Dec 08 2008
I Call ‘Em as I See ‘Em: Playoff Format
At this time when everyone is complaining about the ridiculousness in college football called the BCS, I want to talk to you about the MLB playoff structure. Let me preface this with the fact that when I started really paying attention to how the playoffs worked in Major League Baseball was in 1994 (I was 8). That season we had the strike, and the next season was the first season with 3 divisions per league and the Wild Card. Therefore, I really only remember watching the playoffs under the current system.
The way the baseball playoffs work is that the top team in each division and the team that has the most wins without winning a division (the Wild Card team) advance to the playoffs. There are three sets of series in the postseason, the Divisional Series, the Championship Series, and the World Series. The team with the better record in each match-up is the home team for the Divisional and Championship Series, while the League that won the All-Star game hosts the World Series.
The Divisional Series is a best of five games (win three to win the series), while the Championship Series and the World Series are best of seven games (win four).
That’s the quick and dirty, but explain the exceptions, an illustration will help. Let’s look at an example of how it would work inside one league (the format is the same for both). Assume that the Western Division winner (W) has 100 wins, the Central Division winner (C) has 95 wins, the Eastern Division winner (E) has 90, and the Wild Card team (WC) has 92. The playoffs would set up with WC at W, and E at C. However, if the Wild Card team is from the West, it would be E at W, and WC at C. This is because the Wild Card can not play the team that won their division in the first round. Assuming that E upset W and WC upset C, the Championship Series would be WC at E, even though WC has more wins. This is because supposedly the WC is a weaker team than the divisional winners.
What are the problems? I have two really big problems.
First, is the best of five series. Baseball is a game where the objective is have the most wins at the end of the 162 game season. This is like running a marathon. Teams have to have depth (especially pitching depth), and a stumbling start (say a 5-win April) isn’t impossible to overcome. In the best of five series, teams that have a dominate pitcher or two will have a disproportionately higher chance of success, and a bad game can be insurmountable.
With all of the rest & travel days build into the series, a team can have their two best pitchers start 4 of the possible 5 games. This gives an advantage to a team that has two really good pitchers and three so-so pitchers over a team that has a really good pitcher, three good pitchers, and one so-so pitchers, even though the second team would most likely have the better record.
You fix this problem by extending this first series to seven games. This means you’ll have to extend the postseason into November (which means worrying about even more terrible weather like we had last World Series), or you can return baseball back to it’s previous 154 game schedule. I’m a fan of the second idea, you gain a week of time to hold the playoffs and avoid that unfriendly weather.
The second part of the baseball playoffs that grinds my gears is the treatment of the Wild Card team. The Wild Card team has to play as the visitor in both the Divisional and Championship Series. Yet it possible that the Wild Card team has the second-best record in league, and just had the bad luck to be in the division with the only team to win more games.
How do you fix this? You keep the Wild Card, and the Divisional winners, but you seed the teams on record. The team with the best record hosts the team with the worst, and the team with the second best hosts the team with the second worst. Don’t worry about whether it’s a Wild Card team or if both teams are from the same division. If there is a tie, the tiebreaker is head-t0-head record. This rewards those teams that are good enough to be second-best, but play in the division with the best. (You could still possibly exclude teams from the playoffs that have better records than divisional winners this way, but it’s not very likely and divisional rivalries are good for baseball.)
Mark your calendar for two weeks from today, because the next I Call ‘Em as I See ‘Em will relate to this one quite interestingly.
Until next time, I’m hittin’ the showers.
