Realignment

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

The results of one game can be pretty random. It's entirely possible that the #1 wild card team can have 95+ wins and be in a heated divisional race right up to the end of the season while the #2 wild card team can have fewer than 90 wins and not much to compete for in the final weeks of the season. A one-game lottery is just going to increase the odds that a weak team will make the final 8 while stronger wild card teams (who sometimes have better records than the winners of other divisions) will go home.

[Edgy MD]

I think the one-game randomness should lower the proposition that a weak team advances.

Yeah, it's not about cheapening the playoffs, but cheapening that fourth spot --- which should be cheaper, as it was a acquired at the lowest price.

[Ceetar]

Edgy DC wrote: I think the one-game randomness should lower the proposition that a weak team advances. Yeah, it's not about cheapening the playoffs, but cheapening that fourth spot --- which should be cheaper, as it was a acquired at the lowest price.

if we're defining 'weak' as 'team not the best in their own division' the chances they advance/win the series are roughly exactly the same. It's just that the best said weak teams can hope for is a ~50% to get that equal chance to advance.

No system is perfect though. I happen to like this one more than any of the others that were proposed.

[Edgy MD]

A 50% chance to get a chance reduced by 50%.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Take the 2001 Oakland A's with 102 wins. Do they really need to play the 85 win Twins to prove that they're good enough to compete with the 95 win Yankees and 91 win Indians? Seriously, they lost to the freakin' Yankees anyhow, did they need to be weakened first by playing a roll-of-the-dice winner-takes-all game? Did we need a 50% shot of the Twins winning and then getting spanked by the Yankees to no one's entertainment?

[metirish]

Fuck it , make MLB like the NBA,NFL and MLS where everyone makes the playoffs it seems...

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

metirish wrote: Fuck it , make MLB like the NBA,NFL and MLS where everyone makes the playoffs it seems...

I generally am weary of slippery slope arguments, but I can kind of see that may happen here. "We've expanded to 10 playoff teams, why not 12, why not 16?"

The thing with MLB is that they play 162 games in the regular season so I think the onus is even greater on MLB to make those 162 games means something compared to the shorter seasons played in NBA, NHL, MLS & NFL.

[metirish]

Mets � Willets Point wrote: metirish wrote: Fuck it , make MLB like the NBA,NFL and MLS where everyone makes the playoffs it seems... I generally am weary of slippery slope arguments, but I can kind of see that may happen here. "We've expanded to 10 playoff teams, why not 12, why not 16?" The thing with MLB is that they play 162 games in the regular season so I think the onus is even greater on MLB to make those 162 games means something compared to the shorter seasons played in NBA, NHL, MLS & NFL.

yeah, taking the piss of course but shoot, Bud might say " hey why not have two teams from each division go to the playoffs?"

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'm with Willets on this one. If we have to have an additional wild card, I'd rather see it be a best of three. To compress it, you can even make the first day of the series a double-header. If there's not a sweep on day one, then there's another game the next day.

[Ceetar]

metirish wrote: Fuck it , make MLB like the NBA,NFL and MLS where everyone makes the playoffs it seems...

I get this worry, but this is sorta the opposite. I know it's going to be promoted like the playoffs, but did the Reds in '99 feel like they "made the playoffs"? If the Glavine game was actually the playoff, would we have gone into 2008 thinking "At least we made the playoffs" no, it'd still be a terrible collapse.

It's going to be sort of a 'tweener round no matter what. No one's walking away from the season having lost in the 'first' round saying "Playoffs are a crap shoot, we're good enough, better luck next year'. No. beat the division leader.

For every example of a strongly superior team having to play a much weaker team to prove themselves there are other examples of weak division winnings not having to prove themselves. 2000 Yankees, '06 Cardinals. the 2001 Oakland Athletics are an outlier because the Mariners were just that amazingly good. Of course, that's partly because they won 10 games against the A's.

So yeah, they deserve to play in a Wild Card round, because they failed to establish them as a first place team. This way we'll have three teams that have Won the division, plus the 'best' other team that had to defeat the coin flip game.

[Vic Sage]

Anything that gives a division winner an edge over a WC team is an improvement over the current system. a 1-game WC play-in does that. It requires the WC to win an extra game, likely requiring them to burn their best pitchers just to move on; it will also add travel for the WC, on short rest, while the division winner waits at home. A WC team isn't entitled to play a short series to decide its fate; let it be subject to the forces of randomness at play in a 1-game scenario.

[metirish]

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120229&content_id=26927024&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

Addition of Wild Card berths formalized for 2012

The expansion of Major League Baseball's playoffs with the addition of two Wild Card teams and a play-in game in each league will begin this year. An agreement between MLB and the Players Association, finalized on Friday, adds a second Wild Card in each league, making for a postseason field of 10. The three division winners in each league will await the survivor of a one-game playoff between the Wild Card teams in each league, establishing the Division Series field of four teams in each league. The subsequent Division Series, League Championship Series and World Series formats will remain the same. For the 2012 postseason only, the five-game Division Series will begin with two home games for lower seeds, followed by up to three home games for higher seeds. This one-year change will eliminate a travel day prior to a decisive Game 5 of a Division Series and was necessary because the 2012 regular-season schedule was announced before the agreement on the new postseason was reached Next year, the Division Series will return to the 2-2-1 format used in previous years. Details on the scheduling of the new elimination games between each League's Wild Cards will be announced in the near future. Adding Wild Card teams this year created a logistical issue: The regular season is scheduled to end on Wednesday, Oct. 3, leaving two days for travel, weather problems, possible season-ending tiebreakers to decide division titles and Wild Card berths and the Wild Card play-in games prior to the start of the Division Series on Saturday, Oct. 6. The World Series is scheduled to begin on Wednesday, Oct. 24. The additional Wild Cards will place a premium on winning a division title. Division winners will get at least two days of rest before the start of the Division Series, while the Wild Card teams will possibly have to use their best pitchers to win a play-in game. "It used to be if a team had the Wild Card locked up, they could start setting their rotation for the playoffs," said the Rangers' Michael Young, whose team has won the AL West the past two seasons. "Now you have to do everything you can to win the division. You're in; you don't have to play a win-or-go-home game." The new format was agreed upon last year in the new five-year Basic Agreement between the owners and the players, to start by 2013 at the latest. The two sides then had two months to negotiate the logistics of beginning it a year early. This season's schedule was long set before collective bargaining ended with a new agreement on Nov. 21. MLB had been studying how to expand the playoffs for at least two years, and it became a topic of discussion among Commissioner Bud Selig's 14-member committee that has been studying on-field improvements of the sport. Last season, the eventual World Series-champion Cardinals made the playoffs by winning the NL Wild Card berth on the final day of the regular season. Had there been the additional Wild Card berths, the Cardinals instead would have had to play the Braves in a one-game playoff to gain entry into the Division Series. "Everybody remembers that day 162 last year and how exciting that was," said St. Louis manager Mike Matheny, a coach in the Cardinals system last season. "Anything you throw the fans at this point, we all see the benefit of how the Wild Card played out. There were a lot of people against it at the time and it proved to make some very meaningful games for some teams who otherwise wouldn't have had anything going on. I think they're making some good decisions. The decisions they've made in the past have proven to be right. It will be fun to watch how it all plays out." The expanded playoffs were linked to the sale of the Astros by Drayton McLane to Houston businessman Jim Crane and the team's move from the NL to the AL, effective for the 2013 season. The Astros' shift from the NL Central to the AL West will give each league 15 teams and all six divisions five clubs. The playoff and realignment matters had to be collectively bargained because they involved scheduling, and the union wanted any playoff expansion to be tied to moving a team from the six-team NL Central to the four-team AL West to create better competitive balance. Michael Weiner, the union's executive director, ultimately said that playoff expansion wouldn't have happened without the Astros' move to the AL. The previous format featuring three division winners and a Wild Card from each league was adopted in 1994 but wasn't actually used until the following year because a players' strike led to the cancellation of the '94 postseason. From 1969-93, there were two divisions in each league and a League Championship Series between the first-place teams as a prelude to the World Series. Prior to 1969, only the pennant winners, the first-place teams in each league, met in the World Series. Barry M. Bloom is national reporter for MLB.com and writes an MLBlog, Boomskie on Baseball. Follow @boomskie on Twitter. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

[Benjamin Grimm]

"It used to be if a team had the Wild Card locked up, they could start setting their rotation for the playoffs," said the Rangers' Michael Young.

Yeah, but in many cases they STILL can. Some teams will have locked up a Wild Card with no reasonable shot at the division title.

Also, I'm still waiting to see the tie-breaking rules. What if two teams end in a tie for the division lead? Do they have to have a one-game playoff to determine who is the division winner and who is the wild card? In the past they resolved it with off-the-field tiebreakers, and that was okay because, as we know, the distinction between a division champ and a Wild Card didn't matter much. But now, it's a different story.

[metirish]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: "It used to be if a team had the Wild Card locked up, they could start setting their rotation for the playoffs," said the Rangers' Michael Young. Yeah, but in many cases they STILL can. Some teams will have locked up a Wild Card with no reasonable shot at the division title. Also, I'm still waiting to see the tie-breaking rules. What if two teams end in a tie for the division lead? Do they have to have a one-game playoff to determine who is the division winner and who is the wild card? In the past they resolved it with off-the-field tiebreakers, and that was okay because, as we know, the distinction between a division champ and a Wild Card didn't matter much. But now, it's a different story.

Jon Heyman ? word is, no one wins a division on a tiebreaker/coin flip. there will be a playoff for that, too. #MLB

[Ceetar]

Too many tie-breakers might mean too much rest before division series for the top team though.

I'm actually fine with basing it on head to head record, although I guess you could tie there (tie-breaker could be in-division record). If you've already established you can beat the other team(s) in your division in head to head matchups, isn't that enough edge to say you're the division champ?

[Ceetar]

Regardling the Trade Deadline. I wonder if it'll actually become quieter, not more active. More teams will be 'in it', but the financial payoff is not as guaranteed. With increased prices most teams make out very well if they make the postseason, with at least 1 guaranteed game plus merchandise and all that. Are teams going to spend in July when they're two games out of a second playoff spot when it could mean they don't even get a home game and even the first wild card team may only get the one. Will they be able to charge NLDS prices for that play-in? (probably, in fact the desperation of it probably spikes the price. I remember how fast tickets sold to the 2007 and 2008 possible play-in games)

[metirish]

Ceetar wrote: Regardling the Trade Deadline. I wonder if it'll actually become quieter, not more active. More teams will be 'in it', but the financial payoff is not as guaranteed. With increased prices most teams make out very well if they make the postseason, with at least 1 guaranteed game plus merchandise and all that. Are teams going to spend in July when they're two games out of a second playoff spot when it could mean they don't even get a home game and even the first wild card team may only get the one. Will they be able to charge NLDS prices for that play-in? (probably, in fact the desperation of it probably spikes the price. I remember how fast tickets sold to the 2007 and 2008 possible play-in games)

good points....

[Ceetar]

The flip side being, fans probably don't care, and if you sell something when you're only 1 out of the second wild card, even if you're 10 out of the first spot, they might not be too happy with you.

[Frayed Knot]

Ceetar wrote: Too many tie-breakers might mean too much rest before division series for the top team though.

Another reason why a one-game play-in for the WC teams is better than a two-of-three.