Why should a wild card team have to face an obstacle? What's so sacred about winning a division? Lots of years there's a division that sucks and a mediocre team wins it. Lots of years there are two great teams that happen to be in the same division. A team that wins a terrible division doesn't deserve an advantage over a better team that finished second in its division to a dominant team.
In 2004, the 98 win Red Sox would have had to beat a 91 win A's team in a fluky one game playoff just to advance as far as the 92 win Angels and Twins. That would have been a joke.
(Edit: we've talked about this in other threads, and this should probably be split off -- sorry for continued off tracking)
I don't understand this argument.
There's always been relatively arbitrary distinctions in baseball ever since the upstart American League started playing the Senior Circuit.
How did you feel from 1969-1995 when there were only 2 Divisions in each League and an even higher chance that a 2nd place team with a better record would miss the postseason?
Hell, that era had some far more egregious oversights.
Take 1987, when the 96-win Blue Jays missed the postseason entirely -- no playoffs at all -- because they finished 2nd in the AL East while the 85-win Twins won the AL West and eventually the World Series.
Or, closer to home, how about 1978? All anybody remembers now is Bucky bleeping Dent. But how about the fact that we had to play a one-game playoff despite winning 99 games while the 92-win Royals cooled their heels after winning the AL West?