It is now year three of the two-Wild Card format in year three. Three years of being forced to watch the most unnatural thing in all of baseball: the one-game playoff series.
There is nothing about baseball that lends itself to a one-game, winner-take-all format. With a regular season nearly twice as longer as any other, MLB is the very definition of a sport that is a marathon and not a sprint. OK, maybe the actual sport of marathon running is the very definition of that phrase, but you get my point.
Even during the regular season, teams play each other in a series format and the shortest series is two games. With the standard five-man rotation, rosters aren’t designed to try and win every game possible like they are in other sports either. But in the Wild Card game, teams don’t even carry a normal roster. Six-man benches and nine-man bullpens are the norm. So why throw away the way the game has been played all season by going with the one-game format in the Wild Card round?
MLB would have you believe that the one-game format is more exciting after the excitement of Game 163 in 2011. While that was sudden death as well, it was also the consummation of the regular season and brought with it all the associated drama from that incredible end to the season. But the one-game playoff doesn’t bring any of that same drama. It is completely and totally contrived.
MLB might not even cop to that though. Their other big excuse is that they don’t want to extend the MLB season even longer than they have to. The one-game format allows them to do that. While not having having the season go on too long or having too much of a layoff between the end of the regular season and the LDS series is a valid concern, the one-game playoff isn’t the only option.
The one good thing that the current format is that it creates an incentive for teams to go all out to avoid the Wild Card and try to win their division. Without that, the final day of this season wouldn’t have mattered all that much to the Tigers and Royals or Cardinals and Pirates. Having to play an extra series on the road to a potential World Series is a huge punishment for the Wild Card qualifiers. It doesn’t have to be a one-game series to accomplish that though.
In fact, the one-game series isn’t necessary for any of the purported goals MLB is trying to accomplish. They could just as easily expand the Wild Card playoff to a three-game series, you know, like a normal baseball series should be. There is already four days between the end of the regular season and the start of the NLDS and three days before the ALDS. By adding one more day of padding, MLB could expand the Wild Card round to three games and still be able to have a spare day in there if a Game 163 is needed beforehand. It would eliminate the off day between the Wild Card series and the LDS series, but that just creates an even bigger disincentive for the Wild Card teams. You want a day off and not have to potentially fly cross-country overnight for Game 1 of the LDS? You better win in two games.
While that can certainly be taxing to the Wild Card teams, which is kind of the point, it also gives the Wild Card teams a chance to play in a series where random chance isn’t such a huge factor. There’s a reason people call the Wild Card game “the coin flip” game. The three-game format is a much better measure of a team’s actual performance than a one-game format where teams are largely subject to how their rotation happens to fall on the day of the Wild Card game. Just ask the Pirates how they feel about having their entire season resting on the arm of Edinson Volquez.
You could argue that the one-game format penalizes teams that don’t clinch before the final day of the season, but it might be taking it too far. All of the other rounds of the playoffs are designed so that the best team wins, not the luckiest team or the team with the best timing. Let’s do the sensible thing and expand the Wild Card to a best-of-three and rid ourselves of the tyranny of the one-game playoff.
