Last fall, the Yankees jumped out to a lead in their first-round playoff series behind their ace, C.C. Sabathia, on their way to yet another sweep of the Twins. If the big lefty had already been used earlier in the week, however, the entire dynamic of the series might have changed. The Yankees, mindful of this potential, had decided to rest Sabathia for the final regular season game, instead conceding the division title to the Rays.
Such a development, with an exciting division race dwindling to nothingness as the two teams limped to the finish line, was the perfect fodder for media types to explode. Such overreaction, coinciding with this year’s potentially similar scenario involving the Yankees and Red Sox, has also led baseball higher-ups to consider adding more wild card teams to the postseason. The proposal would have a second wild card in each league face the wild card “winner” in one game to determine which advances to the divisional round.
Last year, the Yankees finished six games ahead of the Red Sox in the wild card chase but, under the proposed new structure, would have had to beat Boston again, as if the initial 162 games weren’t enough to prove the Yankees’ superiority over the duration of the season. Would it have been fair to the Yankees to victimize their postseason chances by playing a do-or-die game against the runner-up?
What about the 2009 season, when Boston clinched the wild card with an eight-game advantage over Texas? Or in 2008, when the Red Sox finished six games ahead of the rival Yankees in the wild card standings? Or in 2007, when the Yankees finished on top, leading Detroit and Seattle by six games each (would Detroit and Seattle have had a playoff to make the playoff to make the playoffs?)? Or in 2001, when the wild card Oakland A’s won the wild card by a whopping 17 games? Would it have been fair to ask those victors, clearly superior in record and regular season performance, to play a winner-take-all game against the teams which they bested over the course of 162 games?
Since 1996, the first full season in which the wild card was in place, the American League wild card winner has finished at least five games clear of the second-place team ten times, and only once (2000, with Seattle edging Cleveland) was the margin only a single game. That is two-thirds of the time when a team with a significantly better record would have had to play an inferior opponent for the right to join the division winners in the divisional round.
In the National League, on the other hand, wild card teams have consistently been closer to the rest of the field than their AL counterparts. Seven times in the past fifteen years, the wild card runner-up was either tied with the winner (forcing a playoff) or only one game behind. The cases falling in the former category already produced a wild card play-in game, most recently in 2007 between the Rockies and Padres.
And while the latter cases certainly call for a closer inspection on whether a play-off would be more logical and fair, comparing the NL data with that of the AL only emphasizes the AL East stranglehold on the wild card for years running – clearly, the AL is more top-heavy, with fewer teams in mediocrity able to battle against the high-spending AL East clubs. In any case, creating a new playoff position and game based on only one league’s data would be undesirable and inequitable.
Another issue with an addition could be that, logistically, the proposal could in fact favor the runner-up. This season, for example, the Yankees and Red Sox could conceivably be tied going into the final day of the season, and each would pitch its ace in an attempt to grab the division crown. If the Angels, though, were already assured of the second wild-card spot, they would rest Jered Weaver to save his arm for the play-in game.
While the Yankees-Red Sox runner-up would have by far a better record than the Angels, it would face a de facto penalty for fighting for the division, in effect sacrificing its best pitcher. This scenario would in fact reverse baseball’s purported effort to incentivize a true division race and reward the Angels for already being eliminated from the AL West picture.
As more of a traditionalist sentiment, one of the most unique aspects of baseball is how selective the playoffs are. In the NFL, nearly 40% of teams make the playoffs, including a 7-9 team last year. The NBA and NHL are even more absurd, as more than 50% of the teams are playoff teams and the postseason becomes a two-month long marathon for television viewers. In recent years, the NBA’s Eastern Conference has been so porous that teams with losing records routinely contend and qualify for the playoffs. Last year, the Indiana Pacers “won” the last playoff seed with a 37-45 record (“won” being used loosely to describe a record of that caliber), a .451 winning percentage which would translate to a 73-89 baseball season.
In baseball, however, only 26.7% of teams currently make the playoffs, further incentivizing a strong regular season. After 162 games and six months of regular season baseball, the best teams usually rise to the top of the standings. While the other ‘Big 4’ sports have shorter regular seasons, it is possible for the best teams to slip, as one or two losses have much more of an impact than they do in a long baseball season. Correspondingly, it does make sense for those leagues to widen their respective playoff nets, to grab all possible championship contenders. In baseball, though, the longer season generally reveal the best teams, the ones who actually deserve the extra rewards and recognition which come with making the playoffs.
Because of its structure, baseball is simply in the best situation to showcase only its best teams and players when the games are at their most important. Rather than have the worthy wild card winner battle the lesser runner-up – the baseball equivalent of last year’s NBA playoffs matching up the #1 seed Chicago Bulls with the woeful Pacers, or the dominant Miami Heat with a .500 Philadelphia 76ers team—let the best vie for a championship.
The wild card has been wildly successful and popular, in terms of adding revenue and excitement for numerous fans without another option. But rewarding mediocrity is no way to run any sort of business. Letting more losing and near-losing teams enjoy a September race does not provide as much incentive for improvement as does the current situation, with playoff spots in smaller supply. The proposal would ostensibly incentivize teams to win their divisions, while in fact it would allow teams to aim for #5 in the league, as opposed to continuing to strive for the best spot.
Under baseball’s current structure, with fewer teams making the playoffs, having a strong regular season is thus incentivized further. The argument becomes that by that same logic, winning the division should be rewarded more, as doing so indicates a stronger regular season. However, solving that problem by adding teams destroys the very reason behind the problem, as letting in additional teams makes the playoffs less a reward of having a good regular season and more a result of Bud Selig, owners, players, media, etc. overreacting to the outliers of the past two years, when the best two teams in a league resided in the same division.
Maybe this proposal would make this year’s Red Sox/Yankees race more exciting, but it could also diminish the sanctity of the playoffs and dilute them further, stripping the playoffs of their selective tradition.