The Baseball Thread

[BigFatHairyDeal]

Why are Wild Card games only "Best of 3"? Did it always used to be that way?

Go Royals!

Baseball's postseason has changed quite a bit throughout the years.

Back when the AL and NL had no divisions, the postseason was just the World Series. The top AL team played the top NL team. The regular season was a round robin tournament.

Then in the 1960s, baseball expanded and the AL and NL each had two divisions. The postseason field doubled from two to four, and both leagues had a League Championship Series. The big drawback of this format was that the team with the second best record could miss the playoffs, such as San Francisco in 1993 who won 103 games and got eliminated in game 162.

For the 1994 season, one year after MLB expanded for the first time since the 1970s, MLB now had three divisions per league. All three division champs got an automatic playoff berth and the best second-place finisher advanced. One nice thing is that the second best team was guaranteed to make the postseason. The problem with the three division format was that there were quite a few years where one division was really weak and the three-seed had a really mediocre record. Fun fact: in 1994, the four wost teams in the AL were the four AL West teams, but since that season ended in a strike, there was no postseason and that fluke hasn't recurred.

For the 2011 season, MLB got even greedier wanted more teams in the postseason, so they added a second wild card team per league. The wild card round was one winner-take-all game. There was one nice feature to this: it created extra pressure to win your division. In years passed, the only difference between winning the division and getting the wild card was the WC got no home field advantage in the LDS and LCS.

Then for the 2022 season, MLB saw another opportunity for more revenue wanted to spice up the playoffs even further and added a third wild card team per league, and made the wild card round best of three instead of single elimination. One nice thing about this is that there's extra motivation to get a top two seed and avoid the WC round.

Personally, I ardently dislike expanded postseasons. Baseball's postseason is notorious for being the hottest team wins. It lowers the bar for what it takes to win a World Series, and MLB's champ is rarely the team that was most consistently good all year long.

 

[wonderfly]

Well, the Royals are out, so it's all a wash for me now.

 

[LinusFan303]

I will not root for the Yankees, I will not root for the Dodgers.... I can only half-heartedly support the Mets, I can easily support the Tigers or Guardians.



@BigFatHairyDeal The one thing I don't like about this new system is it forces a division winner to have to play in the wildcard round , if a division winner's record isn't as high as the other two division winners. I think getting time off is kind of bad for a team , they've had the time off the past two seasons and not do well, though this year it seems the Dodgers got over that curse, the Phillies didn't. The American League had better results with the time off. But baseball is a sport where resting doesn't happen in the regular season as much , most teams play ~6 games a week. (always a weekend F,S,S series then either M,T,W, or TW,TH, the day off for travel ) so I think a team fairs better in the playoffs , like the Mets, with less days off. I also feel having a week off is what hurt my Rockies in 2007 in the WS.

 

[BigFatHairyDeal]

Because a lot of 3-seeds have had some unspectacular regular-season records, I'm generally ok with the idea that they have a harder road to the WS than the 1- and 2-seeds. But if your fix for a playoff problem is adding more playoff teams, you're really going sideways instead of making real improvements.

Rest vs. rust is an interesting debate, especially for baseball where batter timing is pretty important. That said, a little rest is generally good for teams that want to set their postseason rotations or get some extra rest for the bullpens. Also, there's something to be said about automatically getting into the LDS round while the other four teams have to win their WC series. Maybe the ideal time off is 2-3 days.

"Playoffs" are best when they're provisional instead of subject to quotas (i.e. every year, x number of teams qualify regardless).

 

[khuddle]

I'm really not that big a baseball fan but even I am swept up in the Mets magical run.
Maybe its because I have a co-worker who's a Mets fanatic, and his enthusiasm lately has
been infectious. Whatever the case, pulling for the Mets as they will be heavy underdogs
against the Dodgers. But they were healthy underdogs against the Phillies too, and they
prevailed. They should at least have a puncher's chance against LA.

Fun time of year.

 

[LinusFan303]

Because a lot of 3-seeds have had some unspectacular regular-season records, I'm generally ok with the idea that they have a harder road to the WS than the 1- and 2-seeds. But if your fix for a playoff problem is adding more playoff teams, you're really going sideways instead of making real improvements.

Rest vs. rust is an interesting debate, especially for baseball where batter timing is pretty important. That said, a little rest is generally good for teams that want to set their postseason rotations or get some extra rest for the bullpens. Also, there's something to be said about automatically getting into the LDS round while the other four teams have to win their WC series. Maybe the ideal time off is 2-3 days.

"Playoffs" are best when they're provisional instead of subject to quotas (i.e. every year, x number of teams qualify regardless).

Ironically, now the Mets are the one with the longest break, that'll be interesting to see how that goes. I like having more teams have a chance, mostly because I think the pay scales of teams are so different that seeing a team be "scrappy" is always more slightly entertaining to me personally. I loved the D-backs run last year.

I wasn't a fan of expanding to a whole wild card round , the wildcard one and done were enough for me. But they were going the NFL , NHL, NBA route with more teams to spice it up and yeah money.

I'm pretty much on the view (though this year it seems to have been moot with only the Phillies not making it, that the rest part is kind of a hindrance because of how it feels vs. a regular season time. Baseball is a sport that feels like like players have to kind of "warm up" more as they play, which is why some teams burn hot in April and May, but fizzle as other teams start to get more "seasoned" as the season goes on.

 

[BigFatHairyDeal]

Ironically, now the Mets are the one with the longest break, that'll be interesting to see how that goes. I like having more teams have a chance, mostly because I think the pay scales of teams are so different that seeing a team be "scrappy" is always more slightly entertaining to me personally. I loved the D-backs run last year.

I wasn't a fan of expanding to a whole wild card round , the wildcard one and done were enough for me. But they were going the NFL , NHL, NBA route with more teams to spice it up and yeah money.

I'm pretty much on the view (though this year it seems to have been moot with only the Phillies not making it, that the rest part is kind of a hindrance because of how it feels vs. a regular season time. Baseball is a sport that feels like like players have to kind of "warm up" more as they play, which is why some teams burn hot in April and May, but fizzle as other teams start to get more "seasoned" as the season goes on.

Yeah, baseball's lack of salary cap is one mitigating factor for having a spread in the standings. But then there are years like 2021 when the Rays finish with the best record in the AL and they are forced to have to beat the 2nd and 3rd place teams again in the postseason.

If you prefer the idea that the champs are more or less the best teams that year, MLB's postseason only occasionally works.

Sent from my SM-S928U1 using Tapatalk

 

[LinusFan303]

Here's the LDS line up for TV

Yeah, baseball's lack of salary cap is one mitigating factor for having a spread in the standings. But then there are years like 2021 when the Rays finish with the best record in the AL and they are forced to have to beat the 2nd and 3rd place teams again in the postseason.

If you prefer the idea that the champs are more or less the best teams that year, MLB's postseason only occasionally works.

Sent from my SM-S928U1 using Tapatalk

What your ideal playoffs be like?

 

[BigFatHairyDeal]

What your ideal playoffs be like?

Excellent question.

Upfront, I'd mention that every playoff format MLB has ever had presented pros and cons. From a spectator's POV, it's nice that you can turn on a postseason game and it's not a foregone conclusion who will win.

Ideally, there would be a salary cap/floor in MLB, but the players' union will never allow it.

So, under the assumption there will never be a cap like the NFL or a luxury tax like in the NBA, I think you can't do the pre-1960s round robin regular season tournament to see who goes to the WS. To the Dodgers' credit, they do a lot of things correctly beyond spending hundreds of millions of dollars, but as long as they can afford to outspend everyone in the NL, they're at too much of a competitive advantage.

I honestly don't have one optimal suggestion for baseball. There are a couple of things I'd look into. One would be a provisional playoff instead of the quota of 6 teams going to the postseason every year. Back in the 2000s, there were a bunch of seasons when the 4-team postseason worked well because the spread between the top and bottom playoff seeds was really narrow, like in the AL in 2005, 2006, and 2007. But if you have someting like a 102-win team facing an 88-win team, I think that's not so good. It's not like we don't know who the better team is.

In the bubble season, the NBA instituted some really novel ideas for their play-in tournament. There would be a play-in only if the separation between the 8th and 9th seed was four games or less. If there was a play-in, the 9th seed had to win two out of three, but the 8th seed only had to win one. I thought this nailed what a postseason series should look like: 1) you would only bother with a playoff if the spread between the two teams was narrow enough and 2) if you do have a playoff, the team with the better regular season record had a marked advantage, well beyond home court/field advantage. Unfortunately, come 2021, the NBA made the play-in quota-based, where there's always going to be a play-in regardless of spread. Also, the loser of 7-8 no longer has a distinct advantage over the winner of 9-10 when they face each other.

I have a lot of other general ideas, but will stop to pause here.

 

[entransify]

Baseball's postseason has changed quite a bit throughout the years.

Back when the AL and NL had no divisions, the postseason was just the World Series. The top AL team played the top NL team. The regular season was a round robin tournament.

Then in the 1960s, baseball expanded and the AL and NL each had two divisions. The postseason field doubled from two to four, and both leagues had a League Championship Series. The big drawback of this format was that the team with the second best record could miss the playoffs, such as San Francisco in 1993 who won 103 games and got eliminated in game 162.

For the 1994 season, one year after MLB expanded for the first time since the 1970s, MLB now had three divisions per league. All three division champs got an automatic playoff berth and the best second-place finisher advanced. One nice thing is that the second best team was guaranteed to make the postseason. The problem with the three division format was that there were quite a few years where one division was really weak and the three-seed had a really mediocre record. Fun fact: in 1994, the four wost teams in the AL were the four AL West teams, but since that season ended in a strike, there was no postseason and that fluke hasn't recurred.

For the 2011 season, MLB got even greedier wanted more teams in the postseason, so they added a second wild card team per league. The wild card round was one winner-take-all game. There was one nice feature to this: it created extra pressure to win your division. In years passed, the only difference between winning the division and getting the wild card was the WC got no home field advantage in the LDS and LCS.

Then for the 2022 season, MLB saw another opportunity for more revenue wanted to spice up the playoffs even further and added a third wild card team per league, and made the wild card round best of three instead of single elimination. One nice thing about this is that there's extra motivation to get a top two seed and avoid the WC round.

Personally, I ardently dislike expanded postseasons. Baseball's postseason is notorious for being the hottest team wins. It lowers the bar for what it takes to win a World Series, and MLB's champ is rarely the team that was most consistently good all year long.

fun fact about the current postseason format:

it was the idea of Clay Dreslough, who is the owner of Sports Mogul (the publishing company of the Baseball Mogul and Football Mogul PC game series). He had actually lobbied MLB to adopt this format as early as the late 1990s.

 

[AdrenalineRush1996]

For next month's World Series, I think it'll be Dodgers vs. Yankees since the former has had a strong season this year thanks to starmaker Shohei Ohtani, who became the first MLB player to record 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a season recently.

 

[BigFatHairyDeal]

For next month's World Series, I think it'll be Dodgers vs. Yankees since the former has had a strong season this year thanks to starmaker Shohei Ohtani, who became the first MLB player to record 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a season recently.

The Dodgers were plenty good before Ohtani. The roster has three former MVPs on the squad. Oddly enough, this is the lowest winning % they put up since 2018 despite spending $1 billion in free agency before the season.

If you believe Wins Above Replacement is an accurate stat, the Dodgers still would've been in contention to make the playoffs even without Ohtani's MVP performance.

 

[Space Cadet]

Well, we know already but the World Series is now set between the Dodgers and the Yankees. First time meeting in the finals in over 40+ years. Game 1 is on Friday. Should be an exciting series.

 

[BigFatHairyDeal]

Well, we know already but the World Series is now set between the Dodgers and the Yankees. First time meeting in the finals in over 40+ years. Game 1 is on Friday. Should be an exciting series.

I've been telling my friends that if this World Series is not ratings hit, MLB is in big trouble. People have been saying for decades that baseball is dying. If this doesn't give MLB a shot in the arm, nothing will.

You got the #1 seeds from each league finally playing each other in this new playoff format. But more importantly, you have the most popular AL team vs. the most popular NL team. They also are probably the most hated AL and NL teams, too, so MLB fans are going to have strong feelings one way or the other. It's historically the best Interleague rivalry, as the Dodgers/Yankees is the most common World Series matchup. You got the NYC connection for both franchises, but it's also East vs. West and the largest media market vs. the second largest. Perhaps most intriguingly, we actually have the two best and most popular players in all of MLB in the World Series, along with three other former MVPs.

If MLB were to rig the World Series matchup the way the NBA has been accused of doing, it would be exactly this matchup.

 

[Moe]

It looks like Atlanta Braves deal with Bally Sports/FanDuel Sports Network expire in 2027, so hopefully WBD take this seriously to win the rights to air Braves games on TBS in the South.

 

[LinusFan303]

It looks like Atlanta Braves deal with Bally Sports/FanDuel Sports Network expire in 2027, so hopefully WBD take this seriously to win the rights to air Braves games on TBS in the South.

They aren't going to buy the rights to just one team. There's not even a separate TBS Atlanta feed anymore. If the Braves don't make a new deal , either Gray swoops it up or they have the MLB produce the broadcasts like other teams have done.

 

[Moe]

They aren't going to buy the rights to just one team. There's not even a separate TBS Atlanta feed anymore. If the Braves don't make a new deal , either Gray swoops it up or they have the MLB produce the broadcasts like other teams have done.

Back in 1980s, TBS has own block to air Braves for whoever live in Braves territory, especially most of Alabama, so Alabamians never receive local TBS from Atlanta, so just regular TBS on cable.

In 1990s and early 2000s, some Braves games moved to RSN and completely moved to RSN in mid 2000s.

I’m already fed up with RSN model that hurt our family so we had no access to watch baseball games. I’m all for death of RSN.

 

[stephane dumas]

I've been telling my friends that if this World Series is not ratings hit, MLB is in big trouble. People have been saying for decades that baseball is dying. If this doesn't give MLB a shot in the arm, nothing will.

You got the #1 seeds from each league finally playing each other in this new playoff format. But more importantly, you have the most popular AL team vs. the most popular NL team. They also are probably the most hated AL and NL teams, too, so MLB fans are going to have strong feelings one way or the other. It's historically the best Interleague rivalry, as the Dodgers/Yankees is the most common World Series matchup. You got the NYC connection for both franchises, but it's also East vs. West and the largest media market vs. the second largest. Perhaps most intriguingly, we actually have the two best and most popular players in all of MLB in the World Series, along with three other former MVPs.

If MLB were to rig the World Series matchup the way the NBA has been accused of doing, it would be exactly this matchup.

Still, sometimes it's interesting to see a Cinderella team coming of nowhere to go to the World Series. It would have been fun to see that happening again.

 

[LinusFan303]

Still, sometimes it's interesting to see a Cinderella team coming of nowhere to go to the World Series. It would have been fun to see that happening again.

That's one my favorite things like we had two years in a row where a 6th seeded team comes in the playoffs and just goes to the World Series. Personally, my team did that in 2007 where in August of that year it didn't look they would be going then they hit a spark and zoomed through. The Tigers were fun to see doing that this year, it would have been fun seeing them.
I would have loved seeing the Guardians try to get their first win since 1948, and either the Brewers or Padres get off the "haven't won" club.

 

[stephane dumas]

That's one my favorite things like we had two years in a row where a 6th seeded team comes in the playoffs and just goes to the World Series. Personally, my team did that in 2007 where in August of that year it didn't look they would be going then they hit a spark and zoomed through. The Tigers were fun to see doing that this year, it would have been fun seeing them.
I would have loved seeing the Guardians try to get their first win since 1948, and either the Brewers or Padres get off the "haven't won" club.

At least the Brewers and Padres had won a AL(1982) and NL(1984) pennant while the Seattle Mariners didn't won one yet.