One Game Wildcards in Baseball?

There has been much talk about Major League Baseball's rule change this year adding a second wild card team in each league and having the two wildcard teams play a one game playoff to determine which one moves forward. By the nature of the game of baseball a one game playoff seems like a bad idea. Ask a Red Sox fan from 1978 how he feels about a one game playoff but the truth is for those teams that win any such game the format works just fine. Major League Baseball wanted to bring more teams into the playoff hunt, and this move was a great success in that regard, but they really could not extend the postseason into November. As it is should a team in the Northern tier make the World Series you face the very real prospect of freezing temperatures and or snow. Another factor, though one not talked about as much was to increase the value of winning a division. Too many times in the recent past have two teams in the same division been within range of each other on the final week, but both being assured of making the playoffs of at worst a wildcard berth, resting players and not putting full effort into victory. For me I think the one game wildcard is a great idea. I would like to do everything I could to increase the value of the Division championship. The percentage of wildcard teams winning the World Series has shown that getting hot at the end of a season gives one a chance to win the Series that more than makes up for the loss of home field in a deciding seventh game. By making the wildcard game a crap-shoot, yes you negate the effects of a season of success to just one game, but one should consider this, does not the loss of one home game for a wildcard team as a small and insignificant penalty, negate the the effect of the season for the division championship. I would go so far as to in the Division series round of the playoffs where the eventual wildcard winner plays the top seed to limit the wildcard teams home games in this series. I think that if you win the division in a 162 game season it has to give ou a significant advantage. Another problem which I believe baseball is trying to correct but needs to make sure they do is to limit the offdays in the playoffs. A couple of years ago the Yankees won the World Series on a three man rotation. Not just in the series but throughout the playoffs. Now they deserve all the credit in the world but to me the Playoffs should embrace and reward the same things which lead to success in the regular season. If all season long you have a five man rotation that is deeper than most and less top heavy then in the postseason you are a severe disadvantage. No other sport rewards a team in the playoffs for being set up to win in a way that would not be successful in the regular season. The playoff games yesterday were competitive and while it is possible that the outcome might be different in a longer series there is no guarantee of such. I wholeheartedly endorse this approach.