12 wins to be World Champs?

Every April (or very, very late March) 30 teams embark on a journey with high hopes of being one of only 8 of those teams to stretch their season beyond 162 games.  To be exact – they want to win 11 more.  That’s how many playoff wins it takes to win it all: 3 wins in the best of 5 Division Series + 4 wins in the best of 7 League Series + 4 wins in the best of 7 World Series = 11 playoff wins; aka a World Series Championship Title.  But that could all be changing for the 2012 season and beyond.

Bud Selig has been exploring the idea of expanding the  playoff teams from 8 to 10 for some time, and it looks as though it’s going to happen.  The current format is this:  The first place team from each division and two wild card teams – the team with the best record of all the remaining teams in each league.  The new format moves to 10 teams by allowing TWO wild card teams to qualify from each league and having them play each other in a new wild card round to determine who moves on.  The playoffs would then continue with the LDS, LCS and WS remaining as is.

The details of the wild card round are undecided as of now.  The players want a 3 game series but the owners prefer a 1 game play-in.  The latter means that the four wild card teams will have their playoffs decided by only 9 innings.  No player wants that.  Now a 3 game series means that you have to make room for that many additional games in an already tight schedule – without running a potential WS game 7 into November.  No one wants to shorten the 162 game season, and players are opposed to a handful of scheduled double headers each year.  It also means that the 6 division champions teams will have to spend 4 or 5 or even 6 days sitting around waiting to get started, which can be detrimental to momentum, not to mention – these guys are gonna get impatient!  That 1 game play-in is starting to sound a little better huh?

So we know which side the owners will be on and which side the Players Association is taking…so what about the fans?  Tell me what you think!