Under his proposal there would be not one but two wildcards from each league. The teams with the 2 best records that did not win a division would face each other in either a best of three round or simply a ONE game playoff to decide the wild-card, although Selig is leaning towards the best of three format. The rest of the post-season format would then remain the same as it is now.

Opponents of the one game playoff feel that it’s not fair to have a team work so hard to get to the post-season and have it come down to one game.

Personally, I think this is the craziest idea from a commissioner who has many crazy ideas. Baseball is a game of tradition, of history and I am a traditionalist. Leave it alone.

In the NFL, 12 out of 32 teams make the playoffs (37%). In the NBA and NHL, 16 out of 30 teams (53%) make the playoffs. In Baseball, now it’s only 8 out of 30. That’s 26% and that is plenty. If Selig’s proposal is adopted, 1 out of every 3 teams would make the post-season. In the AL, this new format would mean 5 out of 14 teams would advance. Or to put it another way, the American League would play 162 games over 6 months for the sole purpose of eliminating 9 teams.

Unlike Football, Basketball and Hockey the Baseball season is 162 games. I think that is long enough to determine who should advance and who shouldn’t. A post-season berth should be earned, should be won and not handed out like candy.

Over the last several years, based on final standings, 88 wins would get you a 2^nd wildcard. Since 81 wins is 500 should a team get a chance at a World Series by simply being slightly better then mediocre?

Although a move such as this would have to be approved by the players union, Michael Weiner, union head, says the players are open to discussing a longer post-season. On the flip-side, however, the season would remain 162 games and would not revert back to 154 as it was prior to 1961. Clubs would not be willing to lose TV revenue and ticket sales by shortening the season 8 games.

With worsening weather and another round it’s possible the World Series could be played at Thanksgiving! I can hear it now: I’ll have some more white meat, please pass the Cranberry Sauce and come on, that pitch was outside.

We all love baseball. We cant get enough of it. But does the season really need to be 9 months? Will pitchers and catchers be reporting 3 months after the final out of the World Series is made? And would FOX and/or TBS be willing to realign their TV schedule for even another week?

In all fairness to the commissioner, he has made some improvements during his tenure. April 15^th is Jackie Robinson Day, expansion into Phoenix and Tampa Bay, the Expos were set free from Montreal and we now have a stricter steroid policy, albeit a bit too late.

But the negatives of Selig’s time have outweighed the positives. For a guy who cancelled the World Series, for a guy who sat back and did nothing for far too long while players doubled in size and records were not just broken but obliterated, for a guy who had an All Star Game end in a tie and who came out with the ludicrous idea that the winner of the All-Star game gets home field advantage for the World Series, this could be the craziest idea yet.

MLB has a cumulative ERA of 3.35, the only team that seems to have escaped this pitching swoon are the New York Yankees, who’s team ERA pushed 5.00. The same New York Yankees who spent what some have called an obscene amount of money, $234.5 million, signing the likes of C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett to multi-year contracts in 2009.

What may seem obscene to some, one could argue it helped buy/earn the Yankees their 27th World Series title last season. However that was then and this is now.

If you survey the landscapes of the teams in this postseason, the evidence of pitching depth becomes more and more prevalent, as does the time tested argument that pitching and defense wins championships.

The Yankees may have had the deepest of all rotations having the likes of Sabathia, Pettite, Hughes and the beleaguered Burnett, however of all the teams this post season, none had higher expectations then the reigning champs.

Unfortunately for the Bronx Bombers, their pitching depth didn’t translate into a World Series berth this time around. How sad.

As Major League Baseball slowly recovers from the “Steroid era”, a pitching renaissance has occurred the likes of which hearkens back to the mid sixties to early seventies.

In 1965 the Minnesota Twins were offensively what the Yankees are today and were shutout a mere three times that year. That was until Sandy Koufax shut them out twice in October alone – blanking the Twins on just two days rest in game seven of the 1965 Series.

In 1968, Bob Gibson’s Cardinals took on Mickey Lolich’s Detroit Tigers and in the series opener, Gibson tossed a five-hit shutout striking out seventeen. Unfortunately for Gibson, it was Lolich and his Tigers who bested the Cardinals in ’68.

Flash forward to 2010 and the Phillies Roy Halladay joined baseball immortality when he pitched just the second perfect game in Postseason history when he beat Cincinnati this past October 6th.

Philadelphia has employed the three-headed monster approach, with a formidable rotation of Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels. While the Phillies shared in the Yankees postseason misfortunes this year – again so sad – it’s an approach that historically has yielded results   The 1970 World Champion Baltimore Orioles had three twenty game winners in Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, and Mike Cuellar. Take the 1995 World Champion Braves whose rotation included future Hall of Famers, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz.

According to Greek mythology, Cerberus is the three headed beast which guards the gates to Hades. As a Met fan is it really a mystery that the gates to hell lead to downtown Philly and Atlanta?

The San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers have featured their own pitching triple-punches and may very well ride them to the gates of postseason heaven. Cliff Lee, C.J. Wilson and Colby Lewis have led the charge for the Rangers past the reigning champion Yankees while Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Jonathan Sanchez are San Francisco’s treats. The Rangers have a postseason team ERA of 2.76 and the Giants have sported an even more minuscule 2.47.  Is it any wonder why these two teams have earned the right to play in the Fall Classic?

All of this has led me to reflect on the Mets pitching staff. The general consensus is that the Mets never really needed another front line pitcher. Understandably the Mets were offensively woeful partially because it’s star center-fielder missed the majority of the season and it’s newly acquired power bat in left field was anything but powerful, not to mention the time it’s star lead-off hitter spent on the disabled list. All valid reasons for their anemic offense. Not necessarily excuses – just facts.

The 2010 Mets lost 26 games by one run this season. In those 26 losses the Mets gave up an average of 4.5 runs per game and scored 3.69 runs in that span. Of the 26 games, 18 were started by someone other than Santana or Pelfrey.

Now, would the Mets have had a better chance of winning any of those 18 games if they had a front line arm at their disposal, more so than another bat? If they won 12 of those 18 games, the Mets would have won 91 games – the same total as the National League Wild Card Braves

Of course this is all moot and pie in the sky speculation. The Mets arguably could have prospered just as much if not more than from a potent hitting outfielder. And yes we all know by now all the reasons nothing was done to bring anyone in. Like I said it’s just idle speculation and if anything, it shows you just how important a one run loss in May can effect what you’re doing come October.