I’m going to try to be open-minded about this. It appears that MLB will be expanding the playoffs for 2012, whether you like it or not:
Commissioner Bud Selig’s plan to expand baseball’s playoffs to 10 teams seemed inevitable after little to no opposition emerged during meetings this week with owners and general managers in Orlando.
My gut reaction was to decry the further dilution of the baseball postseason. I still lean that way, but….
…the more I think about it, the more I think the proposed playoff expansion may not be a completely terrible thing. Look, the playoffs were screwed up years ago when Dear Leader Bud Selig created the wild card system. It’s done, and we’re never going back to the good ol’ days. That being the case, the proposal that is being bandied about is interesting.
Basically, MLB would add a new wild card team in each league (making two AL and two NL wild cards). Then the wild card teams would play each other in a three-game series for the right to play one of the division winners in the Division Series. I dunno, that three-game series might be kinda fun.
Maybe it would actually make winning a division a bigger deal than it is now (which is one of the strongest arguments against the system as it stands now). By fighting to win that division, you avoid that wild card series and get to rest your pitchers for a few extra days.
What do you think?