If the Yankees make the postseason, one of the following three scenarios is likely:

Yankees win division + Boston wins wildcard = Yanks play Angels in ALDS.

Yankees win division + Cleveland wins wildcard = Yanks play Indians in ALDS

Yankees win wildcard = Yankees play White Sox in ALDS

If I'm the Yankees, I think I actually like that last scenario best. Chicago overperformed all season. They are still likely to finish with the best league record, but will probably be the weakest AL team in the playoffs.

This three-division, four-playoff-team system takes too much of the drive to win every game out of the end of the season.

I'm not suggesting the Yankees can let up at all, given that a berth is not yet secure, but I kinda wish we had life-or-death pennant races again.

I also think they need to get rid of the idiotic rule that the wildcard team cannot play the winner of its own division in the first round if that team has the best league record. The rules should simply say that in the LDSes the team with the best league record should always play the team with the lowest record, regardless of divisional breakdowns.

And if a team wins the wildcard with a better record than the winner of another division (as Houston will do to San Diego this year, and not by a close margin), the wildcard team should be seeded higher. The current system is stupidly formalistic.

I agree with you about the wild card's dilution of pennant races, and even though this has been an exhilarating week for a Yankee (and presumably a Red Sox, Indian and White Sox) fan, I still liked it better when it was "win or go home." But this way is better for business, I understand, which is why it wouldn't surprise me if there were more wild cards added down the line.

I also agree that it's best if the Yanks avoid the Angels, who absolutely have the Yanks' number. The Yanks' rotation is going to be sucking wind going into the first round anyway--your probable Game 1 starter if the Yanks should have to play a playoff game Monday (and if they win it) would be Jaret Wright, followed by Aaron Small in Game 2. Randy Johnson, Chien-Ming Wang and Mike Mussina will have been used in Boston over the weekend. Conversely, the Angels can line their rotation up any way they wish, given that they clinched the other day. (At least the scenario brightens somewhat if the Yanks win the division and don't have to play Monday. Then Shawn Chacon would be the Game 1 starter, and we could at least stave off elimination for one game.)

It's still possible that the Yankees could clinch the division as soon as tomorrow, if tonight they win and Boston loses, and then the Yankees win at Fenway tomorrow. That's a lot to ask for, but if it happens, Johnson and Mussina could be available for the start of the ALDS.

True, but that's way too much to ask for. You're envisioning the Red Sox suddenly losing four games in a row. The fact that they have lost two out of three to the Blue Jays so far is amazing in itself.

Must admit that if the case of the 2004 Red Sox doesn't reconcile you to the lasting existence of the wild card (wordygurdy), then I suspect nothing will.

Would baseball in 2004 have been better served by leaving MLB's 3rd best record at home for the postseason? Totally aside from the Yankee collapse, the opportunity to watch an AL wild-card team comprehensively embarrass (sorry, Niko) the NL's dominant team that year was an eye-opener, raising interesting questions about interleague parity.

Then of course there was that Yankee collapse (sorry, Matthew) -- though that probably could have happened under any playoff system.

The Yankees will never, ever live down what happened to them in 2004. I say that as a Yankee fan who will never be able to comprehend that collapse, just as I still cannot believe the Yankees couldn't win one game out of three in Seattle in 1995.

Yes, I still prefer the ending of a season like the American League East's in 1978 or the National League's in 1993--when the Braves beat out the Giants on the last day of the season, and the Giants went home despite having won 103 games.

So last year in the American League, in the old two-division format, you would have had to have had a one-game playoff between the Twins and Angels (unless the league used the season series winner as the tiebreaker), and the Yankees would have lost to the Angels or beaten the Twins. So the World Series would have been the Angels or Yankees vs. whoever got out of the National League (probably still the Cardinals, but the Cardinals would have still lost).

I think in the long term you might see the extra round of playoff games created by the Division Series wear out players sooner than they might have otherwise, especially pitchers. Who knows--we may have already seen it in the 10 years since the format came into existence. The World Series is perilously close to extending into November even without terrorist attacks; how many innings can we expect pitchers to throw in a given year?

And now we're going to start the World Baseball Classic next spring? Who knows how many injuries star players will incur in those games, which ostensibly count for some sort of national pride but were really concocted to sell beer and MLB memorabilia? And how will those injuries affect the players' teams' fortunes and the players' careers? (This is a topic for another thread, but Selig and Fehr need to seriously rethink having the WBC before the season. Too much can go wrong that will totally outweigh anything that goes right. I can see having it during the All-Star break--or even supplanting the All-Star game. But not before the season, and not after, when players are too tired. What if Vladi Guerrero gets beaned in the noggin and misses three months? What then of the Angels' hopes? What if Big Papi ruptures a hammy while legging out a double? What if Mariano Rivera blows out his shoulder--I shudder to even type those words?)

The Yanks are the AL East champs.

How sweet is it that the Red Sox' home season, which began in April against the Yankees with the crowd sarcastically applauding Mariano Rivera when he was introduced before the game, ends with Rivera nailing down the division title on the same turf?

Pretty sweet, my friends. Pretty sweet. I didn't hear much applause from the Fens in the ninth inning today.

Joe Torre could well get Manager of the Year just for winning the East with all he has had to overcome this year (though Ozzie Guillen will probably give Torre a run for his money, at least in the chase for the award if not in the playoffs).

Now Wright probably starts tomorrow, with Mussina resting for Game 1 against the Angels. Boy, are the Yanks going to have their hands full against the Halos. I sure hope Giambi's not at first base for any of those games, or else it could be three-and-out.

I had assumed that if the Sox and Yankees ended with identical records there would be a one-game playoff. Even though I am a Yankees fan, I would have preferred a playoff to awarding the Yankees the pennant based on their seasonal record against Boston. Has this always been the rule? It stinks. Not only did it deprive us of the drama of a playoff, but it also greatly diminished the drama and importance of the final regular-season game.

After I posted the above, I realized that both teams would be in the playoffs no matter who won the playoff game. I suppose having a playoff game to determine which of two teams is the wild card and which the division champion is not desirable. It's another example of how the wild card can turn what would have been an extremely dramatic, high-stakes finish into a meaningless game.

Yep, you answered your own question. Which is good, because it took me forever to explain all the rules to two guys who were arguing about it at a wedding reception on Saturday and I didn't want to go through it again.

And I agree with you. In central Connecticut for the wedding, I watched Saturday's game with my great-aunt, a diehard Red Sox fan, and the mood in the room was way too conciliatory for "pennant-race" baseball.

"Oh, it's all right if you win today."

"Yes, that's OK, you can still win tomorrow."

Thanks, Bud.

Matthew:

I'm sorry to do this to you, but can you explain the following scenario to me. (I went to see the Sunday game, in Boston, and didn't realize until Saturday afternoon that the Yanks could clinch the division that day.)

The Red Sox, Yankees, and Cleveland all end with identical records. (Which could easily have happened.)

Why wouldn't the Yankees then be declared the division winners, on the basis of their head-to-head record against the Sox? Then the Sox would play the Indians for the wild card.

Instead, as I understand it, the Yankees and Sox would have had a one-game playoff, with the loser playing Cleveland.

For my last sentence, read: " . . . with the loser playing Cleveland FOR THE WILD-CARD SLOT."

Then the real playoffs would begin.

Here's why. Your mistake is in thinking that head-to-head record is the default. It's the exception.

By default, a playoff game is considered a better way of crowning a division champion -- as between two tied teams -- than using head-to-head record. After all, baseball is not football, and since divisional rivals play 162 games against mostly the same teams, head-to-head record is a pretty trivial statistic compared to overall regular-season record.

The justification for NOT having a one-game playoff in the scenario that DID occur is that because Cleveland had been eliminated from the wildcard by finishing behind Boston and New York, there was no point in forcing the East teams to use up a starting pitcher in a Monday playoff game when both Boston and New York were guaranteed playoff berths regardless of who would win such a game. In the pre-Wildcard era, head-to-head record had no effect in baseball at all. It was adopted here just as an efficient tool for mooting a playoff game neither team would want to play.

But if New York, Boston and Cleveland had finished with identical records, then it would NOT have been necessarily true that both Boston and New York would be in the playoffs regardless of which of those two were the division champion, and it would have been appropriate to have playoff games to select both an AL East winner and an AL Wildcard.

In other words, the system is designed to do what a manager in the position of the teams involved would most likely want. If you've got only one day to get ready for the playoffs, and you're already assured of being there, you'll gladly take the wildcard rather than use up a pitcher. But if you've fought all season to tie your archrival and only one of you can go to the playoffs, you're going to want something weightier than head-to-head record to decide the outcome.

Most important is that one-game playoffs are exciting, and the default rule is to have them. Only when both teams are mathematically assured of playoff berths, so that the only thing at stake would be semantics and a slight change in seeding, are they skipped.

Okay, I get it. (For the first time--so thanks.)

But I do still wonder (perhaps idly) why a manager, in the three-way tie scenario, would prefer a Yanks-Sox matchup, followed by a Sox-Sox matchup, rather than just one Sox-Sox playoff game.

The Yanks, I assume, would be happy to cruise into the playoffs based on head-to-head record. The Red Sox would probably be just as happy to play ONE playoff, against the ChiSox, rather than a guaranteed ONE and POSSIBLY TWO, against either the Yanks alone or the Yanks then the Chisox (given how they'd be spent before the playoffs even started).

And the Chisox face a maximum of one playoff game either way.

It's all a bit odd.

Of course not. You're forgetting that under your suggestion, the Red Sox would HAVE to win that one game to make the playoffs. No team would want to have to win ONE game when they would have the option of winning EITHER of two games. A double chance at reaching the playoffs trumps pitching rest, since with only one playoff game there's a roughly 50% chance that your ace would end up being rested for his Tuesday morning tee time.

You're right, of course, that the Yankees would be happy with head-to-head record as it played out, but I'm speaking from an objective standpoint. If you asked either Joe Torre or Terry Francona two weeks ago what system is preferable, they'd both tell you the one-game playoff is what they'd want if a playoff berth were guaranteed to only one team.

The point is that there is nothing intrinsic to head-to-head record in baseball that entitles a team to anything. It's just one of many slightly-less-than-arbitrary factors that MLB could have chosen to avoid a playoff game in circumstances where nobody would want one.

(You're also getting the White Sox and Indians mixed up.)

You know, I hate it that baseball's playoff system has become so complex that one has to have a Ph.D. in order to understand it. Given that I work long hours on Fridays and Saturdays, I had to take it on faith that whatever the broadcasters were saying about the various playoff scenarios was true because I didn't have the time or, frankly, the inclination to figure it out myself.

I felt a little better when I mentioned this to a co-worker who agreed with me and said, "Whatever they [broadcasters] say it is, it is." He too couldn't keep track of all the possibilities. The Times printed an article last Friday that described, I think, nine or 10 possible outcomes.

When did baseball become Advanced Algebra? If two teams leave Chicago and New York at 10 a.m. and travel 100 m.p.h......

Selig has to clean this up so he doesn't lose fans, not to mention besmirch the integrity of the game by creating final games of the season that don't mean anything (Yanks-Red Sox this past Sunday). But given the glacial pace at which Selig moves, we can be assured there will be more complexity added to the playoff system in the form of more wild cards before there will be complexity stripped away from the playoff system in the elimination of the wild cards.

I tried to reply earlier to Matthew and it didn't go through.

Anyway, thanks: I WAS failing to grasp a key point or two. (And I spent so much of Sunday watching the "Chi" / "Cle" sign up on the Green Monster that it's no wonder I mixed the two teams up.)