Today has been billed as a historic day in Major League Baseball. It may certainly be that, but I think mostly for the wrong reasons. I don’t know what metric Bud Selig is using when he says that the Wild Card has been a ‘remarkable success’, but even if it is his new system will effectively gut it. From either next year or 2013 the top two Wild Card teams will play a one game play-in to determine the Wild Card berth. So we are finally rid of that ridiculous situation where we can go to the last day of the season and have four games with an impact on the Wild Card winner! Never again will we have that nightmare scenario where two walk-off wins in the space of ten minutes can decide who will be in the postseason! Thank you Bud Selig, thank you! To paraphrase Selig himself, to say that this decision is remarkably stupid would be an understatement. There is nothing to be gained by having two more teams play one more game. If the Wild Card race is close it won’t be exciting (since finishing in first will guarantee nothing) and if one team runs away with it they will not be rewarded for their superior performance. It’s a no-win situation. It’s yet more evidence in favour of my longstanding hypothesis that Bud Selig is an idiot.

The rest of the changes aren’t nearly as bad. The Astros will be moving to the AL West in 2013. As a fan of symmetry, I am happy with this. Each division will now have five teams. Houston has historically been an NL market, but there has been less and less difference between the leagues recently. The move will mostly just guarantee that the Royals will have at least six games in 2013 against a team that was 56-106 this year. That’s no bad thing. It will also necessitate interleague play throughout the season, to which I am ambivalent. I like interleague play, but I can see it taken too far. Especially since it tends to mean that some teams have a slightly easier schedule than others. (Though the unbalanced schedule does the same and to a much greater extent. Hopefully they will do away with that.)

Overall the changes are good, but the added wild card is change for the sake thereof and will have a negative effect. Hopefully Selig decides that this is his magnum opus and stops meddling now.