Expanded Baseball Playoffs

I posted on a message board earlier today. This is my general thoughts on having 4 wildcard teams and have a 1 game playoff to determine who progresses:

I'm iffy on the idea. I'm sure I would suddenly love it the second it got the Reds into the playoffs one season.

I'm fine with it as long as this is as far as it ever goes. A third of the teams is still better than most leagues and really, a play in game isn't so bad. Let's look at how it would've effected the last few seasons:

2011: Boston vs. Tampa Bay in the AL and St. Louis vs. Atlanta in the NL. Honestly, I thought the way the season played out on the final day was more satisfying as a fan with this group.

2010: New York vs. Boston in the AL and Atlanta vs. San Diego in the NL. NL game would've been great. The media would've been jerking off to that NY/Boston game. Kind of falls apart here as you're making a 95 win team play an 89 win team to get into the playoffs.

2009: Texas vs. Boston in the AL and Colorado vs. Florida in the NL. Really weak play ins here. Two 90+ win teams taking on 87 win teams. Plus, Boston and Colorado were clearly superior teams this year. It would've really sucked if one of them got knocked off by the inferior team.

2008: New York vs. Boston in the AL and Milwaukee vs. New York in the NL. Again, media would've been jerking off to both New York teams being in. The NL match up would've been decent. But on the other end you have 95 win team facing an 89 win team. Just seems wrong.

On second thought to this. I'm against it. Out of 4 years worth of this, most of the games were mid 90 win teams having to waste time on a high 80 win team. That just doesn't cut it for me. Not enough teams get enough wins consistently for this game to not fuck over more deserving teams on a consistent basis.

If you go out there and you win 95 games over the course of 162 games. You went out there and you won a majority of your games. Now, MLB is punishing teams that excel and risk their entire 162 game season on 1 game where most of the time it's going to be a mediocre 87 win team that did a little better than average. That feels kind of fucked up.