Major League Baseball appears to be tinkering with something that's not broken in the sport, its postseason.
Word is, the league and its players' association are close to announcing a playoff expansion that would give one-third of all teams a berth in October starting this year.
Under the new playoffs, the fourth and fifth place wild-card teams in each league would meet in what will likely be a one-game playoff with the three division winners sitting out awaiting the winner.
Commissioner Bug Selig has pushed hard for an extra wild-card team to 'fix' the perceived problem that game do not matter September off. In fact two years ago, the New York Yankees purposely lost the division to Tampa so they could get extra rest and draw a more favorable matchup with Minnesota.
The new playoff structure would put the onus on winning a division. Wild-card teams will have to throw everything, just to make sure they keep playing. But giving division winners an added October advantage will come at the expense of the regular season.
More mediocre teams will have a chance to get hot at the right time and make a postseason run.
If the five team playoff structure had been in place over the past five years, that fifth place team would have averaged just 88 regular season wins. What baseball does not need is another slightly above .500 team playing in October.
Baseball's last postseason change came in 1995, when the field doubled from four to eight teams. That's the number baseball should stick with. It rewards good teams for the 162 games the slug it out, and means every so often a good team stays home.
Less is way more, and adding more playoffs teams will just water down one of the most special postseasons.
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