Even though the new system extended the season for my beloved Cardinals, it has not made baseball better, or more exciting, as was claimed. It has hurt the credibility of the playoff process. The team with the fifth best record in the league (the Cardinals) should not be there. The fact that they beat the Braves in the first wild-card playoff doesnt really prove anything. It just means that on that day they scored the most runs. Match the two teams in a series and most of the time the home team with the better record would win (in this case the Braves).
One game in baseball proves nothing and thereis no time for a wild card series. Why? Because baseball is an outdoors, fair weather, sport. Unlike football, which can be, and is, played under miserable weather conditions, baseball requires good weather. Or so they say. Add a three or five game series for wild card playoffs and before you know it you are playing the World Series entirely in November. Try that out on the fans of northern teams, White Sox, Indians, Red Sox, Brewers, Twins.
In one game anything can happen. Bad teams can clobber good teams. Not so with a five or seven game series, then the better team by definition, always wins. Last year (and every previous year) the winner of the World Series could always claim that no matter whom they faced in the postgame, they were the better team. No more. This years winner will have fans wondering if they really could have made it past the Braves or the Rangers, two good teams that fell short in a one-game death match.
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