Joe Girardi wants best-of-three Wild Card Game format

Unless the New York Yankees can overtake the Toronto Blue Jay's 4.5 game lead in the AL East in the next 15 games, the Bronx Bombers are going to have to settle for the first Wild Card spot — meaning a they'll be in a one-game playoff on Oct. 6 with the next-best team to advance to the division series. They currently lead the Wild Card by 3.5 games.

And after Friday's 5-1 loss to the Mets and the regular season end quickly approaching, it is becoming a good bet the Yankees probably aren’t going to pass anyone.

So for the last month or so, as if preparing himself for the inevitable, Yankees manager Joe Girardi has been voicing his displeasure of the do-or-die Wild Card Game and is calling for change of the one-game format.

"It should be the best of three," Girardi said. "You play Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and then your next series starts Thursday. So the penalty for not winning your division is you're going to play five days in a row to start out if you don't win in two games."

That means if you win the first two, you get a day off.

"I mean, if that's the way you make it, of course you're going to welcome it," Girardi said. "But your preference would be to have a five-game series to sort things out."

The Yankees, who pulled Masahiro Tanaka after six innings Friday night (82 pitches) against the Mets, will likely have him starting in next week's crucial series against Toronto. So it doesn't appear that Girardi is publicly planning around having to play a Wild Card game just yet.

Tanaka gave up two runs, five hits, didn’t issue a walk and fanned four. He is 12-7 after entering the game 3-0 with a 2.54 ERA in his previous three outings and is 8-3 with a 3.01 ERA in his last dozen starts.

That's sounds like a one-game pitcher to me.