Sources: Expanded playoffs, draft lottery proposals in CBA negotiations

Major League Baseball’s expanded playoff proposal, as part of a new collective bargaining agreement between owners and players, includes the ability for division winners to pick their wild-card opponent, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

The format would call for 14 teams—seven from each league—to make the playoffs, four more than currently play in the postseason. The three division winners in each league would be joined by four wild-card teams to make up the playoff field. Here’s how it would work:

• The team with the best record in each league would get a bye into the best-of-five division series.

• The remaining two division winners would get to pick their wild-card opponent from the bottom three wild-card teams. The division winner with the second-best record would pick first, then the No. 3 seed in the league would pick its opponent from the final two wild-card teams. The wild-card team with the best record would play the wild-card team that wasn’t picked by a division winner.

• Once matchups are set, the higher-seeded teams would host all three games in a best-of-three wild-card round.

• Winners in the wild-card round would advance to the division series and the playoffs would continue as they have in the past.

Rosenthal: This year’s races demonstrate the potential issues MLB would face if the playoffs were expanded to 14 teams

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With all due respect to fans of the Phillies, Reds and Padres, do any of those teams objectively deserve a postseason berth?

The answer is no. Yet, under Major League Baseball’s original plan for expanding the playoffs from 10 to 14 teams, two of those three clubs would qualify for wild cards. And in the American League, four of the five current wild-card contenders would be assured of playing in October.

Too many mediocre clubs. Not enough urgency. A plan too flawed to implement, at least in its initial, proposed form.

I’m not opposed on principle to more teams in the postseason. A larger field is inevitable once the league expands from 30 to 32 clubs, which should happen at some point this decade after, ahem, the A’s and Rays resolve the uncertainty with their ballparks.

In the interim, a well-conceived, 14-team format could make sense. But it likely would need to be introduced in combination with other changes that would incentivize competition, or else the Players Association, which must agree to any adjustment in format, would not approve.