In Defense of the Wild Card Play-In Game

One of the things I find frustrating about baseball in the modern era (I am not sure what I mean by that; post-steroid, pre-robot umpire?) is the unmooring of a concept that I understood intuitively even before I took a single course in statistics—that over a 162 game season, crap evens out.  A bad bounce on a ground ball, an unfortunate gust of wind propelling a fly ball into the stands, an ump having a bad day behind the plate, could all influence the outcome of a single game, but over the course of a season the breaks will even out and the better team will win more games.

One aspect of this unmooring is the replay rule, which demands that EVERY play be examined in super-slo-mo to assure that the ball was caught by the first baseman a full one-thousandths of a second before the batter’s foot hit first base.  Yes, egregious calls need to be corrected, if possible (assuming there can be a consensus on the definition of “egregious”) but unlike football, a missed play here or there won’t necessarily determine whether a team’s season is considered a success or a failure.

There are policy reasons for imprecision.  The “neighborhood” play at second was conceded for decades, because not caring that the pivot man in a double play touched second base while he had the ball was more important that fielders’ risking knee damage from a hard slide, or runners being beaned by thrown balls that travel exactly down the baseline to first base instead of from an angle outside the basepath.  But now if a shortstop is a fraction of an inch off the base when making the pivot, the other team will challenge the call and demand that someone ion New York City review it.

More recently, I have become annoyed with well-meaning commentators grousing about the one-game playoff between wild card teams in each league.  For example, on this FiveThirtyEight podcast the moderator says a one-game play-in game wasn’t fair and they should play a seven game series.

The World Series already threatens to extend into the first days of November; a seven game wild card series would guarantee a World Series starting in November and ending after the Ides of November.  That sounds iffy for a sport where, unlike the Super Bowl, the location of the finals can’t be determined in advance; given that the Twins play in an outdoor stadium IN MINNESOTA this seems insane.

The thing is this—the purpose of the wild card play-in game is NOT to decide which team is the better one.  They just finished playing 162 games and the team hosting the play-in game had some advantage over the other one that justified giving them home field advantage.  Playing one game is unlikely to better make this determination.  The A’s had a one-game lead over the Rays after 162 games, so they host; even if they lose the play-in game, they would have the same record but the A’s won the season series over the Rays, so they still could be considered the better team.

No, the purpose of the wild card play in game is to disadvantage wild card teams in the next round of the playoffs.  Presumably the teams in the wild card play-in game will start their ace, making him unavailable for the first two or three games of the Division Series.  The wild card winner will send their #2 starter against the division winner’s #1 starters, and their #3 starter against the other team’s #2. 

When the wild card was implemented it seemed like a good idea (and it was), until wild card teams started winning the World Series.   In the NFL, wild card teams have the disadvantage of no home field advantage, but in baseball if you split the first two games suddenly the home field advantage shifts, and now three of the remaining five games are played at the wild card team’s park.  Something was needed to subtly give the division winner a slight edge over a team that merely came in second (or even possibly third).

So don’t gripe about the Nationals getting lucky because a rookie outfielder botched a routine ground ball to right field.  Maybe the Brewers could have won a seven-game series, but they should have gotten the opportunity to play in one by winning their division.