PORT ST. LUCIE — This new wild card is a real joker.

In an effort to make the postseason more exciting, the regular season has been cheapened yet again and so has the “first-round’’ of the playoffs, which is now one and done.

There’s more: Work all season to get the best record in your league and when it’s your turn to play in the postseason, you will not know what team you are playing until the last minute. When you do find out, you hop on a plane and play the first two games away. By the time you return home, you could be one step away from elimination.

So much for the advantage of winning the most games over 162 games. This isn’t postseason baseball, it’s a TV show: MLB Gone Wild.

Yes, the 2-3 format for the division series will be used just this season because of scheduling problems created by having doubled the wild card teams, but that is still one year too many. No matter how it is set-up, one extra wild-card team is one too many.

Also, baseball becomes “Survivor’’ with the one-game playoff, all of this after running a marathon. You’re off the island if you lose. You could own the island if you win and take care of business at home the next two games. A wild-card team conceivably could play three games at home before the team with the best record in the American or National League gets to step on its home-field this October.

Phillies manager Charlie Manuel told reporters this week, “You shouldn’t get nothing for second or third.’’

Now 10 teams will get invited to the postseason party. Ten general managers can say, “We had a great year, we made it to the playoffs. After you get to the postseason, it’s all luck.’’

No matter how you slice it, you can’t make a one-game playoff be the seventh game of the World Series, but that is what MLB is doing here by creating a winner-take-all format.

This is great marketing, not great baseball, and there is a difference.

There are all kinds of possibilities. With the 2-3 format, a wild-card team conceivably could win the one-game playoff without using the ace of its staff. That ace could pitch Game 1 of the five-game division series at home — though it is the wild-card team against the team with the best record in the league — and then have the ace ready for Game 5 as well. That is a huge advantage for a team that just made it into the postseason because of the wild card.

Also, all of the terrific drama created in the last day of the regular season last year would have been lost if there were two wild cards in each league in 2011.

The winner-take-all day will be exciting, no doubt, but it is manufactured excitement. What’s next, a home-run hitting contest to break tie games after nine innings?

As for the two wild-card teams, they really aren’t playoff teams, they are competing in a play-in game in the winner-take-all format. It would have been much better to have a best-of-three series for those wild-card teams. Make them play three straight days with the next round starting on the fourth day and that would penalize a wild-card winner, having to use up three starting pitchers and a bullpen before facing the team with the best record.

Now you can make it in as a wild card, win that game and get two home games to start. Even when MLB returns to a 2-2-1 division series format in 2013, there is no extreme penalty for being a wild-card team. Seven of the last 10 World Series have featured wild-card teams.

The shortcut to success continues.

kevin.kernan@nypost.com