Like any rule change in baseball, the decision to expand the Major League Baseball playoffs from 10 teams to 12 and add a bye week in the first round was met with widespread disdain from most and smug assurance from others. The old purists saw it as an affront to the game (which every new idea is) and the new age saw it as baseball finally joining football, basketball and hockey in the 21st century. Everyone agreed it was just a simple cash grab.
A bye week in baseball, especially right before the most important games of the season, was always going to be a risk. Baseball players are creatures of habit, used to a daily grind of games day after day with the occasional off day here and there. The baseball regular season encompasses about 180 days of the calendar, including 162 days of games being played. Those 18 days off include the All Star Break, so over the course of the season, players will get roughly one day off of no baseball for every 10 games they play. The playoffs try to mimic that pace, with playoff games usually separated by one day off to allow for teams to travel.
The bye week completely changes that however, giving the four teams that get them a full five days of no baseball between the end of the regular season and their first playoff game. During that time, teams have no way to prep other than the usual drills and live batting practice, which anyone can tell you is no substitute for actual game action. While these teams on bye await the start of the divisional series, their future opponent is locked into the grind of playoff baseball, which is far more intense than any simulated game could hope to be. The results so far: The 111-win Dodgers are GONE, the 101-win Braves are GONE, the 101-win Astros needed the heroics of Yordan Alvarez to key a sweep of the Mariners and the Yankees fought off an upset bid by the Guardians.
Proponents of the bye week (or rational folks who don’t like to jump to conclusions) will state that one run through the new format is not enough to draw conclusions. Long layoffs are not common in baseball, but perhaps with them now becoming commonplace, teams will find a way to adapt and make downtime less detrimental. But we can still look back on history and see how long layoffs have impacted teams in the past.
In the Wild Card era (since 1995) 16 teams have had at least five days off during the playoffs. Most of these layoffs occurred between the League Championship Series and the World Series save for two that took place between the League Division Series and League Championship Series. Note: Team with the longer layoff is in bold.
1995 Braves (6 days) over Cleveland (3 days)
1996 Yankees (6 days) over Braves (2 days)
2001 Diamondbacks (5 days) over Yankees (4 days)
2002 Angels (5 days) over Giants (4 days)
2005 White Sox (5 days) over Astros (2 days)
2006 Cardinals (1 day) over Tigers (6 days)
2007 Red Sox (2 days) over Rockies (8 days)
2008 Phillies (6 days) over Rays (2 days)
2009 Yankees (2 days) over Phillies (6 days)
2010 Rangers (2 days) over Yankees (5 days) ALCS
2010 Giants (4 days) over Phillies (5 days) NLCS
2012 Giants (1 day) over Tigers (5 days)
2014 Giants (4 days) over Royals (5 days)
2015 Royals (3 days) over Mets (5 days)
2016 Cubs (2 days) over Cleveland (5 days)
2019 Nationals (6 days) over Astros (2 days)
In the 16 times that a team has had a five-day layoff, that team is 7-9 in the ensuing playoff series. Even more interesting however, is how these long layoffs used to be a good thing. From 1995-2005, teams with the five days of no baseball went a perfect 5-0 in the next playoff series. Since 2006 however, those teams are 2-9.
It is not just the time off for teams that has to be taken into account. In most of these past instances, when a team is on ice for these five plus days, their next opponent is usually still playing very intense playoff baseball games, as was the case with our bye week teams this year. Teams advancing out of the wild card round this year had either two days off (Mariners, Guardians and Phillies) or one day off of no baseball (Padres). When you narrow it down to teams with five days or more off going against a team with one or two days off, the teams with the long layoff still went 4-6 in the next round.
In fact, having the longer layoff over your next opponent has proven to put teams at a slight disadvantage. In the 27 years of the wild card era prior to this October, there have been 103 postseason series played (This is NOT including the division series played from 1995-2011 as those teams had the same number of days off. It does include the 18 division series played between the top seeded team and the team that won the wild card game starting in 2012). In that time, 15 times have two teams played each other with the same number of rest days before the playoff series started. In the other 88 series, the team with MORE days off has won the ensuing playoff series only 42 times while losing to the team with less rest 46 times. And much like the instances when a team had five or more days off, prior to 2006, the more rested teams actually did better, going 14-16 in those series, with three instances of teams having the same number of days off.
Yes, the bye week teams went .500 in their respective playoff series, which is pretty close to the .436 winning percentage teams with a five plus day layoff had in the past. So no big whoop right? Not quite.
In the past, teams and Major League Baseball more or less had no control over how much time off a team had prior to a playoff series started. There were lots of factors beyond anyone’s controls, such as how long a particular series went, or how weather would impact how long a series went. A team having a longer layoff before a playoff series was simply a matter of chance, and it was up to said team to figure out a way to deal with it.
That is not the case under the new playoff format, which requires four teams every year to get a layoff that statistically speaking has been more of a detriment to teams than a benefit. The switch to this new playoff format goes against the reality that we have seen in baseball over the past 27 years. While things may have worked out this year because we can blame the bye week for the Dodgers losing in the division series, there could be serious issues that arise if getting a bye in the playoffs proves to be more of a detriment than an asset for the teams that earn one. What is the point of winning in the regular season when you can be penalized for it in October?
Again, one run through this format is not enough to make a full determination of whether or not these bye weeks are going to be a problem for the teams that get them. But that won’t stop me from holding out hope that the Giants snag the No. 3 seed next year, just to be safe.
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