As the A's and Mariners battle in Seattle this weekend, they may
think they're both in great shape to make the playoffs. Yes, they
may think that down below the AL West high wire is the old wild-card safety
net, ready to rescue them.
Well, guess what? They might think wrong.
A very strange thing could happen in a week and a half if the A's,
Mariners and Indians all finish the regular season tied for the last two
playoff spots.
|  | | Matt Stairs and the A's could end up with short straw of baseball's playoff system. |
Because baseball has a long, rich tradition of settling its ties on
the field -- as opposed to the NFL, which settles them with one of Bill
Gates' computer programs -- you might assume there would be some sort of
round-robin playoff to determine those last two spots.
Nope.
Here's what would happen:
If Seattle and Oakland tie for first place in the AL West, and the
Indians finish second in the AL Central with the same record, it's the
Indians (surprise, surprise) who get the automatic playoff spot.
Meanwhile, it would be the Mariners and A's who would have to hold a
one-game playoff for the AL West title. The winner would make the playoffs as AL West champ.
The loser would make tee times.
It's a puzzling rule to say the least -- a rule that would actually
reward the Indians for finishing second. And normally, that's not the way
things are handled in baseball.
But there's a reason that's the way this would be handled. The
trouble is, that reason dates back to a rule instituted long before anyone
in this sport ever uttered the words, "wild" and "card."
You don't have to play your Bobby Thomson tapes to know that over
the years in baseball, two teams that finished the season tied for first
place would then hold a playoff to settle that tie. And that playoff game
(or games) counted as an extra regular-season game (or games).
Well, since then, the system has changed -- but that rule has never
changed. So suppose Seattle, Oakland and Cleveland all finish the season
with records of, say, 92-70. Then suppose the Mariners beat the A's in their
AL West playoff game. That game would count in the standings, so Oakland's
record would drop to 92-71, a half-game worse than Cleveland's record.
Hence, the Indians would be in, the A's out.
And the explanation baseball would give to the A's is that the rules
are the rules, even if the rules were instituted almost a century before the
invention of the wild card.
"That's what people don't understand," says Oakland GM Billy Beane.
"When we start making changes to the game, the ramifications start to reveal
themselves over time, not immediately. So you're not going to cover up every
loophole until it's revealed."
That's logical, and that's true. The only trouble here is: That
loophole already has been revealed.
It was revealed just last year, in fact, when the Reds, Astros and
Mets headed into the final weekend of the season facing exactly the same
scenario. Reds GM Jim Bowden and Astros GM Gerry Hunsicker screamed so
loudly back then, you could probably hear them in Mozambique. Fortunately,
that three-way tie never did come about, as the Reds finished a game behind the Astros for the NL Central crown before playing their wild-card tiebreaker with the Mets. But Bowden and Hunsicker still went
to the general managers' meetings in November and screamed some more.
"I can't believe we haven't changed that rule," Hunsicker says now.
"When we discussed that rule at the general managers' meetings last year,
there was universal sentiment that we needed to change it. It's an obsolete
rule. It doesn't apply to today's game. And we voted unanimously to
recommend that it be changed. If it hasn't been changed by now, to me,
that's totally ridiculous."
Well, that rule hasn't been changed. The GMs recommended that in the
future, the two first-place teams play off their tie but not count that game
as a regular-season game. Then the loser of the division playoff game would
get to play the third team for the wild-card spot.
The GMs then passed their recommendation along to the commissioner's office
and the players' union. And that's where that brainstorm died.
"I understand exactly what the general managers are saying," says
Gene Orza, the associate general counsel of the players association. "It
makes a lot of sense. But what people don't take into consideration is that
there's a lot of downside to their proposal. And when we try to determine
how much weight to apply to that downside, that's where reasonable men
differ."
The downside, as seen by both the union and the commissioner's
office, is that a round-robin playoff would take time. And when we have a
playoff system that is already extending the World Series to Halloween, time
is a commodity that baseball no longer has.
Take this year's scenario, for example. If the A's finish their
final scheduled game next Sunday with the wild-card race, the AL West race
or both still in doubt, they have to fly across the country to play a makeup
game with Tampa Bay on Monday.
Then suppose the result of that makeup game was this three-way tie. Oakland
then would have to fly back across the country to Seattle to settle the AL
West the next day. And if the GMs' proposal had been instituted, the loser
would have to play yet another game the following day. Then their Division
Series finally would get underway on the Thursday after the season -- two
days late.
And that, Orza says, "is a big, big problem."
"To me," he says, "it's very important that the playoffs begin on
that Tuesday. I'm not saying that their argument is a bad argument. I'm just
saying that the people who make that argument make it a little too quickly.
They make it without giving the time question enough significance.
"Everyone's looking for the perfect solution. But when they do,
they're overlooking the overarching situation of time. We can't play the
World Series on November 13."
It's the union's view and MLB's view that if the television networks
have been promised playoff series starting on the Tuesday after the season --
and those networks then have paid huge dollars and knocked high-rated series
off the schedule to accommodate those playoff series -- baseball has no
choice but to oblige them.
With negotiations on the biggest TV contract in history now ongoing,
those obligations have a gigantic bearing on the future health of the sport.
So Orza says that if this rule is going to change, it should only be done
after a major summit meeting of baseball officials, union officials, general
managers and broadcasting people.
"Let's consider the future of the sport," Orza says, "before we make
a change like this."
But the general managers recognize that, too. They just think
deciding the playoff participants on the field is more important than all
other considerations.
"The real problem here," Beane says, "is the inflexibility of the
playoff schedule. Everything revolves around those playoff games starting
Tuesday. Everything is set in stone in advance. And it becomes the
immoveable force."
What would really solve this problem, of course, is removing the
immoveable force -- with a revised regular-season schedule that would allow
more time between the end of the season and the start of the playoffs. That
could mean fewer games. It could mean a different schedule format that would
allow the season to be played in less time.
But all those complications are complications for another day. In
the meantime, the A's and Mariners could still be faced with the indignity
of watching a second-place team go to the playoffs while they tie for first
and go home. And someone needs to explain that to them.
"The wild-card team, in essence, is like a fourth division
champion," Orza says. "Only we treat that champion differently from the
others in a number of respects. And by doing that, we make it more difficult
for that team to get to the World Series and play for all the marbles.
"And so when you're a division winner, by the same token, you're
given certain benefits. If two teams tie, we say we'll give them both a shot
at those benefits. We say, 'We're going to give you a shot to be one of
those teams. But if you lose that shot, you lose.' ... It's not a perfect solution. But maybe, instead of looking for the perfect
solution, they should accept the fact that they were given a game they could
win to advance -- and they lost. So they're out. That loss ends their season,
and they knew that going in."
These are reasonable arguments. But it's one thing to argue. It's
another to finish first and somehow not make the playoffs, due to an
antiquated glitch in the system and the TV networks' aggravation over not
being able to air "Third Rock from the Sun."
So let's hope that three-way tie doesn't happen. Then let's convene
that summit meeting over the winter and find a better solution -- before
we're forced into it the hard way.
Jayson Stark is a senior writer at ESPN.com. | |
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 Jayson Stark talks about the AL playoff race on Baseball Tonight.
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