Of all the things wrong with Major League Baseball right now, I find the most egregious foul to be its blatant disrespect for the supposed hallowed regular season. Two very recent stipulations in the game have disregarded the marathon that is a 162 game season and given ridiculously high stakes to two different trivial games. The two games I speak of are the All-Star game and the play-in Wild Card game. A closer look at each of these two contests shows why Baseball’s biggest crime right now is the treasonous act against itself of so heavily discounting the regular season.

The All-Star Game (2003-present)

Since 2003 the All-Star game has carried the weight of deciding home field advantage for the World Series. With the new format, regular season records are not considered for home field advantage but rather, the winning league of the once exhibition game will have earned it for its representative. How ludicrous is it to compile a roster of non-regular season teammates, managed by their non-regular season manger and have them play one game together that means so much to two, yet to be determined teams? It’s so baffling that I can hardly believe that it came to pass.

Consider that in no other sport is home field advantage more relevant than baseball. Baseball allows, and embraces, differences from park to park. Every football field in America, from middle schools to NFL stadiums, are 120 yards long and 53 yards wide. Every ballpark in Major Baseball, from Seattle to Miami, is uniquely different. Outfielders have a distinct advantage when playing in their own yard. Navigating warning tracks, different dimensions, ivy, brick walls, a Green Monster and even a damn hill in center field in Houston favors those that do it 81 times a year. Remember that the World Series is an interleague matchup and the most times an opponent will have played in your stadium that year will have been three. But usually that number is zero.

Last year Baseball concluded its first decade of the new format for the All-Star game. Surprisingly, only two times did a team with a better regular season record forfeit home field advantage because their league lost in the All-Star game (2004 St. Louis Cardinals, 2011 Texas Rangers). However, just because it has only happened two times thus far does not mean that the format should live on. And, in fact, I find those two times, to be two too many. While the 2004 Cardinals were swept by the Boston Red Sox rendering the home field advantage argument nearly null, the 2011 World Series is a perfect example of the new All-Star game format rearing it’s ugly head.

In 2011 the Rangers won the American League West division with a 96-66 record while the Cardinals won the National League Wild Card with a 90-72 record. Of the eight teams the playoffs, the Cardinals had the worst regular season record. Thanks to a National League victory in the All-Star game, the team that had played a season six games worse than their opponent would be home for the Game 1 of the World Series in St. Louis. After five games, the Rangers lead the series three games to two and played in one of the most memorable World Series games off all-time. The series had shifted back to St. Louis for Game 6 and with Rangers right-fielder Nelson Cruz navigating a foreign outfield, David Freese sailed a game tying triple over his head, near the wall, in the 9th inning. The Cardinals went on to win Game 6 in 10 innings and the series in seven games.

David Freese’s game tying triple should have never happened because Game 6 should have been played in Texas. A silly All-Star game cost the superior Rangers home field advantage and subjected them to starting, and ending, a series that went the distance, on the road. And not only did this series go the distance, but it’s biggest moment happened when an .978 outfielder misplayed a line drive, near the wall, in a stadium he had played in just the two games that started the series; a series that should have started in Texas.

Wild Card Play-In Game (2012-present)

Baseball has always boasted the toughest postseason to get into it. After 30 clubs play 162 games, only eight are admitted into the playoffs. Conversely, the NBA and NHL send twice as many clubs, 16, to their respective postseasons and the NFL makes room for 12. It’s very hard to earn the right to play baseball in October.

In 2012, Baseball introduced a postseason format that would include a second Wild Card team from each league. While this keeps a few more teams mathematically in contention for the playoffs deeper into the year, it comes at the great expense of the first Wild Card team. Before 2012, the Wild Card winner would punch their ticket for a best-of-five games series with the team that had the best record in their league. Now that same Wild Card team from years past is subjected to playing a one game playoff with the second Wild Card team in their league.

Many fans are thrilled by the unconventional excitement that a one game playoff brings to baseball. But that’s exactly it. It’s unconventional. Chipper Jones said, “I’m not a fan of it. We play series in baseball.” Consider that teams play each other a minimum of two games at a time throughout the year. Most of the series, however, are three games. Baseball isn’t about beating a team once. It’s about seeing who the better team is through time, through multiple battles. For a sport that has deemed the appropriate time to be at least a best-of-five series in the postseason, just one game seems criminally unfair and unfaithful.

Jones was on the losing end of a Wild Card play-in game in 2012. His Atlanta Braves team was to play an inferior St. Louis Cardinals team that had finished the season six games behind the Braves and 1-5 in head-to-head meetings that year. He admitted to being biased in his comments towards the play-in game but I don’t think he was being biased. It’s a raw deal for 162 games to come down to one. It’s even worse if you have to play a team you finished clearly better than. And it’s plain wrong to have to play that same team if it was a club you beat five out of six times in the regular season. If it were one year before last, Jones’s Braves would have secured a best-of-five series with the Washington Nationals. Instead, Jones walked off the field for the last time in his career in a game that shouldn’t be played.

Players Over Fans

I believe that baseball is a player’s game. We are merely the viewers, the fans. The game doesn’t owe us anything, but it owes the players a great deal. To assume that these big leaguers don’t care about winning is to sell them short. Often we think of money as the great absolver and it’s too convenient to waive the best interests of the players because they make a lot of money. I consider professional athletes to be the greatest interns of all-time. Isn’t an internship doing something you love, for no pay, in hopes that it might translate to a job you desire? These ballplayers have been interning for years. They loved what they did before the money and I believe many love it after the payday, too. Many are, in my opinion, invested emotionally in winning.

If Baseball has made these decisions for the fans, they’re wrong in doing so. Baseball should seek to serve their players when making new rules. Baseball should honor the hard work put in during the most strenuous season in professional sports. To pride itself on being a numbers game only to then reduce such a laboring year to the results of an All-Star game and a play-in game is unfaithful and treasonous.

If you’re wondering how I would fix it? The All-Star game should be, forever, an exhibition game. The play-in game should be extended to a best-of-three games series or nixed completely.

Chipper Jones said it best: “We play series.”

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Adam Hawk is on Twitter.