Say this for the first season of Major League Baseball’s expanded, triple wild-card playoffs: There will be no embarrassments.
Every postseason participant will win at least 86 games, for this year averting the aesthetic displeasure of a .500 or close-to-it team crashing the party. The Seattle Mariners celebrated a postseason berth for the first time since 2001. More bottles were popped, goggles donned, exultations captured on social media.
Who turns down more cake?
That’s what players and owners alike will enjoy with four best-of-three wild card series supplanting the singular wild card game in each league, providing nearly $100 million in extra revenue. For our money, it got no better than the adrenaline rush of the one-game wild card; a best-of-three will take away that instant gratification and either add a grim inevitability or a building crescendo to a winner-take-all Game 3.
And that pretty much sums up what this format has delivered in Year One: A pretty OK pennant race.
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There was a fear among players that extra wild cards would disincentivize competition, that with easier entry to the playoffs, already tight-fisted owners would only further curtail spending. That hasn’t been the case at all, at least among most teams slated to grab those extra berths.
The San Diego Padres, your No. 2 NL wild card, traded for Juan Soto. The No. 3 (for now)…
