MLB playoff expansion

The one bad scenario that I heard mentioned is if you have 2 teams fighting for the division title to the last day, and then the team that loses has to host a team that it was far better than but spent the last week resting players & lining up pitching while they went all out.

 

I've never gotten the notion that a baseball wild card team should be "punished," when it happens in no other sport. I think only the purists who, just recently, have been convinced that night games are OK hold this belief.

 

Did a single fan or commentator say after the 2011 season that what baseball needed was more playoff games? No. This is just more TV "inventory" for MLB to sell. It's stupid. The playoffs are a ratings mediocrity. Baseball's regular season drives the money train, and they keep thinking of more ways to make it less important.

 

In the NFL, the wild card teams get an extra round and the road disadvantage.

I'm about as far from being a purist as it is possible to be in baseball, but I love the idea just for the fact that it makes a clear distinction between winning the division and winning the wild card.

 

I don't even know if I'd call it a real "expansion" of the playoffs. They basically split the existing wild card into two halves.

 

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Michael, this is my biggest problem with it. Look at the ending to that 2011 season. Could it get any more thrilling than seeing Atlanta and Boston (or two other teams in another season, perhaps) complete their collapses by getting eliminated on the final day?

Now you're going to take away some of that drama by creating the extra wild cards.

I guess I want to see this played out before I add any more comments. I'm just glad, beginning in 2013, the end of the season supposedly returns to Sundays. Now all MLB needs to do is restore the traditional Monday Opening Day (with the ESPN Sunday night game, of course...)

 

No matter where you cut off the playoff spots, there will be drama like that some seasons and not others, in pretty much the same ratio.

Last year, four happened to be the magic number. There will be other years where four would be boring but five would be exciting.

 

A one-game do or die will increase the pressure to win the division, not lessen it. Throw in teams grinding just to be wild cards, then turning around for a one-game playoff and then being rewarded by going against the league's top team? Thumbs up. Wild cards haven't had enough of a handicap since they were added.

 

This is still going to involve some darn good teams. The NFL's bloated system leads to teams keeping their playoff hopes alive when they are 6-8.

 

I think that's especially the case when you throw in inter-league play. Each team is on equal footing (ostensibly ... let's not get into the salary/market disparities here) within its division, but teams across a given league that are competing for the wild card are not on an equal footing because they don't play inter-league schedules of similar difficulty. Adding the additional wild card team to some degree ameliorates that concern.

 

Consider:

And yet, baseball's been pretty damn exciting since then. Including last year — widely acknowledged to be the most dramatic regular-season day in the sport's history.