2nd Wildcard added for 2012 - Postseason now includes 10 teams.

[mzxeternal]

Breaking news, official announcement expected tomorrow

http://riveraveblues.com/2012/02/rep...for-2012-64734

Basically, as previously expected, the 2 best second place teams will now face off in a 1 game elimination round to determine who goes forward to face the first place division winners in the playoffs.


My thoughts:


Pros:
Makes winning the division more important for powerhouse teams, as wildcard teams will be handicapped by being forced to play a 1 game do or die game (thus most likely using their Ace starter in that game, and not in a DS game 1, and putting the odds in favor of the division winning opponent.

Gives more teams a possible route to the playoffs, keeping more teams in contention longer. Now teams like the Blue Jays, Mets, Nationals, etc have greater hope of making the playoffs despite intense divisional opponents.

Cons:
Anything can happen in a 1 game playoff. The 1998 Yankees could lose 1 game to the 1992 Mets, for example. It's random.

A 2nd Second Place team could win the world series.

The excitement of 2011's final day of the season wouldn't have happened.

[ratpenat]

I dont like it. Too watered down, just another way for Selig to line his pockets. I wish they would go to 16 teams in each league..... first place team in each league makes it to teh series, winner take call.....make it harder, not easier

[Redbullsnation]

More baseball for me!! So everybody wins, have TBS and have FOX. I will have to pressure me folks to fix the damn cable signal in me bedroom , but still...

[mzxeternal]

I dont like it. Too watered down, just another way for Selig to line his pockets. I wish they would go to 16 teams in each league..... first place team in each league makes it to teh series, winner take call.....make it harder, not easier

I like it except for the one game playoff. They should reduce the season back to 154 games, make the wildcard playoff a 5 game series, and the rest of the playoffs should be a best of 7 across every series. The one game playoff is too random, anyone can win it and i'd rather see the best team (even a best 2nd place team) get through, not just the lucky one.

[Bulk]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/76...anded-playoffs

Nothing actually confirmed at all yet, but it does look likelier.

Not a fan myself, i like the fact its very hard to get into the postseason in Baseball, far harder than any other North American sport.

[mzxeternal]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/76...anded-playoffs

Nothing actually confirmed at all yet, but it does look likelier.

Not a fan myself, i like the fact its very hard to get into the postseason in Baseball, far harder than any other North American sport.

It's a double edged sword, on one hand it's great that there is a penalty for being a wildcard. On the other hand, I don't like the idea of a 2nd, Second Place team somehow winning the world series. At least with 1 wild card, it's the best team that didn't win a division, which many times can be a better team than other divisional winners. (Good example would be an AL East wildcard, which can commonly have a better record than the AL Central or AL West division winners). I think this could be watering things down a little bit.

[dopeismarcus]

The one playoff game is so dumb. Play 182 games and it all comes down to one game?

[MechanicalMan]

I don't like the new format, but I would much prefer this Wild Card "play-in game" to a longer first round series. Part of the purpose of the new format (the part that I like) is to punish the Wild Card teams for not winning their division and make it tougher for them to advance in the postseason. Wild Card teams have been very successful in the playoffs since their creation, and it bothers a lot of fans. People have proposed some very stupid things to put the Wild Card teams at a greater disadvantage; like robbing them (and their fans) of home games. I see this as a more logical and effective alternative to that. Now a Wild Card team has to win a game just to advance to play a division winner, and the division winners get additional rest for their pitchers.

Still, this expands the playoffs, it lengthens the season (I assume), it allows teams like the 2011 Braves and Red Sox into the playoffs (yuck!), and it creates the possibility for a team that finishes third in their division to win the World Series. I personally don't like the change, but I do think this is much, much better than adding a 3, 5 or 7-game series to the postseason. So if they were absolutely determined to add more teams to the playoffs, then IMO, they chose the right way to do it.

[mzxeternal]

The one playoff game is so dumb. Play 182 games and it all comes down to one game?

162 games

[mzxeternal]

I don't like the new format, but I would much prefer this Wild Card "play-in game" to a longer first ro-und series. Part of the purpose of the new format (the part that I like) is to punish the Wild Card teams for not winning their division and make it tougher for them to advance in the postseason. Wild Card teams have been very successful in the playoffs since their creation, and it bothers a lot of fans. People have proposed some very stupid things to put the Wild Card teams at a greater disadvantage; like robbing them (and their fans) of home games. I see this as a more logical and effective alternative to that. Now a Wild Card team has to win a game just to advance to play a division winner, and the division winners get additional rest for their pitchers.

Still, this expands the playoffs, it lengthens the season (I assume), it allows teams like the 2011 Braves and Red Sox into the playoffs (yuck!), and it creates the possibility for a team that finishes third in their division to win the World Series. I personally don't like the change, but I do think this is much, much better than adding a 3, 5 or 7-game series to the postseason. So if they were absolutely determined to add more teams to the playoffs, then IMO, they chose the right way to do it.

I am with you on a lot of your points, but not with the 1 game elimination. I think it stinks, too much can happen in 1 game, an inferior opponent can destroy a juggernaut in one bad game. And as we've seen before there are times where the even the wild card race 1st place opponent is 10 games up on the 2nd.

I think if they were to do this they should have modified the season. A lot of people complain the season is too long as it is. What they could have done, is rolled back to the pre 1961 154 game schedule and added a Wild Card Series of 5 games, while making the Division Series a 7 game series. This would give the division winners a bye week before the playoffs, and make a more balanced battle for the wild card ticket.

[MechanicalMan]

I am with you on a lot of your points, but not with the 1 game elimination. I think it stinks, too much can happen in 1 game, an inferior opponent can destroy a juggernaut in one bad game. And as we've seen before there are times where the even the wild card race 1st place opponent is 10 games up on the 2nd.

I think if they were to do this they should have modified the season. A lot of people complain the season is too long as it is. What they could have done, is rolled back to the pre 1961 154 game schedule and added a Wild Card Series of 5 games, while making the Division Series a 7 game series. This would give the division winners a bye week before the playoffs, and make a more balanced battle for the wild card ticket.

I would be very opposed to that, because I do not want a full-fledged expansion of the MLB playoffs. I'm not one of these old school guys who wants a return to two division-less leagues with the winner of each league going straight to the World Series (which BTW, would utterly destroy the popularity of baseball). But I also don't want postseason expansion that results in 10 or more teams playing series of five or more games.

With the 8-team MLB playoff format (admittedly the only one that I have known, because I began following baseball long after the '94 season), 26.7% of teams make the playoffs. If you dismiss this new Wild Card expansion as two play-in games that are not part of the "real" MLB postseason, then you still have 26.7% of teams getting in. I don't want that percentage to grow. Although I have never been one to complain about Wild Cards or teams with relatively poor records winning the World Series, I do want teams that dominate during the long 162-game regular season to be rewarded. And the more you expand the playoffs, the more unlikely you make it for the teams with the best records to win a championship.

So perhaps you would argue, "Well, with four (total) Wild Card teams and a 5-game Wild Card series, you're not hurting the division winners. If anything, that format benefits them -- they get additional rest for their players and are guaranteed the luxury of setting the order of their starting rotation." But I don't agree with that. In addition to the fact that I simply hate the idea of expanding the playoffs, I also believe that effectively giving the division winners (or if teams are re-seeded, the teams with the best records) a bye week would -- in many cases -- put them at a disadvantage. I can't imagine that players -- particularly hitters -- would benefit from a week of not playing baseball. And unlike American football, a week of coaching preparation provides virtually no benefit whatsoever for a baseball team. A week of recovering from injuries also, I believe, provides very little benefit. The Wild Card series winner is not guaranteed to be at a disadvantage with their rotation. And the Wild Card series winners have been playing between three and five games of do-or-die baseball while the division winners have been, I would argue, getting rusty.

Whether or not you agree with what I just said, imagine what the ramifications would be if Wild Card teams continued to have as much or more success as they have in the past. There are already a lot of fans unhappy with how successful Wild Card teams have been in the playoffs. If you "allow" those teams to play more baseball while the division winners sit around doing nothing, and the result is a lot of #1 seeds losing to Wild Card teams, then there is going to be a backlash -- from players and people in the league, not just from fans. We're all going to be devastated if or when our team loses in this one-game playoff, but no one can deny that the new format benefits divisions winners -- and I don't think the same could be said if MLB had created a longer series for the Wild Card teams.

Now in regard to some people feeling that the 162-game regular season is too long, yes, that is true. But ignoring the fact that there is (for better or worse) very little chance of MLB ever shortening the regular season, ask yourself what would be worse for the popularity of baseball -- a slightly longer regular season (162 vs. 154) or a longer postseason. The "casual" baseball/sports fans who complain about the length of the MLB regular season are not going to suddenly become more avid fans of the league if you shorten the regular season by 5%. You're going to do a lot more to change peoples opinions about MLB, one way or the other, by expanding the postseason. The kind of people who don't want to watch 162 games of baseball also don't want to watch 154 games -- and they wouldn't embrace a longer postseason either. We all know that baseball is not at its apex of popularity and that much of postseason play has already been moved to cable TV. I know that Selig and the league understandably want as many teams as possible vying for a playoff spot in September, but I think that expanding the playoffs would ultimately have a negative impact on the popularity of the sport.

I feel like I'm playing devil's advocate here, because I've been as opposed as anyone to the expansion of the playoffs. However, I completely understand why this happened, and I strongly believe that this format is better than adding a longer Wild Card series to start the postseason.

MLB is trying to get the best of both worlds here, and it isn't easy for me to argue against what they've done, even though I was opposed to it. Think about how this format placates different camps of baseball fans:

1) If you've been watching baseball for 60 years, and you grind your false teeth every time that you see a Wild Card team defeat a 100-win division winner, then you have to like this change. There is no doubt that this change benefits division winners.

2) If your team is not a perennial division winner but is often in contention (or you hope that they someday will be), then even if you don't love this change, you probably don't hate it. Obviously, this change can only help the chances of a team making the playoffs. I would wager that most Rays, Blue Jays and Orioles fans are not unhappy with the change.

MLB has found a way to involve more teams and fans in the playoff chase while also increasing the likelihood of dominant teams winning the World Series. They probably deserve some credit for that. But personally, I believe that the 2011 Braves and Red Sox were God's way of telling Bud Selig, "Don't do it!!" Last year's truly thrilling playoff chase would have been a total snoozefest under the new format. And lest anyone think that I am biased because my beloved Redbirds won the 2011 Series, please remember that the 105-win 2004 Cardinals and 100-win 2005 Cardinals both lost to Wild Card teams -- also, if the Cardinals had defeated the floundering Braves in a one-game playoff last year, Chris Carpenter would have been the Game 1 starter in the NLDS instead of the Game 2 starter, and the Phillies rotation would have been unchanged.

Give yourself a gold star if you actually read all of this.

[muckman1]

thanks for all these statements
nice to keep being informed through myp2p