I Fixed Baseball

[Edgy MD]

I would like to award the best team — or, at least, the team that performs the best.

[Ceetar]

every single postseason in every sport in the history of sport has awarded the team that performs the best the title.

[Edgy MD]

I move to disagree with that.

[Ceetar]

go ahead, we're about 7 layers down into semantics right now.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I think that the best solution is to simply understand that the playoffs winner, especially an expanded playoffs winner isn't necessarily the best team in the respective sport. But as simple as that idea sounds, it'd be a difficult idea to truly set in given how the notion of best team as the playoff champ is so deeply embedded in the collective mindset. There'll never be a perfect solution to this. Even if there were no playoffs and the team with the best regular season record was simply crowned the champ, people would always disagree as to whether that team is truly the best. Especially if that team has the best record by only a game or three.

[Frayed Knot]

well yes, all my points include 18 teams of expansion.

Oh good, because I was afraid for a minute that we were going to drift i to the realm of the unrealistic.





"There's no solution that awards the best regular season team the championship most often. "



No solution that guarantees it but there's a simple solution to have the championship go to one of the top teams and that's to allow only the top tier teams to the playoffs in the first place.





" The real solution is to place more value/prestige on winning divisions. You could do byes if you want. 4 first round series, the winner of each places the division winner from each of the 4 divisions."



Byes work ONCE, ask the Braves. After that there's no advantage outside of increased # of home games and that's a thin edge at best.







"Again, no playoff system is "good" but like, the main idea is competition right, team v team, duking it out. This maximizes that. the drama and narrative of that battle."



I call that the season itself and, quirky guy that I am, I like it.





"The smaller series, even the NLDSs seem like play-in games. But a first round 7 game series? even between two wild card teams? I don't think that would."



Really? I'd call it the definition of a play-in series.

[Edgy MD]

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=111656 time=1666296217 user_id=68]I think that the best solution is to simply understand that the playoffs winner, especially an expanded playoffs winner isn't necessarily the best team in the respective sport.

[Edgy MD]

I realize that post-season revenues are a paramount concern for the powers that be, but I'm appreciating that the discussion is taking place here apart from that.

[Ceetar]

What do we _want_ to see in the playoffs? I contend that most people want to see two good teams battling it out. Really the regular season is irrelevant to this conversation. It is it's own thing, now we've got a tournament. What do we want out of that? Just going right to the World Series isn't enough baseball, and as much as the Mets and Atlanta players disagreed, you'd like to see 'second best' teams that are really good get a chance to compete in that tournament.



side note: Sometimes meh teams play in tournaments. That's..probably okay. Some of the narrative drama is that underdog playing well right? It's not like the Phillies are actually devoid of talent. Front a neutral standpoint, there's plenty there to root for. We can grouse about the '06 Cardinals all we want, but some of those guys went on to historic careers. It's not really "bad" that they were in there.



So we need to honest what we're trying to accomplish. (Obviously, this is all theoretical because what MLB is trying to accomplish is the accumulation of unethical levels of wealth) For me, and I think for a lot of people, we're really just looking for head to head battles between good teams, leading up to a champion. And if we're being honest, some cloudiness about whether or not they're actually "the best" is baked into the whole process.

[Frayed Knot]

1) I want the regular season to be as meaningful as possible

2) I want any post-season tourney to include those teams closest to the elite level from that just-played season



Ceets' system promotes precisely the opposite of those goals and does so in spades.

The idea that the regular season is irrelevant to the conversation of how to structure the playoffs boggles both logic and common sense.

[Edgy MD]

I too want the regular season to be as meaningful as possible.



But here's something that can satisfy both meaningful-regular-season and big-playoff perspectives. Thirty teams make the playoffs, the regular season is bypassed as the utterly pointless exercise that it subsequently becomes, and the playoff champion is the winner of a 162-game round robin tournament that begins at the start of April and comes to an exciting conclusion at the end of September.

[Ceetar]

Boring. give me my tournament. Why are you fighting against more baseball?

[Edgy MD]

I'm not. You can have all the tournaments that the market can bear. Nobody has advocated for tournament play more than I have. Post-season, in-season, pre-season, international. Bring it on. My imagination is a-swim with the conception of various iterations of tournament play.



What is being discussed is the nature of a post-season tournament superseding the longer and more demanding 162-game regular season in declaring someone the MLB champion for the year.

[Ceetar]

that's NOT what's being discussed. We're discussing the specific postseason tournament that MLB plays. The thread was created with a suggested variant. I countered with a suggestion that the NBA/NHL way maybe is a better way to go about it. The only detraction I got was "that's too much baseball!" which is not a thing, and "there are too many teams" which, fine, but there are already too many teams. You could easily do 8-4-2 and have three rounds of 7 games each. Or, we could do real expansion, and not just the vague hints that we might get another team or two. (The main reason this won't happen is unethical monopolistic wealth obviously)

[Edgy MD]

=Ceetar post_id=111673 time=1666304258 user_id=102]
that's NOT what's being discussed.

[Ceetar]

again, there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the "Best team", so we should refocus to what we really want out of this tournament. I want 7-game (or more) series like the NHL, and bonus, i think that's probably the one that leads to the 'best' teams making the World Series more often.

[Edgy MD]

What you actually wrote is that ...

every single postseason in every sport in the history of sport has awarded the team that performs the best the title.

But now...

there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the "Best team",

I don't know what you think you're writing "again" to. The notion that "every single postseason in every sport in the history of sport has awarded the team that performs the best the title" and the notion that "there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the 'Best team'" are inherently contradictory.



So it doesn't really matter. I would prefer that we award a title to the team who has best proven itself to be the best — I hope I've made that clear — and you either don't want that because every postseason ever already does that, or you don't want that, because no system whatsoever does that.



And the dogs bark, and the river runs, and the rich oppress the poor, and nothing means anything, for what are words? And is our struggle not merely lengthening our long defeat? And what happens to all the yesterdays? And who knows to whom the rain returns, and which of our secrets it knows?

[smg58]

A Boy Named Seo wrote: But CF >>> Manfred by a thousand miles. Well CF also likes baseball, so there's that.

Seconded.

[Frayed Knot]

again, there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the "Best team", so we should refocus to what we really want out of this tournament. I want 7-game (or more) series like the NHL,

I followed hockey for a long time and my impression then, as it is now, is if the NHL does something one way, run, don't walk, to do it the complete opposite. As one-time referee and

long-time announcer Bill Chadwick was known to say; 'Hockey's gotta be the greatest sport ever invented to survive with the idiots that run it'.

... and bonus, i think that's probably the one that leads to the 'best' teams making the World Series more often.

No, it's Clearly the worst way to get the best teams thru to the WS because it gives them multiple chances to lose before even getter there.

Even if we give the upper seeds much better than even odds to survive each round, say a generous 70% chance of moving on in Round 1, 60% in the 2nd, and around 50/50 in the 3rd

when they'd likely meet a team roughly equal to their strength, those add up to around a 1-in-5 chance that a top seed survives to even get to the WS (.7 x .6 x .5 = .21) much less win it.



And the Stanley Cup playoffs almost never see the best teams through to the end. #8 seeds regularly beat #1's in the first round and the results are more random than any other

sport we watch here. The NBA, with roughly the same format (though they recently decided that 16/30 team wasn't enough) stays more true to form but that's because the gap between

the top teams and the also-rans is much bigger than you see anywhere else (multiple teams/yr win in excess of 75-85% of their games) and because one or two superstars can dominate a

game (think LAA if Ohtani pitches everyday and the Angels decide to give Trout 40% of his team's ABs)

[roger_that]

Are we overthinking this a little bit?



Seems to me that any playoff system will have an inferior (85-win) team beating its superiors a decent chunk of the time, and superior (100+) win teams will get clobbered in the first round once in a while. That's why they play the games, etc.



Further, some years this will occur grossly, with multiple superior teams getting beaten by inferior teams. If you don't want this to happen, stop watching the playoffs. That danger is inherent to the concept of playoffs.



And actually I have stopped watching. Once the Mets are out of it, my interest in MLB goes down to the levels of interest in watching paint dry.



Maybe that's why I reacted so strongly and so bitterly to the Mets getting clobbered. I wanted a few more weeks of baseball, and I felt entitled to it.



Which is wrong, I know. But that entitlement is running rampant here. You watch the playoffs on the offchance that a so-so team will emerge as the Champions of the World. That's the whole ballgame, giving mediocrities a chance to show that the regular season didn't mean squat.

[roger_that]

The whole thing about the playoffs, to my mind, is admitting mediocre teams (i.e., teams other than the one that won the most regular season games) to the party but disadvantaging them so severely that they earn their right to advance by beating teams they shouldn't be beating.



So what disadvantages are there to dish out? Home field, obviously, is one--not a huge disadvantage, but a reliable one. Short series--even facing a one-game "series" should be the first round for the weakest Wild Card teams, on the principle of "Yuz shouldn't even be here in the first place, you sucked in the regular season, so deal with it." I would pile a day/night doubleheader or two on the next round of playoffs, in the interest of saving time AND making it tougher for the teams that squeak into the playoffs. It also has the effect of tiring out the winner of such series, messing up their pitching, both starters and relievers, and depriving their regulars of a breather that the team they're facing in the next round gets.



You pile on the disadvantages, and the team that overcomes them, if they're severe enough, will have earned their spot in the later playoff series.



Are there any powerful disadvantages I'm forgetting about?

[Fman99]

=roger_that post_id=111684 time=1666346833 user_id=128]
Are we overthinking this a little bit?



Seems to me that any playoff system will have an inferior (85-win) team beating its superiors a decent chunk of the time, and superior (100+) win teams will get clobbered in the first round once in a while. That's why they play the games, etc.



Further, some years this will occur grossly, with multiple superior teams getting beaten by inferior teams. If you don't want this to happen, stop watching the playoffs. That danger is inherent to the concept of playoffs.



And actually I have stopped watching. Once the Mets are out of it, my interest in MLB goes down to the levels of interest in watching paint dry.



Maybe that's why I reacted so strongly and so bitterly to the Mets getting clobbered. I wanted a few more weeks of baseball, and I felt entitled to it.

[Frayed Knot]

Not over-thinking things at all.



What I'm arguing against here is the whole concept that the purpose of playoffs is to be a second chance way station for everyone from those who were almost good enough to win down

through the kinda good teams plus a group of assorted mediocrities. My idea of the best use of a post-season is to pit regional/league winners against each other and crown a winner for

that particular season from the survivor of a knock-out tournament.

I don't see the attraction in including those teams that were shown over the long haul of a complete season to be a cut beneath the top teams and even less in including those several cuts

below them.

[roger_that]

Frayed Knot wrote: I don't see the attraction in including those teams that were shown over the long haul of a complete season to be a cut beneath the top teams and even less in including those several cuts below them.

Problem here, as I see it, is that the 1973 Mets would have been laughed out of the playoffs, instead of going on to beat the Reds, and very nearly the A's. Were they a cut below the Reds, Dodgers, and Giants who all won many more games than the Mets that year in the NL West?

[Ceetar]

Edgy MD wrote: What you actually wrote is that ... every single postseason in every sport in the history of sport has awarded the team that performs the best the title. But now... there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the "Best team", I don't know what you think you're writing "again" to. The notion that "every single postseason in every sport in the history of sport has awarded the team that performs the best the title" and the notion that "there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the 'Best team'" are inherently contradictory. So it doesn't really matter. I would prefer that we award a title to the team who has best proven itself to be the best — I hope I've made that clear — and you either don't want that because every postseason ever already does that, or you don't want that, because no system whatsoever does that. And the dogs bark, and the river runs, and the rich oppress the poor, and nothing means anything, for what are words? And is our struggle not merely lengthening our long defeat? And what happens to all the yesterdays? And who knows to whom the rain returns, and which of our secrets it knows?

if you can't tell the difference between those things, which btw, was something I _responded to_. I'm not the one that separated those two concepts. They are different.







This, more for Frayed Knot, is something I'm not sure of how it actually shakes out:



an NHL style playoffs leading to the best/most talented/regular season champion team winning the most often versus not. Yes, there are more rounds. But there aren't really.. the Dodgers path to the title was already 3. I did propose an idea of first round byes for division champs, leading to only 3 7-game series. That would be the same as right now, except the first series would be longer, and longer series are going to favor the better team, as it (mildly) limits the luck and random variation. Like, if the Mets had a 7 game series against the Padres, I think they might've pulled it out. At least, even going to game 4 I'd still feel reasonably "in it".





But I think we should value regular season stuff a little more. Not necessarily try to reward it in this tournament, but just like, treat it as meaningful. This was my stance on 2022 anyway, if the Mets had lost in the tournament, but had won the division, I'd have felt like "okay, you won this thing and lost the other, tough break, but good season" but when you lose both, it's disappointing. Move to a 4-division setup with 7-10 teams each, and winning that becomes more impressive. There's something grander, more important sounding, even in leagues that give you 8 playoff teams, to be like "my team won the division 7 of the last 8 years" versus like "we made the playoffs every year!" different caliber of thing.

[Edgy MD]

=Ceetar post_id=111692 time=1666358841 user_id=102]
if you can't tell the difference between those things, which btw, was something I _responded to_.

[metsmarathon]

ok, hear me out, because i honestly hate what i'm about to type.



maximally expanded playoffs akin to what the nba has to offer are probably the best way to ensure that the best mlb teams continue deep into the playoffs.



why?



because given a long enough series (and lets assume 7 games is long enough) the vastly better teams should win more often.



so let's just say the playoffs are open to the top 16 teams.



your NL matchups are: dodgers/giants | braves/brewers | mets/phillies | padres/cardinals

your AL matchups are: astros/white sox | yankees/orioles | guardians/rays | mariners/blue jays



i think those series are much more likely to end up with the top two teams in each division advancing, and maybe more likely have three of the top four.



The regular season is still about seeding, and maybe you give the top two seeds in each league all home games in the first round, and give the 3-seed 6 home games, and the 4-seed 5 home games. make it worth a team's while, financially at least, to aim for the higher seeding.



The second round of the playoffs is more like what we used to be used to with the division serieses, but the top seeds likely have just been tuning up against the 7-8 seeds, and the 3-6 seeds are busy brawling with each other. so there's less of the concern with a good team getting iced, waiting for its bye week to be over. but they still have a hope of resting tired players more.



and go from there.



if a low seed really has a run in them, well, damnit, they'll have to fucking earn it more this way, instead of just having one good week.



i mean, i rather hate the overall idea here. but i think it could be the way to get the best teams deeper into the playoffs, at least without going back to a more limited postseason.



i'm really on the fence here, too. because as much as i like to have the regular season be as meaningful as possible for the most amount of teams, i also greatly enjoy seeing cinderella teams go on a really hot streak and prove their mettle knocking down the juggernauts.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I do think that too many teams are in the playoffs, but given that we're at that number, I favor longer series over shorter ones. I'd make the Wild Card series a best of five and the Division Series a best of seven. This would add another five days or so to the postseason calendar. I don't think that's such a big deal. Start the season a week earlier and schedule as many of the early-season games as possible in warm weather cities or domed stadiums.

[metsmarathon]

the short serieses are what really fucks things up. but long serieses AND top-seed byes fuck things up even more. ...or at least as much.

[roger_that]

the short serieses are what really fucks things up. but long serieses AND top-seed byes fuck things up even more. ...or at least as much.

Wrong wrong wrongedy wrong!



We need MORE short series for the 83- and 86-win teams. Not even a series. The two (or four) lowest seeded teams play one game to see who gets into the next round. Unfair? You dont like it? Tough--win more games in the regular season.



The winners of the one game WC gets to play three games at the next-seeded teams' park, and the winner there gets to play (on the road) a team that's had a BYE for the past few days. 1, 3, 5, 7 games, all on the road for the lowest seeded team.



The plural of "series" btw is "series." Like "deer" and "deer."