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I'd like to try out a format which I think would be great IRL. Take the ML division format but have two wild card teams per league. The two wild card teams play a one game play-in game (effectively a 1st round). The winner of that game plays the division winner with the best record. The other two division winners play each other and so on.
This makes the regular season mean a whole lot more. Now you really want to win the division to avoid the one game play-in. Also, if you are the WC team that wins the play-in game then you have lost a day of rest going into the next round and you probably used your best pitcher to win that game.
Now the top team in the league has a real advantage where their rotation is set while the WC winner is scrambling with limited rest. The end result is a structure where it would be much more of an achievement to win the championship out of the WC spots, unlike IRL where there were three straight when a WC team won it all.
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