Extra Wild Card adds extra excitement for entire year
The 2007 regular season will lose interest for Red Sox and Yankee fans as soon as they each clinch a playoff berth. Winning the division really doesn’t matter. Neither team will exert themselves to finish ahead of the other. It will be more important to set up the playoff rotation, than to use an ace pitcher the last weekend.
It would be really simple to make these two rivals fight tooth and nail to the end for a division pennant. All you need to do is to add another Wild Card in each league. This would put a premium on winning your division. No team would want to be a Wild Card if it meant you had to have a one game playoff with the other WC, just to continue playing into October. The AL East race would come down to an exciting closing week, if it really meant more to win your division.
Baseball went to a playoff system in 1969. Since then the home team has only won 54% of the time. When baseball added the Wild Card in 1995 the World Series winner has been the Wild Card 4 times, and also the loser 4 times. That means 33% of the time being a Wild Card has kept your team playing until the end. By contrast having the best record in baseball has only produced 2 champions and 2 runners up in the same time frame.
If the Wild Cards had to play an extra game on Wild Monday, the TV ratings would soar, and all teams would play for first, the entire season.
I am:
The Fan’s Commish
Rick Swanson