Bud Selig’s new Star-Spangled, Super-Fantastic, Two Wild Cards In Every League Postseason Playoff Scheme is with us. It’s fairly simple. Instead of one wild card team, plus the three division winners, getting into the postseason from each league, we are now going to have two wild card teams from each league. The two wild card teams will play a one-game playoff, with the winner joining the three division winners in the Division Series.
The idea is not only to put an extra team in the playoffs (and keep more teams in contention, and more fans interested, in September), but also to make winning the division more significant. Up until now, winning the division was important but it wasn’t critical. The wild card winners were just about equal with the division winners. From now on, however, the wild card teams are going to have to win the wild card play-off game to get to the Division Series. That is a big risk.
I understand the logic behind the move, and on balance it is a good idea, even if it dilutes the postseason a little more by allowing fully one-third of the teams into the playoffs.
But I object to one argument in favor of the new idea: The argument that wild card playoff games will give us, every year, the excitement of September 28, 2011 (see here), when the wild card spots in both leagues came down to the final game of the year. Similarly, I have heard it said that the excitement of the Cubs-Giants playoff game in 1998 (also on September 28), when the Cubs and Giants had a playoff for the wild card spot, would have been the same under the new system - because the Cubs and Giants would have still been playing that night anyway. It would have just been the first game of the postseason, i.e., the game between the two wild card teams, instead a playoff game at the end of the regular season to see who would get into the postseason.
That argument is wrong. The excitement will not be as great. I watched September 28 last year, and I still have a videotape of the September 28, 1998. Here’s the difference: Last year, and in 1998, the games were all about getting into the postseason. The new wild card playoff game will just be about advancing in the postseason, not getting there. It has come to not be all that big of a deal to win a Division Series. The League Championship Series is a big deal because you get a pennant and you get to the World Series. The Division Series? Just a stop on the way. And that is what the wild card playoff game has a chance to become. Just another stop on the way.
And I can assure you that neither September 28, 2011 nor September 28, 1998 were just another stop on the way.
Recent Comments