Last night, my New York Yankees defeated my co-editor Patrick Malin’s ’18 beloved Minnesota Twins in the American League Wild Card game. Just like that, after a grueling 162-game regular season, the Twins’ playoff run ended before it had even began, and the Yankees advanced to the division series to take on the American League’s top team: the Cleveland Indians. For the past six years, the top two non-division winners in each league have met in a one game playoff to determine who makes the playoff and whose season is over. While Malin and I rooted for different teams last night, we agree that the one-game wild card contest does not have a place in baseball. For teams to play a 162-game regular season and then to be forced into a do-or-die game to determine who advances is absurd. The Yankees finished six games better than the Twins over the course of the 162-game regular season but, thanks to the wild card game, had to send their ace, Luis Severino, out to the mound to defeat the Twins to prove, once and for all, that they deserved a spot in the playoffs.
A common complaint against the wild card game is that the team with the better ace has a huge advantage in an elimination game. Ironically, Severino lasted all of ⅓ of an inning before the Yankees’ bullpen and lineup bailed out their ace. Baseball teams are not built to win just one game and, in any given game, anything can happen. A 90–72 season is a very good year for most teams. The best team in baseball this year, the Los Angeles Dodgers, lost 58 games. The goal is not to win every game but to consistently win over a very long season. Now, I could, and perhaps will, write another article about how the MLB season is too long and how shortening it would improve the quality of play, but that is for another issue. The key to success in the MLB is not having one stud pitcher or merely one or two stud hitters, but having depth. A good team has the ability to compete day-in and day-out and win just enough of the tough games to make the playoffs. Even the best teams, and the best players, go through slumps, but what makes them great is being able to recover. One game is not a good test of the quality of a baseball player or a team. Even a best-of-five or best-of-seven series does not effectively demonstrate which team is truly better because, again, teams are not constructed to win over short periods of time. Billy Beane, of
Moneyball
fame, was never able to win a world series as GM of the Oakland A’s, and complained about the “crapshoot” nature of the playoffs and the inability to create a team designed to win in both the regular season and the playoffs.
What makes baseball great is that, in distinction to hockey and basketball where more than half of the league makes the post-season, the playoffs are difficult to make. When only 8 teams truly make the playoffs (making the wild card game should not count), a playoff appearance means something: generally winning at least 87 or 88 games in a 162 game season. The season is plenty long enough to determine which teams make the playoffs without the need for a wild card game; the MLB does not need to let a ninth and tenth team “into the playoffs” for a mere one game. If there is a tie at the end of the regular season, then the teams are so truly evenly matched that a 163rd make-or-break game makes sense to determine who should make playoffs. The addition of the wild card game has created potential nightmare scenarios where teams have to play tiebreaker games — sometimes more than one — and then play a wild-card game all jam-packed into a tight window after the regular season and before the division series. The MLB should eliminate the wild card game and, instead, have one wild card team in each league and make the division series best-of-seven. While best-of-five is exciting, it poorly determines which team is better. If the NHL and NBA can have four rounds of best-of-seven series in which there are off-days between every game, surely the MLB can play three rounds of best-of-seven series with only travel days off after the second and fifth games. If the MLB cannot fit such a series in, then perhaps they should consider shortening the season, but, again, that is an article for another issue.
