The right to choose your opponent doesn't bug me, as long as they don't make it gimmicky as other people have said. If an AL East team has 84 wins facing good opponents and an AL Central team has 85 wins while racking up 30 wins against KC and Detroit, it obviously makes more sense to want to face the Central team. This is baseball's lame response to the problems created by the dumb scheduling.
What I have a problem with is the rest of the format. Especially the WC home team under the imbalanced schedule. Imagine a scenario like this:
NYY - 100 wins
TB - 87
Sox - 86
Jays - 80
O's - 50
Cle - 89
Min - 88
Chi - 75
KC - 50
Det - 50
Hou - 95
A's - 87
Angels - 85
Tex - 80
M's - 70
So because the Twins run up their record against s*** opponents, they get the huge advantage of being the home wild card team. While legit teams with 85 wins don't even make it.
If you're going to put in so damn many wild card spots, don't have teams with wildly different schedules competing for the same spots! I know the NFL has this problem but there are only 16 regular season games. The NHL and NBA have figured out a nice balance between rivalry and strength of schedule and they aren't exactly run by geniuses.
My proposal would be:
-Expand to 32 teams
- 4 divisions of 8
- face division opponents 12 times, non-division league opponents 8 times, have a few interleague games
-2 division winners each league that get the bye, four wild card spots compete in round 1
-top team in the league gets to pick the opponent for the next round. Or don't pick them. I don't care.
Or if the MLB absolutely MUST have the Yankees and Red Sox face each other once a month or else the world will combust, then make 4 "leagues" of 8. Where you play your seven division opponents a bunch of times and everyone else 3 times. Top 3 teams in each division/league make the playoffs. But the format still follows the AL/NL World Series split. Top 3 teams in each league should be good enough so that a good team doesn't miss the playoffs unfairly.