...............
=== PRO ===
Most baseball teams should be in the pennant race ... on Opening Day. Baseball is for kids. It is not for postgrad students, and for sure it should not be co-opt'ed by postgrad students.
This entire discussion about Prince Fielder is fundamentally idiotic. You have home town fans weeping and wailing that their home team might try to win.
This is an idiotic situation.
*See comments - not the arguments for and against Fielder, and not the arguments that winning could be done better without Fielder. But many hometown fans argue -- in March -- that "the Mariners shouldn't be pretending to be in a race they're not really in," and to the extent that they're right, the overarch'ing system is idiotic. :- )
The 5th playoff team remedies this situation. It is indisputable that, with the 5th team, you will have many fewer home town fans begging, in December, that their home teams try to lose in the coming year. QED.
.
=== CON ===
The argument from the best baseball analysts is that --- > the old Wild Card team, the #4 team, usually had a better record than some division winner had.
The #5 team usually is a considerably weaker team than the #4 team, or so it is asserted.
Dr. D grants that this is one of the stronger arguments against a 2nd Wild Card. If you wish to make sure that no "weakie" teams get into the postseason, "embarrassing" baseball, then you would avoid the 2nd Wild Card.
It's got some traction. I could see some dubious #5 teams making the WC playoff. (But lemme say that if the 1996, Junior-ARod-Edgar Mariners are the squirrelliest team we're going to see, that's all right with me.)
.
=== PRO ===
You remember the 1995 elimination game like it was yesterday.
Mark Langston, sweaty and having fought like a lion, sitting on home plate trying not to cry. That game was sports war at its most gloriously bloody.
We're talking about having a game like that -- Felix against Verlander, maybe -- every year.
.
=== CON ===
The concept of the 2001 Oakland A's, having won 102 games, having to play a 50-50 game against the 85-win Minnesota Twins.
This will be the Wild Card Elimination Game at its worst -- when there are 10 or more games' gap between the two teams.
........
It doesn't bother me much. The 1998 Yankees, having won 114 games, had to play a short 5-game series against the 88-win Texas Rangers. What would Joe DiMaggio have said about that? But nowadays, nobody complained. We're just used to it.
The blow would have been softened by the fact that the A's could easily set their ace for the elimination game.
Pundits complain that any baseball game is a 50-50 coin flip, but it isn't a coin flip if you have Justin Verlander against Jarrod Washburn. Some baseball odds games are 2:1 or more. When a team runs away with the #4 playoff spot, it can position itself towards a 70% chance of winning the elimination game.
.
=== PRO ===
The entire landscape of baseball will be changed in September, toward the "more tense and exciting."
...........
As a completely separate issue, I love the fact that winning a division is now a very important accomplishment. The Wild Cards not only face a Harvey "Two-Face" Dent coin flip of death, but they will also be missing their aces as they go up against a great team.
