Wild Card Watch

[Frank Stallone]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Colby Lewis to throw out first pitch tonight for <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Rangers&src=hash">#Rangers</a>. Nice touch. 7,000 tickets remaining.</p>— Jeff Wilson (@JeffWilson_FWST) <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffWilson_FWST/statuses/384740947440857088">September 30, 2013</a></blockquote>
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If they lose, people will simply not care. Rangers fans here in Austin seem ho-hum about it all. Rangers baseball support has been such a farce here.

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[shoes22]

I honestly don't know but I imagine in 5 years everyone will despise it as teams that should be in ti start to lose. I would think they will go to a 6 team playoff though or they figure out a way to make a 3 game series possible.

How would a six team playoff work? Like the NFL system where the top 2 teams get byes?
You run into the problem where you have teams with the best record are most likely sitting around for a week, but overall I think I like this system best.
3 Wildcards and the division winner with the worst record would have to play in a 3-game wildcard 1st round series. That, or get rid of/restructure divisions altogether.

If that was in affect this year, you'd have:

Tampa Bay at Detroit
Texas at Cleveland
Washington at LA Dodgers
Cincinnati at Pittsburgh

Boston, Oakland, Atlanta and St. Louis would also get to rest their starters for the next round. I think everyone (except maybe Detroit) would be happier with this.

I understand the league increasing the number of playoff teams from 4 to create more excitement, but at the same time letting 8 teams in is cheap, making the regular season fairly pointless.
You need to appease teams like us, as well as the teams that win close to 100 games. This is a tough thing to get right.

 

[TheLand1287]

I honestly don't know but I imagine in 5 years everyone will despise it as teams that should be in ti start to lose. I would think they will go to a 6 team playoff though or they figure out a way to make a 3 game series possible.

Agree, it's a flawed system, and will have mixed results on a year to year basis. Let's take a look at last year, which was the inaugural season for the Wild Card game.

AL Wild Card Game: 4 seed Rangers (93-69) vs. 5 seed Orioles (93-69)
- Orioles finished 2 GB the AL East Champion Yankees
- Rangers finished 1 GB the AL West Champion A's
- Tie between both teams for the WC spot (tie breaker favored the Rangers)

Orioles beat Rangers 5-1 in Arlington, TX.

NL Wild Card Game: 4 seed Braves (94-68) vs. 5 seed Cardinals (88-74)
- Braves finished 4 GB the NL East Champion Nationals
- Cardinals finished 9(!) GB the NL Central Champion Reds
- 6 game difference between the Braves and Cardinals for the 1st WC spot

Cardinals beat Braves 6-3 in Atlanta, GA

So, while it seemed last year having a wild card game was a win for the American League to sort out the tie between the Orioles and the Rangers.. it was a loss for the National League as it is pointless that a Cardinals team that was six wins behind the Braves to even be in the conversation, let alone get a one game "playoff" to win and move on, which they did.

As good as we feel as Indians fans to be hosting the wild card game on Wednesday against the winner of tonight's Rangers/Rays game, it should be mentioned that both home teams went 0-2 in the wild card round last year. I still like the Tribe to take this one and move on to play Boston, but it's obviously going to be difficult no matter who wins tonight.