【male auto-eroticism】

If you're a Toronto Blue Jays fan today,male auto-eroticism you love the MLB playoffs.

You love the sudden-death drama of the Jays' walk-off victory over Baltimore on Tuesday night. You love the intensity of a one-game, winner-take-all playoff. You're thinking, 'If the Jays can survive that, they'll be unstoppable.'

On the other hand, if you're an Orioles fan, you hate the MLB playoffs a lot right now. Indeed, Toronto's walk-off win over Baltimore contains all the agony and ecstasy of the modern MLB Playoffs, everything fans loathe and love about its current format.

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Each year, the top team from each division — three in each league — gets an automatic trip to the Division Series. Major league baseball traditionally allowed the fourth best team in each league, the wild card, a Division Series bid as well.

But in 2012, MLB decided to make things dicier.

Now, the fourth and fifth best teams in each league battle it out in a one-game playoff to determine who advances to the Division Series. There are two wild cards.

And as the Orioles found out on Tuesday, your 162-game, 89-win season is meaningless if you lose the wild card play-in game. You play an extra game just to go home.

While the Orioles were bemoaning their loss and ended season, the Jays got to celebrate, as the cool, interactive 360-degree video below shows.

We'll see a parallel scene in Flushing, New York, on Wednesday night after the Mets and the San Francisco Giants battle it out in the National League Wild Card game. One team will move a step closer to the World Series, another will see its season unceremoniously ended after just one postseason game.

Now, by nature, baseball is a sport won with patience and endurance.

Games are long. Teams face each other in two- to four-game series. Seasons are a whopping 162 games. And when you have that many opportunities to win, there's always a 'we'll regroup and go get 'em tomorrow' mentality after a loss.

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Teams aren't judged on a game-by-game basis, as is the case with football. But when it comes to the Wild Card game, they are. After a grueling 162 baseball games, four teams are told they can't move on if they don't win this one.

But here's the catch — some teams are built to win series, and some teams are built to win one game.

The Orioles pitching staff, for example, ranked 19th in ERA during the regular season and lacks starting rotation depth. They're beatable in a five- or seven-game playoff series. But the Orioles hit 253 home runs in 2016 – the most in baseball — and boast the league's best closer in Zach Britton. Home runs and elite relief pitching are difference makers in one-game playoffs.

Manny Machado and the Orioles went home because they lost one game in their 163-game season. Credit: Gerry Angus/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

On Tuesday night, the Orioles held a one-run lead thanks to a home run from Mark Trumbo. But the Orioles' below-average starting pitching blew that lead an inning later, and proceeded to lose the game in extra innings. Britton, somewhat curiously, never pitched.

Even if the Orioles had beat the Jays on Tuesday night, their long term prospects would have been tough.

The Blue Jays, on the other hand, put up the sixth-best ERA in baseball, and the fourth-best home run tally. The Blue Jays are balanced. They have enough pitching depth to win a series -- and the pop to win individual games.

There are critics of this single-elimination Wild Card format, of course, who argue a one-game playoff is not a true assessment of a team's strength, even if it does add entertainment value.

Love Wild Card game for tension/drama, while still thinking it unfair that after 162 games a season rides on 1 game rather than a series.

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) October 4, 2016

.@awitrado on Wild Card: "It is amazing for television. To ask them to play 162 but then bring it to one game though is a bit unfair."

— ESPN 99.1 (@ESPN991SF) October 4, 2016

It's horribly unfair and hardly a proper representation of the regular season grind, but the MLB #Wildcard is sort of badass. #BALvsTOR

— Pete Fiutak (@PeteFiutak) October 5, 2016

They have a point.

Perhaps the best example of this contradiction will take place Wednesday night, when the two National League Wild Cards — the Giants and Mets — enter the do-or-die, one-game playoff.

At one point in 2016, the Mets featured the best starting rotation in baseball, with an elite hurler taking the mound every day. But injuries shelved more than half of the Mets' rotation, so now the season is riding on their ace, Noah Syndergaard.

The Giants have an ace of their own in Madison Bumgarner, making this wild card game a marquee pitching matchup between two of the best on the planet. It will make great television.

Syndergaard's dominance might be enough to carry the Mets to the next round. In a longer series, though, the Giants' starting pitching depth would give them a clear edge over the Mets' broken rotation.

New York might survive this wild card game, but they aren't built to win a five-game series. The Giants might be overmatched by Syndergaard on Wednesday, but have all the tools necessary to compete with any other team in an extended series.

Who is the betterteam, between the Orioles and Jays, between the Mets and Giants? It won't be decided in one game. Even when one team emerges victorious, its performance in the next rounds will tell all.

Some teams are built to win one game. Others are built to win series.

But this is why the MLB playoffs are awesome and, ultimately, accurate. Even if the wild card game is imperfect, the league's best team still hoists the trophy at the end of it all.