On Tuesday morning, the Philadelphia Phillies and Atlanta Braves faced off in the first game of the 2026 Major League Baseball playoffs, ushering in the fifth year of baseball’s not-so-new 12-team postseason format.

Despite the absence of my beloved St. Louis Cardinals — it’s been a rough few years in the old 314 — you’d better believe I’ll be following every game. And why wouldn’t I? This season’s Wild Card Round alone features some powerhouse matchups, including … the 84-78 Chicago White Sox … against the 81-81 Houston Astros. Huh. That’s really a playoff series?

In a perfect world: no, of course not. A team that lost 102 games last year versus a team that lost half its games this year isn’t my idea of a thrilling playoff experience. In MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s world, though, that’s just the way it is.

But why should it be? Baseball fans deserve a high-quality postseason lineup, not a whole series of mediocre American League slop. The sport is better than this.

It’s time to fix the MLB playoffs. Today, I’ll be walking you through my three-step plan to perfect the postseason format, once and for all. Mr. Manfred, I hope you’re paying attention.

Fewer teams in the field

Last year, I briefly complained about how the current team count is too large, and my thoughts on the matter haven’t changed. In a league with only 30 teams, 12 is simply too many to make the playoffs. Proportionally, that’s like if the College Football Playoff had 55 teams instead of 12, or if March Madness featured 146 instead of 76.

Not to sound like an oldhead, but seriously, what’s with the participation trophies? The White Sox making the playoffs after a disastrous three-year stretch is a nice story, I’ll give you that, but they only won 84 games — they’re not exactly my idea of a playoff-caliber team.

This isn’t an isolated incident, either, as the Cincinnati Reds made it in with just 83 wins last year. Unsurprisingly, they got crushed in just two games and promptly flew to Cancun only a couple of days later than they would’ve had they missed the field altogether.

In a sport with such a grueling regular-season schedule, results have to matter. Winning has to matter. You shouldn’t be able to limp through 162 games with a .500 record and still make the postseason.

Thus, when I’m commissioner for a day, I’ll be reducing the number of playoff teams per league from six to four. You want to play in October? Earn it.

No more division champions

In the current era of baseball, where each team plays every other team at least three times, divisions matter less than ever: Across a full season, a given team will play against its division rivals a total of 52 times — less than one-third of their overall schedule. Why, then, are we still placing so much emphasis on winning your division?

The aforementioned 2026 Astros are an extreme example: Despite going an even 81-81, Houston finished with the best record in the AL West, earning an automatic spot in the playoffs as the No. 3 seed. For reference, the New York Yankees, who won 12 more games this year, are seeded No. 4.

It’s not like the Astros beat up on their weak division, either, as they went 26-26 against their AL West opponents. They were a bad team that couldn’t even get the job done against other bad teams. But because they happen to play in a bad division, they still got into the postseason. Make it make sense.

The solution is easy: no more automatic bids for division winners. Instead of letting in each division’s champion — plus a wild-card team or three — simply give it to the four best teams in each league. If that means the worst division in MLB history isn’t represented, so be it.

Every series is best of seven

Why on earth is the Division Series still only best of five? This one feels like the most obvious change of all, yet more than 30 years after the quarterfinal round was introduced, we still haven’t gotten there.

It’s one thing for the Wild Card Series to be a best-of-three format — the original Wild Card was a single game, after all — but when the Championship Series and the World Series are both played to seven games, it’s nonsensical to keep the Division Series at five. Every other major sport maintains a consistent length for each of its postseason series; why not baseball?

In a sport with results as variable as baseball, a five-game series just isn’t enough to determine which team “deserves” to move on — especially in the Division Series, which typically has a larger gap between teams than later rounds. If anything, it might make more sense for the first round to be longer than the rest, as that would allow the better team to win more often.

My final verdict is as follows: The playoff field should feature the four best teams from each league, regardless of their divisions, and each series should be a best-of-seven format. This would be roughly the same amount of postseason baseball we’re getting now, but with stronger teams, fairer matchups and more exciting competition overall.

Oh, and the Cardinals should be in it every year. I almost forgot that part.

Bennett Christofferson is a senior writing about baseball’s biggest stories and controversies in his column, “Dugout Diaries,” which runs every other Thursday. He is also the managing editor at the Daily Trojan.