The Major League Baseball Players Association has agreed on a plan to expand the playoffs to 16 teams by the 2020 season, sources told ESPN’s Marly Rivera.
A playoff expansion still needs final approval from MLB owners, the sources said.
All second-place teams in all six divisions would now qualify for the playoffs, the sources said. Then, the seventh and eighth teams in each league would be chosen for the best record among other teams.
The first round of the playoffs in each league will be four series of three games with all games played at the local highest seed stadium. The rest of the rounds will be their usual duration: the two Division Series in each league will be five-game series, while the AL and NL Championship Series and the World Series will be seven-game series.
If a 16-team format is adopted, it would include a televised postseason seed show in which the best teams choose their first-round opponents, a source told ESPN’s Buster Olney on Thursday.
Players will receive a $ 50 million pool to be distributed after each round and could increase if fans are allowed in the stadiums for the postseason.
Sources said an important aspect for the players was the housing of the players and their families and access to the stadium during the playoffs.
The change means that 53% of the 30 teams make the playoffs. If eight teams qualified for the playoffs in each league from 1995 to 2019, 46 teams with a level equal to or less than .500 would have achieved, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, an average of just under two per season. Those teams included 25 from the American League.
There would have been only three seasons in which all playoff teams would have winning records, Elias said: 2000, 2003 and 2009.
According to ESPN statistics and information, the only time in the last 10 seasons that eight teams in each league finished .500 or more was in 2012.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
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