Does The Wild Card Series Make The MLB Playoffs Even More Random?
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The Wild Card Series has emphasized the wild elements of the MLB postseason.
Introduced in 2022, the WCS pits the third-best division winner in each league against the No. 3 wild card and the top two wild cards in each league against each other in best-of-three series. All games are hosted by the higher seed, i.e. the third division winner and No. 1 wild card.
But through two years of the expanded postseason format, the do-or-die third game of the WCS has been necessary only once in eight total series.
• This year, all four Wild Card Series ended in sweeps, with two of them seeing the lower-seeded team go 2-0 on the road. The Rangers toppled the 99-win Rays in the American League, and the D-backs upset the Brewers in the National League. Arizona had 84 wins in the regular season, the second-lowest total for any postseason team in history.
• Last year, three of the four Wild Card Series lasted just two games, with the lower-seeded Mariners, Padres and Phillies all sweeping to victory on the road.
• Of the eight total Wild Card Series to be played in 2022 and 2023, a majority (five) were won by the lower-seeded road team.
• The top two division winners in each league receive first-round byes. For two wild card teams that came oh-so-close to winning their divisions, narrowly missing bye status has spelled doom. The Mets won 101 games in 2022 and tied the Braves for the top record in the NL East, but they lost the tiebreaker to Atlanta and then lost to the Padres in the only three-game WCS to date. The Rays this year won 99 games and finished just two games behind the AL East champion Orioles. The Rangers upended Tampa Bay in the WCS.
• Seven out of eight WCS—0r 87.5% —have ended in 2-0 sweeps, no third game necessary. This is a much higher knockout rate than existed during the 27 seasons in which the League Division Series was the opening round. In the 108 LDS to be played between 1995 and 2021, just 65 of them—or 60%—saw a team go 2-0 to open the series.
These past two seasons indicate that the Wild Card Series has enhanced the random nature of the MLB postseason, further blurring the line between MLB regular season greatness and postseason glory.
