Major League Baseball has decided to dramatically change its October look, and not for the better.
The playoffs will be expanded by two teams as early as next year. That means one-third of baseball's 30 teams will make the postseason, in what feels like another Yankees-Red Sox exception.
The first Yankee-Sox playoff exception states if the team with the best overall record and the wild-card team are from the same division, the wild card team will face the team with the second-best record.
Since Boston has been absent from the last two postseasons, and New York was left out four years ago, a fifth playoff team appears they are getting a backdoor playoff admittance. If a fifth playoff spot existed, the Red Sox, and their rabid fans, would have watched at least one game in October.
Ensuring more big market teams make the playoffs isn't the whole story.
Commissioner Bud Selig and Co. are trying to fix the September problem that many division pennant races, particularly in the AL East, lack drama because both teams are resting up for October.
In order to put the premium on winning a division title, MLB is only further watering down its laborious 162-game season.
This past year, the additional wild-card teams would have meant the most exciting night of baseball in years wouldn't have mattered. All teams would have lived another day.
"You don't do things for one year. You do things for a long period of time," Selig said.
Rewarding mediocrity is not going to help over the years.
Under the expanded playoffs, it will happen that a 97-win wild card team is going to lose to a team that finishes seven to eight games behind them.
Playoffs ought to reward the best teams, and expanding the postseason will do just the opposite.
MLB is breaking something that isn't broke.
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