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In other words, the Mariners’ odds of winning a division title are about to become steeper.
For the past 13 years, Seattle has enjoyed – if that’s the right word – the advantage of competing in baseball’s smallest division. Simple math insists it’s easier to beat out three division rivals than it is to beat out four or five of them.
Consider, for instance, the challenges foisted upon the St. Louis Cardinals. Since 1998, the Cards have been mired in a division stocked with six clubs, and all they’ve got to show for their trouble is, let’s see, six division titles, three pennants and two World Series championships.
The Mariners, meanwhile, have used the inherent perk of a four-team race to win, let’s see, one division title.
But fair is fair, and despite the disparity between St. Louis’ successes and Seattle’s struggles, a baseball landscape containing six divisions of five teams each is more fair than a baseball landscape that includes a six-team division and a four-team division.
Everybody’s satisfied with divisional balance, I think, except those NL diehards in Houston (they’re opposed to more games with a designated hitter, and fewer home games against the Dodgers) and the Astros’ broadcast sponsors, who can’t be thrilled about the team’s potential road schedule. (A first pitch for a night game in the Pacific Time Zone typically is thrown at 9 p.m. in Houston.)
Then again, the Texas Rangers know all about the inconvenience of belonging to the AL West, and their popularity in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is at an all-time high.
Besides revealing the news about the Astros on Thursday, commissioner Bud Selig announced a long-rumored revision to the postseason: A second wild-card team in each league will qualify for the playoffs.
The expanded format could be implemented as soon as next year, and no later than 2013.
For those of us who relished the delicious conclusion of the 2011 wild-card race – on the final night of a 162-game season, the destinies of four teams were decided almost simultaneously – a knee-jerk response to Selig’s push for wild-card expansion is in order.
Are you crazy, Bud?
If the new format had been in place last month, there’s no suspense. The Rays and Red Sox both qualify in the AL, and the Cardinals and Braves both qualify in the NL.
Once more, with feeling: Are you crazy, Bud?
Nope. Selig’s belief that two wild cards per league is preferable to one is both brilliant and inspired – as long as he follows through on his preference for reducing the wild-card “series” to a single-game playoff.
I’ve been a proponent of the wild card since its 1995 inception, but I also acknowledge an irrefutable flaw of the status-quo: There’s no incentive for a wild-card qualifier to win its division. The only incentive is to make the playoffs, because from there – as the Wild Cards from St. Louis recently proved – anything can happen.
A one-game showdown seriously discourages the inclination of any team to look at a wild-card berth as the equivalent of a division title.
Furthermore, it guarantees the drama baseball fans saw on the last date of the regular season, when four teams grappled for two playoff berths in one night.
Although Selig didn’t specify how wild-card expansion will work, he noted that the committee for on-field matters favors a one-and-out format, as does he.
“This was, in my opinion, what I think will prove to be a very historic day in this sport,” Selig said.
Historic?
Major League Baseball finally balanced its divisions, and set forth an agenda that could assure playoff-series electricity before the first playoff series.
But the truly historic day will be when Bud Selig achieves a consensus opinion among baseball owners, and convinces them that More is not a synonym for Better.
