I appreciate the link back to my original piece, and the legwork you’ve done here to compare the leagues. My objection here would be that soccer differs from football, baseball and basketball in that a team can adopt an entirely different style of play designed specifically to succeed in a two-legged knock-out tie. In other words, it’s much easier for a lower-seeded team, qualified for the playoffs despite a mediocre season, to grind out results. I would argue that league play and cup play are very different forms of competition and that blending them undermines the integrity of the season.

It’s like there’s two seasons. Or a season and a tournament, really. MLS values both the same. The Supporters’ Shield winner gets a CONCACAF Champions’ League spot, and the MLS Cup winner gets a CCL spot. If you don’t like the playoffs, consider the SS winner the champion and ignore the tournament. I don’t think the “integrity” of the season is undermined, since the reward for MLS Cup is no different from the reward for SS. The media builds up the Cup, but you can take whichever as your standard for championness.
By the way, baseball teams play completely differently in the playoffs, most significantly by reducing their starting pitcher rotation from five to three. The World Series doesn’t necessarily reward the most consistent team, just the team with the best one-two punch at the top of their rotation.

People can ignore it, but there is an official MLS Champion and that’s the MLS Cup winner. Whatever, it’s a rather tired argument and it’s different structures are a good thing.

As for too many teams being in the play-offs being a “temporary condition”, it’s been a temporary condition for 14 yeas now. That’s a long time.

And in any case, how it will look a few years down the road is not relevent to this year or previous years. Personally, I won’t mind 8 teams when there are 18 teams in the league, though I suspect the league will find a way to increase the number of teams in the post season for that year. I like the idea of needing a better record than at least half the teams in the league to get in the play-offs.

Well, frankly the past isn’t really relevant to the discussion. As of the moment, more than 50% of the league makes it into the playoffs, and next year that won’t be true and the year after that, it’ll be an even lower percentage, assuming MLS doesn’t change the playoff format. In my book, a situation that is changing next year is temporary, no matter how long it’s been going on.

Shrinking the playoffs when the league is on the verge of growing to the size that makes the current number of playoff places respectable would be a little perverse. I think MLS would be best served by keeping the playoffs as is as the league grows, and using the natural growth of the league to make the playoffs more stringent.