Mike and big: First 4 teams don't play a series, it's a play in game.
#8 vs #5, and #6 vs #7 play a one game playoff. (wild card round)
1/2 seeds get byes, while winners of wild card play 3 and 4 seeds in best of 5.
Winners play 1-2 seed in next round.

Basically adding 2 teams to current format, while at the same time making the "division dynasties" go away. This also eliminates teams from sneaking into the playoffs with a losing record (I did it one year. And it felt dirty). Unless the league is so unbalanced that a 7 or 8 seed has a losing record. But it should work out that the top 8 teams will get into the playoffs, while giving the best 4 teams the better shot at advancing.

What do you guys think???

I think a one game play-in sounds horrible.  There is virtually no advantage to finishing 5th vs. 8th.

If you want to get rid of divisions to avoid the sub-.500 division winners getting in, that's fine.  Then top six teams make the post-season just as it is now, with 1 and 2 getting first round byes, and 3 vs. 6 and 4 vs. 5.

And I'd prefer to see all rounds go best of seven.  Since that would add two real-life days to the schedule, shorten spring training to 12 games.  ST is too long and meaningless as is.

Posted by dodgersgale on 2/14/2012 3:55:00 PM (view original):
Mike and big: First 4 teams don't play a series, it's a play in game.
#8 vs #5, and #6 vs #7 play a one game playoff. (wild card round)
1/2 seeds get byes, while winners of wild card play 3 and 4 seeds in best of 5.
Winners play 1-2 seed in next round.

Basically adding 2 teams to current format, while at the same time making the "division dynasties" go away. This also eliminates teams from sneaking into the playoffs with a losing record (I did it one year. And it felt dirty). Unless the league is so unbalanced that a 7 or 8 seed has a losing record. But it should work out that the top 8 teams will get into the playoffs, while giving the best 4 teams the better shot at advancing.

What do you guys think???

Not a big fan of this.  But FWIW, I'm not really a fan of the post-season expansion that the real-life MLB is implementing either.

Under your proposal, the only benefit would be that 2 extra teams in each league get a chance to play at least 1 extra game.  But meanwhile, the #1 & #2 seeds in each league, who already get about 9 days to rest their players (if you include off days) under the current format, would now get at least an additional 2 days (off day to set your rotation + play-in games) to rest up.

Also, the one-game play-in format is not really fair to teams that earned the #5 and #6 seeds. Instead of getting to play a best-of-five, they now would only have one game, and if their pitcher has a bad outing or gets hurt, they're history. An entire season's worth of effort down the drain in one game. When HBD first started, the 1st round of the playoffs was a best-of-three, and it was universally hated. People complained to the point that sitestaff had to change it to best-of-five.  So taking that hated concept and shortening it even further would not go over well.

I'm not a fan of byes in baseball playoffs anyway. It works for football because each postseason match-up is decided in one game, but in other sports you have a series, and its kind of ridiculous that two teams in each league get to rest and recuperate that entire time while other teams are slugging it out.  I think HBD should have no byes; either 4 teams in each league make it, or 8 teams in each league make it, but nobody gets to rest their players through an entire series worth of games while they wait.

HBD's postseason has NEVER resembled real-life baseball's, so I don't see any need to change it just because MLB is changing theirs.

And, since we've strayed a bit from the original topic, I also think realignment would be a bad idea for HBD, for the reasons other posters have mentioned above.

The playoff system is perfect the way it is now and I love spring training. ST is very important for those of us who use it to evaluate talent and to get young players at bats and young pitchers the chance to work on their pitches. I think WIS should add additional rating increases for players during ST to simulate the work they get in. And they should also add more ST games and include split-squad games. Make the ST more valuable to owners. ST serves a purpose in baseball. It needs to be the same here.   

I hate ST with a passion and would be happy to see it oblterated.

tec's suggestion is the real winner.  At the very least I think the LDS rounds need to be best-of-7. 

You don't have to participate in ST.  You don't need those silly AB's for your prospects.