Bones of Contention: Wild Card Competition? Not All That Wild

“I come to bury baseball tradition, not to praise it!”

So goes the cry heard throughout the land. And who can argue with such a sentiment? Here we are, seven years into the brave new world of major league baseball’s expanded playoff format, and the change from the old two division system has been a roaring success with fans everywhere. The tyranny of the division championship is dead, and the laurel of victory rests upon the brows of the heroes of the wild card movement.

But is this picture accurate? Has the change to an expanded playoff system really fulfilled its promises to baseball fans? Now that seven seasons of the new order have passed, we can begin to meaningfully assess the impact of the expanded playoffs upon major league baseball.

To do this, let’s review those aforementioned promises. When the major leagues revised their divisional format and introduced the wild card playoff teams, proponents made two major arguments in its favor. Point One: the expanded playoffs would bring in more money for the leagues through increased broadcast and gate receipts. And Point Two: the expanded playoffs would give more teams a shot at postseason play, thus enhancing competition and bringing more excitement (and paying customers) to the late season playoff races.

Point One is a no-brainer. More playoff games played means more television money, more tickets sold, more merchandising-more of every form of revenue generated by postseason play.

But what of Point Two-the idea that the inclusion of three division champs and a wild card team in each league will heighten the competitiveness and excitement of the pennant races? ls that idea valid?

“Sure it is,” scoffs the fan of the wild card format. “The expanded playoffs have been great for baseball. Look at the one-game playoffs we’ve had the last couple of years. Teams are fighting it out down to the last day. How’s that for exciting?”

Well, yes indeed, a cursory look at the last few seasons would seem to support that idea. In 1999, the race for the wild card spot in the National League ended with a playoff. Though the American League races have not been quite so dramatic, we have seen several intense, memorable postseason battles between traditional rivals like the Yankees, Indians, Orioles, and Red Sox.

But a big part of the wild card’s appeal lies in broader, more wide-open playoff races. With more teams contending, more teams’ fans will have a reason to pay attention—and spend money—in September. So the basic question is: Has the realignment created more late-season contenders? Or, to put it another way: Do more fans feel that their team is a contender?

To answer this question, we need to figure out just what a “contender” is. Then we can look back over the history of division play and see just how much impact the wild card format has had on the pennant races. For the sake of a meaningful comparison, we will only examine the pennant races of the divisional era, 1969 through 1999, and we’ll toss out the the strike years of 1981 and 1994.

Let’s define a contender as any team that is within 7.5 games of a playoff spot on September 1. Why 7.5 games out? Because that is the largest September 1 deficit to be overcome by a playoff team in the divisional era. (Seattle came from 7 .5 games behind the Angels in 1995 to force a one game playoff and take the division championship.)

Given this definition of contender status, does the expanded playoff format provide more reason for more fans to stick with their favorite teams through September?

Sure enough, when we examine the standings from the last seven years, we see an increase in the average number of teams in contention per year versus the two division era. From 1969 to 1993, the number of contenders in the American League averaged out to 5.125 contenders per year. For the National League, the figure is almost identical, at 5.042.

By comparison, the average figures for the wild card era are 7.7 teams per year in both leagues. Those numbers look even better if you compare them against the division races that would have resulted if the leagues had never been realigned.

(For our purposes, the “reconstituted” leagues look as close a possible to the two division alignments—the Central Division teams go back to their former East or West homes, Atlanta is an NL West team, and the expansion teams, Arizona and Tampa Bay, end up in the NL West and AL East respectively. After 1997, as in reality, Milwaukee moves to the National League to maintain balance, though the Brewers become an NL East team in the “reconstituted” order. All teams are assumed to have achieved the same won-lost records as they did in reality.)

When the leagues are “reconstituted” back to their pre-1994 alignments, the comparable average figures are 4.6 contenders per year in the American League and 5.1 contenders per year for the National League during the years 1995-2001.

In absolute terms, the expanded playoffs have meant more teams in contention for the playoffs late in the season.

“Great!” say the wild card partisans. “Thanks for telling us what we already know. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have to go wash our ‘Chicago Cubs 1998 Wild Card Champion’ t-shirts.”

Not so fast. Yes, the numbers show an absolute increase in contenders in the wild card era. But, as they say, numbers can be deceiving.

For one thing, part of the increase comes from the very format itself. In fact, realignment alone doubled the number of playoff teams in each league. But that did not translate into more wide-open competition. The number of playoff spots doubled, but the average number of contenders, moving as we have seen from about five to about eight, did not.

And, lest we forget, those numbers are averages. The figures for both leagues in the wild card era were inflated by the first two years of the format. The new order got off with a bang in 1995, with ten contenders in the AL and eleven contenders in the NL. The next year was almost as good: ten AL contenders, nine NL contenders.

But things have calmed down since. For instance, in 1998, the numbers were five AL contenders and six NL contenders-very close to the averages of the two division era. In 1999, there were six contenders, as opposed to five under the theoretical “reconstituted” divisions alignment. Clearly, the pennant races of the last few years have hardly been “wide open.”

What’s more, 1995 and 1996 were hardly unprecedented. When we look for the highest number of contenders in a single year of the divisional era, the two division days stack up pretty well with the wild card era. The National League’s eleven contenders in 1995 do beat the eight teams vying for the playoffs in 1973. But in the American League, where ten contenders jockeyed for the playoffs in 1995 and 1996, that number is matched by the 1987 season. Over the twenty-four years of two division play, the American League produced eight seasons with six or more contenders. All of those seasons compare favorably to recent years of the wild card era.

This relative shortfall of contenders presents another byproduct of the new league format: more “runaway” division champs. A runaway division champ is a team that moves out far ahead of its competitors and never faces a challenge for the division title-for our purposes, they led their division by more than 7.5 games on September 1 (in most cases, the gap was considerably wider).

With two divisions in each league for the twenty four years from 1969 to 1993 (excluding 1981), there were forty-eight division championships to be won. In each league during the two division era, eleven-23 percent- were taken by runaway champs.

When we move to the last seven years, the numbers shift dramatically. Of the twenty-one division championships in each league from 1995 to 2001, seven AL teams and six NL teams earned the flag as runaway champs. That’s a 33 percent runaway rate for each league in the wild card era.

Stack the numbers up against the “reconstituted” divisions and the leap is equally dramatic: 21 percent of the pennant races in each league would have been runaways during the last seven years, and only 13 percent of the division champs (2 teams) would have been so dominant in the American League.

Apparently, the three division setup has helped foster more dominant teams, creating situations where one team gets to rule over its division like some despotic potentate, clutching the division championship in an iron hand and not letting anyone else get near it.

Did someone mention tyranny being dead?

That wild card fan is beginning to get a bit surly. “All right,” he says, “maybe it hasn’t exactly been what we thought it would be. But the wild card is about more than just who wins in the regular season. It’s also about giving a deserving second place team a chance in the playoffs, right? Why don’t you talk about that.”

Fair enough. Let’s look at the playoffs. When we compare the playoffs that were to “the playoffs that would have been,” do we see many significant differences? Are there any teams that made a big splash in the playoffs that would have been nowhere to be found under the two division format?

In fact, as of this writing (pre-2001 postseason) of the six World Series champs of the wild card era, two would not have been in the playoffs without the three division format: the 1996 and 2000 New York Yankees. The ’96 Yanks would have finished a healthy 7.5 games behind the Cleveland Indians in the old American League East. As it was, the Yankees won the American League East and went on to give Wade Boggs a chance to ride a horse in Yankee Stadium. The 2000 Yankees had only the fifth best record in the American League when they won their third straight title. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on where you live and who you root for.

Apart from the 1996 and 2000 Yankees, three other teams made it to the Series when they would have been watching at home under the old system: the 1997 Cleveland Indians, the 1998 San Diego Padres, and the 2000 New York Mets. Thus, five of twelve pennant winners were rescued by the wild card system, even if they weren’t wild card teams themselves. But seven of those twelve would have been playoff teams anyway under the old format-and, presumably, would have won their pennants exactly as they did in the realigned leagues.

By now, the astute fan will have noticed that no mention has been made of the 1997 World Champion Florida Marlins. And with good reason. Though the Marlins remain the only wild card team to win the Series, they weren’t really helped by the wild card format. Under the two division setup, they would have wound up National League East champs anyway, four games in front of the New York Mets. (Remember, Atlanta was a National League West team for the entire two division era.) Hence, the Marlins stand as the poster team for how little impact the wild card system has had on the playoffs-the one wild card that won it all would have gotten to the championship series without that second chance.

And we must remember that for all the teams that have been helped by the expanded playoffs, there are teams that have been hurt by them. Instead of being shown the door in three quick first-round sweeps, the Texas Rangers would have had three cracks at the League Championship Series, where it would have taken four games to sweep them away.

The Cubs would have made it to two League Championship Series, in 1995 and 1998, when all of the strongest teams were old National League West rivals. And in 1996, when Montreal and St. Louis finished with identical 88-74 records, the Expos would have had a one-game shot at playing for the championship. Instead they’ve been buried in obscurity since the days when Marquis Grissom was young. How’s that for helping out the small market teams?

Of course, realignment goes beyond the simple fact of who is in the playoffs and who is not. It also affects the postseason results. Cleveland and Atlanta stand out glaringly. They have been dominant teams in the regular season, winning 13 division titles in all. Each team has won its division’s championship in every season of the wild card era-ten division championships in all. And what has been the reward for their efforts? Their combined accomplishments: three pennants, and only one World Series victory—when the one (Atlanta) beat the other in 1995.

ls it a good idea to penalize teams that have proven their excellence over the course of a season by placing another layer of playoff hurdles in their paths? Is the wild card’s benefit to baseball so great that the sport needs to punish its best teams?

By now that wild card proponent has just about had enough. “Come on!” he cries. “You’re missing the point entirely. The fans love the wild card. It gives all the teams something else to shoot for besides the division title.”

That argument would be fine, if all the also-ran teams were “shooting for it.” But is that what’s really happening in baseball today? Look at the impact of the wild card format beyond the playing field. Look at what happens in the off-season, when a team’s success or failure is often determined.

The non-contenders tend to remake their teams. The contenders tend to stand pat. For the most part, the teams that lingered at the edge of contention remain static. They don’t made the moves that will take them that next seep up in the standings.

That wild card proponent has a devilish gleam in his eye. ”Aha! Got you!” he cries. “Those teams aren’t bringing in any new players because they are the sadsack, poor boy, second class teams. They don’t have the money to stock up on All Stars. It doesn’t have anything to do with the wild card format.”

Ah, yes. Economics. Thanks for bringing it up. Because, in fact, the rich teams-poor teams argument is one of the strong points against the wild card format. With a wild card playoff spot available, teams like the A’s and Blue Jays can sometimes hang around the upper half of the standings and appear to have a chance at winning it all. Apart from giving the fans in those cities a reason to show up at the ballpark, in a broader context it also gives the appearance of more competitively balanced leagues. Fans can say, “Look how close the A’s came, and they didn’t need to spend the GNP of Spain in order to win.”

Unfortunately, this sort of thinking helps to alleviate any pressure on Major League Baseball to correct its economic imbalance. It plays right to the interests of the wealthiest teams. With a few have-not teams on the brink of contention each year, baseball can hide behind the illusion of competitive balance and do nothing to address the serious economic inequities that hamper so many of its teams. The division championships will remain the province of the few wealthiest teams, while the wild card position becomes a sort of booby prize for the poorer teams-the wealthy teams’ version of “Let them eat cake.” And even then the poor teams get jobbed, since there are more than three wealthy teams in each league; whichever rich team doesn’t land one of the division titles will most often nab the wild card spot anyway. Look at how frequently the American League wild card spot has been the “property” of American League East teams (five times out of seven). ls this really an increase in competition?

And think about the aforementioned rise in runaway division champions. With three divisions in each league, the major leagues have the potential for six division races to be contested going into the final weeks of the season. Instead, we’ve seen more teams winning uncontested division titles in the last seven years. Baseball’s financial disorder is sapping the realigned leagues of their competitive potential, and robbing the fans of the very thing they were promised: more wide open pennant races.

Taken all together-the less than expected increase in the number of contenders, the rise in runaway division champs, the wild card’s mixed-bag impact on playoffs and World Series, the disincentive provided by the wild card toward financial equity-the effect of the expanded playoff format has fallen far short of the goal of Point Two: an increased, broader measure of competition throughout Major League Baseball.

It’s no news that baseball’s playing field has been tilted toward the wealthier teams. But it may be surprising to see just how much the wild card format bolsters that inequity. Without a league-wide alignment that places a premium on competitiveness within the divisions, a format that requires all teams to spend the money to compete for a division title or languish at the bottom of the standings, there will be no serious incentive for Major League Baseball to clean up the game’s economic mess.

“All right already,” concedes the browbeaten wild card fan. “You may have a point. Maybe the wild card hasn’t been all it was cracked up to be, at least as far as competition is concerned. Maybe it was all shuck and jive, just a sales pitch, when they said it would give more teams a chance to reach the playoffs. But that first argument in its favor still holds, right? Baseball still gets all that extra money from the expanded playoffs. That’s got to be good for the health of the game, right? We can trust the owners to take advantage of their increased revenues and do what’s best for the game, can’t we?”

And they say baseball purists are out of touch! 

 

Sources

Information for daily standings was taken from the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner, 1969-1999. Additional information came from MLB’s official site at majorleaguebaseballcom; and The Baseball Archive at www.baseball1.com.