NEW YORK (AP) – With less than a month to go before opening day, baseball at last decided who's in and who's out come October.
Now, even a third-place team can win the World Series.
Major
League Baseball made it official Friday, expanding the playoff format
to 10 teams by adding a wild-card club to each league.
"I hope we
get that extra spot," said new Houston Astros general manager Jeff
Luhnow, whose team is coming off a 56-106 finish that was the worst in
the majors. "I think it's great any time you have more markets
involved."
Who knows, maybe a rookie such as Bryce Harper will get that shot this year.
"Cool,"
the 19-year-old Washington sensation said after a game against college
kids. "It's great. Hopefully, we're that playoff team."
Boston and
Atlanta sure could've used this setup last year. They went through
awful collapses in September that eventually cost them playoff spots on
the final day of the season.
"I think the more, the merrier," new
Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine said. "I think for the fans, the
players, the energy at the end of the season, I don't mind. What would
it be, a third of the teams? I think it'll be good."
This is the
first switch in MLB's postseason format since the 1995 season, when wild
cards were first added. The move creates a new one-game, wild-card
round in the AL and NL between the teams with the best records who are
not division winners.
"It's a good thing for baseball. That seems to be what the people want," Detroit manager Jim Leyland said.
"There
are a lot of mixed emotions but as long as the playoffs don't get
watered down, it's fine, but that won't happen in baseball," he said.
The
additions mean 10 of the 30 MLB teams will get into the playoffs.
That's still fewer than in the other pro leagues - 12 of 32 make it in
the NFL, and 16 of 30 advance in the NBA and NHL.
The
long-expected decision was announced less than an hour before Seattle
and Oakland started the exhibition season. On March 28, the Mariners and
Athletics will play the big league opener in Tokyo.
"This change
increases the rewards of a division championship and allows two
additional markets to experience playoff baseball each year,"
Commissioner Bud Selig said in a statement.
Also, a tweak: For the
2012 postseason, the five-game division series will begin with two home
games for lower seeds, followed by home games for the higher seed.
After that, it will return to the 2-2-1 format previously used.
MLB
said that with schedules already drawn for this season, the postseason
had to be compressed to fit in the extra games. Hence, fewer off-days
for travel.
"I don't think it really changes the way you look at
this season. You really have to fight to win your division," New York
Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "It is kind of strange to start on the
road. That doesn't quite seem right, but it's a one-year thing. I
understand why they're doing it."
If the World Series goes to Game
7 this year - as it did last season, when the wild-card St. Louis
Cardinals won the championship - it would be played Nov. 1.
"I
like the extra playoff spot. I like the one-game playoff because it
really gives the advantages to the division winner," Los Angeles Dodgers
manager Don Mattingly said this week.
As in, it'll be real dicey
for the wild-card contenders to immediately jump into a winner-take-all
game, then quickly turn around to start the division series.
Starting this year, too, there's no restriction on teams from the same division meeting in that best-of-five division series.
Baseball
players' union head Michael Weiner said there had been internal
discussions way back about possibly having six playoff teams from each
league. He said that once bargaining began with owners on a new labor
deal, it was clear MLB only wanted five.
"The players were in favor of expanding the playoffs," Weiner said.
In
particular, he said, the players wanted to put more emphasis on winning
a division, especially when MLB goes to a pair of 15-team leagues next
year with three divisions each. The Astros are switching from the NL to
the AL to make that possible.
A portion of the money generated by
the one-game playoffs will go in the players' pool that is split among
the postseason participants.
In 1999, Valentine and the New York Mets won a one-game tiebreaker for the NL wild-card spot.
"I
didn't think that entering the playoffs in '99 when I had to play a
one-game playoff against Cincinnati that the next round was cheapened,"
he said. "It seems to be similar to that. I don't know if it's the same
thing, but it seems."
AP Sports Writer Jimmy
Golen and AP freelance writers Mark Didtler, Carl Kotalo, Maureen Mullen
and Jeff Berlinicke contributed to this report.
