Robothal: MLB may still add wild cards in ‘12

The problem in ’12 is that the regular season ends on Wednesday, Oct. 3, and the World Series will begin on FOX on Wednesday, Oct. 24. Squeezing in additional wild-card games never was part of the plan.

Under the existing schedule, the Thursday after the regular-season finale likely would be left open for tiebreaker or makeup games. The wild-card games would be Friday, and the Division Series would begin on Saturday.

Here’s where things gets sticky:

Ten of the 15 games on the final day of the regular season will be played at night. Three of those games — Rockies at Diamondbacks, Angels at Mariners, Giants at Dodgers — will begin in the Pacific Time Zone and likely end at around 1 a.m. ET.

Potential qualifiers on both coasts might need to travel across two or three time zones and play a makeup game or tiebreaker the next day, then fly back across the country for the wild-card round and all the way back again for the start of the Division Series.

The expanded format, designed to create more races, would increase the chances of uncertainty on the final day of the regular season — and the potential for tiebreakers. Teams might not want to move night games to the afternoon and risk losing revenue. And a tiebreaker or wild-card game that began on the west coast at 10 p.m. ET — a possibility depending upon the matchups — also would not be the best way to maximize TV ratings.