Giants, A’s face Game 7 right out of the postseason chute

It’s Game 7 right out of the postseason chute. Win and move on. Lose and go home. It’s crazy, unfair, curiously exciting and, most of all, final for the team that comes out on the short end.

A’s general manager Billy Beane once called the entire postseason a crapshoot, but the single-game wild-card playoff that both Bay Area teams will participate in — the A’s and Royals on Tuesday in Kansas City, the Giants and Pirates on Wednesday in Pittsburgh — takes it one step further. It’s one roll of the dice.

“I think a lot of people like this one-game deal, because it’s kind of a Super Bowl-type thing,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. “I will say that one game, I’ve enjoyed watching it. But now that I’m in it … um, I think I’d like to have two out of three.”

Sorry, Bruce. And you, too, Bob Melvin. Strap in. One game, all or nothing. And on the road, no less. Thank your managerial brethren for what you are about to experience.

Outgoing commissioner Bud Selig, who approved the one-game wild-card playoff as one of his final sport-altering acts, said on a recent visit to San Francisco that it was the four managers on his 14-man postseason committee who sold the do-or-die format.

“When this came up, and we spent a lot of time debating it, I wanted two out of three,” Selig said. “I was thinking, ‘You work all year, and then you play one game, oh my God.’ But it was the managers who talked me into it. Joe Torre … I know, shocking. But also Mike Scioscia, Jimmy Leyland and Tony La Russa. Looking back now, I have to say the managers were right.”

Scioscia? The longtime Los Angeles Angels manager was at the helm in 2002 when his club beat the Giants in the World Series and became the first American League wild-card entry to win it all. But that was under the format that existed from 1994 to 2011, where the team with the best record among those that didn’t win their divisions qualified for the playoffs. The current format, now in its third season, pits two wild-card teams in a winner-advances playoff.

Even though only four wild cards went the distance in 18 seasons under the old format — Florida Marlins in 1997, Boston Red Sox in 2004, St. Louis Cardinals in 2011 along with the ’02 Angels — Scioscia has always believed the wild-card teams should have a tougher road, one that incurs a lot more risk.

“I think winning the division is very important, because it means you’re playing 162 games for something,” Scioscia said. “There wasn’t enough disadvantage for wild-card teams before. It’s tougher now. The opportunity to get into the playoffs without winning your division is still there. The one-game playoff is where you try and continue your season.”

Scioscia added that while a best-of-three series might be more fair to teams after they endure nearly two months of spring training and a six-month regular season, he believes it penalizes division champions.

“You might not play for a week, and that’s tough, because no matter how much you practice to try to keep your edge, things become dysfunctional,” he said. “Right now, we’re going to deal with three days off as it is. I don’t think anybody in baseball doesn’t want to put more weight on winning the division. So if you’re asking me if I like the one-game playoff, it’s not ideal. But it’s better than going home for the winter right at the start.”

So, Scioscia will sit in his lounge chair Tuesday night and watch the A’s and Royals slug it out for the right to play his Angels. Both teams will burn their ace pitchers, Jon Lester and James Shields, and who knows how much of their bullpens. The winner will then have to hop on a plane to Anaheim to open the A.L. Division Series on Thursday.

Similarly, the Giants and Pirates will square off at PNC Park on Wednesday, with the winner locked in for a trip to Washington to play the rested Nationals starting Friday.

Is this new setup too much of a burden for the wild-card winner? The sample size is too small to be certain at this point, but of the four one-game playoff winners so far, only one has managed to advance past the division series. That team, the 2012 Cardinals, lost to the Giants in the NLCS.

Then there’s the notion that one game might be too harsh for the loser. Giants pitcher Tim Hudson was on the ’12 Atlanta Braves team that lost to the Cardinals, and that experience caused him to form an intense dislike for the one-game format. He said to avoid a long layoff for the division winner, wild-card teams could play a best-of-three starting the day after the regular-season ends, noting that the Giants will be off for two days before they play Pittsburgh anyway.

“I just don’t like the one game because you don’t really know if the better team won,” he said. “If it was a three-game series, I think you’d have a better feeling that the best team came out of it. But any team can have a good or bad day. The worst team in baseball could beat the best team in one game. It’s just unfortunate that 162 games are going to come down to one game where you may or may not be the best team.”

Hudson said players and managers aren’t the only ones who have to be on top of their games. The umpires, he noted, are under more pressure to call balls and strikes by the book and make correct calls in the field. As it was, the Braves lost to the Cardinals in 2012 partly because of a controversial interpretation of the infield fly rule.

“It was just a rough day,” he said. “We had one bad inning where we kicked the ball around, and then we had that infield fly call that kept us out of our chance for a big inning. Then, all of a sudden, it was over. I felt cheated a little bit.”

A’s catcher Geovany Soto had a similar experience playing for the Texas Rangers, who lost to the Baltimore Orioles in the 2012 A.L. one-gamer.

“It’s just really intense,” he said. “I just remember it went by so quick. It felt like we played in an hour. Before you knew it, we lost and we’re packing our bags and going home. It was like a blur.”

Soto thinks there has to be a better way.

“I like being in the playoffs, but I’d like to be in the playoffs without having to play that one game,” he said. “But until they change it, you do what you have to do and just hope you survive.”