A Case Against Holding MLB Playoffs in a Bubble like the NBA and NHL

There are suggestions that the Major League Baseball postseason should go the bubble route, compressing all the games into a few selected areas and venue. The thing is, baseball is time insensitive, unlike the NBA and NHL, and for that reason seems unlikely to work well.

Since the Major League Baseball season is already more than one-third in the books – at least for teams who haven’t lost a week or more to coronavirus blowups – so perhaps it’s time to think about what comes next.

Sixteen teams, more than half of all MLB franchises, will make the postseason. The question is, what will that postseason look like.

There are suggestions that the postseason will steal pages from the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League and play the game in what are euphemistically being called bubbles – teams are brought into a confined, centralized areas.

A number of Sports Illustrated writers got together to sketch out their feelings about what a bubble playoff might look like, and it’s an interesting read.

Still, while the general consensus is that the bubble system makes sense, I’m not convinced that it does. Not even a little.

It’s one thing to use an arena to cram a bunch of games into in Orlando or New York or Los Angeles, but it’s just not going to work in baseball.

NBA and NHL games are time sensitive. Aside from the occasional overtime game, you can count on an NBA game lasting a two hours 30 minutes; an NHL game is about the same.

Baseball, on the other hand, is time insensitive. MLB games this year are lasting over three hours, and while the Red Sox seem unlikely to get into the postseason, it seems like every Yankees-Red Sox game in the postseason takes just over four hours, or forever, whichever comes first.

Throw in an extra-inning game, and you can throw out the clock.

MLB’s season ends on Sept. 27. And even If the first round of playoffs has a staggered start, you’re going to need to play four games per day starting on Day 2. It’s going to have to be played at four different parks, because it just takes one 14-inning game to blow the entire system sideways.

The idea about conducting the playoffs in bubbles was engineered to keep players safe and healthy in the middle of the pandemic. Things are going well for now, it seems, but there’s no guarantee that the NBA and NHL will coast through this thing.

It may be better to just hold the MLB playoffs as if it was 2019 and not 2020. True, there would be many more plane flights, but MLB teams use charter planes and, so far at least, MLB’s coronavirus problems haven’t had anything to do with city-to-city travel.

When you have at least one team at home, then you have players who will have been living and, presumably, successfully social distancing, off-and-on for two-plus months. That’s got to count for something; the NBA and NHL went into their bubbles without much in the way of a regular season, so they didn’t have any history to go on getting the postseason in shape.

Strictly from an American League West point of view, the suggestion that Houston and Arlington, Texas serve as bubble sites wouldn’t go over well. Sure, they are retractable-roof stadiums, but do the A’s or the Angels really want to see the Rangers or Astros have all their games at home? The same would be true for the NL West if Southern California is picked as a venue and the Dodgers and Padres get to play at home when no one else does.

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

Click the "follow" button in the top right corner to join the conversation on Inside the Athletics on SI. Access and comment on featured stories and start your own conversations and post external links on our community page.