MLB Playoffs: Wild Card Teams Should Play a Best-of-Five Series After Game 156

It was recently announced that at the end of the MLB regular season, the two wild-card teams in each league will play one game against each other, and the winners will advance to the Division Series.

The one-game format must be changed. It's patently unfair when one wild-card team might have a much better record than its opponent or, heaven forbid, a better record than one or two division winners. It borders on the absurd to play 162 games only to lose the 163rd game to end the season.

There's shades of Bobby Thomson and Bucky Dent in the new format, but fret not, there is a solution.

It would help if the two wild-card teams in each league are determined after 156 games. Then, they play a best-of-five series while the other teams finish their schedules.

Assume that the New York Mets and Washington Nationals are the Wild Cards in 2012. The rest of the schedule following their 156th games is canceled to enable them to play each other in the Wild Card Playoff Series (WCPS).

This means that three Mets games against the Pittsburgh Pirates and three Mets games against the Atlanta Braves are wiped out.

Three Nationals games against the Philadelphia Philles and three Nationals games against the St. Louis Cardinals are gone.

The Pirates and Braves play a three-game series, and the Phillies play the Cardinals in a three-game series. Forget the balanced schedule. The extra television revenue for the new WCPS is more important to the moguls than fairness.

The Pirates next face the Phillies for three games, and the Braves play three against the Cards.

The season ends on Sept. 30. The Mets-Nationals Wild Card round ends the same day.

The wild-card teams have a more equitable playoff series, baseball makes more money and there are more "important" games to broadcast.

Problems do exist with this model, especially with a close race at the end of the season.

If Mets and Nationals finished second and third in the Eastern Division in 156 games, there would still be time to catch Atlanta in a close race. It could happen if the Braves finished first, then lost their final six games.

If the fourth-place Phillies won their last six games, they'd wind up with a better record than the Braves. Then, the Phils win the division despite having a worse record than the third-place Nationals.

It's really great because the possibility of division races will exist. Purists haven't mattered to those in power for a long time.

Does anyone think that if a player on a wild-card team were challenging a home run record or a saves record he would be upset because his team made the playoffs?

The format is a natural, and it is simple. We should see it starting in 2013.