The one-game wild card format is in its fourth year, which should mean people are used to the idea, and accept it. Except they do not. Critics continue to push, year after year, for a best-of-three wild-card round, and for good reason.
Baseball is not a one-game sport.
When baseball expanded the play-offs to include two wild cards from each league, it wanted to make it harder for those who didn’t win their divisions to advance. So, first, the wild cards play a preliminary “round” of one game. The one game also, often, coerces teams to burn their best pitcher, which makes him unavailable for the early stages of the next series against the “more deserving” division winners.
Why wild cards need to be “punished” at all seems silly. They often have better records (see Pittsburgh and Chicago this year) than one or two division winners.
But “one” grates on many fans, media and baseball people for other, more obvious reasons. First, it doesn’t test the depth of a team’s starting rotation past one pitcher. The entire season is a series of three- and four-game series in which multiple starters are used. So how is a one-and-done postseason even a season?
Mostly, baseball is about skills and random events that require time to better produce a just result. The sport begs for play-offs, not a play-off.
Congratulations to wild-card-game winners, the Houston Astros, and Chicago Cubs. But the New York Yankees and Pittsburgh Pirates have a legitimate gripe.
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