The early ratings for the baseball playoffs should convince Bud Selig and his pals to keep the one-and-done format for the wildcard teams.

While a best-of-three series might be fairer, opening with two winner-take-all games gave the postseason a high dose of urgency from the first pitch. And it carried over into the weekend.

From TBS:

TBS’s exclusive live doubleheader coverage of Major League Baseball’s first-ever Wild Card presented by Budweiser averaged 4,608,000 total viewers, up 61 percent over last year’s 2,866,000 viewers for the first day of the MLB Postseason. The average 3.0 U.S. household rating for the Wild Card doubleheader was an increase of 58 percent over last year’s 1.9 rating for the first day of the postseason.

Why the big jump? In a 5 or 7-game series, if you miss the first game, so what? There’s more coming.

But a one-gamer with all of its drama and storylines (Will it be Chipper Jones’ last game?), and you’re there.

The format sucked fans in, as TBS’ ratings are up 16 percent for the first three days of the playoffs, increasing from 2.5 to 2.9.

Is one-game for the wildcard winners fair? Probably not. But if I’m MLB, I’m not going to mess with it.