New baseball playoff format will add excitement

Major League baseball is on the verge of making a tremendous change.

There is a strong chance that one extra team from each league will make the playoffs beginning with the 2012 season.

"I would say we're moving to expanding the playoffs, but there's a myriad of details to work out," commissioner Bud Selig said on Thursday.  "Ten is a fair number."

You got this one right Mr. Commish.

Imagine the excitement this will create.

First off, this brings more validity to the regular season. 

Coming down the stretch last season, both the Yankees and Rays worked harder at being able to set up their playoff rotation rather than go all out to win the division, knowing both would be in the playoffs.

This would eliminate that as the reward for winning the division would be far greater than it has been.

Right now, the division winner is awarded home field advantage.  But that's it.  The team the are playing can set up their rotation the same as the higher seeded team.

In the new playoff format, both wild card teams would have to play each other just to get to the next round.  This would give a well deserved advantage to the non wild card teams.

Imagine this - the Giants are fighting the Rockies for the NL West title.  They are tied for first place on the last day of the regular season.  The loser of the division is guaranteed to be the wild card team.

The Phillies are lurking, waiting to play the loser of the NL West division race, with Roy Halladay ready to go.

As it is right now, the Giants could choose to rest Tim Lincecum with the thought of setting up their rotation to have him throw game 1 of the first round. 

The only advantage the division winning Phillies would have is home field advantage.  They would still have to face Lincecum in game 1.

Now, let's jump to the same scenario in the new playoff format.

Giants and Dodgers are tied for first place on the last day of the regular season.  The Giants, wanting to not have to play a one game playoff or best of three (more to come on that), have Lincecum take the mound.  The Rockies, with the same strategy, throw their ace, Ubaldo Jiminez.

The Giants end up losing the division and playing the Phillies in the first round.

However, they now have to pitch Matt Cain in game 1 vs Roy Halladay.

The division winner should have an advantage in the first round, and this gives it to them.

Now, on to the big decision that will be made.

Much of the talk has been around whether or not the play in game/series would be a one game tilt to advance into the divisional round or if it would be best of three.

This is a huge decision with a split on which is better.

A one game playoff would be wildly exciting.  All hands on deck, winner take all.  It would not get much better than that. 

At the same time, after playing 162 games, should it come down to one game?

A best of three series would set up the better team with a better chance.  Should a 90 win team only have to beat a 94 win team once to advance to the division round?  A best of three would be more realistic in the better team winning.  Then again, anything can always happen.

There is also the question of season length and not wanting to go into November.

Here are my thoughts.

Go with the one game playoff. 

If you don't want to play in that game, then go out and win your division.  It's that simple.  Think it's not fair?  Fine, play out the regular season and win your division.

The excitement for this game would be awesome, no matter who is playing.

Recent seasons that have had a 163rd playoff game have been awesome.  Now we would get this every year.

Let's look at what 2010 would have looked like.

American League:
Yankees vs Red Sox to get to the divisional round.  Winner plays Tampa Bay and loser goes home.  Minnesota and Texas play in the other game.

National League:
Braves vs Padres to get to the divisional round.  Winner plays Philadelphia and loser goes home.  Cincinnati and San Francisco play in the other game.

Who would not want to see the Yankees and Red Sox play one game with winner take all?  How awesome would that be!

This change is going to be a great thing for baseball and it will change a lot.

More teams will be involved in the race to make the playoffs.  This means more teams will be shopping for players to better their team at the trade deadline.  More fans will be into the end of the season.  The division winners get an advantage they deserve but have not had.

Baseball is just one year away from getting better than it already is, and I cannot wait.