MLB Wants 154-Game Seasons and Letting Top Seeds Pick Their Playoff Opponents

NEW YORK — FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2026 — Baseball is flirting with its past to fix its future. On Thursday, Major League Baseball formally proposed cutting the regular season from 162 games to 154 — a length the sport used from 1904 through 1960 — while expanding the Division Series to best-of-seven and introducing the most radical wrinkle of all: letting the top seeds choose their playoff opponents. The proposals landed as part of the league’s ongoing collective bargaining negotiations with the MLB Players Association over a new labor agreement.

The league said in a statement: “MLB has proposed returning to a 154-game Regular Season, best-of-seven Division Series, and opponent selection in the Wild Card and Division Series.” Under the plan, the shorter season and the longer Division Series would both begin in 2029. The opponent-selection twist would arrive sooner — starting with the 2027 postseason, if the two sides agree.

02 How “Pick Your Opponent” Would Actually Work

This is the part that will launch a thousand talk-radio segments. After the regular season, according to LiveMint’s breakdown of the proposal, the No. 3 seed in each league — the division winner with the weakest record — would get first choice between the No. 5 and No. 6 seeds for the Wild Card round. The No. 4 seed takes whichever club is left. Then the No. 1 seed, sitting on its bye, gets to hand-pick which Wild Card survivor it wants to face in the Division Series. The No. 2 seed gets the other one.

MLB’s logic, per the league’s own framing: the choice rewards the best regular-season records, kills any incentive to coast into the third wild-card spot, and — in the league’s words — creates instant bulletin-board material the moment a team gets singled out. HITC, which flagged the proposal early, called it a radical “pick your opponent” playoff twist — and honestly, that’s the most accurate three-word summary going. Imagine the Yankees pointing at a clubhouse and saying you, we want you, on live television. The selection show alone would do numbers.

There’s a wrinkle worth noting: a separate account of the proposal described the mechanics slightly differently, with the second-best division winner choosing from the three lowest wild cards. The fine print is still being negotiated — this is a proposal, not a done deal — but the core idea is consistent across every version: seeds pick, and nobody gets to hide.

03 Why 154? Health, Mondays, and Primetime October

The league is selling the shorter season as a health measure with a broadcast kicker. Eight fewer games opens up a standard weekly off day — mostly on Mondays — plus room for one or two new national broadcast windows. MLB spokesman Glen Caplin said the 154-game slate would “allow us to introduce a weekly off day, which is good for player health, while also creating a new national broadcast window to showcase our most exciting teams and players.”

The October math is just as deliberate. Stretching the Division Series from five games to seven could add as many as eight postseason games — roughly replacing what the regular season gives up — while extra off days would lengthen the month, trim the dreaded weekday-afternoon windows, and push more games into primetime. Caplin added: “a shorter summer unlocks making October even better for our fans, with fewer weekday afternoon games, a longer Division Series, and more opportunities to see the game’s best pitchers on the biggest stage.” More aces, more nights, more eyeballs. That’s the whole business plan in one sentence.

And the history is real. The American League played 154-game schedules until it expanded to 162 in 1961; the National League followed in 1962. For anyone who romanticizes the record book, this is a return, not a reinvention — which is exactly how the league wants it framed.

04 The Union Has to Say Yes — and the Money Fight Is the Real Fight

None of this happens without the MLBPA — and as NewsRadio 840 WHAS reported, the proposals landed Thursday as part of the ongoing talks. The current proposals sit inside a much bigger bargaining pile: free agency rules, salary arbitration, the pre-arbitration bonus pool, luxury tax thresholds, and the minimum salary are all on the table, and previous rounds have shown real daylight between the sides on the economics — especially the competitive balance tax.

The postseason size question is its own subplot. MLB has previously pushed to expand the playoffs from 12 teams to 14, with four wild cards per league; the players countered with their own 12-team vision. The pick-your-opponent twist reads like a sweetener — a way to make a bigger bracket feel meritocratic instead of watered down. Give the best teams a tangible reward for finishing first, and suddenly the extra October inventory is easier to swallow.

Whether the union bites on 154 games is the open question. Fewer games means fewer gates, and the players will want to know exactly how the lost regular-season revenue gets made up before they sign off on nostalgia. The league’s answer — bigger October, better windows, healthier stars — is compelling on paper. Paper, though, doesn’t pay salaries.

More from the sports desk, including last night’s postseason recap, the Guardians forcing a Game 5, and the Dodgers-Brewers NLCS preview.