It's Time to Go Back to One Wild Card

The 106-win Los Angeles Dodgers will take on the 90-win St. Louis Cardinals in a one-game, winner-take-all showdown on Wednesday night. It's entirely possible the Dodgers, who would have won every division in baseball other than the NL West by a minimum of six games, will see their season end without even making the NLDS. The Dodgers' 106 wins are the most of any team to play in the Wild Card Game since its implementation in 2012.

I've always thought the Wild Card Game was dumb, honestly. A one-game playoff in a sport whose season includes 162 games in 180 days and is built on averages over a prolonged period of time just doesn't make much sense. But until now, there has never really been an egregious example of a team getting screwed by it.

Regardless of the outcome of the game, the Dodgers are being screwed simply by having to play in this game.

Even if it wins, Los Angeles is going to have to use at least one of its top starters — not that it doesn't have a stable of top-flight arms, but the point remains — and hope it's able to get by St. Louis to get into the NLDS. And oh by the way, if the Dodgers do make it to the Divisional round, they'll be greeted by the 107-win Giants. So there's more than one team potentially getting fucked here.

The 1993 Giants missed the Postseason with 103 wins, which was the final straw for baseball to move to three divisions in each league and add the Divisional round of the Postseason and, in turn, the Wild Card. So if a 103-win team missing the Postseason was the impetus for the Wild Card, a 106-win team potentially being eliminated before the NLDS should be a good enough reason to go back to one Wild Card team.

There is simply no reason the Dodgers should have to play the Cardinals on Wednesday. I liked the idea of a three-game Wild Card series all played at the higher seed's home field — which would also place more incentive on winning your division, as to not burn all that pitching — for a while, but this year has turned me off of that as well. Just go back to one team.

In the event there are two teams who are actually equally deserving of the additional Postseason spot, like the Yankees and Red Sox this year, they'd play a de facto Wild Card Game, anyway. Other than that, you're leaving open the possibility of a situation like we have this year, where the two teams at the biggest disadvantage in the Postseason are those with the two best records.

Luckily, I have a solution.

Obviously, we go back to one Wild Card. But under the current format, that would still leave us with the 107-win Giants and 106-win Dodgers in the NLDS and that's not fair to either of them.

So, let the top seed in each league pick who it wants to play.

That would probably give you Giants-Braves and Dodgers-Brewers in this year's NLDS. This would almost always benefit the teams proportionally in order of finish, because the top seed would presumably never pick the second-best team, regardless of whether it was another division winner or the Wild Card — like it would be this year.

And in terms of the money and publicity MLB would lose by getting rid of the Wild Card Game, make the Postseason selection a TV special. I have zero interest in watching the five-hour game between the Yankees and Red Sox tomorrow, but you bet your ass I'd tune in to see Gabe Kapler and Kevin Cash pick which team they'd want to play in the Divisional Series.

I hope this Postseason has illuminated for people how ridiculous this current format is. We almost had it just right 10 years ago, so go back to that and then let the top teams pick their opponents. That would be much better than this nonsense.