Morning Mound Visit: MLB expands playoffs

After the 2020 season was two innings old, MLB officially announced that the playoffs would be expanding to 16 teams. There will be eight best-of-three Wild Card series with the higher seeded team hosting all three games. The first and second team from each division will earn a postseason berth and a spot will be given to the two remaining teams with the best record. Jayson Stark pointed out that it will be possible for a fourth-place team to make the playoffs.

Adam Kilgore | Washington Post: The Nationals announced that Juan Soto tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday morning. Soto took three more instant-result tests yesterday which all came back negative and Soto is asymptomatic, so there’s a chance this was a false positive. However, even if that’s the case, Soto was tested on Tuesday and played in two games before his results came back. That kind of lag makes it very easy for one player to spread the virus other teams.

Patrick Dubuque | Baseball Prospectus $: Making a good prediction is harder than it sounds. The prediction can’t be too safe because then it just wastes everyone’s time, but it can’t be so outlandish because even if it proves to be right, it looks like random guesswork.