Yea, it is hard to come up with advantages for higher seeds that doesn’t seem hokey. The only ones I can think of are starting with a game up (as EF points out that costs one game of revenue possibly) or moving to a 5 home- 2 away for the # 1 seed in the first round they play in. Even that seems rather contrived.
In Football there is a pretty clear home field advantage. Standard betting lines add 4 points for home field. And having a bye is a huge deal in football because of injuries and general need to rest players.
Basketball used to have a crazy home court advantage (65-70%), but it has come down in the last decade- plus.
Hockey has a crazy tradition of lower seeds winning. I remember a season were the 5-6-7-8 seeds advanced out of the 1st round.
I was just throwing stuff out there. Let’s face it, we have a slow weekend coming up for the Phillies, figured I would see if anyone else had better ideas or if (as seems the consensus) it is not really a problem. I think the higher seed, particularly #1, deserves some type of advantage, but baseball doesn’t really allow for easy advantages like that.
At least no one suggested the higher seed gets 4 out, an extra hirtting inning or starts with a guy on base