Inherent Wild Card Advantage

[vaball]

Should the Wild Card winner in each league have disadvantages imposed on it? I ask this not as sour grapes after the Cardinals lost to Houston, but it seems to me a structural problem in the baseball postseason.

 

The way that the Wild Card is set up seems to naturally select teams that are the most likely to succeed in October. First, the winning WC team has to be hot just to get in; second, they have to play playoff-pressure games just to get in. The WC team always seems to be exactly where a team would ideally be, intensity wise, to start the playoffs.

 

Third, WC teams do not win the division because balanced teams do. But teams with dominant pitching seem to be the ones that the WC selects. So you end up with a hot team, used to the pressure, with dominant pitching. The very nature of the WC selects a team that is very likely to succed over a short time span like the playoffs. What, then, is the point of playing 162 games other than tradition?

[SouthSideRyan]

I think the fact that the White Sox made the world series disproves the hot team theory. And it's not like they're some huge juggernaut that could overcome coming in a cold streak either.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

The Wild Card is already at a disadvantage by having the hardest road to the World Series.

[KatJ]

The Wild Card is already at a disadvantage by having the hardest road to the World Series.

 

I completely disagree. Once the regular season is over, it's a level playing field. As a matter of fact, if the WC team is against a team in its own division, you might argue that they could have an advantage, having played the other team so many times an knowing them better than they would have in the old balanced schedule.

 

FWIW, here's an excerpt from what I wrote in the Cards' MLB message board:

 

"... I am sick to death of Wild Card teams getting into the World Series after a CONSISTENTLY good team put together a fantastic regular season. The introduction of the WC has been good for MLB from a business standpoint, but it has turned the validity of a pennant race the way of the dodo.

 

I figure if your team does gets the most wins during the regular season, they should have an automatic berth to the NL/ALCS. IMO, MLB has turned the playoffs into the pro baseball equivalent of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, where "madness" prevails."

[vaball]

I think the fact that the White Sox made the world series disproves the hot team theory. And it's not like they're some huge juggernaut that could overcome coming in a cold streak either.

 

 

I don't know, after faltering, they seemed to get pretty hot the last week of the season and carried it right into the playoffs.

 

And just being hot won't always get you to the series, but it sure helps.

[vaball]

The Wild Card is already at a disadvantage by having the hardest road to the World Series.

 

Well they don't have home field advantage but the other factors I listed earlier far outway that handicap, IMO.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Come on, the Wild Card team isn't wildly inferior to the other teams that it should be a surprise when they upset them. They never hame home field, and they have to play the toughest schedule. I think that playing in more of those pressure games can be interpreted as a disadvantage too. You need to win a bunch of them to get in, and eventually the law of averages has to kick in.

 

The argument doesn't make much sense at all to me. The playoffs by nature are going to cause some more talented teams to lose because of the series length. Just because there's been a recent stretch of upsets doesn't mean we should punish one of the 4 best teams in the league.

[vaball]

Come on, the Wild Card team isn't wildly inferior to the other teams that it should be a surprise when they upset them. They never hame home field, and they have to play the toughest schedule. I think that playing in more of those pressure games can be interpreted as a disadvantage too. You need to win a bunch of them to get in, and eventually the law of averages has to kick in.

 

The argument doesn't make much sense at all to me. The playoffs by nature are going to cause some more talented teams to lose because of the series length. Just because there's been a recent stretch of upsets doesn't mean we should punish one of the 4 best teams in the league.

 

I'm not saying that the WC team isn't good. But we all know that postseason baseball plays by different rules than regular season baseball. It just seems like the WC teams are better suited to short series.

 

Maybe that isn't as true for 7 games, but it is for 5. A WC team with 90 wins might play a division winner with 115, but that WC team has one lights out pitcher, say Jason Schmidt, and pitches him twice, wins both, squeeks out a third win, and bye-bye 115 win team. If the WC then goes on to lose in 7 during the LCS that seems like an injustice to me. The least they could do is make the divisional series 7 games.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Come on, the Wild Card team isn't wildly inferior to the other teams that it should be a surprise when they upset them. They never hame home field, and they have to play the toughest schedule. I think that playing in more of those pressure games can be interpreted as a disadvantage too. You need to win a bunch of them to get in, and eventually the law of averages has to kick in.

 

The argument doesn't make much sense at all to me. The playoffs by nature are going to cause some more talented teams to lose because of the series length. Just because there's been a recent stretch of upsets doesn't mean we should punish one of the 4 best teams in the league.

 

I'm not saying that the WC team isn't good. But we all know that postseason baseball plays by different rules than regular season baseball. It just seems like the WC teams are better suited to short series.

 

Maybe that isn't as true for 7 games, but it is for 5. A WC team with 90 wins might play a division winner with 115, but that WC team has one lights out pitcher, say Jason Schmidt, and pitches him twice, wins both, squeeks out a third win, and bye-bye 115 win team. If the WC then goes on to lose in 7 during the LCS that seems like an injustice to me. The least they could do is make the divisional series 7 games.

 

It might be a little better if the Divisional Series went 7 games, but you're still going to see upsets. A team that wins 115 games should be able to knock off a Jason Schmidt, and they probably should have one(or more) of their own. Bottom line is in a short(5 or 7) game series anything can, will, and has happened. Sanctioning the Wild Card team isn't going to change that, and isn't fair to them.

[rawaction]

I think it's stupid that if the team with the best record can't play the WC if their in the same division. A 5-game series with Houston looks a lot better than a 7-gamer. The Cards would have had just 1 game vs. Oswalt (who beat them soundly twice) and 2 vs. Pettitte (who they scored 7 runs on in 12 innings).

[CardsFanInChiTown]

It might be a little better if the Divisional Series went 7 games, but you're still going to see upsets.

 

This is the only change I think MLB should make. I don't see upsets as a bad thing - sports would be pretty boring if the best team always won!

[BigbadB]

The Wild Card team in the World Series this year had a better record than San Diego. Should there be a sanction against San Diego if Peavy was completely healthy and walked right through St. Louis in the first division series and went all the way to the World Series?

 

Very rarely does an undefeated college basketball team make it all the way through the NCAA basketball tournament. It doesn't take away their great season, and it doesn't necessarily make the team that beat them the better team. The World Series is just that. A series. Either team can win, and in each playoff, any of the teams competing have their own shot of being that team in the World Series. There aren't any "advantages". You go out and make it happen in those series, or you go home.

 

If you think it's momentum that gave Houston the advantage in the playoffs, the teams that lacked the momentum probably need to think about what they did wrong to not have that momentum.

 

I think the only fair thing you can honestly do is not allow teams to use the same pitcher within a 4 game span. In other words, feel free to drop the 5th starter, but every team has to use 4. The #1 starter couldn't be used again until game 5, etc...

 

But, then again.... I really don't care whether they make any changes at all. The Cubs should have beaten the Marlins in 2003. Boston should never have won against the Yankees last year. The Angels just barely got through some very tough series to win their World Series. I absolutely loved seeing the D'Backs beat the Yankees.

[somechick]

You can't really do that fairly unless every division is equally strong, too. I mean, look at the NL East--every team finished over .500 compared to the NL West where only 1 team did and barely at that. Why should the Astros have been punished when they finished with a far better record and San Diego got to play a bunch of incredibly crappy teams on its way to its division title. Heck, there were what, 4 or 5 teams better than San Diego this year? And they played more of their games against better teams. and until every division has an equal number of teams, you can never come close to having things seemingly fair. No matter what they do, someone will find something fallible in it.

[vance_the_cubs_fan]

I'm for adding a second wild card team in each league. The two wild cards play a best of three series in the city of the wild card with the best record. That team advances to the postseason along with the divisional winners in the current format.

 

That would require the wildcards to play an extra series and also allow baseball to collect a little more postseason revenue. It would open up two more teams (one in each league) that could claim they made the post season.

[CardsFanInChiTown]

I'm for adding a second wild card team in each league. The two wild cards play a best of three series in the city of the wild card with the best record. That team advances to the postseason along with the divisional winners in the current format.

 

That would require the wildcards to play an extra series and also allow baseball to collect a little more postseason revenue. It would open up two more teams (one in each league) that could claim they made the post season.

 

I think this is a seductive argument however I really don't want to see the number of playoff team increase. I really hate NBA, NFL and NHL playoff formats.

[UK1679666180]

The playoffs being a crapshoot doesn't provide an advantage for any of the teams beyond home field advantage.

 

The Wild Card team doesn't have any advantage.

 

MLB just has to go to a balanced schedule or as close as possible.

[SouthSideRyan]

I'm for adding a second wild card team in each league. The two wild cards play a best of three series in the city of the wild card with the best record. That team advances to the postseason along with the divisional winners in the current format.

 

That would require the wildcards to play an extra series and also allow baseball to collect a little more postseason revenue. It would open up two more teams (one in each league) that could claim they made the post season.

 

Adding a 5th playoff team only diltues things further.

[Mizzou]

I'm all for a 2-1-2 home field setup, where the Wild Card team gets game three, and only game three, at home.

[bhogg]

I'm for going back to a 2 divsion per league format (AL East, West NL East, West)

 

The team with the best record is in the LCS. The other two play a 7 game series.

[rawaction]

I'm not understanding the whole bye thing. What makes anyone think that a team would want to sit around waiting for a playoff series? If you have a 7-game series with the best team having a bye, you get:

 

Season Ends

Off day

Game 1

Game 2

Travel Day

Game 3

Game 4

Travel Day

Game 5

Travel Day (unless you do 2-3-2 format)

Game 6

Travel Day

Game 7

Off day

Game 1 LCS

 

That's 15 days between games for a team.

[Careless]

The way that the Wild Card is set up seems to naturally select teams that are the most likely to succeed in October. First, the winning WC team has to be hot just to get in; second, they have to play playoff-pressure games just to get in. The WC team always seems to be exactly where a team would ideally be, intensity wise, to start the playoffs.

No, they don't, and no, they don't

If the white sox had wound up behind the indians, that would be the perfect example of this. As it is, the red sox are a great example of a team that choked its way down the stretch.

[burnt out cubbie fan]

I say we make wild card teams wear 5 pound weights on their ankles to even out the playing field a bit.

[gus_dog]

I consider myself a traditionalist, however I really favour keeping the Wild Card. Here's why:

 

IMO, prior to divisional play, there was no LCS. I always thought this was very unfair because I felt many of the second place teams deserved a shot at the playoffs. Divisional play came along and then expansion, again, and this worked for awhile, until the most recent expansion forced realignment (adding two new divisions), and forced MLB to find the 'extra' team (the Wild Card) to balance out the playoffs. This is something that obviously the fans enjoy. If the Wild Card team did not 'deserve' to be there, they would not have been so successful, would they? Additionally, under the old formats, when a team ran away with the lead, there was nothing (except pride) for the other teams to play for. Now there is added incentive to. This has made the season more interesting for all of us. Even with the Wild Card, there has been incidents of very good teams not making the play-offs. A case-in-point is the 2002 AL standings. Seattle finishes third in the AL West and Boston finishes second in the AL East with identical records of 93-69, yet cannot play in the post-season because the second place Angels won 99 games! :shock: Seriously, you could make a case for either/or Boston/Seattle being playoff-worthy.

 

I like the idea of allowing another Wild Card team in, and forcing them to play each other for the right to play a division winner. The season would need to be shortened - maybe back to 154 games. As long as it does not affect player salaries, I don't know why the player's association would care, except it would cut back on revenue to share (8 games * (30 teams/2) = 120 games worth of revenue).

 

The Wild Card, as it now formatted, has NO advantage, IMO. In fact, it is quite the opposite. If a division winner is unprepared come play-off time, they have nobody to blame but themselves. As it is, division winners get home-field, for whatever it's worth. IMO, the best teams don't really care where they play - as long as it is a baseball diamond, they'll win.

 

I have always felt that the old way was VERY unfair, because you could have an excellent season, but have to stay home because there were not enough play-off slots available for ALL the good teams. Talk about unfair?

[mul21]

The wild card has to stay just out of fairness. I mean how ridiculous is it that in past years, a team wins 103 games and doesn't make the playoffs because some team in their division won 105? That (or thereabout) has happened and there is no reason for it when a team in the other division had maybe 95 wins. When the Marlins won 116 or whatever it was a few years ago, how bad would MLB have looked if the A's or Angels had won 107 and the other division winners won 97 games or so. Not that this scenario happens all the time but the precaution has to be taken if it does.

[goonys evil twin]

Once the regular season is over, it's a level playing field. As a matter of fact, if the WC team is against a team in its own division, you might argue that they could have an advantage, having played the other team so many times an knowing them better than they would have in the old balanced schedule.

 

Um, it's not level when the other team has home field advantage.

 

And why would the wild card team have an advantage having played another team in its division so often, yet that other team wouldn't have the same advantage?

 

 

I think this entire discussion is ridiculous. There's no advantage to being the wild card. There's no justification for adding some more difficulties to their postseason run. They made the postseason.

 

If you're so pissed about wild card teams making the playoffs, why not just go back to the old way of just letting 2 teams make the postseason, thus ruining the season for 80% of fans by July.

 

The wild card is good for baseball. Having 12+ teams in it, or virtually in it at least to the final month is good for baseball. People need to quit looking for things to be upset about and just enjoy baseball. STL didn't have a birthright to the world series just for winning a lot of regular season games. Tons of teams have won a lot of regular season games and never made it to the playoffs, let alone the world series.