It took me a while to get into baseball; not enough interesting stuff happened and the games lasted too long to peak my interest. Eventually, as I entered high school and my attention span developed, I started to garner more interest in the sport and have been a big Cubs fan ever since. I’m the only person in my family that watches baseball and only a handful of my friends care as much about the individual games as I do. I have many friends who are passionate about baseball once the playoffs start but don’t care for the regular season. The main problem with the regular season, as is a big problem with many American sports, is that it lasts for too long. Now, I’m not talking about how long it goes on in terms of calendar length because each season of American sports is far shorter than the season of European soccer. I’m talking about a number of games. A season in the English Premier League lasts only 38 games, but baseball has 162. It’s hard not to reach a point where the season begins to feel trivial and the games start to lose significance in the eyes of the fans. I think that it’s the extreme amount of games that’s the primary cause for attendance at baseball games shrinking.

While anyone who is a big fan of baseball will say that each of these games does end up being important in the end, with occasional playoff spots only being decided by a couple of games. Despite the season being so lengthy, it’s difficult to see that during the season. Last year, Mike Trout and the Angels missed out on making the playoffs by 1 game, which shows exactly how important each game of the 162 truly was; however, during the middle of June, it’s hard to see the importance of losing one random game on a Wednesday night. In order to make baseball more interesting and save attendance by making each game seem more important, I have developed a new format for how to construct a baseball season.

Instead of having baseball standings be solely based on individual W-L record like it currently is, I want to change the standings to a point system based on series wins. Being as the baseball season is already set up with games scheduled in series groups, it won’t be a drastic change to the way scheduling works, but instead of just getting simple wins and losses for each game, teams will get points based on series wins. The point system would work as follows: 2 points for a series win and no points for a series lost. In order to provide teams incentive for sweeping their opponents if they find themselves up 2-0 after the first two games, a team would be awarded 3 points for a sweep. If the series ends 2-1 but the team that lost the series lost a game in extra innings, then they would get one point instead of none (so it would act similarly to an overtime loss in hockey). With this rule, there would be a difference in points provided for a team that lost a 3-2 in 12 innings versus a team that lost 8-1 in 9 innings. If at the end of the season, there was a tie in points for teams fighting for a division lead or for a wildcard spot, then the overall W-L record will be the tiebreaker, and if there is still a tie, then run differential would be the deciding factor.

The season would still feel the same, with teams playing three-game series at a time as they currently do, but to decrease the number of games, each team’s schedule would look like this (using the Cubs as an example):

• We would play two series against each team in the NL (one home and one away) so that we play a similarly proportional amount against our conference as we currently do.
• We would play four series (two home two away) against randomly selected teams from the AL so that, again, we have some inter-league play but most of the games are focused on inner-league play.
• But what about increasing importance on the divisions, you might ask? Well on top of the two series the Cubs would play against teams from the NL Central as part of competing against NL teams, we would play another two series (again one home and one away) against our divisional rivals in order to keep the rivalries intact and place the importance on divisional play that is already present.

This would cut the schedule from 162 games to 120, shortening the season by 25% but still holding the core structure of the current schedule in place.

I believe this format for points and scheduling would work because it wouldn’t be a drastic change from the scheduling system we already use, but it would make the season shorter and provide a sort of playoff-like atmosphere that so many fans love by putting a greater importance on Game 3 if a series is tied 1-1. Losing that one game can be the difference between 2 points and none, making it more important than a single game would currently be. It also places importance on Game 1 because if you don’t win, you lose the chance for three points from the sweep. This format encourages rewards for accomplishments that aren’t given any special treatment currently, such as sweeps and extra innings games. Fewer games mean more rest, which would allow greater freedom to rotate the pitching lineups, giving us a greater chance to see Kershaw and Arrieta battle it out at Wrigley in Game 3 as teams fight for the two points. It encourages teams to go for the sweep, to avoid being swept to help with their potential tiebreaking W-L record, and to score as many runs as possible to help with their overall run differential. Baseball will still be the same at its core, but with this format, we will increase the importance of individual games, create the feeling that playoffs so brilliantly provides, and most importantly, keep the fans interested and coming out to games.