Ken Rosenthal: Reseeding MLB postseason after Wild Card round ‘needs to happen’

This year’s MLB standings ended up with the most significant disparity between division winners in recent memory, and longtime MLB insider Ken Rosenthal believes it’s time to do something about it.

On Tuesday’s Foul Territory, Rosenthal agreed with the show’s hosts that baseball should reseed its postseason bracket after the Wild Card round. Rosenthal argued this would stagger the best matchups for audiences and be more fair to teams.

“The reseeding after the Wild Card series, that’s something that’s been talked about a lot in recent weeks. And that is something that honestly needs to happen,” he said.

“I don’t know that MLB is going to be piggish about it going forward, but they have to recognize that what is happening in the American League this year, when you have the three best teams on one side of the bracket … and then on the other side, you have the Guardians, the White Sox and the Astros … that’s not what you want. It’s not an ALCS that you’re gonna want.”

“MLB has to recognize that you have the three best AL teams on one side of the bracket.”

Re-seeding after the Wild Card Round needs to happen, says @Ken_Rosenthal. pic.twitter.com/iPysGKVsSv

— Foul Territory (@FoulTerritoryTV) September 29, 2026

Ironically, Rosenthal will be part of the NLCS broadcast as part of the Fox Sports crew.

But as Rosenthal notes, re-seeding after the Wild Card round would partially alleviate the bizarre AL East load-up on one side of this year’s bracket. An upset by the Chicago White Sox over the evenly matched Houston Astros would send the Sox to Tampa rather than Cleveland. Last season, Detroit won the Wild Card round as a six-seed, which would have triggered a re-seed under Rosenthal’s preferred rules.

Particularly with three Wild Card teams these days that are often separated by just a game or two, seeding arguably is less predictive than ever.

Still, Rosenthal added that the bigger problem for MLB this year is that teams like New York and Philadelphia underperformed in a manner that led them to play rivals early in the playoffs.

“If you’re the networks, and the networks’ interests kind of align with MLB’s, they want the most eyeballs,” he explained. “Ideally, you want the Yankees and Red Sox playing in a later round, possibly the Braves and Phillies as well. It can’t always work out that way, and sometimes it just works out the way it is right now.”