Written by Right up front, I LIKE the expanded playoffs adopted officially by MLB today. I went on record supporting this concept a couple of years ago and I stand by that support.
Beginning this fall, there will be TWO Wild Card spots in both the AL and NL, instead of one in each. In a perfect world, I’d have no Wild Cards at all, but that realistically is never going to happen. This is the next best thing.
I know that scheduling issues meant that, for 2012 only, the LDS will have a goofy format where the first two games are played in the lower seeded team’s stadium and the following three in the higher seeded team’s place. That’s not ideal, but they’ll go back to a 2-2-1 format next season, so whatever.
Image: MLB.com
The primary reason I like this concept is that it returns emphasis where I believe it belongs… on winning your Division title.
Players and managers (and thus most fans) have become conditioned, since 1995, to establishing their team’s season-long goal as being to “make the playoffs.” This is the way it is in the NFL, NHL and NBA, and while MLB has had fewer playoff spots than other major sports leagues, that same mentality has established itself in baseball since the Wild Card was implemented starting with the 1995 season.
Since that time, it has no longer mattered if you win your Division or not, as long as you managed to win enough games to beat out all of the other Division “runners up.” Several times over this period, teams that have locked up the Wild Card spot have stopped bothering to even compete for their Division championship, preferring instead to rest players and set their rotation for the playoffs. In at least one case, a team very clearly tried NOT to win their Division, in an effort to get the first round match-up they felt most comfortable with. That cannot be allowed to happen.
It won’t happen again.
There are only two real objections raised to the new plan.
One is that it results in the likely outcome that a strong second place team in one Division is placed at too great a disadvantage to Division winning teams of lesser talent and abilities. We’ll call this “the Yankee objection” and it goes something like this:
“The Yankees are always the best team in the American League, even when they let another AL East team win the Division and this format will mean that when the Yankees do allow someone else to win the AL East, they won’t get in to the playoffs on equal footing with the AL Central and AL West Division champions who are never ever as good as the Yankees. Therefore, the Yankees will gain their rightful place in the World Series less often than they deserve.”
To this I say, “If you’re so much better than everyone else, win your f’ing Division or shut up.”
The other objection, raised by a lot of players and managers, is that it just isn’t fair to make a team go through a 162 game season and then have their playoff hopes hinge on a single game. Everyone is conditioned to believe that you’re supposed to get a series of some sort in the postseason to establish your right to move on or go home.
And I agree… for Division champions.
But we’re not talking about Division champions here. We’re talking about two teams that didn’t win a damn thing over the course of that 162 game season. By all rights, they shouldn’t get to play ANY more baseball. They finished no better than 2nd place in their Divisions.
But we need an even number of teams in the “real” playoffs for each League, so one of those losers has to be let in to the postseason party. That’s fine, I guess, but this business of letting that also-ran team enter the playoffs on equal footing with the teams that DID win their Division needed to end.
So, once again, my answer to the whiners who think their 2nd place finish should entitle them to getting to play more than a single play-in game is pretty similar to my response to the first objection… “If you don’t want your playoff hopes determined by a single Wild Card game, win more games.”
In the end, Major League Baseball is saying that they want Division Championships to matter more than they have since 1995 and this change absolutely guarantees that teams will go flat out to win their Division, rather than settle for a Wild Card spot.
There are other benefits of this change, of course, but they are not so much real reasons to make the change as they are pleasant byproducts.
More teams will be in contention for one of those Wild Card spots late in the season. This is important, not only to fans in the markets directly affected by their team continuing to have a shot, but across the entire fan base, because it will mean more fans continuing to pay attention to more games at a time of year when baseball loses a number of eyeballs to football games. The playoffs and even World Series have become less watched in part because, by the time the playoffs roll around, fans in most markets have lost interest in baseball and have been watching football for over a month.
I also really like knowing there will always be two “win or go home” games every season. The down side of having playoff “series” is that there are years when not a single postseason game has the drama of both teams needing a win to avoid elimination, because there are years when no playoff series goes the full five or seven games. That will never happen again.
The handful of “game 163” contests in recent years have been instant classics. Now there will be at least two of those games every season (though not many of them are likely to have the drama of the Rockies, White Sox and Twins wins this decade). And it won’t come at the cost of other potential game 163s because there will still be potential tie-breaker games.
I understand that there are plenty of people who don’t like this change. That’s fine. As always, I acknowledge that everyone is entitled to their opinion… even if it’s wrong. 
- JC
