So, here we are, a few days into the baseball playoffs, and the best team in the regular season is nine innings from elimination, and the worst team in the regular season is nine innings from advancing.

Those would be the Angels and Dodgers, respectively, and their experiences so far — and likely short-term futures — remind us what a travesty these five-game “divisional” playoffs series are.

This is a sport that asks teams to play 162 times before it figures out who goes into the postseason, a marathon that identifies without quibble the best teams in the game … then puts them into best-of-five series in which a bobble or a hanging curve or a few bad at-bats can put some clearly lesser opponent into the next round of the playoffs.

The Angels going out, and the Dodgers going on, which is probably what is going to happen this weekend … only brings home how unfair this is.

The Angels entered the playoffs with the best record in baseball, 100-62. The Dodgers entered it with the worst (among the playoffs teams), 84-78. Yet one is about to be humbled and the other exalted. That’s wrong.

I thought the Angels could hang with the Boston Red Sox, this time, especially with home-field advantage, but John Lackey got one up and in to Jason Bay and there went Game 1 … and Frankie Rodriguez, whose decline in pitching power was on display, grooved one to J.D. Drew, and there went Game 2 … and a shift back to Fenway Park, where Angels dreams go to die.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers got a wild Ryan Dempster in Game 1, and took advantage with a James Loney grand slam … then got an ineffective (and probably overworked) Carlos Zambrano in Game 2, and beat him up … and now the cursed Chicago Cubs are one defeat from oblivion — despite the best record in the National League.

Anyone who knows baseball understands that even great teams lose 35 percent of their games. And even great teams have a bad week — or weekend.

In a 162-game season, those bad weeks are overpowered by a team’s general excellence. But if the series is short enough, random events come into play, and those teams that excelled at the marathon of the regular season can get left behind in the sprint that is the postseason — particularly the best-of-five first round.

It wasn’t always like this. Until 1969, the best teams in the National and American leagues went directly to the World Series. That was pure. That was legit.

When baseball got up 24 teams, in 1969, it was decided another round of playoffs was needed to keep fan interest alive, and the leagues were split into two divisions. The idea being that half of the teams in baseball would be out of contention by the All-Star break, if the game organized itself into two 12-team leagues. And then some weird things started happening. Like the 83-79 New York Mets making the 1973 World Series. A team from the “lesser” division could get to the World Series with one hot week.

It was to get worse. When baseball got to 28 teams, in 1993, it went to six divisions and two wild cards, and a third round of playoffs, and that has led to some serious squirrely things.

Like, say, the ragged Dodgers about to eliminate the Cubs and the well-rounded, wonderfully balanced Angels about to go down in Boston.

We can attempt to dissect the handful of games played so far … argue over this or that decision or move or performance. Should Mike Scioscia be playing Howie Kendrick after Kendrick missed so much of the final two months? Or Erik Aybar? Should F-Rod have been asked to finish the eighth when he was going to have to go back out for the ninth (when he gave up the two-run homer to Drew)? Should Lou Piniella of the Cubs have stuck with Zambrano as long as he did?

But there are minor details, and that is the point. It’s just Not Quite Right to have baseball decide its champions this way.

Billy Beane, general manager of the small-market Oakland Athletics often has been criticized for not getting one of his teams — which generally win far more than they lose — to the World Series. But his observations on the topic are germane: You build a team for the regular season, which is the true measure of a team and organization. And then you send it into the playoffs where a couple of odd games knock you out.

What would I do?

This will never, ever happen, because baseball loves the wild card … but I would go back to two divisions in each league and eliminate the extra layer of playoffs. Four playoffs teams, playing two seven-game series to determine a champion. I think that would deliver us something satisfying more often than not. Certainly more often than it does now.

The Dodgers and Angels are a game away from fates they don’t deserve. The fact that they are in the same market brings the topic into focus.