How to fix the BYE and make the regular season more meaningful: Fall training and tilted series

Before I get started I'm not opposed to the lower seeds pulling off upsets in fact those are amazing moments, however I don't want such moments to be decided by the type of format. When San Diego beat the Mets (12 Games Better) and Dodgers (22GB) and the Phillies beat the Braves (14GB) last year I thought that it was just an amazing historical postseason.

Some fans of the Braves and Dodgers felt there was an issue with the format so I did a brief manual poll about the division round early in the offseason but it was still just a 1 year sample, not to mention the 2 AL bye teams got past the ALDS and 1 such team won the World Series.

Now that it happened again in the 2nd year of the bye and this time it was 3 out of 4 going down (all 10+ GB) and winning 1 total game among them that there is some trance involved in this setup.

A bye is supposed to be rewarding but unless you are the Astros it usually isn't so far. In order to keep the number playoff teams the same and eliminate the rust factor the 4 bye teams should take part in a few exhibition games (Fall training) against each other while the Wildcard round is going on. Like Spring training if tied after 9 innings there will be no extra innings as there is no impact on seeding or eliminations at stake.

In both the wildcard and division rounds if teams are 10 or more games better the lower seed should have to win an extra game while the higher seed as the same goal but with 1 extra game to accomplish it. That would mean 4 games in the wildcard round (4-0 format) and 6 games in the division round (2-2-2 or 2-3-1 format) This year there would have been no affect in the wildcard round but last year's Padres/Mets series would have had a game 4. All 5 of the DS rounds in which a 100+ win team would have had at least 1 more game although some (like last year's Braves/Phillies and this year's 2 sweeps) would have ended the next game. The Mariners/Astros series where the tilt also would apply ended with the high record sweeping so no extension would have occurred.

With these 2 adjustments whenever upsets occur the fans of the high team will have peace of mind that they simply didn't get it done and the low seed truly outplayed them and they won't feel it was decided by the format.