Were the postseason to begin today, the National League’s second- and third-best teams would play each other in a single winner-takes-all game for the honor of going on the road and playing a series against the best team in baseball. In the meantime, the teams with the fourth- and fifth-best records in the league would face off for a ticket to the NLCS.

If this seems screwed up, it’s because it is. The wild card opened up a world of possibilities, including the one playing out in the NL Central today: The three best records happen to come from the same division, and baseball’s playoff system is in danger of penalizing teams for having the temerity to exist in relative geographic proximity to other good teams.

View photos Pittsburgh's Gregory Polanco and St. Louis' Kolten Wong are part of the toughest division in baseball. (Getty) More

This, of course, is ridiculous, and even if the New York Mets ride the weakness of the National League East or the Los Angeles Dodgers the strength of their $300 million payroll to pass up the Central’s St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs or even all three, an odd truth in baseball still will exist: winning a division is more important than winning, period.

Considering divisions are little more than constructs – they didn’t exist until 1969, further split 25 years later and are so subject to whims that teams change leagues without much hullabaloo – their power over baseball is strangely addictive. It held true in other sports, too, until NBA commissioner Adam Silver this offseason said the league plans to award teams with better regular-season records instead of giving division winners artificially high playoff seeds.

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“That,” Silver told reporters, “is a vestige of a division system that may not make sense anymore."

Even if the issue is more egregious in the NBA, it doesn’t lessen the nonsensical nature of baseball explicitly saying the value of its regular season is only as important as the quality of teams in a particular division. A few years ago at the annual general managers’ meetings, executives around baseball discussed the subject, according to sources present. Like many of the ideas bandied about, it was dismissed and not revisited. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider a look at the playoff system – and, consequently, a look at the divisional system itself.

“If you go with top three records,” one GM said, “[you] should eliminate divisions entirely, no?”

Well, yes. Five years ago, before the second wild card and playoff game even existed, that very idea was suggested in this space with a phrase that never did catch on: unalignment. And it still stands today: The most fair way to mete out playoff positions is to keep the American and National Leagues intact and throw every team into a pool of 15 fighting for five spots.

“I don’t think there’s a reason we have divisions,” one executive said this week. “Other than we’ve had it for a long time.”

The most compelling reasons for keeping divisions aren’t altogether compelling. There is the most common answer, espoused by one assistant GM: “I think there is something to be said for winning your division,” he said. When asked what that something was … he really didn’t have much of an answer.

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“Because we’re baseball,” another executive said. “And nostalgia is our thing.”

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