Baseball’s post season

I see that Major League baseball has added a second wild-card team to its post-season mix. As I understand it, the two wild cards in each league will play a one-game playoff with the winner in each league joining their respective league’s division winners in the normal playoff series.

We can all agree that’s a dumb idea, almost as dumb as letting the winner of the all-star game decide which league gets home field advantage in the World Series.

So let’s dump both of those.

What major league baseball should do is simply follow the lead of the NBA. First it needs to shorten it’s regular season by 20 games at the most, 10 at the least.

Then simply have the teams with the eight best records in both leagues begin seven-game playoff series with the team having the best regular season winning percentage always having the home field advantage, right through the world series.

Looking at the teams at the halfway point, here’s what a first round playoff matchup would look like (seeding is in parenthesis)

American League: (8) Detroit Tigers at (1) New York Yankees, (7) Cleveland Indians at (2) Texas Rangers, (6) Tampa Bay Rays at (3) Los Angeles Angels and (5) Baltimore Orioles at (4) Chicago White Sox.

National League: (8) San Francisco Giants at (1) Washington Nationals, (7) St. Louis Cardinals at (2) Pittsburgh Pirates, (6) New York Mets at (3) Cincinnati Reds and (5) Los Angeles Dodgers at (4) Atlanta Braves.

To me, it makes for a far more interesting and exciting post season. That’s one reason why it will never happen.