It's Finally Time To Fix The Wild Card

September 28, 2007

As I mentioned back back in 1999, the wild card needs to be fixed. Since then, we've had 8 more years of pointless division races. The AL East race between the Yankees and Red Sox was the closest since 1978, but I stopped watching about two weeks ago. Once the Yankees put enough space between themselves and the Tigers, the rest of the season became meaningless.

This could have been the most exciting playoff chase in recent memory. A chance for the Red Sox to collapse as badly as they did in 1978. Instead, we got to see a bunch of games where Terry Francona sits his best players and experiments with how best to use Eric Gagne.

It seems like the calls to fix the wild card have died down. I think it's because the ALDS and NLDS can produce some great baseball. That's great. I don't want to get rid of the wild card. I just want to fix it so that the division races regain some importance. In case you missed it the first time, here's my proposal again:

1) Replace the current Wild Card system with two Wild Cards. Because these are the 4th and 5th teams in each league to earn a playoff spot, we will call these teams #4 and #5.

2) As with the current system, the division winner with the best record is the #1 seed, the division winner with the next-best record is the #2 seed.

3) On the first day after the end of regular season, team #5 plays a one-game playoff at team #4.

4) The winner of this game advances to meet team #1 in a best-of-five series.

In other words, this is identical to the current system, except that each league adds a 2nd wild card team which faces off against the 1st wild card team in a one-game showdown.

Some advantages of this new system:

a) Division races gain importance. Settling for the wild card means there's close to a 50% chance you'll get knocked out in 1 game. Even if you win, you have to hop a plane and go face the best team in your division the very next day.

b) "Home field" races (such as between the 2007 American League division winners) gain added importance. Wouldn't you rather face a team that just used their best available pitcher in a one-game playoff than a team that had the ability to set their rotation?

c) This addresses the frustation that the current wild card system is "unfair" because the wild card has as good a shot (or better) at making it to the World Series. No team wants to face a 1-game elimination playoff, no matter how good their best pitcher is. Moreover, it's unlikely that a wild card team's best pitcher will be rested for this playoff game. And even if he is, and the team manages to win the one-game playoff, they have to start the division series with their #2 starter.

d) This adds to post-season excitement, and TV ratings, without lengthening the playoffs. We don't have to worry about playing November games in Boston or Cleveland.

e) The one-game playoffs create instant excitement to kick off the post-season. It's like scheduling a couple of Game 7's right at the beginning of October. Baseball needs this, because a lot of fans are losing interest in the playoffs. It's ridiculous that the Braves would have thousands of empty seats in the playoffs because "it's only the first round".

At least from Bud Selig's point of view, this system seems to be an improvement on all grounds. It restores the importance of each division race while also increasing fan interest -- because even more teams now have a shot at the post-season. In fact, although we are adding 2 teams to the playoffs, we actually increase the chance that each division winner has of reaching the World Series (because we disrupt the starting rotations of the wild card teams -- putting them at a disadvantage in the ALDS and NLDS).

But instead of actually fixing the current system, Selig has been busy making bizarre tweaks to the post-season format, like giving home-field advantage in the World Series to the team from the league that wins the All-Star Game. This year, he created a new rule that most baseball fans don't even know about that lets the league winner with the best division record decide whether the ALDS will span 7 days or 8 days (the best National League team gets no such benefit, but it appears that the leagues will "trade off" this lovely privilege in future years).

Anyway, it's about time to restore the division races to prominence, while also adding some post-season excitement. It shouldn't be too hard to get baseball to stand up and notice this idea. Just print out the above proposal and drop it in a letter to Bud. You can probably find his e-mail address online, but I've learned that snail-mail works better for these kinds of things:

Mr. Allan H. "Bud" Selig
Commissioner of Baseball
777 E. Wisconsin Avenue
Suite 3060
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202