Key Injuries Shuffle the Wild-Card Deck

The seamheads are getting worked up because everything in baseball except the American League West is up for grabs. The traditionalists, of course, won’t let go of their belief that the wild card is blasphemous.

I’m all for the wild card and the extra drama it generates, but I can’t get too hyped about these races because of what’s missing. Namely, about $73 million worth of talent sitting on the disabled list.

You don’t think the New York Yankees would be feeling a little more heat on their backs if the Boston Red Sox had Pedro Martinez on the mound?

Wouldn’t this Chicago Cub-Houston Astro showdown for the National League Central be more fun if Kerry Wood were back to pitch in his home state?

The Minnesota Twins’ small-market feel-good story is on the verge of evaporating as the Twins struggle without Brad Radke and Cristian Guzman.

And the Dodgers might not be so prone to these inopportune losing streaks if they had Kevin Brown, Darren Dreifort, Andy Ashby and James Baldwin in the rotation. I mean, they come to a pivotal point of the season Wednesday and have to send out Giovanni Carrara?

Playoff fever is so widespread that even the Angels are on the fringes, only five games back in the wild-card race. Imagine where they’d be if they had Mo Vaughn for even a single at-bat this season.

If you’re going to the ballpark these days, you shouldn’t be merely disappointed, you should be angry. Baseball teams say they have to keep hiking their ticket prices to meet the demands of the rising payrolls. So you’re being charged for these players, with no refunds forthcoming.

If you wanted to see Brown pitch Wednesday, you had to be at Dodger Stadium two hours before game time, when he threw in the outfield for about 10 minutes.

And how many more times are we going to have to get “SportsCenter” updates about Martinez throwing on the side?

We’re getting to the point where the best players take over teams and get them to the playoffs. You’re already seeing it from such most-valuable-player candidates as Luis Gonzalez, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa.

I’d love to see Martinez, Wood and Brown competing for a Cy Young Award.

The Dodgers’ Chan Ho Park has looked worthy of an award at times this season, including his eight shutout innings Tuesday.

But he’s picking a funky time to go into his home-and-road, Jekyll-and-Hyde routine. He has yielded a total of five earned runs in his last five starts at Dodger Stadium, but he has given up seven runs twice within his three most recent road starts.

Things like that keep him from joining the inner circle of the elite pitchers.

But at least he’s on the mound. Martinez, Brown, Radke and the rest of the guys are missing quite a party. Other than the Seattle Mariners, who are doing their best impression of Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes, no division leader had more than a four-game lead entering Wednesday.

There’s that tight three-way race between the Dodgers, San Francisco and Arizona in the NL West. Philadelphia has taken the NL East lead back from Atlanta, which makes you wonder how they’ll handle multiple baseball-to-football conversions at Veterans Stadium if the Phillies go to the postseason. Even the St. Louis Cardinals, winners of seven in a row, are back in it. The Mark McGwire Traveling Circus is only four games out of first in the NL Central.

The Oakland Athletics are the best argument for the wild card. Without it, their postseason hopes would have been only a fantasy by May. They probably would have traded Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon, and the franchise’s future in the East Bay would be in question.

Instead they kept the nucleus together, added Jermaine Dye and have the best record in baseball since the all-star break.

Will it be an injustice if the Mariners should lose in the playoffs to a team they obliterated during the regular season? No. It happens all the time in the NCAA basketball tournament, and we all love that event. One of the most memorable games in the tournament’s history, Villanova’s upset of Georgetown in the 1985 final, would never have happened if the NCAA stuck to its old ways of inviting only the conference winners.

If the Cubs or the Red Sox miss out on their once-a-century World Series championship because they didn’t have their top pitchers for crucial stretches, that would be an injustice.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com.