Besides being a lackey of the ownership, namely "small-market" owners, and presiding over the steroid era, the accomplishment Selig is generally lauded for is creating the wild-card playoff format. Going hand in hand with the wild-card was the reorganizing of the leagues into three divisions, east, central, and west. This was done for two reasons, to, one, gin up some excitement after the canceling of the '94 postseason (of which the Yankees were in first place whence the strike commenced) and, two, to give more of the flyover country teams the opportunity to make the postseason (think Milwaukee Brewers, Selig's former team).
In light of the ignominious way the AL East division race ended, with both the Rays and Yanks seemingly trying to who see who could lose more games as they rested key personnel, I have now a strong distaste for this format. There has been some talk to expand the field and add another wild card team, having them have a one-game playoff to advance to the DS, creating disincentive to be a wild card team. While I agree that not only does this encourage teams to try to win the division but puts the eventual wild card team at a disadvantage going into the first round as they would most likely have used their best pitcher to win the play-in game thus making them unavailable for the first two games of the DS.
Here's the problem. Given the strength of the AL East and the unbalanced schedule, you create a situation where a 95-100 win wild card team in a stronger division may be reduced to playing an 85 win second wild card team from the weak central or west division. So instead of further diluting the postseason field I contend that we go back to the future and create two divisions west and east and make the regular season mean something again. Thanks to Bud and his quest to even-the-playing field and give everyone a trophy we missed out on what could have been a great and memorable race between the best teams in baseball instead of game of chicken where nobody dared blink.
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