Well… that Kansas City Royals game was fun. Twelve innings of multiple ties and lead changes, truly memorable plays and heroes like Brandon Finnegan, Brandon Moss and Jarrod Dyson all in front of an electric crowd and in winner-take-all, no-tomorrow stakes? Yeah, I’d like to see more of that.
The Wild Card game provides two things I really enjoy seeing: the creation of baseball games exciting enough for a mainstream audience and the punishment of incompetence (unless it’s Ned Yost, apparently).
That part about punishing incompetence might take some explaining. Let’s go back to the fourth inning of Wednesday’s Giants-Pirates game. Before it escalated into an 8-0 blowout, the Pirates had Edinson Volquez on the mound in a true can’t-lose game.
Volquez had a decent 2014 season, 3.04 ERA in 192.2 innings pitched, but he is still the Major League leader in walk rate in the last five years (minimum 500 IP). When he falls apart, it’s about as ugly a pitching performance as you’re going to see.
And he fell apart, giving up two singles and walking the bases loaded with no outs. Now, the left-handed Brandon Crawford, an above average hitter, was up against the right-handed Volquez, who had lost his fastball command.
If you’re Pirates manager Clint Hurdle, do you take door A (keep Volquez in so you don’t have to open your bullpen early) or door B (pull Volquez for lefty ace reliever Tony Watson knowing that one bad inning from a volatile starter will end your season)?
Hurdle took door A. Grand slam. The rout was on.
You’re going to hear some grumbling from Pirates and A’s fans that a season shouldn’t come down to a single game. Reds, Indians, Braves and Rangers fans have also made that argument in the last two seasons; the variance of a single game on one fall night where anything can go wrong (like a certain infield fly ruling) shouldn’t automatically decide the fate of a season.
That complaint misses the point of the Wild Card game. The variance is the punishment. The presence of the Wild Card game sends a very clear message during the regular season: Win your division or your season will hang in the balance of basically a single coin flip.
The nature of the Wild Card game as a single-game elimination also turns the game on its head and rewards outside-the-box thinking. In a Wild Card game, there is no game tomorrow. There is one two days from now, but only if you win. If a starter is struggling even a little, pull him and use every effective weapon from your bullpen; it can take heavy use thanks to the two days of rest that come between the Wild Card and Division Series.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy did eschew this and allow Madison Bumgarner to throw a complete-game shutout, but there was never a situation where the game was in danger. Bumgarner allowed five baserunners, but never more than one per inning until the eighth, when he was up by eight runs. He was effective, Volquez was not, and it was all pretty clear.
Keeping an ineffective starter in to save your bullpen until you’re deploying top closer Mark Melancon while down eight runs and not even using Watson is, well, pretty inside the box as far as baseball games normally go. Managers talk about the value of a starter that can go deep and save the bullpen. That value does not exist in the Wild Card Game; Clint Hurdle made decisions like he did and it cost his team dearly.
That’s the beauty of the single-elimination Wild Card. It creates that beautiful chaos born from win-or-die stakes and forces teams in that deserve to be there. It’s a just-add-water Game 7. The variance is also the reward, but for baseball fans.
Expanding the Wild Card to a best-of-three format, like some have suggested, could rob us of that. It could rob us of nights like Tuesday in Kansas City where Jarrod Dyson turns into Dave Roberts. Nights where Kansas City expels 29 years of futility and frustration through waves of thousands of cathartic exclamations, knowing the best game they will see in their lifetime happened when the stakes couldn’t have been higher. Nights where the world can see the absolute maximum of just how exciting baseball can be.
Yeah, I’d like to experience more of those.
