Playoff creep has made the regular season almost irrelevant in the NHL and the NBA, and Major League Baseball has been struggling with how to avoid a similar fate ever since it stopped automatically sending the two teams with the best records in the American League and the National League directly to the World Series. That last happened in 1968 when there were just ten teams in each league: now there are 15, with six divisions. The champs of each get into post-season play-offs, with three Wild Card teams, mandatory because otherwise random luck can have a mediocre and inferior team making the play-offs by winning a weak division while teams with a better records are left at home watching the games on TV, just because they happened to be competing with stronger teams in their division.

Fairness and perception are the issues at hand, as well as maintaining the quality of the World Series. Last year’s edition, with the L.A. Dodgers squeaking out an extra-inning, deciding game victory over an evenly matched Toronto team, gave the sport a boost that carried into this season. Pairing the Dodger with a mediocre team is a recipe for embarrassment on baseball’s biggest stage. No team with a losing record has ever represented its league, but this season that situation could indeed occur. That highlights a flaw in the system. Now what?

In “How to keep losing teams out of MLB playoffs,” ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle does an excellent job explaining the problem and analyzing potential fixes. Right now, there are just five teams (out of 15) in the American League with winning records: the leaders in the three divisions, and two more teams (including the Red Sox) in the Eastern Division. Those two teams, Boston and the Yankees, seem to have wrapped up the first two Wild Card slots, but six teams, all with losing records, are in contention for the third Wild Card, and a single losing streak by the leaders in the Central and Western divisions could give those losing champions as well. If the American League playoffs started today, the top three records in the league would all reside on one half of the bracket, with the Tampa Bay Rays awaiting the winner of a wild-card series between the Yankees and Red Sox. On the other side of the bracket, the leaders in the Central Division, the Chicago White Sox ,would receive a bye to face the winner between the Astros (72-69), winners in the West, and the Cleveland Guardians (70-70), the third Wild Card.

FanGraphs projects Chicago to win the Central with 84 wins, with Cleveland taking final wild card with 82 wins and Houston winning the West with only 82 wins. Those would be three of the six worst records to ever qualify for the postseason in a full season, yet one of those teams would be guaranteed to play for the AL Championship in the ALCS.

Here are Doolittle’s candidates for remedies going forward. This season, of course, all baseball fans can do is cross their fingers. Doolittle’s commentary will be in quotes: