OK, so we consider ourself to be somewhat of a "baseball purist." We absolutely abhor the DH (even if we love Jim Thome. No offense, big fella. Keep mashing taters and leading that ox around), we hated when they added the Wild Card initially (even though now we see its value) and we have even been known to wax poetic about the green grass, the smell of hot dogs and how we need baseball. But believe us when we say we don't think the proposed expansion of the baseball playoffs from 8 to 10 teams is merely a bad idea from a purity standpoint. Rather, it's primarily a terrible idea from the standpoints of logistics and fair play. Consider, via ESPN.com:
In the new format, the two wild cards in each league would meet, and the winners would advance to the following round against division winners.
Part of the reason we eventually grew to accept the Wild Card is that not all divisions are created equal. Often, the Wild Card team is just as worthy of a postseason berth in terms of record and overall capability as the winners of the two divisions that didn't produce a Wild Card team. And the Wild Card team has won four of the 16 World Series played since 1995, when the 8-team playoff format was implemented. Twenty-five percent of the teams in the playoffs are WCs, and 25 percent have won the World Series. Very worthy.
Having the two WC teams meet in an opening round would add more weight to the division winners, which in theory isn't a terrible idea if you are a purist. But here's where you run into a problem again of competitive balance or logistics. Also per the story:
With both sides expressing support for adding two playoff teams in 2012, negotiators for baseball players and owners are considering having the new wild-card round be best-of-three or winner-take-all. Because longer series would push playoffs deeper into cold weather, the sides are not considering have the new first round be best-of-five of best-of-seven.
So you could theoretically have two teams win 90-plus games to reach the postseason, only to play a one-game playoff before moving on to a best-of-five series against a team with a potentially inferior record? Doesn't make sense, and it isn't fair.
Five teams in each league making the postseason just doesn't work. If they were truly interested in expanding the playoffs while still rewarding top teams, we would propose this: Expand to 12 teams. Have three Wild Card teams in each league. Have those three teams and the division winner with the worst record play in the first round in a best-of-3 series, with all games on the home fields of the division winner/top wild card. Winners move on to face the top two division winners. You'd perhaps have to squeeze the regular-season schedule (sneak in a few scheduled double-headers?) to avoid having the playoffs drag on too long into cold weather.
Or you could just leave a pretty good system alone.
