The major change in baseball this season is the addition of a second wild card team. While I do support this change, I think the way that they went about it is 100% wrong. The last day of last season was arguably the best/most exciting night in baseball history. It was an incredible hour where the playoff picture came into focus in a seemingly made for Hollywood sequence of  events. It was amazing not because of the outcomes, but because it was organic and wrapped up everything great about October baseball into one September night. If you have yet to hear about the change, from this year forward there will be two wild card teams per league who will be forced to square off in a one-game playoff to determine which actually makes the  playoffs. A pennant race coming down to the final day of the season is about as exciting as it gets. On the flipside, forcing two teams, who have battled for 6 months into a contrived bit of made-for-tv forced drama seems both wrong and unfair. Flash-forward to September. Let’s say the Rays win 100 games this season, but finish 2nd in the East to the Yankees who won 102. Let’s also say the next highest non-division winner is the Tigers with 87 wins. The Rays will then be forced to take on the Tigers and Justin Verlander in a win-or-go-home scenario to determine their fate. Good luck with that… Baseball isn’t a single game sport, it’s a series sport. It should be a 3-game series. Beating a team twice in three games proves a lot more than a potential fluke win or a situation where their ace is superior to yours, but the rest of the team matchups are slanted heavily in your favor. I understand the reasoning for the change; first to generate more revenue, and second to reward division winners. Well what if the aforementioned Rays are the 2nd best team in the America League, but also the 2nd best team in their division? Is that fair to them? If baseball insists on a one-game playoff, they should at the very least re-seed and make it between the two playoff teams with the least amount of wins (but I would overwhelmingly vote on the 3-game playoff if asked). Odds are something will be changed when a team like the Yankees or Red Sox are eliminated  in this scenario. Until then, we have yet another instance (like selective use of replay) where Selig takes two steps forward followed immediately by one step back.

Without further ado, here are my playoff predictions and award projections for the 2012 season: