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http://ifcus.org/2009/05/09/listaris-first-birthday/ Several people have complained about how the wildcard has diminished the importance of baseball’s regular season. More often than not, at least one wildcard team has made it to the World Series, often doing better than the team that beat them out for the division title.  Given one badly timed three-game losing streak (or even just a three out of five losing streak) a team that wins a hundred and ten games over the regular season can be knocked out very quickly by an eighty-three win team.

São João Nepomuceno I have a proposal to improve the situation, and one that will add some spice to the playoffs. It will make the team with the best record that much harder to beat. Give the team with the best record the privilege of playing the team of their choice in the first round. That is the reward for dominating the regular season: the chance to choose one’s own path through the playoffs.

First of all, can you imagine how much fun this would be? For the last month of the season, every radio talk show would be alive with various strategies for getting through the playoffs. What team do you want to face in a five-game series? What team in a seven-game series? How did the season series go with each of the contending teams? What pitchers give what lineups trouble? Baseball is a game of strategy, and this would make the playoffs seem more like baseball: a series of controversial but exciting choices which everyone can have an opinion on.

I think there is no doubt that this would give an advantage to the team with the best record. There have been plenty of instances where a team like the Yankees (which during their playoff run often had the best record) might have gone further in the playoffs if they could play anyone but the Angels. Similarly, the Braves might have been able to choose to play the Mets, and might have spared themselves some first-round exits. On the other hand, this would definitely give juice to these series, because the underdog will really want to beat the team that considered them an easy win.

When the team with the better record picks their series and wins, the radio talk shows will be alive with praise for the manager. If they lose, there will be plenty of discussion of who he should have chosen to play instead.

For teams that are securely in command of their divisions, playing for the best record would be a legitimate prize at the end of the year. It might be the difference between facing those two hot pitchers on the hottest team in baseball or the team that limped into the playoffs.

There would be some practical problems – you might have to submit your list of preferred teams by a certain date, for instance, so that Major League Baseball could plan the series out in advance. But it could be pretty close to the end of the season, as it often happens that the series are not set until the last day of the season.

It would be an ideal way to make the regular season more important, and the playoffs even more exciting. How about it, MLB?