Posted by Jeff Lubbers on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 2:45 am

Apparently the wild card is saving baseball (again) this year.

On the surface it makes sense. With more available playoff spots more teams are in contention later in the season leading to meaningful games for more teams later in the season. What baseball fan doesn’t enjoy such a scenario?

The problem is that for yet another year the fact that the wild card is taking away from the division races is ignored once again.

While anything can happen in the final four weeks of the season it does look like the divisional races will be less than thrilling this year. Following games of September 8 the closest wild card race is 2 games (American League) while the closest divisional race is 3.5 games (N.L West).

Of course, part of the reason that the divisional races are less than intriguing is that once again they are overshadowed by the wild card race. Take, for example, the N.L. West. While a 3.5 game lead with 22 games to play (as the Dodgers currently hold over the Rockies) is a healthy lead in early September, it is anything but insurmountable. However, the “race” between the two teams has lost its luster as both teams will likely qualify for the playoffs. What would be more exciting than the two teams facing off the last weekend of the season in Los Angeles with the Dodgers holding a one game lead while only one team will make the playoffs? Not much. However, with both teams making the playoffs the series becomes virtually meaningless. Both managers will worry more about getting their playoff rotations in order than winning games.

With one week to go in the 2007 season the American League East with its pre-1994 format would have featured the following three teams and their respective records and only one would have made the playoffs:

		W	L	PCT.		GB
Cleveland		92	63	.594		-
Boston		92	64	.590		.5
New York		90	65	.581		2

 

If only one of those teams were to make the playoffs baseball would have had an absolutely thrilling, old-fashioned pennant race on its hands. Of course in actuality it had nothing of the sort as all three teams qualified for the playoffs and had no challengers to face in the last few weeks of the season.

The wild card is here to stay. It does in fact keep more teams in the playoff race longer. Of course for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. By keeping more mediocre teams in the race it means that the best teams in the league go unchallenged late in the season. Fans of baseball should expect to see the top teams fighting each other for playoff berths late in the season, not the 10th and 12th best teams. The Atlanta Braves’ playoff run of 1993 would have simply been an impressive late season run that sent them to the playoffs, not a thrilling pennant race they only clinched on the last game of the season.

Part of the reason baseball implemented the wild card is to make sure that teams such as the 103-win Giants of 1993 would make the playoffs. But is including an undeserving team an improvement over excluding a possibly-deserving team? I think it is not, of course the revenue-generating additional playoff games say it is.

Baseball has seen a number of exciting wild card races since 1995. But that doesn’t mean that for the last 14 years it has been for the greater good of the game. In many situations, likely including this year, it has removed the luster from potential meaningful late-season matchups between top teams in the league while keeping the focus on good but not great teams. By lowering the bar baseball has encouraged mediocrity and taken the attention away from the best teams in the league where it belongs.