MLB’s Wild-Card Game Is Loved and Loathed

“There’s no crying in baseball. We’re in second place. We’re in the Wild Card game,” said Dodgers pitcher Max Scherzer, who also said he liked that the playoff format encouraged competition to the very end of the season.

“If I’m playing on a team that just won 100 games, I want to have the right to be out there and kind of stretch my chances for at least three games — not just one and done,” said the Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez, who will analyze the playoffs for TBS with Granderson and Jimmy Rollins. “The efforts of my entire team, my entire organization, going down the drain by losing one game? One little mistake?”

Martinez won his only championship with a wild-card team, the 2004 Red Sox. Back then, baseball gave a wild-card berth to just one team in each league, and the playoffs started with the best-of-five division series. The format changed in 2012, with each league staging a knockout game between two wild cards to open the postseason.

The games have often brought high drama: rollicking comebacks in Kansas City and Washington, a walk-off homer by Edwin Encarnacion in Toronto, two road shutouts by Madison Bumgarner for the Giants. Whatever you think of the format, its pull is irresistible.

“I’m going to watch both games, and I’m going to enjoy them as a spectator,” said Bud Black, who has won a wild-card game and lost another as the Colorado Rockies’ manager. “But when it’s over that quickly — bam, you’re done. You’d like to have a chance to show why you got into the playoffs with at least three games. I think that’s the viewpoint of any player, manager, general manager, coach. But from a fan’s standpoint, they’re great.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/sports/baseball/mlb-wild-card-playoffs.html