There's nothing wild about being a wild card
The Yankees essentially mailed it in yesterday, in their final regular-season home game, and they'll pay no real price for it. When the Yankees wind up falling short of the AL East title, settling for the wild card, they won't have the homefield advantage in the playoffs. Big whoop.
Baseball absolutely needs to create a greater disincentive for teams to get the wild card, as opposed to the division crown. At the moment, neither the Yankees nor the Red Sox possesses major motivation to go hard after the division. The rivals are better off resting up, letting the chips fall where they may and going full-bore next week.
At least one wild-card team has competed in the past five World Series. That's too frequent for my liking.
So what should be done? There are two ideas I like the best. One has been floated repeatedly by Joel Sherman of the New York Post. Here is his latest argument in favor of it. The gist: Each league adds one more wild-card team, and then the postseason kicks off with a best-of-3 series between the two wild-card teams. This gives the three division winners three days to rest, and puts the wild-card survivor at a significant disadvantage when it enters the round of four.
Here's another one I like, borrowed from Japan's Pacific League: In the Division Series, the wild-card entry has to win four games, while the top seed has to win only three. So if the Yankees played the Indians, for instance, the Yankees would be required to win four games before Cleveland took three. Talk about a disincentive to be the wild card - and motivation for teams to fight for the top seed. For this to work, teams in the same division would have to play each other if they are the one and four seed, respecitvely.
So what do you think? Do you like Joel's idea? Or the Japanese idea? Or are you perfectly content with the status quo?
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Comments (5)
If you do go with 2 Wild Cards from each league, how about the Wild Cards square off in a Best of 1 series?
That should provide sufficient incentive and put a "Dent" (all pun intended) into their rotation.
Joker, Joker, Lakes and Rivers.
Well, considering it looks like the Yanks will win the wild card this season, I like the current playoff format as is. I agree though that changes need to be made once the season is over.
I like the idea where the wild card team has to win the extra game in the Division Series, and I also would like to see that happening in the LCS series as well. I would also like to see teams in the same division being allowed to play each other in the first round, that is if the league's best team and wild card team happen to be in the same division.
The bottom line is teams who win the division should have more of a reward than they currently have. We should make it harder for the wild card teams to advance. Right now, there's not much shame of being a wild card team as recent playoff history tells us.
In the mean time, I'm just hoping the Yanks win the wild card, the Indians finish with the league's best record, and the Angels and Red Sox beat each other up in the first round.
Adding another Wild Card ala the NFL makes sense...then the WC team that advances to the next round would get only 2 homes games in the Div Series...i.e. first 3 to the Div winner, next 2 to Wild card and if necessary the last 2 to DW.
Uh, how about realigning both the AL and The NL into 2 Divisions each instead of three? Why on earth are you idiots still ADDING more games to an already obese schedule???
Pablo, find me two other people who consider the MLB postseason schedule "obese." It is by far the leanest postseason schedule among the major sports.