Wild-card games earned their keep
The two best words in sports are said to be “Game 7.”
So how did “wild-card game” come to be among the most polarizing?
Ironically, for a sport that is remarkably consistent in its basic rules, change is the only constant theme in the way people talk about baseball. At least some change seems inevitable at the game’s highest level after this season, when the Collective Bargaining Agreement between Major League Baseball and the Players’ Association is set to expire.
Who gets to participate in the major league postseason, and for how long, should be a money-agnostic topic. Some means of determining a champion are objectively better than others.
Currently, there are three rounds after the one-game wild-card playoffs. Last year there were four rounds and no wild cards. Mercifully, the hastily drawn 2020 postseason format ended with the best team crowned the champion. But after a 162game regular season, four rounds would be one too many.
Postseason games come with the virtue of added revenue for major league owners, so removing money from any discussion of change will be a challenge. Even some fans and media folks believe a best-of-three wild-card format would be more just. After all, why should any team’s 162-game marathon be decided on the basis of a one-game sprint?
That’s a fair question, but the results speak for themselves. Wild-card games are rarely lopsided. They offer a momentary yet consequential respite from the game’s usual pace, which has a nasty habit of alienating casual fans. They also honor a longstanding baseball tradition: winning your division matters. It’s a wild ride and a nod to history rolled into nine innings (and occasionally more).
Among the 18 wildcard games played since the current playoff format was adopted in 2012, all but two have been decided by four runs or fewer. One competitive game each year isn’t guaranteed, but it’s close.
Do you like your sports with a dash of unpredictability? The cliché about “throwing the records out the window” is apt. Home teams — the teams with the better record — are 9-9 in wild-card games.
Far from making a mockery of the format, Wednesday’s game between the 106-56 Dodgers and the 90-72 Cardinals was an exhibition of what makes the wild-card game great.
From the first out to the last, the game was as competitive as any this season. The announced crowd of 53,193 at Dodger Stadium did not lack for interest. Even Washington Nationals star Juan Soto showed up with a front-row seat.
It’s a feature of the current format — not a bug — that a team as dominant as the Dodgers could see their season dashed in a single game against a plucky underdog. This is the essence of every Game 7. Finishing second in their division merely enabled the teams to skip the first six games of the series as a courtesy.
The American League wild-card game on Wednesday took on a different character but did not lack for unpredictability.
New York Yankees starter Gerrit Cole was, like the Dodgers’ Max Scherzer, hand-picked by a deep-pocketed team specifically for the occasion of a winner-take-all game. That Cole twice failed to keep the ball in the ballpark, and that Fenway Park’s famous Green Monster of a left field wall repeatedly succeeded, is the sort of drama every elimination game should aspire to.
Wednesday, as the Dodgers took batting practice on their home field, the two outfield video boards stood at the players’ mercy. Both were tuned to — what else? — the AL wild-card game.
It’s possible to make the postseason more compelling and expand the league-wide revenue pool.
Re-seed the playoff field after the wild-card games to ensure the teams with the best records within each league cannot face each other until the championship series round. In 2021, that would mean the 107-55 Giants and 10656 Dodgers wouldn’t play each other until the NLCS.
The division series could expand to a best-of-seven format.
For my money, the annual chaos of late September and early October is the best feature of the baseball calendar. From the final day of the regular season with its universal start time, until the conclusion of the second wildcard game, that’s where the magic happens. Eliminating the wild-card game is a problem in search of a solution.