Those Amazing Mets...and Yankees

There's a guy at my gym who's a diehard Mets fan -- the kind of fan who whose opinion of a player's moral fiber is directly proportional to his batting average over the last six weeks.

Mostly I giggle when we talk, but every once in a while I make an attempt to reorient him to reality. Met fans should be making sacrifices to the baseball gods for the team's continued Wild Card contention.

This is an outfit built on an eye-popping young rotation and a couple of other assets. Sixty percent of the starters are on the shelf and manager Terry Collins has lost the services of his team leader, his slugging first baseman, his star keystoner and various others. His only remaining power bat has bulled through a serious of pulls and strains throughout the season.

The Mets' Wild Card fortunes turn on the contributions of rookies Seth Lugo, Robert Gsellman and Logan Verrett, and veteran castoffs Kelly Johnson, James Loney and Rene Rivera. And they're 10 games over .500.

The House That Refsnyder Built
The Yankees are likewise in a Wild Card chase, if only peripherally, but their miracle has a somewhat different shape. A broken down old roster with questionable pitching at season's start, the Bombers jettisoned their best players at the trade deadline and began the youthful march towards 2017.

Yet somehow, the future's remained now. Gary Sanchez, in a mere 44 games, is the team's second most valuable player by WAR. But besides him, this is a team without hitting (next to last in the AL in OPS) or pitching (non-Tanaka starters sport a robust 4.78 ERA).  Their roster rates as below average by Wins Against Average and they've been outscored on the season by 25 runs with eight games left.

It's hard to imagine either team making much noise beyond Fan Appreciation Day. The Yankees will need a miracle finish and they just don't have the horses. The Mets might slip into October baseball where anything can happen, but how will they score runs?

Nonetheless, both teams merit some props for making it interesting. And then, there's next year.

Everyone in the Pool!

The baseball team representing my alma mater plays about 40 games in a full season. With 40 games left in the MLB season, it seems pretty clear that the Kansas City Royals will play October baseball, and not the play-in variety. They have a 12-game lead in the AL Central and a formula that worked reasonably well last year without hitting, which they now have, if not in abundance then at least in sufficiency.

The Yankees, Blue Jays and Astros all appear poised to join K.C., but at only 10-13 games over .500, a two-week skid could bury any of them. Consider that Toronto rode an 11-game win streak that ended this weekend to climb from also-ran to favorite. At the same time the Yankees blew an eight-game lead over the Jays to fall temporarily into second. New York is elderly and its mound corps is spotty. For Toronto, spotty is an improvement. The Astros are frightfully young, untested and almost entirely relying on two pitchers.

The Angels own the second Wild Card spot, but just five games clear of .500 and a game ahead of Baltimore, two ahead of Tampa, two-and-a-half in front of Minnesota and Texas. Indeed, everyone but Boston, Oakland and Seattle sits within six games of the Wild Card, including Cleveland, the Central's cellar dwellers. Any one of them could catch a fortnight's rocket ride into that last playoff berth.

Indeed, think of recent years' late season fireworks. The AL Champs themselves were barely above .500 well after the All-Star break before claiming the last post-season spot and then the pennant.  The Rangers crash landed in 2013 to miss the playoffs. And the Red Sox and Braves famously choked away the 2011 season by stumbling down the stretch and losing on the last day.

No one knows which team is the one that catapults into the playoffs or slides out of them, which is why, if you peruse Baseball Prospectus's playoff odds calculations, the chances of, for example, the Indians, Twins and Tigers entering the post-season are rated at 8.6%, 3.5% and 3.0% respectively. (The A's and BoSox are listed at under one percent. That's the rough equivalent of good night.) But there is an 80% likelihood that it won't be the five teams now occupying those spots.

So if you have a dog in the fight, be neither complacent nor hopeless.  There is a full college season's worth of games remaining.

With Help Like That We'd Prefer Hinderance

I got a kick out of this line from the description of the Jon Lester signing by the Cubs:

"Lester was dealt by the Red Sox to Oakland at the trade deadline in July and helped the A's reach the playoffs for the third straight year..."

Ha! Evidently the Associated Press* believes you've already forgotten the 2014 season. You know, the season in which Oakland dominated all of Major League Baseball until pretty much the moment they traded for Lester. 

*Yes, he's picking on the AP again. Sometimes it's a slow baseball news day and all looks bleak and then the AP writes something and makes life fun again. Thank you, AP. Don't ever change. 

For the record, the A's won 65 of their first 104 games, a .625 winning percentage. Three games later they acquired Lester and proceeded to lose 35 of their next 60 games, a .417 winning percentage. They relinquished the best record in baseball, the best record in the AL, the division lead, the first wild card, their air of invincibility, most of their dignity and nearly the post-season altogether, all with Lester in tow. Having stumbled into the Wild Card game, they gakked up a big eighth-inning lead, with Lester on the hill, against middling Kansas City. 

In sum, their season descending into ignominy almost immediately upon Lester's arrival. That's how he "helped" them earn a playoff berth.

Now, to be fair, correlation isn't causation, definitively not here. Lester pitched well for Oakland, allowing 2.82 runs per nine and fanning 71 while walking just 16. It wasn't his fault the A's collapsed like Ukrainian peace talks.

But he doesn't deserve credit for their post-season moment either. They earned that while he was hurling for Boston.

Parity Begins at Home

The derision funneled Seattle's way for rolling out the golden carpet to free agents Robinson Cano and Fernando Rodney, and making fat-wallet pitches to several others, has stood the test of half a season. The weak-hitting Mariners are bobbing along at two games over .500, a million games behind the Oakland steamroller.

But those two acquisitions have a middling team in the middle of the playoff hunt. On the first day of summer, Seattle stands two games out of the Wild Card, part of an eight-team scrum.

Except for Oakland and Toronto on the plus-side and Houston and Tampa Bay in the negative, the entire American League is within three games of even. That means that Cleveland, who can't win on the road; Detroit, who've lost 20 of 30; and Boston, who dropped 10, won seven and lost five straight; are all still very much in the mix.

Ditto in the senior circuit. The Dbacks, Padres, Mets and Cubs have recused themselves from the 2014 playoffs, but it's a free-for-all besides that. In the NL East, the phading, phourth-place Phils are phour notches under .500, the phiphth-worst team in the NL. And they're just 3.5 games shy of their division's lead.

It makes the competition wondrous for fans, not so much for general managers. If you're the last-place White Sox, are you buyers or sellers at the trade deadline? You're just five games out of the lead in the AL Central. How about the Yankees, currently in the lead for a Wild Card, but living large off luck and bracing for the next cascade of injuries to your geriatric club?

If you're the Rays, you're plying every contender, pretender and upender with visions of David Price hurling them to victory. There could be a long line vying for trade bait capable of helping a team win that extra game or two.

And Now, The Tournament Begins

In case you thought the 2013 baseball season is over, the Rangers and Rays beg to differ. They will battle tonight in Arlington for the right to fly to Cleveland and challenge the Indians Wednesday for the opportunity to fly to Boston and face a rested Red Sox team Friday with their best pitcher (and possibly second best) unavailable.

On Tuesday, the Pirates and Reds will join the fray. Earning one of the Wild Card berths is certainly a substantial achievement, but the euphoria gives way to disappointment with jarring speed for the loser of the play-in game.

Only then does the tournament begin. Like hockey, baseball does not have a championship; it has a tournament in which a team's regular-season exploits are largely meaningless and the results essentially random. Hockey's playoffs are doubly disconnected because they are open to half the league, including the disappointments, the rebuilders and the inconsistent. In baseball, at least, only the best teams are afforded opportunities to compete for the title.

Still, only three of the last 17 World Champions have had baseball's best record over the 162-game season, while five Wild Cards have won the title.  

You will hear ad naseum (actually, hearing this once is ad naseum, because it's patently false) that teams need to have "momentum" or a "hot hand" or simply be playing well entering the playoffs in order to emerge victorious. This shibboleth is repeated despite the 2006 World Series in which both teams (St. Louis and Detroit) entered with sub-.500 second-half records. The Tigers were swept in the season's final series by last-place KC to drop into the Wild Card. The Cardinals lost seven in a row the week before the playoffs commenced.

Last season, the eventual champs fell behind in the best-of-five division series two games to none before storming back, then dropped four of five in the NLCS before sweeping the remaining three games. That's not so much "hot" or "cold" as random.

In fact, research shows that there is almost no correlation at all between playing well at season's end and winning it all. Indeed, there's little correlation between anything and playoff magic, which is why the playoffs are both a lottery and impossible to predict except by dumb luck.

When the Rays and Rangers tussle tonight in their loser-go-home affair, both teams will enter the series "hot" and "cold." Texas lost its grip on the division and then the Wild Card by dropping 12 of 13 in the waning weeks of the season. In the final week, they rebounded for six wins in a row. Tampa Bay charged to the top of the Wild Card standings with a seven-game win streak before losing a pair that dropped them into a tie with Texas. One of these teams will survive and will thus be dubbed, ex post facto, on a roll. If you're a betting person, caveat emptor.

Except for the Cardinals, every team is at least six years from a championship and has suffered at least one indignity since. After St. Louis (2011) and Boston (2007), the most recent champion city is Atlanta (1995), followed by Cincinnati (1990), Oakland (1989), L.A. (1988), Detroit (1984), Pittsburgh (1979) and Cleveland (1948). Texas and Tampa Bay have never tasted the sweet fruit of victory. So for all but Cards and Red Sox fans, a World Championship would be a refreshing novelty. 

Let's go all of them!

The AL East: Your Nose Runs and Your Feet Smell

If you had the AL East this way on your tout sheet to start the season, no one would have even sniffled:

Toronto
Yankees
Baltimore
Tampa Bay
Boston

With 10 games yet to play, your basement dweller has, in real life, clinched a Wild Card berth and is the leading candidate for the best overall record. Your pick for division king has clinched a losing season and lags 12 games behind .500. Indeed, like the man whose nose runs and feet smell , you've got it upside-down.

We all wondered (or fantasized) about the Blue Jays, who cobbled together high-profile parts from failed organizations to create an intriguing roster. Instead, the imports have scuffled either with injury or ineffectiveness or both, leaving Ontarians with a lineup that doesn't get on base and a pitching staff with a 4.65 ERA.

Other than the Jays, the rest of the division is at scraapping furiously for a Wild Card. Tampa Bay, despite its 18-25 August and September, leads the pack. They host Baltimore and visit New York and Toronto in their final 10 games, almost certainly securing a spot with six wins.

For the Orioles, three games short of the Rays, the four meetings in Tampa are critical. Failing to win at least three leaves them dependent on others to take down Tampa and Texas while they exploit last-place Toronto and coasting Boston.

Oh so improbably, the Yankees cling to contention's edge, even as Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte prepare for life after baseball, and the Disabled List hogs the services of Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter. Losers of nine of their last 14, the Bombers have been outscored this year and have auditioned 18 shortstops and 19 third basemen. While the rest of the division engages in internecine warfare, New York can feast on San Francisco and Houston sandwiched around a set with the Rays. Four out in the loss column and trailing four teams for a play-in berth, they probably need to steal seven wins in the last nine to have any hope. 

Texas, Cleveland and Kansas City figure into this morass as well. The Rangers, reprising their 2012 role as late season face-planters (they're 4-13 in September), run into hard-charging KC on the road, then host the minor-league Astros and the enigmatic Angels to end the season. The Royals head home for the punchless Mariners and the feckless White Sox. They need at least seven of ten but might have the least resistance of all the contenders to deal with.

Then there is the Tribe, a mere half a game out of the Wild Card after an 11-6 September, but let's face it, they're Cleveland. They're 83-70, they're pounding the ball, their final three opponents (Astros, White Sox and Twins) are a combined 105 games under .500, but . . . they're Cleveland. By all rights they should be favored to nab one of the Wild Card slots. But, as may have been previously noted, Cleveland.

For the record, going into games of Sept. 20, Baseball Prospectus rates Tampa a seven-in-ten favorite to reach the play-in, while Texas is a two-to-one favorite. That means there is a 54% chance that one of them will relinquish their lead, and The Indians are best positioned to accept it. Cleveland is a 50-50 proposition while the Orioles, Royals and Yankees are all rated less than one-in-ten longshots, with New York a one-in-a-100 fantasy. These projections are based on the current roster of each team, their opponents and their current position in the Wild Card puzzle.

Besides determining the winner of the NL Central, it's the only intrigue left in the last two weeks. But from Dallas to the Bronx and from St. Pete to Cleveland, every pitch, every out, every run is magnified, and that's intrigue at the James Bond level.

Piercing Insights To Shock and Amaze

Momentary lasers of brilliance that couldn't wait to be disseminated to the world...

Big Donkey Still Kickin'

Adam Dunn wasn't nicknamed The Big Donkey to denote grace and beauty afield. Mostly the White Sox hide his glove and pencil in his name as DH. He's hitting .209 and following a record-setting strikeout trajectory with 172.

And he's worth nearly two wins compared to a replacement DH.

That's because Dunn leads the AL in home runs and walks too, giving him a respectable .342 OBP and an exemplary .494 SLG. By way of comparison, Reds sparkplug Brandon Phillips is batting 80 points higher but has posted an OBP 12 points lower.

Dunn is a quintessential Three True Outcomes (TTO) hitter: of his 512 plate appearances he's actually tested the opponent's defense just 214 times. The other 298 trips have comprised walks, strikeouts, HBP or balls hit out of the park. His infield teammate (when Sox manager Robin Ventura saddles his defense with Dunn at first), Gordon Beckham has made the defense work 333 times in just 445 plate appearances. Dunn's TTO score is 58.2%; Beckham's a more average 25.2%.

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Run-Run-Run-Runaway

If high drama is your cup of tea, the MVP race in each league is a steaming mug of strychnine. 

With a quarter of the season left, Miguel Cabrera, has a .990 OPS, 31 HR and 104 RBI, and has posted an offensive value in the five-win range. And he's a distant second in the MVP race. 

Angels phenom Mike Trout, with a 1.011 OPS and 39 steals in 42 attempts (zounds!) is worth nearly seven wins to his team -- and that's before you subtract Cabrera's third base butchery and add Trout's brilliance at the premium midfield position. 

Unless Trout tanks, Cabrera, Josh Hamilton, Robinson Cano, Edwin Encarnacion, AJ Pierzynski and others will have to settle for an attaboy from their manager (and perhaps a World Series ring).

Likewise in the NL, where Melky Cabrera has turned into a pumpkin and Joey Votto's injury has removed him from contention. Pirate center fielder Andrew McCuthcen's 1.020 OPS and fielding genius has also lapped the field. Barring a McCutchen face plant down the stretch, Buster Posey, Ryan Braun and David Wright will battle for silver (and probably no World Series appearances). 

Same for the Rookie of the Year award. Try a cuppa Joe.

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The Cat Says, Do It Now

Bobby Valentine could do something immediately to boost the Red Sox fortunes: Whisper the following to his disappointing left fielder, "Carl, have the surgery now."

Carl Crawford has played just 30 games this year due to a torn elbow ligament. He needs Tommy John surgery but a chivalrous streak has kept him from abandoning his troubled teammates and their late-season Wild Card run.

"What late season Wild Card run," you may have asked yourself, or your cat, who was minding her own important business, consisting largely of staring blankly into space or licking her private parts and swallowing the loose hair, for re-purposing later on the carpet. 

Exactly. 

Recovery from the TJ surgery will take six-to-nine months. (Recovery from the hairball will take several minutes and also involve labored breathing.) If Crawford hangs on for Boston's inevitable demise on Oct. 3, his healthy return for the 2013 campaign might be delayed into summer. Going under the knife next week virtually guarantees his availability at the start of the 2013 season, when the Red Sox won't be seven games in the hole.

With improved pitching that will result from the natural evolution of I haven't the foggiest idea, Boston plans to contend in 2013, and for that they need the contributions from Crawford that they paid for in the 2011 off-season. 

It's certainly possible that Fenway's brutal mound corps could catch fire pigs fly just as David Ortiz returns to a newly-rejuvenated lineup hell freezes over, leading New England's favorites out from the sub-.500 abyss chicken have teeth and past the five teams ahead of them for the Wild Card on a week with two Thursdays. That kind of miracle could occur, as this Boston contingent knows all too well, but if Crawford wants to play the odds, sticking around the rest of this season is like betting that fish will climb trees.

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He Can't Go Home Again

If Hanley Ramirez has a home in Miami, he might want to reconsider returning there following the season. After blasting the Marlins with his suck ray in 2011 and 2012, he's delivered .330/.392/.549 and good defense to the Dodgers, including four homers in a three game set against his old compadres. In just 23 games in L.A., Ramirez has been worth more to his team than in the previous 185 games in Florida.

Think they want to string him up in the Sunshine State?

Now if the Dodgers are smart, they'll flip Hanley's re-motivated self to another club while his value remains spiked and let his next sulk come at someone else's expense. That might ease the pain endured by the franchise from the re-signing of another Ramirez in 2009 to a disastrous two-year, $45 million deal after he temporarily re-discovered his inspiration with them in the 2008 season.

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The Devil's Good Side

While maintaining that expanded playoffs are the devil's workshop, I have to admit that the massive disadvantage bestowed in the new format upon Wild Card teams is shooting bolts of interest into the division races.

This year, it matters whether Chicago or Detroit wins the AL Central, or whether L.A. or San Francisco takes the NL West, even if the loser earns a post-season consolation prize. The loser's playoff fortunes will ride on a one-game, anything goes play-in game, followed by a division series in which they may have already burned their top starter.

The result: the consolation prize won't be worth anything to 50% of the teams that grab it, and even advancement into the playoffs will still entail a climb over the odds.

Expect two positive developments from the new post-season scenario:

1. Despite a doubling of Wild Card qualifiers, there will be a small decline in Wild Card teams making the World Series. 

2. The Wild Card game will be considered by baseball fandom to be a play-in, not a playoff, and teams that succumb in that  match will not be generally understood as having made the post-season.

Pirates Get Closer to Playoffs

Think back to the searing excitement of the Dayton play-in games that blast off the NCAA basketball tournament. Remember how you wore out the edge of your seat awaiting the winner of the Northern Southeast Idaho Ag & Tech-Mildred P. McGillicutty game.

Great news! Baseball has just recreated the same heart-stopping sudden death format for its playoffs.

Starting next year, another Wild Card team will be added, so that after 162 games, a one-game tournament will determine who goes on to face a division-winner in the league division series.

The good news is that failing to win a division will have its consequences.

The bad news is that a yet-lesser team gets into the playoffs. The bad news is that the postseason gets yet another day longer. The bad news is that the Yankees and Red Sox become that much more likely to earn a berth every year. The bad news is that a team with a seven-game Wild Card edge can be ousted from contention by a vastly inferior opponent after one game. The bad news is that the more common a postseason berth, the less valued. The bad news is that this makes the baseball playoffs even less interesting and the regular season even less urgent.

The bad news is that on balance, this is bad news.

Addition By Subtraction

So it comes down to the Rangers and Angels. That's the only playoff race left in baseball, despite eight playoff slots. How did we come to this lamentable result?

We came to to this lamentable result because there are eight playoff slots. Duh.

This is the unintended consequence of Wild Cards. Carmakers developed four-wheel drive cars with traction control and anti-lock brakes, with the unintended consequence that people who buy them drive with impunity in snow storms and crash by the mini-van load. Designed to increase late season drama, the Wild Card has anti-locked the pennant race while halving the value of making the post-season.

Imagine if we returned to the days of two divisions in each league. The annual chewing of the nails could commence in full force in the Northeast for the AL East Battle Royale between New York and Boston. Assuming that Detroit and Cleveland would head East, the current AL West dogfight would be unchanged. Sorry Tigers, no contention for you. Does that mean Justin Verlander is no longer an MVP candidate? (Good luck defending that argument.)

In the NL, Philly has turned the competition to mush, so it wouldn't matter that Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis would go east. Milwaukee and Arizona could scrap for the West title where the Giants have faded into batlessness.

The result, three playoff races instead of one, each of which leaves the victor four wins from the World Series. It would be a bummer for fans in Detroit and Atlanta this year, but a gargantuan net gain for baseball. In the current environment, September games are losing the TV rating wars to Wheel of Fortune re-runs and -- God help us -- presidential addresses. Even Yankee-Red Sox tilts have been drained of their zing.

On top of that, a shorter playoff schedule would eliminate November World Series nightmares, reducing the likelihood -- now 100% -- of flurries, freezing rain and hard frost during the Fall Classic. Which brings us back around to the playoff races, which this year have devolved into a hard frost themselves.

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Retiring A Terrible Idea

There's a political ad running on TV in my town in which a 59-year-old librarian with a torn rotator cuff admonishes our Senator for supporting an increase in the Social Security retirement age. She complains that the constant pain she endures in the hopes of retiring at 62 will be for naught if our Senator is successful.

I am very moved by this ad. I want to find this poor woman. And shoot her.

What is absent from their argument is the cost of allowing people like this apocryphal woman to retire at 62. The cost is that Social Security won't function in 15 years. This ad argues for a handful of people to get all their money right away at the expense of our children and grandchildren ever collecting theirs at all. 

This is the rationale currently being pursued by Bud Selig and MLB power brokers with respect to the playoffs. They have embarked on a short-term money-grab that will drag the sport further down the entertainment food chain. It appears likely that, because of the added revenue it will produce, owners and players will approve an expanded playoff structure starting in 2012. They want to add two more teams, and a wild-card round, to the current format.

Apparently Commissioner Bud hasn't noticed that the public is losing interest in baseball's post-season for the following reasons:

1. The team with the fourth (or worse) best record has nearly as much chance of winning the pennant as the team with the best.

2. Too many series = increased chance best teams get knocked off = less compelling championship.

3. Snow showers, sleet, parkas and baseball don't mix. Hello?

4. October belongs to pro and college football. November? Fuhgedaboutit!

More importantly, all the arguments in favor of expanding playoffs -- more teams in the race, more excitement for a larger number of fan bases, blah blah blah -- amount to a smorgasbord of irrelevance in the absence of an accounting of its many costs. 

The NBA Effect is this: more teams in the playoffs yield a less meaningful regular season. Under the proposed format, the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays no longer have to worry about winning their division; they can all come to the party! People generally fail to understand that regular season drama is about that last playoff slot. Adding more slots doesn't heighten drama; it reduces its intensity as the best outfits cruise home and weaker teams battle for less significant positions. 

The current proposal -- two wild cards play for a berth in the next round -- promises every bit the bone-chilling anticipation of the NCAA hoops play-in game. While the idea correctly tips the scales against division runners-up, it dilutes the accomplishment of getting in.

Worse yet: human beings do not play baseball in Minneapolis (or most of America), at night, in March and November. My yearly Opening Day pilgrimages to Cooperstown were met with closed shops because of the cold. One year it snowed on us. That was when Opening Day was in April. Another round of playoffs? Where you gonna put it? The season needs to be shortened, not lengthened.

All this is irrelevant considering the decision is about legal tender and nothing else. So let's talk cash. Selig is proposing 4-6 extra post-season games -- two best-of-three series. That's 4-6 extra sellouts, 4-6 more televised properties. But again, there's a cost.

Before wild card expansion, the World Series drew 30 million TV viewers in the US. Today, 14 million. There are many reasons, but sucking the life out of the Series is transparently (to me) the most determinative. (The NHL sends its regards.) Offering up a cadaver as your sport's championship does nothing for your sport's overall popularity, as is evidenced by the microscopic TV ratings for baseball's regular season.

MLB's rulers have to look beyond short-term revenue enhancement and focus on the long-term health of the sport. Quick fixes and Band-Aid approaches have slowly degraded the game. A little sacrifice by everyone today might be all it takes to improve the sport's prognosis over time.

Wait, am I talking baseball or Social Security?

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Like Kissing Someone Else's Sister

How many times have you heard this season that the Yankees and Rays are battling for first place in the AL East. They are doing no such thing.

It doesn't make a nose hair's worth of difference whether the Yanks win the division and the Rays take the wild card or vice versa. As the team in the Bronx demonstrated a decade ago, they shake the Etch-A-Sketch after the season and start all over.

For practical purposes, one team will draw Texas and the other Minnesota. We still today don't know which team the AL East champ will play. Does it really matter? A World Series appearance requires victory in two playoff series, regardless of the opponent.

The division winner gets an extra home game, while the Wild Card squad has an added road challenge in the unlikely event that the series goes the distance. (Most series end before game seven.) It changes the odds of winning the series by about two percentage points.

That's more than a bucket of warm spit, but a whole lot less than getting your team healthy and your rotation set. In fact, if the teams are tied on the last day of the season, both managers would be well-advised (and don't worry, they both are) to sacrifice the division and send a scrub to the mound so the rotation is correctly rotated for the playoffs.

Ask the '06 Tigers, the '05 Astros, the '04 Red Sox, '03 Marlins, '02 Giants, '00 Mets and the '97 Marlins about conquering their division. Each of them leapfrogged the team that outpaced them in the regular season to reach the World Series. They know that coming in second is like kissing someone else's sister...if the Wild Card's involved.

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The Wild, Wild, Wild, Wild Card

Woe is us. Peter Gammons has spoken, and when he speaketh, the Lords of Baseball doth listen.

Let's stipulate that Gammons is a great reporter, respected and beloved across the sport and the media. But he has proposed such a terrifically bad idea it has got to be killed, bludgeoned to death with logic. I volunteer with the club.

Gammons, like the rest of Baseball Nation, is underwhelmed by this year's playoff races and disheartened by the way football has shoved the national pastime into the shadows. The result is a jerking of the knee that will expedite the sport's path to irrelevance, not forestall it. He suggests that baseball add yet another playoff round just for the Wild Cards.

Oy. Caramba. Yeesh. Take your pick.

Here's the fundamental misconception people have about playoff races. They think that making more teams eligible for the playoffs increases the number of playoff races. It categorically does not. The race is only around the last qualifying spot, regardless of whether two teams qualify, or 20 teams do.

The real difference is that when only the two best teams qualify, the battle is fierce and the consequences momentous. When 20 teams qualify, the contestants are feeble and the prize is simply a short postponement of their ignominy.

Take this year as an example. There's one wild card race -- in the NL, among Colorado, SF, Atlanta and Florida. Adding another wild card would do nothing in the AL, where Texas is the clear next best team, and nothing in the NL, where Colorado would be a lock and the three teams chasing them would be vying for the next spot. It's a wash.

That doesn't account for the additional downside of the extra playoff round -- putting aside the scheduling headaches involved. A team like the Red Sox, the second or third best team in the league, would be severely disadvantaged, particularly with respect to the significantly inferior Tigers/Twins.

Suppose instead, we returned to the old way -- two divisions, one playoff round per league. The Yankees-Red Sox tilt this weekend would matter (a little). Better yet, the Phillies and Cardinals would be waging holy war for the Eastern Division title, with everything at stake. The victor would be four wins from the World Series; the loser is done. What we have instead is each team, a month before season's end, arranging its playoff roster and hotel room assignments.

There is a direct and inverse relationship between the importance of the regular season and the number of teams in the playoffs. Certainly more playoff slots allows more teams to feel that they can contend, particularly in a sport like baseball where any team can take three of five against another. But when the fifth best team is given a nearly equal chance to claim the title in a handful of games over the first and second best, what was the point of the 162 contests that preceded them?

Does baseball really want to be like the NBA and NHL, where they play 80-game seasons for no apparent reason? In the NBA, 16 teams -- many of them godawful -- make the playoffs, but only four of them have any realistic hope of raising the trophy. In hockey the regular season is so utterly irrelevant that the top regular season team HAS NEVER won the Stanley Cup since they went to the 16-team format.

The Wild Card has added a degree of hope to half the teams in baseball and has detracted a little from the playoffs and World Series. We can live with the tradeoff. Adding lesser teams to the mix adds no more hope, but further cheapens the championship. Bud, this time, don't listen to Gammons.
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Not As Close As You Think

The standings say the Rays have a 5.5 game lead in the AL East. Likewise the Cubs, a 4.5 game lead in the NL Central. With regard to their playoff chances though, the Rays actually have an 8.5 game head start over Minnesota and the Cubs are 10 clear of the Phils.

With 26 games left to play, it sure sounds a lot more like a sure thing now, doesn't it?

There is no discernible difference between making the playoffs with the best record in baseball or the Wild Card. The Marlins won two titles without winning their division. The Red Sox, Tigers and Rockies won berths in the last three World Series as Wild Cards.

So it's really not germane, from a post-season standpoint, whether the Cubs or Rays cede their division leads as long as they maintain their playoff positions. In that regard, the Rays aren't fending off the Red Sox, but the Twins. And the Cubs have little to worry about from the Brewers; it's the Phils they need keep at bay.

(Of course, the White Sox in the AL and the Mets in the NL might turn out to be the teams to beat for the Wild Card. Those teams would have to lose ground to be in that position. The Cards might also push their way into Wild Card contention, but they're even further back than Philly.)

With those kinds of leads, neither the Rays nor Cubs is going to lose its playoff spot unless the other teams take it from them. Even if the Cubs go 10-16 in their last 26 games, they still cruise into the post-season unless Philadelphia wins 20 of 26 games. It could happen, but it's only slightly more likely than a Nader presidency.

And for you Yankee haters out there -- (I'm talking to me) -- the news is equally good. The Yanks have to overtake Boston and Minnesota, which means they can't count on a Red Sox collapse to win the Wild Card. Down seven games with 26 left, they'd need a Rockiesque streak even to have a chance. Were they the Yankees who entered the season, that would be plausible, but there is little about the remaining collection that suggests they're capable.

Now Yankees, don't make me regret my words...