MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said on the Phillies Radio Network Monday that he\u2019s \u201creally satisfied\u201d with the current postseason format. <\/p>\n
MLB<\/a> expanded to a 12-team postseason in 2022, adding a third Wild Card spot in each league. <\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019ve kind of found the sweet spot between enough teams that September was really exciting for us, right through the last weekend,\u201d Manfred said prior to Game 2 of the NLDS between the Phillies and Dodgers. \u201cI think that the incentives that are embedded in the system kept everybody playing hard right through the end, and I think that\u2019s important. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd we have maintained the selectivity of our playoffs. We\u2019re still the hardest (major North American professional) sport to get through to the playoffs, and I think that\u2019s important in terms of the history and tradition of the game.\u201d <\/p>\n Three of the four Wild Card round series went to a decisive Game 3<\/a>. The 11 games on ESPN averaged 4.6 million viewers, up 64% from 2024. Game 3 of the Yankees-Red Sox series drew 7.4 million viewers, the largest ESPN audience since 2021. NBC<\/a> is slated to take over the Wild Card round next year. <\/p>\n \u201cI think the Wild Card round gave us a start to the playoffs that could not have been better,\u201d Manfred said. \u201cOur ratings were phenomenal. Obviously, you get a New York-Boston matchup, it just gets everybody engaged sooner, and it was really a nice start for us.\u201d <\/p>\n Amid a star-laden matchup between Philadelphia and the defending World Series champions, Manfred said he received several emails asking why the standard best-of-five series wasn\u2019t seven games. <\/p>\n \u201cI understand the thought,\u201d Manfred said. \u201cThe way that things shook out you\u2019ve got two really, really good teams with a phenomenal group of players, and it\u2019s nice to hear your fans say we\u2019d like a little more of that.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said on the Phillies Radio Network Monday that he\u2019s \u201creally satisfied\u201d with the current…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1558,363,99],"class_list":["post-205889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}