“For those fearful the second wild card would mostly be some crummy team that didn’t deserve a spot in the Octoberfest, history says otherwise. Because the 1995 season was strike-shortened, I started that look with 1996 — and found that those 30 second-wild-card entries would have averaged 89 wins, and 11 would have been teams that won 90-plus. Meanwhile, only one of 30 second wild cards over the past 15 full seasons would have been a team that won fewer than 85 games (the ’97 Angels, who won 84).”

Thanks for playing.

That year was a perfect illustration of the flaws of the old system.

(And on top of that, finishing in 2nd place that year meant dodging Cliffy in the 1st round. And it worked, as Cliffy won 2 of 3 games to knock out TB, while NY made it out of the 1st round. Under the system at the time, it was not far-fetched to say the Yanks were actually incentivized to “lose” the division. Lovely system that is.)

So I’ve been a huge proponent of adding an additional wild card team, for a couple key reasons…

1) It restores true meaning to the division races. Once again, winning the division will *always* be significant, which has not always been the case during the WC era.

2) It will keep more teams in the hunt past July. No matter how you slice it, more fan interest across the overall baseball landscape can only be a positive thing for the game as a whole. And since baseball’s economic system is wide open, allowing large market clubs to lap the majority of the league when it comes to revenue generation/spending on payroll, I like that opening up another playoff spot brings more teams into the mix, to help offset a bit of the $$ advantage.

And BTW, even after adding another WC team, MLB still has the most exclusive playoff field of any of the major pro sports. So I just don’t buy into the “watering down the field” nonsense. To me it’s a nice balance when all factors are considered.

The main thing I don’t like is that the opening WC round will now be a 1-gamer. I’d have preferred a best-of-3, with the entire series played at the home park of the WC team with the better record. That would help with scheduling/travel logistics, so that the playoffs don’t drag out too much, and it would make sure there’s competition all the way down to the final 2 WC spots. While also making the advantage of winning your division even that much greater.

But close enough. Bud did OK with this thing.

Though that might even be the case with two wild cards this year. If things go the way we expect, the only AL club that has a real cushion might be Detroit.