If 5 teams is what they want I'd rather see a best-of-three series where the 4th seed team would get all 3 games of the series at home in 3 consecutive days.

Explain to me the advantage that this gives large market teams over small market teams.

Yeah sure, this may help a large-market team make the playoffs and win a WS that it otherwise may not have. Then again, it provides the exact same opportunity to a small market team. Last year it would've put the Braves and the Red Sox in; one a large market team and the other a mid-market team.

The argument that this is just driven by a need to let more big-market teams in simply does not make sense; there's just no logic or reason to it.

Well, first the Wild Card *SHOULD* have a tremendously harder road. Give them a shot? Sure, but they need a handicap. Same thing as the NFL, they basically have 2 play-in games instead of one, with the unfortunate drawback of forcing 2 division champs to play-in, since they have 2 wild cards.

Second, at least in the AL, this change is far more likely to screw a large market than not. Unless the AL East has their rare down year, the 1st AL Wild card often goes to the Yankees or Red Sox. Now they get yanked off from standing on the same tier as the division champs, and get told "hey, you, here's the 2nd-place AL Central team. You must beat them first in a wild high-drama do-or-die elimination game, have fun"

Not a huge fan of the one game playoff idea. Especially after a 162 game season, it all comes down to one game. Although if it gets the Royals deep in the playoffs eventually, I reserve the right to change my opinion.

WHYYYYYY
ISN'T BASEBALL SEASON LONG ENOUGH?

why does the NFL and march madness rule

one and done
limited season

Baseball can't do that. The game is so crazily random, much more so than football and college basketball, that if you win 40% of your games, you are a really bad, awful, terrible team but if you win 60% of your games, you are one of the best in the league. If every round was one and done, the playoffs in baseball would lose almost all meaning, it would be a stupid crapshoot coinflip to see who wins the championship. (For similar reasons, baseball's seasons need to be very, very long.) You don't have to go to every flippin' game, just read the box score every morning, watch a few here and there, and go to 4 or 5 games if you want, and you are still a decent fan.

Wild Card teams, since they failed to win their division, do not deserve the same consideration. Let them fight a knockout round for our amusement.

The Royals still won't make it.

Expanded postseason is lame as hell.

This year? Its possible, but yeah, probably not. The Royals offense is going to rock, but we don't have the pitching to beat Detroit. Between the AL East juggernaut, and Rangers/Angels, the Wild Cards look dicey too.

2013-14 is when things should start to get more interesting.

Atlanta is nowhere near a mid-market.