Poll of the Week: A Wild-Card Playoff

Poll of the Week is a weekly (sometimes) feature appearing every Friday (or whenever we want). Please vote on the right sidebar, and back up your opinion in the comments. Feel free to email poll suggestions to gjr52@cornell.edu

September 28th may well go down as one of the most exciting nights in baseball history. In the span of just a few hours, the fates of the Braves, Red Sox, Cardinals, and Rays were decided in exhilarating fashion. After 162 games, the Wild Card in both leagues came down to the last day of the season.

Starting next season and beyond, this kind of night might happen every single year.

In case you haven't heard, Major League Baseball is reportedly playing around with the idea of instituting a "Wild-card playoff" in which the top-two non-division winners in each league will play a one-game playoff to determine who clinches the wild-card.

The New York Post reports,

Negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement for Major League Baseball are moving at a fast pace and one issue the sides have all but agreed upon is adding two wild-card teams and holding one-game playoffs in each league to determine which of the wild cards advances

A one-game playoff would undoubtedly create a must-see TV event. Wednesday night aside, there have been some fantastic one-game playoffs the past few seasons.

Who can forget Matt Holliday's winning run in 2007?

What about the Twins topping the Tigers in extra innings to win the 2009 AL Central?

Imagine a game with this much on the line. Now imagine it happening every. single. year.

Twice.

But it's not that simple.

ESPN.com's Mark Kreidler picks apart MLB's proposed plan:

Baseball's brutal 162-game schedule is the difference-maker in this sport, a fact reinforced with historic authority Wednesday night. That schedule certainly doesn't preclude a late rush, especially not with the single wild-card factor already in place. (And esoterics aside, that has been a massive success.) But it is ultimately designed to reward the long-term winners.

Kreidler goes on to argue that Wednesday night wouldn't have been possible, because all four teams would have already clinched spots in the one-game playoff.

Additionally, he argues that there are times when the wild-card race isn't close, and it's unfair to the team that is clearly better to have to play a team that is clearly worse for the chance to make the postseason after a 162-game season.

So what say you? Should Major League Baseball institute a one-game playoff at the end of every season? Or should they the 162 season separate the men from the boys?

Vote in the poll to the right and let your voice be heard in the comments below!