Why I Like The Extra Wild Card

With a wave of his mighty finger, Bud Selig recently announced that Major League Baseball has expanded its playoff format, going from an eight-team postseason to ten.  Fans everywhere have been discussing why they like or dislike the change.  I am on the "like" side of the fence, although my Studious Metsimus colleague, Joey Beartran, is not.  (That's okay.  We're still cool.)

I have a few reasons why I believe the addition of two wild card teams will be beneficial for baseball.  Hopefully, after you read them, you'll be on my side of the fence as well.

In all of the other major sports, mediocre teams are constantly winning championships or making it to the final round or game.  Just this past month, the New York Giants won the Super Bowl after going 9-7 in the regular season.  This came one year after the Seattle Seahawks won the NFC West with a 7-9 record and defeated the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints in the playoffs.

In the NBA, the 1980-81 Houston Rockets advanced to the NBA Finals despite finishing the regular season with a losing record (40-42).  Had the Rockets lost to their opponent in the Western Conference Finals, the Kansas City Kings, there still would have been a team in the finals with a losing record, as the Kings finished the regular season with an identical 40-42 mark.  The Rockets' magical ride ended in the NBA Finals, where they lost to the Boston Celtics in six games.  The '80-'81 Rockets were one-upped by two teams in hockey.

The 1948-49 Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup after finishing the 60-game regular season with a 22-25-13 record.  But eleven years before their unlikely Stanley Cup victory, they lost the championship round to a team that was even worse during the regular season.  In 1938, the Chicago Black Hawks (they didn't become the one-word Blackhawks until the 1986-87 campaign) defeated the Maple Leafs to win the Stanley Cup.  This unlikely title came on the heels of a 14-25-9 regular season.  That's right.  The Black Hawks won only 14 of their 48 regular season games, yet they still skated away with the Cup.

While I don't think teams with losing records should win championships, I do think teams with excellent regular seasons should be allowed to compete for the title.  In 1993, the last non-strike season before the advent of the wild card in baseball, the San Francisco Giants failed to make the playoffs despite finishing the regular season with a 103-59 record.  Six years later, the Cincinnati Reds won 96 regular season games, but failed to win their division or the wild card.  (The Mets defeated them in a one-game playoff to clinch the wild card berth.  Yay!)

Even with the two extra playoff teams, Major League Baseball will still have the fewest teams qualifying for the playoffs in the four major sports.  Only one-third of the teams in baseball will be invited to the postseason party, as opposed to 12 in football and 16 each in basketball and hockey.  For most teams, a 90-win season would be considered a success.  But I'm sure the 90-win Braves would not consider 2011 to be a successful season.  Good teams deserve to be rewarded for their performance over the full 162-game campaign.  The extra wild card should provide that.

Another reason why I'm in favor of the second wild card is that it will encourage teams to win their division as opposed to just settling for the wild card.

Too many teams in the past have given up on the division title (cough cough, 2010 Yankees, cough cough) to rest their players if they had the wild card to fall back on.  Now, with the possibility of their season ending in a one-game, do-or-die wild card game, teams that can still win their division will go all out to win that hat and T-shirt awarded to division champions.  Those clothes will not only signify that the team has won a championship (in this case, a division title), but will give them a chance to play in an actual playoff SERIES instead of a playoff GAME, which will give them a better chance to win the World Series.

Division champions should have an easier route to the World Series, as too many wild card teams have won it all over the years.  (Since 1995, a total of ten wild card teams have played in the Fall Classic, with five of them winning it all, including last year's Cardinals.)  Now, if a wild card team wins the World Series, they will have truly earned it, needing to win an extra postseason game and having to do so without being able to set up their starting rotation in the way they would want.

Without question, the addition of an extra wild card team in each league is a good thing for baseball.  It'll provide fans with more excitement during the season's final month and give division champions a better chance to win the World Series.  I can't be more in favor of this new playoff format.

ESPN Writer Jokes On The Mets In A Super Bowl Article

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, a day in which thoughts of the traditional national pastime are temporarily put aside for the current national pastime.  In today's matchup, the New England Patriots will be taking on the New York Giants in a much-anticipated rematch of Super Bowl XLII.

Everywhere you turn to, sports writers and bloggers are covering a certain angle of the game.  From Victor Cruz's penchant for salsa dancing to Tom Brady's overrated good looks to Madonna's halftime show, there is no shortage of material for writers to cover.  So tell me, Mets fans.  Why did one particular writer use his Super Bowl article to make a joke about the Mets?

In an article posted to espn.com this morning, Jerry Greene touched upon a gamut of topics from Wing Bowl XX (won by Takeru Kobayashi - who I guess has gotten over his three losses to Carlos Beltran in the fictional Wiener War) to chicken plucking to the actual Super Bowl itself.  However, it was a paragraph near the end of his article that caught my attention.

A few paragraphs before his Super Bowl prediction (he picks the Pats to win by two touchdowns), he provides a link to an article by Drew Davison of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  Never mind the fact that he misspelled Davison's name (Greene spelled it Davidson).  What was truly offensive was his little rip on the Mets at the end of the paragraph.  In discussing Davison's article about which five teams had the best offseasons and which five had the poorest, Greene says:

"Hey, Mets fans, which list do you think you're on?"

So nice that a fan of chicken plucking found it in him to add his two cents and a plucked feather about the state of the Mets in his Super Bowl article.  We all know the Mets had a poor offseason.  So did the Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins, Oakland Athletics and Houston Astros, according to Davison's well-written article (a writer Greene can learn a thing or two from).  But of course, he chooses to single out the Mets in his weak attempt at humor.

We get it.  It's fun to rip on the Mets when they're doing poorly.  Even I, a die-hard Mets fan, do it on this site.  (Ask me about my disdain for Joe Orsulak one day.  It's a doozy of a story.)  But to do it in an article that's supposed to be about football on the most sacred day in all of sports, Super Bowl Sunday?  That's just a little overboard.

Super Bowl Sunday is the one day of the year that it's okay not to think about baseball.  The day should be all about football and all the trimmings that go with it (like the chicken wings that Takeru Kobayashi enjoys so much).  It's not a time to make jokes at the Mets' expense.  Jerry Greene can go pluck himself for all I care.  But then again, a kick through his uprights would probably do the trick just as well.