A lot of sports are like that now, NFL, MLB, College Basketball, NASCAR. Tournament style plays into the hot team's hand. That's one reason why the MLB brought in the extra wildcard team to try and make the regular season more important. That's also why college Football doesn't want a full tournament, the regular season is important to NCAAF.
To go off topic I love the 4 team playoff in NCAAF. Just about every year there are 3-5 teams that say they should be playing for the National Title and now all of them have a shot. Any more teams and you would have teams that had a much worse regular season win the national title so the regular season becomes meaningless, much like the joke that is getting into the NBA playoffs.