Leadoff hitter Juan Pierre is batting .305 in the postseason for the Marlins. AP

I better begin by giving all due respect to the Florida Marlins. They took out Barry Bonds and the Giants, then beat the Cubs when Chicago had Mark Prior and Kerry Wood lined up on full rest at home for Games 6 and 7 of the NLCS. The Marlins earned their way to the World Series. They're fun to watch.

OK, now here's the problem: Florida is the fifth wild-card team to reach the World Series in the past seven years. Wild cards have accounted for 36 percent of the World Series slots over that span and 27 percent since 1995, when the format was first used. Those percentages are too high when you consider that with an even playing field (four divisions, no wild card) the success rate is 25 percent -- and an even playing field should never apply to wild cards.

The wild card has succeeded in getting more teams involved in pennant races, which spreads interest in late-season baseball among more markets, which is good for the game. But the system needs to be reviewed, and the fundamental question is this: Are wild-card teams penalized enough in the postseason for finishing in second place during the regular season? The answer appears to be no.

If not for Hank Blalock, the wild-card Marlins would have had homefield advantage in the World Series over the Yankees, who tied Atlanta for the best record in baseball. The only penalty for Florida was that it could not have homefield advantage in the Division Series or LCS. The same would have held true for the Cubs, a division champion, if it played San Francisco in the NLCS.

The Marlins were eight games out of first place as early as May 9, after playing only 37 games. They never got closer. They were 15 1/2 games out in July. They were a non-factor in the NL East race and their fans -- the third-worst in baseball according to attendance figures -- knew it. And yet Florida brought a rested pitching staff into the Division Series and continued the unsettling trend of "inferior" teams winning the best-of-five first-round series. In Division Series matchups, the team with the better regular-season record is 14-21, including 2-13 since 2000. (There was one series among teams with the same record.)

What the wild card and Division Series have done is reduce the importance of the 162-game season. How many times have you heard players say they don't care if they get into the playoffs as the division champion or the wild card? That's the tipoff that something isn't right. There should be a difference.

That's why baseball should study the idea of adding a second wild card in each league. The purpose of expanding the field would be to put an obstacle in the way of the wild cards -- to penalize them and make sure they don't get the treatment of a division champion.

Here's how it would have worked this year. In the NL, the Astros would have won the second wild -card spot. On Monday, Sept. 29, the day after the regular season ended, the Marlins would have hosted the Astros at Pro Player Stadium. The winner would have advanced to play the Giants. The Marlins would have started Josh Beckett against Roy Oswalt in the play-in game. The winning team would have left immediately after the game for San Francisco, where it would have played the Giants in Game 1 of the Division Series the next day. Now, the play-in winners' ace pitcher is not available until Game 4. And its bullpen may not be fully rested for Game 1. There is no travel day. Now you've established a real disincentive to be the wild card -- to say nothing of the possibility that you might lose that play-in game and go home without having hosted a postseason game.

In the AL, the Red Sox would have hosted Seattle, which would have meant that Pedro Martinez could not have started two games in the Division Series against Oakland if Boston had beaten the Mariners.

With two wild cards and a play-in game, second-place teams get second-class treatment, which is how it should be when six months of an unbalanced schedule determines division champions. The current system is proving to be too easy for a wild card to get through to the World Series.

A cutting-edge scandal

Baseball has its fingers crossed while it closely monitors the IRS investigation into a San Francisco-area laboratory that may have supplied world-class athletes with the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG. "I just hope we don't come out of this with a black eye," said one nervous high-ranking Major League Baseball official.

Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and two other unidentified ballplayers have been subpoenaed in the case. THG had been undetectable in steroid tests until a source turned over a syringe of the substance to U.S. Anti-Doping Agency officials. Once officials began to test for it, six athletes immediately came up positive, which is considered an extremely high number.

Baseball had not been testing for THG, but will likely do so next year if, as expected, it is classified as a Class III controlled substance.

"The IRS got involved presumably because of the cash transactions involved," the baseball source said, alluding to income unreported by BALCO Laboratories. "Now if [THG] were not yet classified as a Class III drug, would the DEA have any jurisdiction there? I don't know. The legal issues are fuzzy. That's why it's been an IRS-driven case at this point and not DEA."

Athletes who cheat will always strive to be one step ahead of the testing police. Given the huge salaries in baseball and the proliferation of knowledgeable, connected personal trainers hired by ballplayers, it would be naive to think that some baseball players were not availing themselves of the cutting-edge performance-enhancing drugs typically associated with track and field. By taking a designer steroid, which has a slightly altered DNA code so it does not have a known marker in drug tests and thus does not appear on the official list of Class III substances, a ballplayer can say "Go ahead and test me" and "I don't take steroids" and keep a straight face about it. His soul, however, is another matter.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci covers baseball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com.