This should be wild.
After years of discussion and debate by Major League Baseball on how to improve its playoff structure, commissioner Bud Selig yesterday announced the addition of a wild-card team in each league, effective this season, that will accompany another round of playoffs.
The additional round will be a one-game playoff between the wild-card winners in each league.
“This change increases the rewards of a division championship and allows two additional markets to experience playoff baseball each year,” Selig said in a statement.
The new rules make it conceivable three playoff teams could emerge from the same division. But the division winner would have the clear advantage of skipping the one-game playoff for the right to play in the division series.
“I don’t see how this can be a bad thing,” Mets outfielder Jason Bay said. “It only adds an extra day or two to the playoffs, but it puts a lot of teams that are out of it in September right back in the race. I don’t see too much downside.”
But to accommodate the calendar, just for 2012, MLB will reconfigure the division series format. That will mean scrapping the 2-2-1 format — where the higher-seeded team plays the first two games and a potential Game 5 at home.
This season, the lower-seeded team will play the first two games at home before the series shifts to the higher seed’s ballpark for the final three games.
Also, ties for the division title will now be settled with a one-game playoff instead of using tiebreakers.
“The players are eager to begin playing under this new format in 2012, and they look forward to moving to full realignment in 2013,” MLBPA executive director Michael Weiner said.
The new alignment will shift the Astros from the NL Central to the AL West in 2013, giving each league 15 teams. It also will mean playing interleague games every day throughout the season.
The implementation of the one-and-done to decide the wild card is controversial, but was more palatable to MLB than adding another full round and lengthening an already long postseason.
“What’s good is obviously we’ve proven as an industry and as a union to be able to collaborate to find what’s going to work best,” Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey said. “So it starts this way, if the debate continues and [the system] needs to be different, we’ll find a solution.”
But players such as Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz would have rather seen a longer wild-card series added.
“One game? That’s kind of crazy,” Ortiz told reporters at Red Sox camp. “You know how many things we’ve got to move around and pack for one game? It would make more sense for two wild cards to play at least a two-out-of-three series while the other teams take a break for three days because they won their divisions.”
The last significant change in the playoff structure came in 1994, when the wild card was added after each league went from two to three divisions.
For the underdog Mets, the added wild card brings additional hope that the franchise can reach its first postseason since 2006. The Mets would have been the second wild card in 2008 under the new system.
“I like that another team can make the playoffs, and hopefully we can get in there,” Mets first baseman Ike Davis said. “It just gives us a little more chance, which is great.”
mpuma@nypost.com
