Remember the whining about how unfair this new playoff system is to the highest-seeded teams because they have to sit out a week waiting for the Wildcard round to complete?

Yesterday, three of the four bye recipients won. And, in a best-of-five Division series, the winner of the first game wins more than seventy-percent of the time.

Cleveland put an end to that nonsense right away. Having sat out for nearly a week, they jumped on Detroit—who has been playing non-stop all that time—for five runs in the first inning before the Tigers pinned an out on them.

All that rest got them rusty. It’s obvious they would have scored eight runs had they not had to sit for a week.

The Dodgers came back from being down three runs to beat the Padres 7-5, and the Yankees were so rusty, they had to come from behind four times to beat the unrusty Royals. Even the Phillies wasted no time proving the six-days of sitting around didn’t matter. Kyle Schwarber crushed the third pitch he saw into right center. Granted, that was the only offense the Phillies could muster and the amazing come-from-behind, last-inning Mets waited until the Phillies took out their dominating starter to pounce on Philly for five in the eighth and another in the ninth.

This playoff format allows more teams to have a chance to be in the postseason, it allows more fanbases to stay involved in the season longer, and it gives hope to more teams.

And that’s a fun thing.

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TODAY’S GAMES: 

3:08, New York 1 @ Philadelphia 0, FS1

7:03, San Diego 0 @ Los Angeles 1, FS1