57 replies to this topic

[Farmball]

How many teams were out of it by the time the calendar turned to September 1st? August 1st? I was trying to convince someone yesterday that the MLB should adopt a playoff format similar to the NFL (though the 1st round should be 3 games, DS should be 5, and CS should be 7). The bottom line is that you have more teams in the playoff hunt meaning more fans are engaged. This could financially help some of the small-mid market teams that would otherwise be out of it if people are still attending games late in the season. Additional playoff game revenue for another few teams and the fun of having your team make the playoffs for the first time in X years. There's some parity in the NL but with the AL, it seems like we see the same mix of 6 or so teams year-after-year with the occasional surprise.

edit: Gammons article from this AM on the same subject: http://sports.espn.g...ebook?page=bbtn

Edited by Farmball, 23 September 2009 - 08:48 AM.

[da funk]

Gammons' suggestion is to have an extra wild card team per league to make 5 teams per league. These would play off in a 3 game series first. Are you suggesting 6 teams from each league, ie introducing 2 extra teams?

[brienc]

Personally, the only thing that I would change would be making the first round 4 out of 7. However, there are a lot of strong economic arguments in favor of expanding the playoffs, so I expect extra rounds of playoffs to happen eventually.

The best way to go about it would be to start the regular season a week earlier. With the slight stretch of including Baltimore and Washington as warm weather sites, half of the ballparks in each league are either domes or in a warmer climate. These teams should be at home for the first two weeks of the season. I know this was tried, and was considered to be unfair to the teams from the colder areas, but it's a lot less unfair than going to Japan to open the season, and MLB seems ok with that.

[zenter]

How many teams were out of it by the time the calendar turned to September 1st? August 1st? I was trying to convince someone yesterday that the MLB should adopt a playoff format similar to the NFL (though the 1st round should be 3 games, DS should be 5, and CS should be 7). The bottom line is that you have more teams in the playoff hunt meaning more fans are engaged. This could financially help some of the small-mid market teams that would otherwise be out of it if people are still attending games late in the season. Additional playoff game revenue for another few teams and the fun of having your team make the playoffs for the first time in X years. There's some parity in the NL but with the AL, it seems like we see the same mix of 6 or so teams year-after-year with the occasional surprise.

edit: Gammons article from this AM on the same subject: http://sports.espn.g...ebook?page=bbtn

Sounds like an idea I had over a year ago, along with a bunch of other proposals. Doug Melvin's point of "watered-down"playoffs falls on deaf ears (with me), though. The imbalanced schedule means each division polarizes internally, and one cannot honestly tell if the Rangers are indeed as good as the Rays, or simply benefit from playing the Mariners and As a lot.

My ideas, in brief:

1) No Interleague Play
2) No Unbalanced Schedules
3) No Divisions
4) Move Team back to AL (this is hardest)
5) Move ASG to December
6) Shorten Season to 154 - not necessary, but equalizes games-per-opponent (11 * 14 = 154)
7) Add 2 Teams in AL and NL to Post-Season, so top 6 in each league, purely by record.
- Best-of-3 "Wildcard Series" (WCS)
- Top 2 teams in each league get "bye" from WCS
- DS, CS, and World Series exactly the same

Explanations, etc, at the link above.

Obviously, not all ideas are truly feasible or can be implemented today, but I think it would carry-through what already happens naturally - the Sox see the Angels as a rival as much as they see the Yanks as one. Why even have divisions anymore? The Rays and Jays are unfairly discriminated against because of geography (they each play 36 games against the Sox and Yanks).

[BucketOBalls]

I don't think this would be a good idea.

1)A 5 game series already is a bit flukey. A 3 game series would be worse. If your gonna do this, you might as well just expand to 8 teams, make the playoffs 4 rounds of 7 each and just call it a second season like the NBA/NHL do. A 3 game series would either have no off days(and be a pretty big disadvantage to the WC teams, as their rotations would be all screwed up), or it would cause layoff problems for the other contenders if it took up more actual days. Either way, it's an incredibly bad idea. Just having 4 rounds would be better, but that would require shortening the season or cause other problems with a longer season.

2)I'd rather not baseball become like the NBA/NFL. I think every team in the playoffs should have a decent chance of winning it all, and in other sports....those low seeds really don't. A fluke will happen every once in a while, but that is not justification. Also, the NFL is more random in this regard, due to the 1-and-done format. I like the current system,where each team in the playoffs actually has a respectable chance to win. (Wild card's being at a 5-10% disadvantage is ok. In other sports, the low seeds have something like a >10% shot at going all the way)


It would be nice if you could ignore teams from bad divisions. This would reward teams that have done well, but are in the wrong place. Does any AL central team actually deserve to be in the playoffs? I'm not sure how you could do this though.

[crow216]

The playoffs are already too long and dragged out. IF they add anything, they better remove a handful of off days.

[cannonball 1729]

There's some parity in the NL but with the AL, it seems like we see the same mix of 6 or so teams year-after-year with the occasional surprise.

In the last three years alone, there were 9 different teams that made the playoffs in the AL: Bos, NYY, Det, Oak, Min, Cle, LAA, TB, ChW. In fact, only five teams haven't: Bal, KC, Tor, Sea, and Tex. No team made the playoffs in all three seasons; in fact, only three teams made it twice (Sox, Yanks, Angels).

In the NL, there have also been 9 different teams in the playoffs in the last three years: StL, SD, NYM, LAD, Col, Ari, Phi, ChC, and Mil. None of those teams made it all three years, either; the three that made it in two different years were the Dodgers, Cubs, and Phillies.

How many teams were out of it by the time the calendar turned to September 1st? August 1st?

Since the start of August, there have been 18 teams (8 AL, 10 NL) that have been within four games of a playoff spot at some point: Bos, NYY, LAA, Det, Phi, StL, LAD, Col, SF, ChC, ChW, Fla, Tex, TB, Min, Atl, Mil, and Hou. All but two of those (Mil and Hou) got to within three games, which is essentially one great series away from the lead.

There are twelve teams not listed above: Tor, Bal, KC, Cle, Sea, Oak, NYM, Was, Pit, Cin, SD, Ariz. Almost all of those teams are terrible. If we expanded the playoffs to six teams, we would basically be doing it so that these teams could feel like they had a chance. Here's the thing, though: how many of those teams actually deserve to think that they have a chance? More importantly, for how many of those teams do you think it would have even mattered? Other than the Mariners, none of those teams would have even been within seven games of the sixth playoff spot in August or September.

Right now, an AL team one game under .500 would be 4 games out of the playoffs under this new 6 team format. I am more than happy to go on record as saying that if a team is under .500 on Sept. 23, they should be done for the season. If there's one thing I object to under the current system, it is the fact that a team can go 80-82 and win a really crappy division as the Padres almost did a couple of years ago. This would only serve to exacerbate the problem.

A major difference between baseball and every other sport (but especially football) is that baseball teams' winning percentages are closer than any other sport. The absolute worst team in modern history still won 25% of their games. If you put them in a 3-game series with, say, this year's Red Sox (a .600 team to this point), they would still win the series about 20% of the time (actually, 18.2% if mathematics is to be believed). This is the benefit of having an extremely long season in baseball; the .600 teams will separate themselves from the .550 teams, which they might not do if the season were shorter. One of the reasons baseball has shied away from expanded playoffs is that short series are a terrible way to determine who is the better baseball team. If we were to expand the playoffs to include 12 teams, we either get:

1.) Two teams with a 10-game difference in W/L record playing an absolute crapshoot of a series to determine whose season should be over, or
2.) Playoffs into mid-November,

or both.

Edited by cannonball 1729, 23 September 2009 - 12:35 PM.

[Gdiguy]

I don't think this would be a good idea.

1)A 5 game series already is a bit flukey. A 3 game series would be worse. If your gonna do this, you might as well just expand to 8 teams, make the playoffs 4 rounds of 7 each and just call it a second season like the NBA/NHL do. A 3 game series would either have no off days(and be a pretty big disadvantage to the WC teams, as their rotations would be all screwed up), or it would cause layoff problems for the other contenders if it took up more actual days. Either way, it's an incredibly bad idea. Just having 4 rounds would be better, but that would require shortening the season or cause other problems with a longer season.

Both of those issues are the reason people WANT something like that, though; right now, there's zero penalty to being a wild-card team (other than not having home-field, which is the same as the third divisional winner), and a lot of people would like there to be at least some reason to want to win the division as opposed to cruising to a wild-card berth. Having to blow your top 2 starters on a pre-playoff round would fit that bill nicely.

Yeah, it'll be flukey, but I'm not sure it would be hugely worse than the 5 game series, or even the 7

[zenter]

I don't think this would be a good idea.

1)A 5 game series already is a bit flukey. A 3 game series would be worse. If your gonna do this, you might as well just expand to 8 teams, make the playoffs 4 rounds of 7 each and just call it a second season like the NBA/NHL do. A 3 game series would either have no off days(and be a pretty big disadvantage to the WC teams, as their rotations would be all screwed up), or it would cause layoff problems for the other contenders if it took up more actual days. Either way, it's an incredibly bad idea. Just having 4 rounds would be better, but that would require shortening the season or cause other problems with a longer season.

2)I'd rather not baseball become like the NBA/NFL. I think every team in the playoffs should have a decent chance of winning it all, and in other sports....those low seeds really don't. A fluke will happen every once in a while, but that is not justification. Also, the NFL is more random in this regard, due to the 1-and-done format. I like the current system,where each team in the playoffs actually has a respectable chance to win. (Wild card's being at a 5-10% disadvantage is ok. In other sports, the low seeds have something like a >10% shot at going all the way)


It would be nice if you could ignore teams from bad divisions. This would reward teams that have done well, but are in the wrong place. Does any AL central team actually deserve to be in the playoffs? I'm not sure how you could do this though.

1) Good point. I was merely thinking about macro-scale competition. The mechanics of this would need to be delicately handled. I think the downside of the 3-game short series could be offset by the upside of interesting strategy and competition with playoff rotations.

2) I don't think this dilution is in danger of happening. The season is still SO much longer than the playoffs, as a percentage of games played. Even if you add a 3-game series to the schedule (going from a max of 19 to 22 games), you're really adding but 3 calendar days to the schedule (which can be taken from off-days).

3) Ignoring teams from bad divisions: This is my biggest problem, and why it's time to end tyranny of divisions, balance the schedules, and just take the top 4 or 6 teams into the post-season.

[Rudy's Curve]

It's fine that there's an automatic qualifier for winning your division (otherwise divisional play would be pointless, and no divisions means a lot more travel), but qualifiers should simply be seeded 1 to 4 on record. It's absurd that the Sox wouldn't have HFA against the Tigers in a possible LCS.

Edited by Rudy's Curve, 23 September 2009 - 12:39 PM.

[BucketOBalls]

Both of those issues are the reason people WANT something like that, though; right now, there's zero penalty to being a wild-card team (other than not having home-field, which is the same as the third divisional winner), and a lot of people would like there to be at least some reason to want to win the division as opposed to cruising to a wild-card berth. Having to blow your top 2 starters on a pre-playoff round would fit that bill nicely.

Yeah, it'll be flukey, but I'm not sure it would be hugely worse than the 5 game series, or even the 7

If your gonna penalize the 4th worst team in league....why bother even having them play? They would have like a 20% chance of moving on.

What the playoffs really say is: We think one of these 4 teams is the best, we acknowledge that there is enough luck/scheduling diff/etc that it could be any of the 4. And we are gonna have this little playoff to figure out which one it is. Teams deserve credit for winning the division, but that could very well be luck. Or the WC could be better than one of the division winners(this actually seems to be pretty common). In the extreme case, suppose a team wins the division on tie breaker due to winning the season series due to a bad call.

If team doesn't have a chance to win it all, they shouldn't be in the playoffs. You should get a small bonus for winning the division, but nothing extreme like your opponent having to use their best starters before starting the series.


I think this is a function of the races being weak this year. This isn't always the case though, there have been 1-game playoffs for the WC the last two years and increasing the number of playoff teams would have lost those. Sometimes the division races are better, sometimes it's the WC races. There isn't any perfect system that will give 8 good September races every year. Sorry.

[TheYaz67]

My ideas, in brief:

1) No Interleague Play


4) Move Team back to AL (this is hardest)

I think even with your idea of staggered schedules, this (having 15 teams per league, meaning every day of each season at least 2 teams are not playing somewhere) becomes more problematic than you are assuming. I think this might cause more travel in some cases, and with there having to be constant "rolling" days off (rather that the usual mondays and thursdays), teams are going to be upset that they for instance are not playing 3 Sunday home games because of the new system - the problem being if those are their #1 day for ticket sales, and other teams do not have the same number of "premium" days off, you would have some pretty mad owners (unless you compensate them financially) and also possibly fans who would bemoan the loss of home day games....

[zenter]

It's fine that there's an automatic qualifier for winning your division (otherwise divisional play would be pointless, and no divisions means a lot more travel), but qualifiers should simply be seeded 1 to 4 on record. It's absurd that the Sox wouldn't have HFA against the Tigers in a possible LCS.

Not necessarily. It means longer travel, and smarter scheduling, but there's no reason the company which is paid millions of ducats to make the schedule shouldn't be able to manage this.

If your gonna penalize the 4th worst team in league....why bother even having them play? They would have like a 20% chance of moving on.

Doesn't the current system give the wild card equal footing rather than the appropriate second-class status? HFA is too small a factor in the post-season, if we look back at the results. Give the top two teams a bye from the first round, and let's see if the extra 3 days of rest helps or hurts them. This gives the #3 and #4 teams a reason to fight for a top spot, and the middle teams more reason to fight #5 and #6 for a playoff spot (in my 6-team scenario).

EDIT: Saw Yaz's post.

I think even with your idea of staggered schedules, this (having 15 teams per league, meaning every day of each season at least 2 teams are not playing somewhere) becomes more problematic than you are assuming. I think this might cause more travel in some cases, and with there having to be constant "rolling" days off (rather that the usual mondays and thursdays), teams are going to be upset that they for instance are not playing 3 Sunday home games because of the new system - the problem being if those are their #1 day for ticket sales, and other teams do not have the same number of "premium" days off, you would have some pretty mad owners (unless you compensate them financially) and also possibly fans who would bemoan the loss of home day games....

I totally agree, and don't think it's reasonably feasible. I just liked the math of it resolving nicely to 154 games. With the 162-game schedule, they can still have a largely-balanced schedule (13 opponents * 12 = 156, OR 15 opponents * 10 = 150), and preference "divisional rivals" for the remaining (6 AL or 12 NL) games.

Edited by zenter, 23 September 2009 - 01:25 PM.

[Gdiguy]

If your gonna penalize the 4th worst team in league....why bother even having them play? They would have like a 20% chance of moving on.

What the playoffs really say is: We think one of these 4 teams is the best, we acknowledge that there is enough luck/scheduling diff/etc that it could be any of the 4. And we are gonna have this little playoff to figure out which one it is. Teams deserve credit for winning the division, but that could very well be luck. Or the WC could be better than one of the division winners(this actually seems to be pretty common). In the extreme case, suppose a team wins the division on tie breaker due to winning the season series due to a bad call.

If team doesn't have a chance to win it all, they shouldn't be in the playoffs. You should get a small bonus for winning the division, but nothing extreme like your opponent having to use their best starters before starting the series.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, and it's probably a bit too much of a swing towards the penalizing side; but to play devil's advocate, if you're starting with the assumption (as I would say a majority of baseball people do) that winning the division should confer an advantage, the current system is ridiculous and needs to be changed in some way.

Which I'd argue is actually more correct - with your point, if you're worried enough about 'luck/scheduling diff/etc', then why should there be a wild-card team at all? Regular season play is really the BEST way to determine which team is better; if you were going to ask which team was better this year, Red Sox or Yankees, would you trust a 7 game series or 162 regular season games? The luck / scheduling diff means that you aren't really sure which of the division leaders is the best (playing in a harder division will give you a worse W/L record than in an easier division), so you want to have a playoff between them. However, you already know that the WC team isn't better than the division leader from their own division, so why should you bother with them?

The answer, of course (besides your extreme example, which is only a concern because they don't play tie-breaking games for division titles now that it doesn't matter as much), is that the wild-card makes the end of the season more exciting, lets MLB sell more playoff broadcasting rights, and lets a team into the playoffs that legitimately might be the 2nd best team in the division. They might win, either because they get lucky or because they're a better team RIGHT NOW than the other team, but let's not pretend that injecting a bit of luck into the wild-card playoff entry makes the playoffs as a whole significantly less random than they already are (does anyone really think the '06 cardinals were the best team in MLB that year?)

I think this is the problem MLB has had; it's difficult to come up with something that's a little penalty for WC teams, whereas having no penalty or a huge penalty is fairly straightforward

Edited by Gdiguy, 23 September 2009 - 01:57 PM.

[drbretto]

I thinkthey have already come up with the perfect balance of having more teams in it late and having the regular season still mean something. The only thing I would change about the playoffs is making the DS 7 games.

[cannonball 1729]

Not necessarily. It means longer travel, and smarter scheduling, but there's no reason the company which is paid millions of ducats to make the schedule shouldn't be able to manage this.

No such company exists. MLB allows anyone to submit a schedule (as long as it incorporates all of the quirks like "Boston has to be home on Patriots' Day" and "The Vikings need to have the Metrodome for certain days in September"), and then they pick the best and pay the winners a couple hundred thousand. If I recall, there was a husband and wife team that won every year until a couple of southern professors beat them a couple of years ago. I have no idea who won this year.

Also, there's pretty much no way that forcing a team to play 30 more games out of division doesn't result in more travel. "Longer travel" is more travel with different words.

Doesn't the current system give the wild card equal footing rather than the appropriate second-class status? HFA is too small a factor in the post-season, if we look back at the results. Give the top two teams a bye from the first round, and let's see if the extra 3 days of rest helps or hurts them. This gives the #3 and #4 teams a reason to fight for a top spot, and the middle teams more reason to fight #5 and #6 for a playoff spot (in my 6-team scenario).

Why isn't HFA enough? It certainly stacks the deck in favor of the home team without making the games absurd. The home team wins about 54% of the time (obviously meaning that the road team wins 46%); that's about the difference between the Rangers and A's this year. That's a pretty big handicap.

As BucketofBalls points out, if the #3 team has to blow two starters and then play the #2 team, what's the point of playing the second round? You might as well force the #3 team to play the second round without a center fielder or force their pitchers to throw with weights on their arms. We give the division winners HFA because we want the division to count for something, and we have the wildcard so that we can guarantee that the two best teams in each league have a chance to be playing for the pennant (in fact, we make sure that two teams from the same division can't play each other in the first round in case one of the divisions is much better than the others).

The problem of trying to create a minor handicap in baseball is that the results will be negligible because the differences in winning percentages between baseball teams (especially playoff teams) are so small. HFA is a big deal, turning an average team into the Rangers at home and the A's on the road, but as the last two series between the A's and Rangers has shown, that signal can often be overridden by a whole bunch of noise in a short series.

Edited by cannonball 1729, 23 September 2009 - 02:24 PM.

[snowmanny]

Two points:

I've heard a lot of proposals about having some sort of additional wild-card playoff (between the number one 2nd place team and the next team with the best record amongst non-division winners), anything from one game to three games. Now, last year, for example,
we had the Mets going 3-5 the last week of the season while the Brewers went 6-1 to catch them and take the wild card. That was pretty exciting, and having
a playoff between these teams instead would have added, in my opinion, nothing. On the AL side we had the Red Sox burying the Yankees for the wild card, but if we'd one of these playoffs, we would have had that last meaningless Sox-Yankees series, followed by some playoff between the teams to determine what? Whether the Yankees could get lucky? Again, adding nothing. If you actually look at how this sort of system would play out, what would be likely to happen is the rendering the of regular season even less interesting, especially the stretch run.

IF they come up with some contrivance to penalize the WC team, the franchise most likely to suffer is the Red Sox, who have to deal with the #1 Payroll Yankees year in year out. It's really not fair for the team with the second or third best record in the league to have to play some additional round while the team with the fourth or fifth best record gets a bye. If MLB pulled something like this I would hope that John Henry got off his twitter and asked for the Red Sox to be moved to the AL Central. Yes, I know he'd never do it, but I am dead serious.

[Spacemans Bong]

No, no, no, no, no.

We would be letting bad teams into the playoffs. Do you seriously want the Chicago Cubs to have a fucking chance at the playoffs? Is there any rational reason why they deserve a chance at the playoffs?

Besides, with basically every team who wins over 88 games being guaranteed a playoff spot, the regular season becomes even more meaningless. Interest in the NFL is because of gambling and the short length of the regular season. It's far more likely to turn baseball into NBA or the NHL, where absolutely nobody outside the hardcore gives a shit until the playoffs because every half-decent team qualifies.

[zenter]

No such company exists. MLB allows anyone to submit a schedule (as long as it incorporates all of the quirks like "Boston has to be home on Patriots' Day" and "The Vikings need to have the Metrodome for certain days in September"), and then they pick the best and pay the winners a couple hundred thousand. If I recall, there was a husband and wife team that won every year until a couple of southern professors beat them a couple of years ago. I have no idea who won this year.

The Sports Scheduling Group won in 2005, 07, and 08. I understood the bidding process to mean that they sent bids before finalizing schedules. I'm now not sure which is correct. Either way, part of the reason scheduling has become so complex is the unbalanced schedule. Keep in mind that this was not the case prior to 1994. Balance the schedule, and schedules can have some normalcy.

Also, there's pretty much no way that forcing a team to play 30 more games out of division doesn't result in more travel. "Longer travel" is more travel with different words.

I took "more travel" to mean "higher number of hours in transit." Considering the times we've complained about the schedule (for example, the Sox having a homestand, a series in Texas, then Baltimore, back to Boston, then TB, etc.) in the unbalanced-schedule-and-interleague-play-era, travel seems quite inefficient to me. An intelligent schedule-maker need not make the teams travel so unintelligently, especially if the schedules were balanced and interleague eliminated. Making schedules work more geographically-aware (as it was pre-94) would resolve travel concerns, and make road trips more like road trips.

Why isn't HFA enough? It certainly stacks the deck in favor of the home team without making the games absurd. The home team wins about 54% of the time (obviously meaning that the road team wins 46%); that's about the difference between the Rangers and A's this year. That's a pretty big handicap.

In 15 years, among 30 possible WS contenders, 9 have been WC winners (30%). Of the 15 winners, 4 have been WC winners (27%). If you assume that WC teams have an equal chance of winning as any other team, these results are well within a reasonable range. If you assume that HFA should make a difference, then the data shows that WC winners are not affected nearly enough.

I know penalizing WC teams would affect the Sox more than most other teams, which is why (at the very least) I would kill the unbalanced schedule and divisions. I mean, the best teams should go to the playoffs, regardless of location. (Let's remember - the braves were in the AL West for ages, long after moving to Atlanta.) If we don't want to penalize the WC team, then let's end the whole practice completely - I'm not tied to sending more than 4 teams to the playoffs. Failing radical ideas, why not, at bare minimum, send the top four teams per league (with a balanced-schedule)? What's the downside?

EDIT: Regarding 54/46 H/R splits of the MLB, I would add that 19 is not a sufficient number of games for this split to be statistically-relevant. Out of a maxmum of 19 playoff games played, if the home team wins every game, we're talking an average record of 10-9 H-R, or fewer than it takes to win it all (11). HFA is not statistically significant in baseball playoffs.

EDIT 2: 2006 is a great microcosm of the problem. 1/4 teams with HFA won DS. 0/2 teams with HFA won the CS. 0/1 teams with HFA won the WS. And the Cardinals, 2 wins from being 81-81, won because they played in the weakest division in baseball.

Edited by zenter, 23 September 2009 - 04:17 PM.

[Farmball]

No, no, no, no, no.

We would be letting bad teams into the playoffs. Do you seriously want the Chicago Cubs to have a fucking chance at the playoffs? Is there any rational reason why they deserve a chance at the playoffs?

Besides, with basically every team who wins over 88 games being guaranteed a playoff spot, the regular season becomes even more meaningless. Interest in the NFL is because of gambling and the short length of the regular season. It's far more likely to turn baseball into NBA or the NHL, where absolutely nobody outside the hardcore gives a shit until the playoffs because every half-decent team qualifies.

I've seen a lot of good counter-points on this topic but I can't agree with this one. Is there any doubt that the Rangers or Mariners would give the Tigers a good series? Besides, the Rangers have a BETTER record than the Tigers and if that holds through the rest of the season, it will be the 5th straight year that a team has missed the Wild Card but had a better record than one of the division winners within its league.

[cannonball 1729]

The Sports Scheduling Group won in 2005, 07, and 08. I understood the bidding process to mean that they sent bids before finalizing schedules. I'm now not sure which is correct. Either way, part of the reason scheduling has become so complex is the unbalanced schedule. Keep in mind that this was not the case prior to 1994. Balance the schedule, and schedules can have some normalcy.

I think the firms send in initial schedules, then get picked, then they make the 10,000 adjustments that baseball asks for. Don't quote me on that, but that's what I've read.

I took "more travel" to mean "higher number of hours in transit."

If that's what you meant, I won't argue with that.

In 15 years, among 30 possible WS contenders, 9 have been WC winners (30%). Of the 15 winners, 4 have been WC winners (27%). If you assume that WC teams have an equal chance of winning as any other team, these results are well within a reasonable range. If you assume that HFA should make a difference, then the data shows that WC winners are not affected nearly enough.

This data doesn't really show much other than to indicate that it's not a lot of data. If WC teams have a 46% chance of winning each round, it stands to reason that they would have about a 21.2% chance of winning two rounds. 30% isn't really that far off; if you ran a bunch of trials, you'd expect a percentage at least this high about 1 out of every 7 trials, which means that it certainly isn't unusual enough to draw any far reaching conclusions. This, of course, discounts the possibility that the wildcard is a better team than the team it plays in the first or second round, which would push the expected percentage up even closer to the 30% we've observed.

EDIT: Regarding 54/46 H/R splits of the MLB, I would add that 19 is not a sufficient number of games for this split to be statistically-relevant. Out of a maxmum of 19 playoff games played, if the home team wins every game, we're talking an average record of 10-9 H-R, or fewer than it takes to win it all (11). HFA is not statistically significant in baseball playoffs.

I have no idea what this means. There's no such thing as an advantage being "statistically significant"; either it's an advantage or it isn't. Statistically significant only deals with whether or not a sample of data can be used to infer a larger trend. Here, you're invoking the concept backwards; we know the larger trend is true, so the sample size doesn't matter. If I flip a coin that's biased (even slightly) in my favor, I get a clear advantage regardless of how many times I flip the coin; even if I only flip it once, I'm at an advantage. If you mean that the advantage is small relative to other factors, well, of course that's true, but that's how baseball works. Like I said before, it's the difference between being the Rangers and the A's in a one-game playoff at a neutral site. Most would argue that that's a pretty big difference, but it will get clouded by a lot of noise because baseball teams are really close in wins and losses.

The weirdest part about this logic is that if you applied it to each series, you'd have the home team winning 3-2, 4-3, and 4-3 which is enough to win each round. Yet, if you apply it to the 19 games, you get an insufficient number for winning the World Series. If looking at smaller samples gives you a more significant result, you've probably stumbled upon some faulty logic.

Edited by cannonball 1729, 23 September 2009 - 04:54 PM.

[zenter]

EDIT 2: 2006 is a great microcosm of the problem. 1/4 teams with HFA won DS. 0/2 teams with HFA won the CS. 0/1 teams with HFA won the WS. And the Cardinals, 2 wins from being 81-81, won because they played in the weakest division in baseball.

More data: Assuming my counting is right... Since the inception of the DS, the team with HFA has won something like 59% of the series. But since 1999 (the last 10 years), the team with HFA has won less than 49% of series. This means the first 4 years were home-team dominated, but road teams have found a way to equalize.

[Spacemans Bong]

I've seen a lot of good counter-points on this topic but I can't agree with this one. Is there any doubt that the Rangers or Mariners would give the Tigers a good series? Besides, the Rangers have a BETTER record than the Tigers and if that holds through the rest of the season, it will be the 5th straight year that a team has missed the Wild Card but had a better record than one of the division winners within its league.

That's an argument for getting rid of divisional play, not adding the fifth and sixth best teams to the playoffs.

[Jungleland]

Both of those issues are the reason people WANT something like that, though; right now, there's zero penalty to being a wild-card team (other than not having home-field, which is the same as the third divisional winner), and a lot of people would like there to be at least some reason to want to win the division as opposed to cruising to a wild-card berth. Having to blow your top 2 starters on a pre-playoff round would fit that bill nicely.

Yeah, it'll be flukey, but I'm not sure it would be hugely worse than the 5 game series, or even the 7

I completely disagree that the wild card winner should be penalized. I view the wild card as a method of ensuring the best teams make the playoffs, not as a method of giving a 1b team a chance. Each year, there is almost always going to be a division that is stacked, and a significant chance that a 2nd place division team could in reality be a top 3 team in their league (and sometimes even all of baseball). "Penalizing" the wild card team would be a poor idea, and would punish teams that deserve to be there. This year's Red Sox happen to be perfect examples.

Home field advantage is more than enough incentive to want to win the division, imo. Tito conceding the division to the Yankees (in a situation like now where there is a very small chance of coming back) isn't bad for baseball, it's just strategy and common sense.

[Farmball]

In the last three years alone, there were 9 different teams that made the playoffs in the AL: Bos, NYY, Det, Oak, Min, Cle, LAA, TB, ChW. In fact, only five teams haven't: Bal, KC, Tor, Sea, and Tex. No team made the playoffs in all three seasons; in fact, only three teams made it twice (Sox, Yanks, Angels).

In the NL, there have also been 9 different teams in the playoffs in the last three years: StL, SD, NYM, LAD, Col, Ari, Phi, ChC, and Mil. None of those teams made it all three years, either; the three that made it in two different years were the Dodgers, Cubs, and Phillies.

Right, the occasional surprise team makes it once every 5-10 years in the AL. In a sport where the payrolls are more lopsided and fewer teams make it in the playoffs than any other, the window is very short for teams like Oakland and TB. TB was the first team to make it from the East not named Red Sox or Yankees in 10+ years. I noted in the OP that there is parity in the NL so we agree there.

Since the start of August, there have been 18 teams (8 AL, 10 NL) that have been within four games of a playoff spot at some point: Bos, NYY, LAA, Det, Phi, StL, LAD, Col, SF, ChC, ChW, Fla, Tex, TB, Min, Atl, Mil, and Hou. All but two of those (Mil and Hou) got to within three games, which is essentially one great series away from the lead.

There are twelve teams not listed above: Tor, Bal, KC, Cle, Sea, Oak, NYM, Was, Pit, Cin, SD, Ariz. Almost all of those teams are terrible. If we expanded the playoffs to six teams, we would basically be doing it so that these teams could feel like they had a chance. Here's the thing, though: how many of those teams actually deserve to think that they have a chance? More importantly, for how many of those teams do you think it would have even mattered? Other than the Mariners, none of those teams would have even been within seven games of the sixth playoff spot in August or September.

Nice work here.

Right now, an AL team one game under .500 would be 4 games out of the playoffs under this new 6 team format. I am more than happy to go on record as saying that if a team is under .500 on Sept. 23, they should be done for the season. If there's one thing I object to under the current system, it is the fact that a team can go 80-82 and win a really crappy division as the Padres almost did a couple of years ago. This would only serve to exacerbate the problem.

Some of those teams just missing the playoffs have better records than teams making the playoffs (Rangers) and some are playing pretty good baseball: see Giants, Mariners, and Braves.

A major difference between baseball and every other sport (but especially football) is that baseball teams' winning percentages are closer than any other sport. The absolute worst team in modern history still won 25% of their games. If you put them in a 3-game series with, say, this year's Red Sox (a .600 team to this point), they would still win the series about 20% of the time (actually, 18.2% if mathematics is to be believed). This is the benefit of having an extremely long season in baseball; the .600 teams will separate themselves from the .550 teams, which they might not do if the season were shorter. One of the reasons baseball has shied away from expanded playoffs is that short series are a terrible way to determine who is the better baseball team. If we were to expand the playoffs to include 12 teams, we either get:

1.) Two teams with a 10-game difference in W/L record playing an absolute crapshoot of a series to determine whose season should be over, or

So you argue there should be no playoffs? After all, the Yankees are 16 games ahead of the Tigers. The Playoffs are exciting. Technically, the purest winner should probably be the regular-season winner and we should end it all then but playoff baseball has an electric atmosphere. It would be great to bring 4 more teams and their fans into the mix.

2.) Playoffs into mid-November,

A 5-game series w/ 2 off days would add 7 days to the playoffs and you could easily start the season earlier to compensate.

[Farmball]

That's an argument for getting rid of divisional play, not adding the fifth and sixth best teams to the playoffs.

I see what you are getting at but adding a 5th and 6th team preserves division rivalries while getting rid of divisional play doesn't. I don't necessarily favor 18 games against a team in your division but that's another debate.

[snowmanny]

I see what you are getting at but adding a 5th and 6th team preserves division rivalries while getting rid of divisional play doesn't. I don't necessarily favor 18 games against a team in your division but that's another debate.

Division rivalries are totally phony; that should be the least of the priorities,

[zenter]

I have no idea what this means. There's no such thing as an advantage being "statistically significant"; either it's an advantage or it isn't. Statistically significant only deals with whether or not a sample of data can be used to infer a larger trend. Here, you're invoking the concept backwards; we know the larger trend is true, so the sample size doesn't matter. If I flip a coin that's biased (even slightly) in my favor, I get a clear advantage regardless of how many times I flip the coin; even if I only flip it once, I'm at an advantage. If you mean that the advantage is small relative to other factors, well, of course that's true, but that's how baseball works. Like I said before, it's the difference between being the Rangers and the A's in a one-game playoff at a neutral site. Most would argue that that's a pretty big difference, but it will get clouded by a lot of noise because baseball teams are really close in wins and losses.

The weirdest part about this logic is that if you applied it to each series, you'd have the home team winning 3-2, 4-3, and 4-3 which is enough to win each round. Yet, if you apply it to the 19 games, you get an insufficient number for winning the World Series. If looking at smaller samples gives you a more significant result, you've probably stumbled upon some faulty logic.

I was skipping a few steps in my thinking... What I'm saying is that a 54/46 split is not "loud" enough to overcome the noise of a short baseball playoff series, nor a big enough "advantage" to make a meaningful difference in a small sample of games (max 19 overall, max 7 per series).

At maximum, there are 19 games a team may play, and therefore there are 19 games in which there is a home team. Applying the 54/46 split, you expect the home team to win 10 out of 19 games, and the road team to win 9 out of 19 games. So, even if my team played EVERY game at home, the chances of HFA are so close that I cannot reliably predict the requisite 11 playoff wins for the home team. I shouldn't have said HFA is not "statistically significant", but I can still say HFA is not significant.

Taking this down to an individual series: in 7 games, the difference between a 54/46 split or a 50/50 split is miniscule. In aggregate, the team with HFA is expected to win 3.54 games in a 7-game series (4 at home, 3 on road). That's a total of a .08 game "advantage" over a dead heat. I don't think it's a stretch to say that .08 games is not significant enough for HFA to be considered a meaningful advantage in a 7-game series.

The 54/46 split is relevant in aggregate (as you note), but streaks become more relevant when you don't have the opportunity to play all 5 or all 7 games. In 81 home games, a loss at home would not change the chances of a season's outcome significantly - lose 2 in a row at home and you can still have a 44-37 home record. Make the season 7 games, two losses in a row at home means you're likely not going to get to approximately 3.54-3.46, unless you play .600 ball the rest of the way, and even then you lose the series.

The point of the playoffs is high-pressure games in which make-pr-break is the name of the game. So, assuming that there are no divisions, and the top four teams in each division make it, why not provide a meaningful advantage to the teams that did better all season?

[smastroyin]

The only reason to have more playoffs is to make more money. The reason for a divisional format is to have more games that make money. The reason for interleague play is to have more games that make money. You are not going to get more playoffs and also remove those two.

[cannonball 1729]

Right, the occasional surprise team makes it once every 5-10 years in the AL. In a sport where the payrolls are more lopsided and fewer teams make it in the playoffs than any other, the window is very short for teams like Oakland and TB. TB was the first team to make it from the East not named Red Sox or Yankees in 10+ years. I noted in the OP that there is parity in the NL so we agree there.

Not really. Six of the nine teams that made it one year didn't make in the other two. That's not an occasional surprise; that means that the majority of the teams didn't repeat. Four different teams won the AL Central in those years; three won the AL East and two won the AL West. That's pretty good parity.

Just to contrast it with the NFL, in the last three years, 10 teams have made the playoffs from the AFC - this despite having two extra playoff spots every year. Moreover, six teams repeated in the playoffs in that span, including two who made the playoffs all three years: Colts (3), Chargers (3), Ravens (2), Pats(2), Titans (2), and Steelers (2) (the others were the Jets, Fins, and Jags). I think the NFC might have had slightly more, but I'm too lazy to check. By contrast to the AFC, nine teams with only three repeats is actually very good parity (and no three-time repeats). Baseball has come a long way since the late 90's when the Yankees won every year.

Nice work here.

Thanks. Baseball Reference is a godsend.

Some of those teams just missing the playoffs have better records than teams making the playoffs (Rangers) and some are playing pretty good baseball: see Giants, Mariners, and Braves.

My least favorite argument on the planet is the one that comes at the beginning of the NCAA tournament, when teams that get left out say, "We were better than the 64th ranked team! We should be in instead of them!" as though being the 45th best team in the country means you've earned the right to play for the national championship.

If a team missing the playoffs has a better record than a bad team that is making the playoffs, sucks for them. The biggest point in favor of having a wildcard is that the pennant is important in baseball (that's why they gave it a special name), so it makes sense that the best two teams in the league should have a chance to play for it; the wildcard does this while still respecting the division format that has been in baseball since 1969. As far as the fourth or fifth team, I don't see what they did to earn it.

So you argue there should be no playoffs? After all, the Yankees are 16 games ahead of the Tigers. The Playoffs are exciting. Technically, the purest winner should probably be the regular-season winner and we should end it all then but playoff baseball has an electric atmosphere. It would be great to bring 4 more teams and their fans into the mix.

I should be clearer. I consider a 3-game series to be an absolute crapshoot. 5 or 7 games is more palatable. That said, pennant races are exciting, too. If you bring in four teams, you kill pretty much any and all division races, unless you do the bye system, which penalizes the #3-6 teams to a degree that most would consider absurd. Unlike football, you can't pitch a pitcher every game, and if the first round non-bye screws up a team's rotation so that they have to trot out the 4 and 5 starters for games one and two, there's no point to having the second round anyway.

Moreover, you start letting in teams that aren't very good. How exciting is that last month in basketball for those 8th and 9th place teams, knowing that if they play well down the stretch, they could somehow find a way to be a first-round tune-up for the best team in basketball? How exciting is it for those 5th and 6th place teams, knowing that they can't really go that much farther up and probably won't go down, so they start shutting it down to prepare for the post-season (the Sox and Rangers would probably already be at this point by now). That's what the wildcard system starts to become.

A 5-game series w/ 2 off days would add 7 days to the playoffs and you could easily start the season earlier to compensate.

There's no way they add a 5-game series with two off days, or else you'll have four games a day. The reason MLB added extra off days was so that you wouldn't have 1:00, 4:00, 7:00, and 10:00 starts every day. Remember the Sox-A's game in 2003 that ended at 2:30 in the morning because the game started at 10? I don't think baseball wants to deal with that again.

We'd have added an extra 1.5 to 2 weeks (depending upon how baseball decides to split up the games) to the season. That's a long way to push the season up. I like the green St. Patty's day uniforms as much as anyone, but I never thought I'd see them in the regular season....

I was skipping a few steps in my thinking... What I'm saying is that a 54/46 split is not "loud" enough to overcome the noise of a short baseball playoff series, nor a big enough "advantage" to make a meaningful difference in a small sample of games (max 19 overall, max 7 per series).

At maximum, there are 19 games a team may play, and therefore there are 19 games in which there is a home team. Applying the 54/46 split, you expect the home team to win 10 out of 19 games, and the road team to win 9 out of 19 games. So, even if my team played EVERY game at home, the chances of HFA are so close that I cannot reliably predict the requisite 11 playoff wins for the home team. I shouldn't have said HFA is not "statistically significant", but I can still say HFA is not significant.

Well, I certainly agree more with the math here. HFA is an advantage. It is not, on its own, enough to win a series, nor should it be.

The point of the playoffs is high-pressure games in which make-pr-break is the name of the game. So, assuming that there are no divisions, and the top four teams in each division make it, why not provide a meaningful advantage to the teams that did better all season?

Well, no. The point of the playoffs is to crown a champion. Is anyone really going to accept the legitimacy of, say, an Angels championship if they swept the Sox in a series where Beckett and Lester never pitched? What's the point of having a playoff if you're not going to let the teams compete fairly? If the Tigers made the playoffs but were forced to play without a center fielder to intentionally put them at a disadvantage, I would bet that a lot of Tiger fans wouldn't bother to watch. Moreover, since fans of wildcard teams know they'll be at a huge disadvantage in the playoffs, you've killed a lot of enthusiasm for the wildcard as well. How excited do you think Mariner fans will be about their newfound status as the 6th wildcard team if they know there's a chance King Felix will never pitch in the second round?

Edited by cannonball 1729, 23 September 2009 - 06:55 PM.

[Infield Infidel]

Just to contrast it with the NFL, in the last three years, 10 teams have made the playoffs from the AFC - this despite having two extra playoff spots every year. Moreover, six teams repeated in the playoffs in that span, including two who made the playoffs all three years: Colts (3), Chargers (3), Ravens (2), Pats(2), Titans (2), and Steelers (2) (the others were the Jets, Fins, and Jags). I think the NFC might have had slightly more, but I'm too lazy to check. By contrast to the AFC, nine teams with only three repeats is actually very good parity (and no three-time repeats). Baseball has come a long way since the late 90's when the Yankees won every year.

. . .

Well, no. The point of the playoffs is to crown a champion. Is anyone really going to accept the legitimacy of, say, an Angels championship if they swept the Sox in a series where Beckett and Lester never pitched? What's the point of having a playoff if you're not going to let the teams compete fairly? If the Tigers made the playoffs but were forced to play without a center fielder to intentionally put them at a disadvantage, I would bet that a lot of Tiger fans wouldn't bother to watch. Moreover, since fans of wildcard teams know they'll be at a huge disadvantage in the playoffs, you've killed a lot of enthusiasm for the wildcard as well. How excited do you think Mariner fans will be about their newfound status as the 6th wildcard team if they know there's a chance King Felix will never pitch in the second round?

It's interesting that you bring up the NFL and its parity, then later on say "What's the point of having a playoff if you're not going to let the teams compete fairly?" when the NFL doesn't let teams compete fairly. Two teams in each conference have any easier path, just like the team with the best record under Gammons' plan.

I'm all for what Gammons suggests, but with a twist. Add two teams to the AL (they will eventually), switch back to four divisions (AL East/West, NL East/West), with eight teams each, and have 3 wild cards per league. This will balance out the schedule a bit, and reduce the chance of a ~.500 team making the playoffs.

13 games x 7 division teams = 91
7 games x 8 non-division teams = 56
15 interleague games = 15
Total - 162

It also makes the race for the wild cards more interesting. You could potentially have 4 teams from one division in the playoffs, which would be a boon to places like Toronto and Baltimore that are rarely playing for anything. The way things are now, if you are in the AL east and not called the Red Sox or Yankees, those three teams have made the playoffs once in 12 years. That's 1 per 36 team years.

It also doesn't penalize the best WC team (often, the Sox), since the two div winners and the #1 WC wouldn't play in the 3 game first round series, only the #2 and #3 WC. Going back to 4 divisions would solve so many problems

And about missing your best pitchers: tough. We crown the best team, not the team with the best top of the rotation. This is a team game, if your team isn't good enough to get its best pitcher on the mound, then your team isn't good enough to be champs.

Edited by Infield Infidel, 23 September 2009 - 07:57 PM.

[singaporesoxfan]

It's interesting that you bring up the NFL and its parity, then later on say "What's the point of having a playoff if you're not going to let the teams compete fairly?" when the NFL doesn't let teams compete fairly. Two teams in each conference have any easier path, just like the team with the best record under Gammons' plan.

I'm all for what Gammons suggests, but with a twist. Add two teams to the AL (they will eventually), switch back to four divisions (AL East/West, NL East/West), with eight teams each, and have 3 wild cards per league. This will balance out the schedule a bit, and reduce the chance of a ~.500 team making the playoffs.

13 games x 7 division teams = 91
7 games x 8 non-division teams = 56
15 interleague games = 15
Total - 162

It also makes the race for the wild cards more interesting. You could potentially have 4 teams from one division in the playoffs, which would be a boon to places like Toronto and Baltimore that are rarely playing for anything. The way things are now, if you are in the AL east and not called the Red Sox or Yankees, those three teams have made the playoffs once in 12 years. That's 1 per 36 team years.

It also doesn't penalize the best WC team (often, the Sox), since the two div winners and the #1 WC wouldn't play in the 3 game first round series, only the #2 and #3 WC. Going back to 4 divisions would solve so many problems

And about missing your best pitchers: tough. We crown the best team, not the team with the best top of the rotation. This is a team game, if your team isn't good enough to get its best pitcher on the mound, then your team isn't good enough to be champs.

First up, let me say I hate the Gammons idea, and I think the only reason it has any traction is that this year, for the first time in a long time, the regular season races were settled relatively early. Which is a ridiculous reason to push for change; it seems like a recipe for overreaction, just like the whole "This Time It Counts" "solution" to the All-Star Game tie. I'm with the idea that the only change I'd like to see is a 7-game ALDS. As most others have noted, the NHL/NBA regular season is essentially worthless.

I think there are multiple goals the choice of the playoff teams tries to achieve. There is reward for performance - you want the best teams to make it. And there is parity - you want most teams to have a reasonable shot. Sometimes these goals coincide. Sometimes these diverge. To give an extreme example, you can achieve total parity by simply holding a lottery at the end of the season and having the first 4 teams chosen out of a hat to be the playoff teams, but this would be at the total expense of rewarding the better teams. I think the baseball playoff system actually does a nice job of balancing reward for performance and parity through one means: the creation of the AL and NL Central Divisions with unbalanced schedules. So generally the best teams make it, but the schedule is generally a bit easier for the divisions with the smaller-market teams.

As cannonball's numbers have shown, the NFL has achieved less parity than MLB in terms of getting teams into the playoffs, even with a higher number of playoff teams. So what is the value of having an NFL-style playoff, really? To give teams that have performed poorly the equivalent of pity sex? I think the examples of Toronto and Baltimore are awful ones. There is no reason Toronto and Baltimore should be playing for anything in the 2000s. They have been poorly run, with bad GM decisions. Both teams did fine in the 1990s. Meanwhile, I think we can generally agree the Sox, in addition to their financial might, have been well run in the Theo Epstein era. I suppose my sense is that given how much of a leash GMs have (J.P. Ricciardi, I'm looking at you) as well as how long the "core" of a team can stay together, the cycles of good management and/or the assembling of a good collection of players in baseball happen in fairly long intervals, and so you wouldn't expect total parity where every single team in MLB has a shot of the playoffs in a 10-year span, at least not without sacrificing reward for performance drastically. If we look at the 20-year horizon, it seems almost every team in baseball has made it into the playoffs in that span, except for the truly atrociously run (*cough* Royals *cough*, and even then they had a shot in 2003).

[zenter]

I think there are multiple goals the choice of the playoff teams tries to achieve. There is reward for performance - you want the best teams to make it. And there is parity - you want most teams to have a reasonable shot. Sometimes these goals coincide. Sometimes these diverge. To give an extreme example, you can achieve total parity by simply holding a lottery at the end of the season and having the first 4 teams chosen out of a hat to be the playoff teams, but this would be at the total expense of rewarding the better teams. I think the baseball playoff system actually does a nice job of balancing reward for performance and parity through one means: the creation of the AL and NL Central Divisions with unbalanced schedules. So generally the best teams make it, but the schedule is generally a bit easier for the divisions with the smaller-market teams.

I'm becoming convinced that more teams in the playoffs will not add any major value. Still, if the goal is to reward the best teams and have them make the playoffs (and I think it should be), I still think HFA is too weak a "benefit" in a short series, and it's a reason why I wanted to add 2 teams per league to the playoffs - you have the elite 2 teams who get to skip a short series.

That said, divisions are still the biggest problem. Consider the NL in 2006:

Division winners: NYM (97-65), STL (83-79), SDP (88-74)
Wildcard: LAD (88-74)
Other 2nd place teams: PHI (85-77), HOU (82-80)

There were four teams in the NL with better performance than the Cardinals, yet STL was seeded 3rd. Heck, the '93 Giants had the 2nd-best record in the entire MLB, but missed the playoffs.

Is there any downside to killing divisions? Or the unbalanced schedule (as it was pre-1994)? Or interleague play? Have the top four teams in each league make it or not, and see what happens from there.

EDIT: Like 2006, there's no reason the 2000 MFYs should have been in the playoffs - there were 4 teams with better records in the AL.

Edited by zenter, 24 September 2009 - 12:08 PM.

[The Gray Eagle]

I would restructure the leagues so that there are two divisions in each league. 7 teams in each AL division and 8 in each NL division. No more interleague play; 154 game season.

The division winners are the only teams that make the playoffs. At the end of the season, the division winners play a best-of-9 game series, followed by a best-of-9 world series.

Home field advantage in all postseason series goes to the team with the best record. If there's a tie, then it's broken by giving it to the team from the division which had the better interdivision winning percentage.

In the regular season, teams would play mostly within their own division, with two series per year with the teams in the other division. In the AL, that's 20 games against each team in your division, and 34 total with the 7 teams in the other division.

The only way to make the playoffs would be to win your division. Baseball's season is long enough that no wild cards should be necessary to determine who is the best team.

Longer postseason series take away a bit of the randomness. There will still be plenty, but at least this way, if an underdog pulls a playoff upset, they would still be a team that was the best team in their own division, and was good enough to beat the favorite five times.

There would probably be fewer teams in the pennant race each year, but the pennant races would mean more. More at stake means more exciting, to me at least.

These changes would make for a more fair way of determining the champion IMO, which is my priority. They would not allow for maximizing revenue, which is baseball's priority, so they'll never, ever happen.

Edited by The Gray Eagle, 24 September 2009 - 12:42 PM.

[Farmball]

Is there any downside to killing divisions? Or the unbalanced schedule (as it was pre-1994)? Or interleague play? Have the top four teams in each league make it or not, and see what happens from there.

EDIT: Like 2006, there's no reason the 2000 MFYs should have been in the playoffs - there were 4 teams with better records in the AL.

Interleague is here to stay. More people attend these games and the owners make more money.

[Infield Infidel]

First up, let me say I hate the Gammons idea, and I think the only reason it has any traction is that this year, for the first time in a long time, the regular season races were settled relatively early. Which is a ridiculous reason to push for change; it seems like a recipe for overreaction, just like the whole "This Time It Counts" "solution" to the All-Star Game tie. I'm with the idea that the only change I'd like to see is a 7-game ALDS. As most others have noted, the NHL/NBA regular season is essentially worthless.

I think there are multiple goals the choice of the playoff teams tries to achieve. There is reward for performance - you want the best teams to make it. And there is parity - you want most teams to have a reasonable shot. Sometimes these goals coincide. Sometimes these diverge. To give an extreme example, you can achieve total parity by simply holding a lottery at the end of the season and having the first 4 teams chosen out of a hat to be the playoff teams, but this would be at the total expense of rewarding the better teams. I think the baseball playoff system actually does a nice job of balancing reward for performance and parity through one means: the creation of the AL and NL Central Divisions with unbalanced schedules. So generally the best teams make it, but the schedule is generally a bit easier for the divisions with the smaller-market teams.

As cannonball's numbers have shown, the NFL has achieved less parity than MLB in terms of getting teams into the playoffs, even with a higher number of playoff teams. So what is the value of having an NFL-style playoff, really? To give teams that have performed poorly the equivalent of pity sex? I think the examples of Toronto and Baltimore are awful ones. There is no reason Toronto and Baltimore should be playing for anything in the 2000s. They have been poorly run, with bad GM decisions. Both teams did fine in the 1990s. Meanwhile, I think we can generally agree the Sox, in addition to their financial might, have been well run in the Theo Epstein era. I suppose my sense is that given how much of a leash GMs have (J.P. Ricciardi, I'm looking at you) as well as how long the "core" of a team can stay together, the cycles of good management and/or the assembling of a good collection of players in baseball happen in fairly long intervals, and so you wouldn't expect total parity where every single team in MLB has a shot of the playoffs in a 10-year span, at least not without sacrificing reward for performance drastically. If we look at the 20-year horizon, it seems almost every team in baseball has made it into the playoffs in that span, except for the truly atrociously run (*cough* Royals *cough*, and even then they had a shot in 2003).

There is no comparing the "this time it counts" to adding another WC. One is a gimmicky marketing they did to make the a meaningless game meaningful; the other is an idea that would a) lessen the chances that teams with good records get snubbed, and b) give the team with the best record an honest advantage in the playoffs, instead of treating a 105 win team the same as an 83 win team. (HFA has been discussed previously, it's not much of an advantage in a short series).

And also, Toronto has been pretty decent this decade, and have had difficulty solely because of the division they are in
Toronto win totals 2000-2008: 83, 80, 78, 86, 67, 80, 87, 83, 86
In any other division, with an easier schedule, they're probably consistently in the 85-95 win range. Switching to 4 divisions, would balance the schedules more and balance the Wild Card races considerably. Plus the league structure and economics were completely different when the Blue Jays were good, they won both their titles, and a few division titles, in the 4 division era, when they're payrolls were similar to the Sox/Yanks, and they played fewer games against them. You really cannot compare then to now

Six divisions gives false parity, as almost every year there's a team that doesn't make the playoffs that has a better record than a division winner. Usually, that team left out plays in a tougher division. If "parity" means an 82 win team makes the playoffs at the expense of an 89 win team, is "parity" really worth it? If you want the best teams in, then adding a WC would alleviate that, and so would switching to 4 divisions.

Edited by Infield Infidel, 25 September 2009 - 12:44 AM.

[Maalox]

Division rivalries are totally phony;

Sorry but any Red Sox fan who makes this argument is lying and knows it.

[Infield Infidel]

Wins for last playoff team and first team snubbed

Year	AL Worst PO team	Best Non-PO team	NL Worst PO team	Best Non-PO team
1995	Mariners 79*	Angels 78*	Dodgers 78	Rockies 77
1996	Orioles 88	Three teams 85	Cardinals 88	Expos 88
1997	Indians 86	Angels 84	Astros 84	Mets/Dodgers 88
1998	Rangers 88	Blue Jays 88	Cubs 90*	Giants 89*
1999	Red Sox 94	Athletics 87	Mets 97*	Reds 96*
2000	Yankees 87	Indians 90	Mets 94	Dodgers 86
2001	Indians 91	Twins 85	Braves 88	Giants 90
2002	Twins 94	Mariners/Red Sox 93	Giants 95	Dodgers 92
2003	Twins 90	Mariners 93	Cubs 88	Astros 87
2004	Twins/Angels 92	Athletics 91	Astros 92	Giants 91
2005	Three Teams 95	Indians 92	Padres 82	Phillies 88, Marlins/Mets 83
2006	Athletics 93	Angels 89	Cardinals 83	Phillies 85
2007	Yanks/Angels 94	Mariners 88	Cubs 83	Padres 89, Mets 88
2008	White Sox 89	Yankees 89	Dodgers 84	Mets 89, Astros/Cards 86

Yellow means teams with better records were left out, * = 1-game playoff

It must have sucked being a Phillies fan in 05 and 06.

If the goal is to have the best teams in the playoffs, we are clearly not seeing that goal met. In the six division era, teams have been snubbed eight years in 14 years. In 05 and 08 there were three teams left out with better records, and in 97 and 07 there were two.

The Rangers are ahead of the Tigers as of today, but Texas would be left out, which would make it nine out of 15 years, and five in a row.

Also, does anyone know what year the 19 game divisional schedule started? I think it was 2000 but I can't seem to find it.

Edited by Infield Infidel, 25 September 2009 - 12:56 AM.

[Spacemans Bong]

One problem: There's three 90 win teams in that whole spread. I don't really give a shit that an 87 win team feels jobbed. 87 wins isn't very good baseball.

There's no argument for expanding the playoffs that isn't just an argument against divisional play.

Edited by Spacemans Bong, 25 September 2009 - 02:16 AM.

[teddywingman]

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see it mentioned anywhere in this thread:
Any change to the playoffs that would create a bye for the best teams is a terrible idea.

Edit: There's too many off days in the playoffs as it is (especially for the teams that sweep a series).

Edited by teddywingman, 25 September 2009 - 03:31 AM.

[da funk]

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see it mentioned anywhere in this thread:
Any change to the playoffs that would create a bye for the best teams is a terrible idea.

Edit: There's too many off days in the playoffs as it is (especially for the teams that sweep a series).

I think this is a really good point. Remember 2006? The Tigers swept the ALCS beating Oakland in Game 4 on 10/14. The first game of the World Series was 10/21, a week later. A week is a long time to not play a competitive game, whereas the Cardinals finished the NLCS on 10/19. The idea of deliberately having a team sit out a series is probably detrimental to their chances, rather than beneficial.

[Dan Murfman]

I think this is a really good point. Remember 2006? The Tigers swept the ALCS beating Oakland in Game 4 on 10/14. The first game of the World Series was 10/21, a week later. A week is a long time to not play a competitive game, whereas the Cardinals finished the NLCS on 10/19. The idea of deliberately having a team sit out a series is probably detrimental to their chances, rather than beneficial.

I bet more people on this site remember 2007 when the Rockies had 9 days off between the NLCS and the World Series.

[da funk]

I bet more people on this site remember 2007 when the Rockies had 9 days off between the NLCS and the World Series.

Whoops - an even better example. My point still stands that in both cases the enforced delay cooled off a pretty hot team - in the latter making it easier for the Sox, which was good.

[Alternate34]

Why is everyone so worried about giving the better team an advantage in the playoffs? They already have an advantage: they are the better team.

The argument for it is to reward regular season play. However, the best teams are usually in the position to set their team up for the playoffs in whatever way they see fit by virtue of the fact they have established a lead that is insurmountable. They can rest their players if they want. They could get their starters ready for short rest (though that would probably be stupid). They can keep their best relievers fresh.

Also, don't the teams with the best regular season record also get to pick either the A schedule or the B schedule? That is another advantage.

[dynomite]

There are twelve teams not listed above: Tor, Bal, KC, Cle, Sea, Oak, NYM, Was, Pit, Cin, SD, Ariz. Almost all of those teams are terrible. If we expanded the playoffs to six teams, we would basically be doing it so that these teams could feel like they had a chance. Here's the thing, though: how many of those teams actually deserve to think that they have a chance? More importantly, for how many of those teams do you think it would have even mattered? Other than the Mariners, none of those teams would have even been within seven games of the sixth playoff spot in August or September.

Also, look at the 12 teams that are terrible this year. Included in that list are: the Indians, the Mariners, the A's, the Mets, the Padres, and the Diamondbacks. All of those teams have been in the playoffs this decade, and most within the last 4 years.

Indeed, of those 6 teams, 4 have been in their league's Championship Game Series in the last 4 years (Indians, A's, Mets, DBacks), and the others (Mariners, Padres) were perennial playoff teams/contenders for most of the decade.

So, basically there are 6 problem teams: Blue Jays, Orioles, Royals, Natinals, Pirates, Reds. Every other team in baseball has either been in the playoffs in recent memory or has been within sniffing distance late into this season.

Edited by dynomite, 25 September 2009 - 09:43 AM.

[OilCanShotTupac]

My plan:

Realignment.

Atlantic League: BOS, NYY, NYM, PHI, BAL, WAS

Eastern League: ATL, FLA, TB, CIN, CLE, TOR, DET, PIT

Central League: MIN, MIL, CHC, CWS, STL, KC, TEX, HOU

Western League: SEA, COL, SF, OAK, LAAAAAA, LAD, SD, ARI

Unbalanced schedule. I think one of the great thieves of TV ratings is teams playing out of their natural game times, ie 10 PM games for East Coast teams playing West, or 4PM games for Western teams playing East. This plan minimizes that by grouping leagues by time zone. More away games against teams in the same time zone = better ratings.

Eight team playoffs: first two teams in each league make it. Seeded 1-8, with four division champs seeded 1-4, and runners-up seeded 5-8.

First round playoffs: 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc. Seven-game series. Top seed gets all seven games at home, #8 seed gets 0 home games.. #2 seed gets 6 games at home, 1 away. #3 seed gets 5 games at home, 2 away. #4 seed gets 4-3.

Seven game second round, same concept applies.

HFA is not that big a deal in baseball, but it would be a big deal to have a 7-0 disadvantage in home games - proportionate for 1 vs. 8 seed, I think.

[BucketOBalls]

Here is my semi-balanced schedule idea.
Scheduling
1)Every team plays every other team in a 2-game series home-and away. that is 116 games. Playing every team makes the scheduling easier, as you can just do short hops within a geographical area. Much of the travel ends up being short.

2)The other 46 games can be filled in from division play.-

Playoffs
Same as currently(4 teams), with 2 changes.

1)Seeding is determined by record

2)Take the top 4 teams by record, but division winners have the tiebreaker over non-division winners.


This is relatively balanced, but still has the division rivalry aspect. I oppose massive disadvantages for higher teams, as I think winning a playoff series should mean something. If you give a large advantage to one side, it just becomes a chance for the higher seed to screw up. It doesn't mean anything if they win. You can end up with cases were teams are pretty close, and I don't like giving a large advantage due to luck.

One idea would be to somehow tie the advantage to the difference between records. To use OilCanShotTupac's idea above. Maybe give the higher seed an extra home home for every N(3? 4? more?) games of difference in their record. Havn't thought that through that well though, so I'm not sure it's a good idea.

[zenter]

I like OilCan's plan a lot. Since the traditional leagues are no longer meaningful thanks to ILP, let's retire the AL and NL, and make them fully meaningless. With a potential 29 opponents, unbalanced schedule is a requirement, so I can live with that (like basketball).

One problem isn't resolved, though: Why should seeding be relative to ranking within each division/league? In this scenario, if ATL takes the Eastern with 95 wins, and the Sox come in 2nd in the Atlantic with 98, why should ATL be given preferential seeding? Moreover, if NYM has 96 wins and is 3rd in the Atlantic, why shouldn't they make they playoffs over ATL?

Here's my counter-offer, taking a (partial) cue from basketball...

Realignment: 30 teams in 4 divisions (as above, except with no less than 7 teams in each division, meaning one of ATL, TB, TOR, and FLA need to move to the Atlantic)

Schedule: 8-team divisions have 13 games against each team in-division (91), 7-team divisions have 15 games each (90). Remaining games out-of-division.

Optional Idea: NL and AL only exist in terms of DH/non-DH. AL and NL can have 15 teams each, without scheduling nightmares. Then, the Mets would still have a primarily non-DH schedule and the Red Sox would have a primarily DH schedule.

Seeding: Top eight records 1-8, regardless of division. That way, if every team in a single division plays .500 in-division, but 1.000 out-of-division, all of those teams deservedly make the playoffs, since they are clearly superior to teams in other divisions. Likewise, dominating your division will not guarantee a playoff spot.

Playoffs: 3 rounds with standard 4-3 HFA determined by record. (While I like it, owners would never go for radical HFA.)

To me, this allows divisional arrangement to have meaning without a penalty for unlucky geography. You need to do well in-division to have a good record, but being the third-best team in the MLB behind two other teams in your own division, is no longer a prohibitive problem.

EDIT: I really want to reward the best teams for the best records, so some kind of HFA benefit would be nice. I thought a series bye would work, but I see the arguments against it.

Edited by zenter, 25 September 2009 - 12:49 PM.

[paulftodd]

I completely disagree that the wild card winner should be penalized. I view the wild card as a method of ensuring the best teams make the playoffs, not as a method of giving a 1b team a chance. Each year, there is almost always going to be a division that is stacked, and a significant chance that a 2nd place division team could in reality be a top 3 team in their league (and sometimes even all of baseball). "Penalizing" the wild card team would be a poor idea, and would punish teams that deserve to be there. This year's Red Sox happen to be perfect examples.

Home field advantage is more than enough incentive to want to win the division, imo. Tito conceding the division to the Yankees (in a situation like now where there is a very small chance of coming back) isn't bad for baseball, it's just strategy and common sense.

Given the unbalanced schedule, W-L no longer means anything in terms of determing who the best team is between divisions. Nobody deserves the WC, thats a gift to ensure enough teams for the playoffs given there are 3 divisions.

For example, the Red Sox went 27-6 against the Blue Jays and Orioles, two of the worst teams in baseball, and TBR turned out to be a 500 team. It can be argued that Texas (who also played the AL West in interleague and fewer bad teams) had a tougher schedule than the Red Sox, yet the Red Sox will win the WC.

My solution is to have the 3 second place teams play a round robin 1 day tournament in a neutral park, and the team with the best record or biggest RS-RA differential gets the WC. For example, Boston plays 1 game against the Twins and Rangers, and the Rangers play the Twins. All 3 teams play 2 games, for a total of 3 games played on the same day, start the games at 10 AM, 2;30 PM and 7:30 PM. Winner plays in the ALDS against the team with the best record amongst the division champs (even if in the same division as the WC winner)

They can call it Titos Tournament.

This will at least prevent teams from not giving 100% to win the division which is happening under the present rules. Under the current system, the Impossible Dream in 1967 never happens, the Red Sox would have been content with the WC (4th best record in the AL since no divsions, and rested Yaz and Lonborg down the stretch). Under my proposed system, the only guarantee of being in the playoffs (aside from Titos Tournament) is to win the division championship.

edit-talking about eliminating the AL-NL, scrapping divisions, going to a balanced schedule is useless, it will never happen, too much money to be made/saved with the current system (which is why I propose only a modification).

Edited by paulftodd, 27 September 2009 - 01:52 AM.

[zenter]

edit-talking about eliminating the AL-NL, scrapping divisions, going to a balanced schedule is useless, it will never happen, too much money to be made/saved with the current system (which is why I propose only a modification).

Question - is more money being made/saved with the imbalanced schedule? I can see it both ways...

Travel is so convoluted now that, I would guess, players (the most expensive asset) are exposed to higher chances of fatigue. Also, the unbalanced schedule means that a very good team in a great division is not getting an equal chance at the playoffs as good teams in weak divisions - couldn't that lead to less money elsewhere? I'm guessing that a balanced schedule would net a neutral effect (more competition/$$ there, less here).

I think all these ideas - expanding the playoffs, realignment, etc. - are about ensuring that the very best teams are actually deservedly in the playoffs and the mediocre teams are deservedly out. Some of the solutions here are radical, yes, but they also challenge us to defend the merits of the current system. So far, everyone seems to agree that the current playoff-selection system is too fault tolerant (STL 2006), and we're trying to think up a system that rewards good teams for winning the marathon of a season, and bars mediocre teams making it above better teams.

Realistically, I don't think a round-robin baseball tournament can work in the MLB (for reasons of player usage, etc, that were used to counter my idea of a 1st-rd "bye" for the best teams). Balancing schedules, in my mind, is something MLB is more likely to do (they did it in the past), and is actually a step towards a more fair system.