2012 MLB Season: Baseball Wild Card Changes, how many teams make it in the Playoffs

Free agency has once again shuffled the deck when it comes to team expectations for the upcoming 2012 baseball season. Some teams’ stock went up (Angels and Marlins) while others decreased their odds at being competitive this season (A’s). Fans of the teams that didn’t fair well this off-season can at least take solace in knowing the games are not decided on paper, but on the ball fields. Unfortunately for some of them they really do not have a legitimate shot at postseason play based on their current rosters.

As with every Major League Baseball season some team will defy the odds stacked against them and be a strong competitor come the postseason. With the changes being implemented this season will these alterations benefit one of the smaller market teams or allow another one of the free spending teams to secure a playoff spot?

Whoever makes it to the 2012 postseason will be greeted with a new format because Major League Baseball is revising how many teams make it in. The old format was a division winner from each of the three divisions, in each league, plus a wild card team that possessed the next best record. The wild card team could come from any of the three divisions.

The proposed format will still have the three division winners but an additional wild card winner will be added giving two teams the keys to unlock the postseason door. I have no personal objections to increasing the amount of teams competing in the postseason, especially since other professional sports allow such a higher percentage of their teams to participate in their postseasons. For example the NBA has 16 playoff teams (53% of the league) and the NFL allows 12 teams (37% of the league) to go to the playoffs. In comparison MLB lets 8 teams in but it is only 26% of the league; adding two more teams would only bring that percentage up to 33%.

My initial objection to what Major League Baseball is proposing is that the two wild card winners, in each league, play each other in a one game playoff to become the ‘real’ wild card winner. This is a tough pill for me to swallow because, unlike professional football, professional baseball is not geared to be a one game, winner take all deal. Baseball is made up of series’ of games, usually five and then seven games in the postseason. Expecting two teams to come off of a 162 game schedule to only play one more pre-postseason game, just to get into the postseason seems a little bit unusual to me. I don’t pretend to have all of the answers but the executives could come up with something better right? I’m cautiously optimistic however since these are the same suits that came up with the winner of the All-Star game being the home team for the World Series.

At the end of the 2011 season fans witnessed the final games of the season, in both leagues, deciding the eventual wild card winners. These games were documented as some of the best, non-playoff games, which can be played. The Cardinals came out of no where to win the NL wild card while the Rays pulled of the same feat in the AL. Throw in the collapse of the Braves and Red Sox and every baseball fan, no matter which team you root for, was talking about the games.

As a huge baseball fan I sincerely hope that Major League Baseball's tinkering with the playoff format does not negatively affect the action on the field that we all had the joy of witnessing last season. It would be a travesty to implement procedures that would take this kind of drama away from us.

If you are interested in attending a MLB game in person every team's schedule can be found by visiting Major League Baseball's website for all of the games on the MLB Schedule.