As many have noted, two weeks ago, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked Chipper Jones what he thought of the one-game playoff. He said he thought the new double-wildcard, play-in game system was "stupid," because it potentially puts the second best team in a given league in the position of playing one game for their entire season. And why is that a problem?
"Now if you were to say the two wild-card teams will play a best two-out-of-three [series], I'd be OK with that. We play three-game series all the time, and we concentrate on winning those series all the time. I think it's more fair from a standpoint that anything can happen in one game – a blown call by an umpire, a bad day at the office … at least in a two-of-three-game series you have some sort of leeway."
The umpires weren't the only ones to have bad days at the office, but yeah. After 19 years in the majors, it's probably tough to trust the umps with your team's destiny. Veterans like Jones understand the human element well enough to know that one contest won't necessarily say all that much about who has the better team. At least he never has to in another one-game playoff again.
Chipper Discusses Play-In Game - ‘It's Stupid' - And Philadelphia [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]