The current MLB wild card format, implemented for the 2012 postseason, added another team to the postseason. After the division winners are decided, the next two teams with the best records in their respective leagues face off in a one-game playoff to see who moves onto the division series. While the wild card game adds more tension to the end of the regular season and energizes more fan bases across the league with the hope that their team can snag one of the two bids, the game comes with more flaws than benefits.
Change To The Wild Card
Baseball is a game built around playing a series, not a single game. Unless a game needs to be rescheduled due to weather, or two teams are tied at the end of the regular season and need to play a play-in game, teams play two to four game series’ against one another. Baseball isn’t football; there isn’t a quarterback who can dominate the game on a baseball diamond. A single pitcher doesn’t pitch all 162 games; a team is built around a pitching staff. The wild card game eliminates the need for a staff when a team just needs a single starter to pitch. That situation does lend itself to two top of the line aces facing off against each other, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Depending on how the respective teams used their rotation to finish out the regular season, it could end up being a number one starter versus a number three. In a sport built on such a long regular season, it is just odd that once the grind of 162 is over and you’re in the hunt for a championship, it can all be over after just one more game.
The wild card games are popular in their current format, and the winner-takes-all stakes add tension and atmosphere to the game, but changing the format to a best-of-three series is a no-brainer. The tension can be maintained, the regular season is no longer diminished, and the tradition of series’ can continue with a best-of-three. With the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs, who finished with the second- and third-best records in baseball, facing off in the NL Wild Card game this season, many discussed a total overhaul of the playoff seeding. While one of the best teams in the game being forced to play a winner-take-all is unfair, tearing down the whole seeding system over the rare occurrence of a single division producing the three best records in the league is unnecessary. A three game series would give both teams a fair shot at making a run in the postseason without eliminating the tension of the wild card game and without extending the baseball season, which at times already seems endless. If the length of a season is a concern, then MLB should consider playing 152 or 154 games. Simply put, Major League Baseball, its teams, and its fans would all benefit from a three-game wild card series.
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