Baseball-Pirates rue being victims of playoff format

Oct 8 (Reuters) - The Pittsburgh Pirates had the second best regular season record in Major League Baseball, but one playoff game against an in-form pitcher on Wednesday ended their season abruptly. For the second successive year, the Pirates had to take their chances in a one-off Wild Card game. Last year they ran into San Francisco Giants left-hander Madison Bumgarner, who, a few weeks later, clinched the World Series for his team. This time they encountered Chicago Cubs right-hander Jake Arrieta, who came into the game as the hottest pitcher in the majors. Both times the Pirates were shutout. "Sport's hard, life's not fair," a philosophical Pirates manager Clint Hurdle told reporters. "This is an outlier season for sure, where you have the three teams (St. Louis Cardinals, Pirates and the Cubs) with the best records in one division (the National League Central)." Under the current format, the top team in each of the three NL divisions advances directly to a best-of-five Division Series, while the two teams with the next best records meet in the Wild Card game. This season, the Cardinals topped the NL Central with a 100-62 record, followed by Pittsburgh at 98-64 and the Cubs at 97-65. Both the Pirates and Cubs had the second and third best records in the majors, but were victims of the playoff structure. Pittsburgh starting pitcher Gerrit Cole lamented his team's situation. "It's unfortunate," he said. That's why we fought so hard to try to win this division, because you never truly know what can happen in these games. "Bumgarner had a fantastic year last year. Jake's been on a roll. "That's a little bit of a pitfall...that's it's a one-game playoff. It's unfortunate. "Right now it pretty much sucks." (Reporting by Andrew Both in Cary, North Carolina; editing by Amlan Chakraborty)