Dayn Perry Sits Down, Writes Meaningless Article, Cashes Paycheck, Laughs Maniacally

Someone, anyone, tell me why this article needed to be written. I'll give you zero guesses, because there is no right answer and I don't want to waste either of our time(s).

This year, wild card is hurting, not helping

For the most part, the wild card has been a good thing for Major League Baseball.

Correct. In fact, if I had to quantify it, I'd say the wild card has been good for MLB at a 99% rate of success.

Since the expanded playoff format was introduced prior to the 1995 season, we've seen more teams in contention, more teams making headline-grabbing trades at the deadline, and, in a related matter, increased fan interest.

Mmmmmmm-hmmmmmm.

After all, without the wild card, the 2004 Red Sox, 2002 Angels, and 2003 and 1997 Marlins wouldn't have been able to win the World Series in the first place.

I like the use of "after all" here, as if people really needed convincing that the wild card is good. It's like he's trying to justify something controversial like tax increases or immigration reform.

The wild card also means that intra-divisional rivals can meet in the LCS (as did the Rockies and Diamondbacks in 2007; Astros and Cardinals in 2004 and 2005; Red Sox and Yankees in 1999, 2003 and 2004; Braves and Mets in 1999; Braves and Marlins in 1997, and Yankees and Orioles in 1996), which lends some high-stakes tensions to the respective blood feuds.

As a Rockies fan, I have to say that they don't exactly have a "blood feud" with the Diamondbacks. But whatever. Even a big market team hater like me has to admit the 2003 and 2004 ALCSes were amazing.

So it's all good, right?

Right. Aaaaaaaaaaand... the article should end here.

Sure, the wild card has added drama to the regular season and engaged more fans in more cities.

You're dawdling. Get to your dumbassery.

However, let's not forget that the wild card comes with a cost. That cost is the division race between two or more truly great teams.

Wow. Since I'm a hyperorganized person (that is a lie, but whatever), let's parse this with a list.

1) This is not necessarily true. This isn't exactly college-level math, but if each league has 3 (three) divisions and only grants 1 (one) wild card, that leaves 2 (two) divisions that will only have one team (their champion) making the playoffs. I'm not sure what Dayn's definition of "truly great" is, but if the AL East has two 100 win teams that both make the playoffs, and the AL Central has a 96 win team that makes the playoffs and a 95 win team that misses out on the last day of the season, isn't that pretty dramatic?

2) I'm pretty sure a wild card race that could include as many as four or five teams well into September is cooler than a two or three team division race. Which, like I already said, isn't even necessarily precluded by the wild card.

3) If you asked 100 baseball fans what the "cost" of the wild card is, maybe 10 of them would say what Dayn said. The other 90 would stare at you blankly.

Think about it: In the wild-card era, when two division rivals are among the best teams in the game there's often less at stake because the second-place team has the wild card berth to fall back on.

I guess. The degree to which this is a bad thing, however, is dramatically overshadowed by the degree to which this is a bad thing:

Remember the classic NL West race of '93, when the 104-win Braves won the division and the 103-win Giants failed to make the postseason?

Yeah. I was pretty young, but I remember that. And you know what? It sucked. What a shitty situation for that Giants team. And for the fans, consider this: which is cooler- the Braves clinching the division on the last day of the season by beating the Rockies while the Giants lost to the Dodgers, or the prospect of a compelling Braves/Giants NLCS?

Those days are mostly over, thanks to the "hedge effect" of the wild card.

And not a year too soon.

It so happens that the 2008 season may provide us with two more examples. Courtesy of the Playoff Odds Report over at Baseball Prospectus, let's have a look at which teams have the highest odds of winning the Wild Card in each league:

Red Sox: 42.8%
Rays: 28.1%
Yankees: 15.8%
Twins: 5.2%
White Sox: 3.1%

Brewers: 48.5%
Cardinals: 16.8%
Cubs: 13.7%
Phillies: 9.4%
Mets: 7.9%

Here's what I see in both leagues: an exciting race in one division, which will award two spots to three teams, and a great secondary race in another division in which two teams (possibly "great" teams, depending on your definition) will fight for one playoff spot. Pretty cool. What does Dayn see?

As you can see, in the AL the top three wild-card contenders, according to the system, are in the East. Over in the NL, the top three wild card contenders are in the Central. In fact, the system predicts that the Rays will take the East with 95 wins, and the Red Sox will win the wild card with 92 wins. In the senior circuit, the Cubs are tabbed to take the Central with 96 wins, and the Brewers are in line for the wild card with 90 wins.

This is in the article just so Dayn can meet his pre-determined minimum word count.

Therein lies the problem.

Certainly, in these kinds of situations you'd prefer to win the division (that's especially the case this season, when so many contenders can't seem to win on the road and thus badly need home-field advantage in the playoffs), but for the Red Sox, Rays, Cubs and Brewers (and perhaps the Yankees and Cardinals) it's likely not going to be a matter of life and death.

Read that again, and see if it gets less stupid. If you're like me, it won't. So we're saying... that because the Yankees are Cardinals are both likely to finish with good records but miss the playoffs... that's somehow undesirable? Because there aren't more teams missing the playoffs despite good records? Here's what I think is too bad: when a team like the 1993 Giants wins 103 games and misses the playoffs. (A roughly similar situation happened in 1987 in the AL, when the 96 win Blue Jays lost the East by 2 games while the 85 win Twins won the West. I didn't look any further back than that, but I assume it was a semi-regular occurrence during the pre-WC days.)

That's too bad.

You're not just stretching- you're stretching to get to the point where you could be construed as stretching. Ridiculous.

Imagine, if you will, the all-in scenario: two — maybe even three — teams from the AL East battling down the stretch for a single playoff spot, and now imagine the same scenario in the NL Central.

OK. It's kind of cool. But not as cool as the wild card.

Brewers-Cubs, separated by fewer than 100 miles? Cubs-Cardinals and their long-standing rivalry? Sox-Rays with all their recent bad blood? Sox-Yankees with all their historical bad blood? Each of those hypotheticals is a compelling one because of the histories and — in most cases — proximities involved.

And here's the key- each of them could easily still end up being a significant and compelling race. It's not that hard to imagine: take the two teams you want to match up, and now simply pretend that the third team in the division wins it. Pretty cool.

As for the scheduling possibilities, the Brewers end the regular season with a three-game home set against the Cubs, and the Red Sox, in customary fashion, end the season against the Yankees. Potentially, that would be two "all or nothing" series on the final weekend, each pairing up regional and divisional rivals. Obviously, such a turn of events is almost impossible now, thanks to the wild card.

Almost impossible, unless of course the Cardinals/Rays win their respective divisions. Pretty unlikely but still possible for the Cards; reasonably likely for the Rays. So... not that impossible.

To be fair, the wild card on occasion provides drama of a similar nature — the 1998, 1999 and 2007 seasons all provided us with one-game playoffs to determine the NL wild card.

Obviously.

However, most often those match-ups are going to lack the hostilities native to intra-divisional match-ups (last year's wild card playoff between the Rockies and Padres is an obvious exception),

Again, as a Rockies fan, let me confirm for you (in case you couldn't figure it out for yourself) that the Padres and them have no bad blood or hostility whatsoever. Didn't really make the game any less exciting, did it? I know that 9-8, 13 inning walkoffs are pretty unlikely. The next one game wild card playoff will probably be a 10-2 snoozefest. But still... yeah.

and they generally aren't going to involve genuinely great teams (after all, it is the wild card — most often a signifier of goodness rather than greatness).

Thank you for that completely arbitrary and meaningless distinction.

As mentioned, the institution of the wild card has been on balance a positive for baseball.

This is like saying that on balance, having a job will help you support a family.

But let's not pretend it's without costs.

I'm OK with pretending that. Or, If you really don't want me to, I won't. I'll go ahead and acknowledge that it has one tiny and pretty much insignificant cost. I'm comfortable with either option.

If the possibilities detailed above come to pass, then the wild card this season will deprive NL Central and AL East fans of something truly special.

Yes, it has the potential of depriving them of a winner-take-all divisional race. Any disappointment they feel in the aftermath of this, however, will probably be abated by the realization that two awesome teams just made the playoffs instead of just one. Not mentioned here: the fact that AL Central, AL West, NL East, and NL West fans will be unaffected. Also not mentioned here: Dayn Perry stinks.