Home MLB MLB’s extra Wild Card round to produce extra excitement in 2012

MLB’s extra Wild Card round to produce extra excitement in 2012

by Matt Smith

While the Oakland A’s and Seattle Mariners got the 2012 Spring Training games underway on Friday evening UK time, MLB confirmed that the postseason will be expanded from eight to ten teams starting from this year.

The new Collective Bargaining Agreement allowed for the increase alongside the realignment of the divisions, which will see the Houston Astros move from the NL Central to the AL West. As the Astros will not change leagues until next year, based on the CBA the postseason format would not change until 2013 either.

However, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig was loudly voicing his desire for the expansion to take effect straight away as soon as the CBA was signed and he has now got his wish.

They have had to fudge the scheduling a bit to find the space for the extra game in each league. The result is that the Division Series will follow the format of two games at one venue followed by three straight games at the other, rather than the 2-2-1 format used in recent years. In the division winner-Wild Card Division Series, it will be the latter that starts at home and the former who gets the potential benefit of an extra home game.

That could leave the division winner in a tough spot, with a hot team that wins the Wild Card potentially quickly winning their two home games to leave their opponent in an 0-2 hole. The flip side of the argument is that the Wild Card winner may well have had to use their ace in the ‘play-in’ game, so the division winner has a better chance to set their rotation up and to avoid an 0-2 deficit in the first place.

Either way, whether there was such a desperate need to introduce the extra Wild Card this year, when other parts of the schedule had already been set in stone, is debatable. Waiting an extra year to start the new postseason era as it means to carry on for the foreseeable future would have made for a cleaner transition.

Alongside the rushed introduction of the Wild Card round, Selig’s claim that the new format “allows two additional markets to experience playoff baseball each year” is also something that can be questioned.

It’s factually accurate of course, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s expansion in the most minimal way possible. That’s not a problem in itself, keeping the postseason entrants to only 10 of 30 teams is certainly the right way to go, but if the road team in the Wild Card game gets knocked out, will their fans really feel like they have been part of the playoffs? The team can say they got there, but losing in one game without playing at your home ballpark will make it seem like a fleeting visit. Going out 3-0 in the previous Division Series was bad enough; going out 1-0 will be heartbreaking.

But enough of the negativity; although the change isn’t completely perfect in implementation or design, it will create more hope, more drama and more excitement.

The increased hope will come from the fact that it increases the odds of making it into the playoff arena. While that postseason appearance could be over in a flash, that very scenario will produce the added drama and excitement in two vitally important ‘play-in’ games and in restoring the importance of teams qualifying for the postseason by winning their division, rather than going down the lottery route that is the Wild Card round.

The games scheduled over 3-5 October are going to be something else. Wednesday 3 October will bring the regular season to an end and 2011 proved just how incredible that day alone can be. Thursday 4 October could be a rest day, or it could be a nerve-jangling event if any teams need an extra game to determine how they enter the postseason (as a division winner or a Wild Card) or if they even make the postseason at all.

Friday 5 October 2012 will give us our first two Wild Card ‘play-in’ games. The games are unlikely to be played at the same time, so that increases the chances that one will be played during the British evening with the other following at just gone midnight. That would be a great way to start the weekend. If one game is on the east coast and the other on the west, they may both start at around 7 p.m. local time, making for first pitches at midnight and 3 a.m. UK time. The latter would mean giving up some sleep, but there will be little chance of dozing off considering the action that will be unfolding.

Whichever way those Wild Card games are scheduled, we now know that they will definitely take place this season and that the already-dramatic postseason set-up will be even better than before. All of the 30 teams playing their opening Spring Training games this weekend will be working hard and dreaming of the prospect of being part of it.

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