Starting in 2012, ten teams will likely play for this trophy every October. (Photo: Associated Press)

Major League Baseball's general manages are meeting in Florida this week, and there's no question as to what the most talked-about issue is: the expansion of the baseball playoffs to include an additional wild card team in each league. As the above-linked piece by USA Today's Bob Nightengale appears to show, MLB GMs seem to be in favor of a structure wherein the two wild card teams play either a one-game-play-in, or, more likely, a best-of-three series while the three division winners in each league would get a first-round bye.

Despite the fact that the potential format change is unlikely to take effect until 2012 due to the special requirements of the collective bargaining agreement, the proposal has already generated a fair amount of controversy around the Internet. For example, here's what Hardball Talk's Crag Calcaterra had to say about it:

I’m on record as being opposed to any expansion of the playoffs, because I think it’s a cynical cash grab that Bud Selig has disingenuously portrayed as “fairness” ... [Y]ou increase the chances that a bad team will get hot for a couple of weeks and more or less make a mockery of the regular season. Oh, and you likely reverse the things baseball has tried to do to cut the length of the playoffs down over the past couple of years. Worst of all, it creates a total crapshoot playoff round that is about as divorced from the normal dynamics of baseball than anything that’s ever been done before, and that sits with me quite poorly. One-and-done? If we’re gonna make a tournament out of this, let’s just invite all 30 teams and unleash the bracketologists.

Last month, I broke down Bill Plaschke's suggestions on how to make the MLB postseason more interesting. My proposals were mainly of the theoretical, pie-in-the-sky, if-I-were-King variety. Having said that, rather than adding an extra two wild card teams, I'd rather just bite the bullet and expand the Division Series to seven games, which is a Plaschke suggestion that I'd originally panned. As Calcaterra says, the whole thing just smacks of a gimmicky cash grab. Which is a shame since Major League Baseball has generally done a good job of avoiding giving its playoffs the Mr. Creosote treatment, and I really hope we're not heading that way here.