Existing System

This year brings a new MLB playoff system: an extra wildcard team resulting in a 1 game wildcard playoff.

3 pros:

1) Produces an extra playoff team, putting more teams in the race down the home stretch of the season. Better for gate sales, TV, etc.

2) Makes winning the division important. No more restting all your guys for the last few weeks a la the Yankees a few years ago.

3) Produces an instant "Game 7" type atmosphere for 2 games in each year's playoffs. Helps boost Best Buy sales.

Concerns

But obviously this perhaps magnifies the primary issues with the MLB playoff system. It's essentially a weighted crap shoot. The best teams have a better % chance than the worst teams, but there is still a massive amount of variance.

Many people think a substantial element of luck is a positive thing. It adds excitement, gives every team the feel that they can "win it all" and has produced some pretty amazing playoff runs in the recent memory.

The downside is, of course, it often means the best team doesn't win the World Series. Shouldn't that be the goal? For the best team to win the World Series?

It doesn't make sense to play a 162 game regular season and then chuck some weighted dice for rangz gamb0000000l.

For this analysis, I'm assuming the following facts:

-2 wildcard team system is here to stay
-Reducing the # of regular season games is not an option
-Anything incorporating a series over 11 games is not an option due to pitcher/player health
-Anything incorporating a series over 9 games is not an option due to $$/TV/MLBPA/fan endurance

3 Possible Alternatives

Alternative A:

This is an extreme alternative. I think it is far too long and not viable for various considerations listed below.

2 wildcard teams + 3 division winners from each league.

The 2 wildcard winners play each other in a 5 game series. After that round, the team with the top overall seed can choose which team it wants to play. The other 2 teams play each other.

Wildcard Round - 5 Games
Divisional Round - 7 Games
AL/NL Championship Round - 9 Games
World Series - 11 Games

Alternative B:

Same Wildcard and Divisional format as above, just reduced number of games.

Wildcard Round - 3 Games all played at higher seed OR 5 games
Divisional Round - 7 Games
AL/NL Championship Round - 9 (possibly 7) Games
World Series - 9 Games

Alternative C:

Some sort of round robin, double-elimination monstrosity.

Alternative D:

A complete restructuring of MLB resulting in a drastically different playoff scenario.

Examples:

-Moving back to 2 divisions in each league
-Moving up to 4 divisions in each league
-Seeding playoffs according to overall record, not winning the division (although winning the division still gets you in, if you have a wildcard spot and your record is better than a division winner, you jump them in seeding)
-Nuking the AL Central from orbit (it's the only way to be sure)

9 game series possible schedules:

H
H
H
H
(travel day)
A
A
A
A
(travel day)
H

OR

H
H
H
(travel day)
A
A
A
(travel day)
H
(optional travel day)
A
(optional travel day)
H

Road Blocks

1. Pitcher stamina. Pitchers are some of the most fragile creatures in American sports. A lot is made of IP limitations and getting pitchers proper rest. If extra games are added to the playoffs, is this viable on a pitcher's arm? Will Dusty Baker end up killing a man?

2. Player health. Here I don't think it's a huge issue (other than pitchers, of course) like it is in the NFL.

3. Fan endurance. I don't know of any sport that has a series over 7 games. I assume there's probably a reason for that. Will fans quickly get bored in a 9 game series? Will "Game 9" ever have the same excitement as "Game 7?"

4. Money/TV/logistics issues. The union will cry foul and demand an extra incentive because it adds extra work for the players. The owners won't want to pay the players more money, etc. Of course, even if a few teams were interested, all the owners might not be thrilled with this idea... especially teams that don't look as if they are going to be dominant anytime soon. Think the Rockies are gonna jump for joy at this idea?

5. The weather. The deeper the playoffs go, the colder and nastier the weather will get. I don't think any of these alternatives, save 1 or 2, will really add THAT many games to throw us into nasty cold weather, but it certainly increases the possibility.

Is my conclusion that the current system is simply a weighted dice game as well-accepted as I think? Does anyone have different alternatives? I just came up with the above ones on the spot while writing this post.

I rarely make new threads in SE, so hopefully this is a useful one. Thanks for reading.

edit - I also don't intend to come up with a system where the best team always wins or even wins an extremely high % of the time. I'm just thinking of a system that reduces the big variance we face now. If we do something as simple as kicking the current 5 game series up to 7 games, does that make a huge difference?

1 con

div champ vs wc team can be down 0-2 and haven't played a home game yet.

also they're not going back to over 7 game series, been there done that snooze fest.

if the goal was to have the best team win the world series, they'd have some kind of formula that would determine the top 2 teams after the season was over and have them play each other. That would be so much fun. I'd call it the Baseball Championship Series.

1. Spread the games out over longer periods of time.

2. Not a big issue, like you said.

3. wat

4. Legitimate.

5. ehhh

I agree with most of what you said, however, as a fan of a smaller market team I appeciate the "dice game" come playoff time. Since there is no salary cap in baseball, it makes it more interesting to have higher variance come playoff time to give these smaller market teams a chance at glory.

But id be more in favor of shortening the season 10 games and extending the playoffs a bit more.

The obvious answer is to get rid of divisions. Only AL and NL. Balance schedules. Top 4 teams from each (or 5 if you want this 1 game playoff). Also interleague shouldn't exist, but since the Astros are moving I guess we're ****ed there. All series 7 games. AL Central nuked from orbit is definitely the smartest thing though.

Baseball just has so much variance to begin with that the postseason's always going to be a crap shoot no matter what. If the best teams only win around 60% of their games against the entire league, how are you going to separate them from each other in a watchable series? Short of just taking the team with the best record in each league, and having them play a best-of-17 World Series, you're not going to get much out of just changing the postseason structure.

What I'd rather do is just change the actual structure of the game by starting the batting order over every inning. Since the vast majority of the at-bats would then be taken by the Top 4 hitters, the skill difference will be magnified whereas averaged out over 8 or 9 batters, it doesn't amount to as much. It's one of the main reasons why basketball (8 rotation players with most shots taken by 3 guys) has a lot less variance than hockey (~20 players sharing similar ice time). Also, since the better hitters would be hitting more, the games would be more high-scoring, and would contain more at-bats, also reducing the variance a little.

Now, since there would be more at-bats, you would also need measures to hurry the game along, but I think this is very doable. I would have a "pitch clock" much like a shot clock where if the clock runs out, the umpire automatically calls a ball. You could maybe give it one reset to a shorter number if the pitcher has to throw back to the bases to check the runners (like the NBA shot clock resetting to 14 on a foul), but after that you have to get the runner or it's still a ball when the clock runs out. Also, if a team is up by more than 1 run after the 5th inning, I'd have the team that's losing play 2 of their innings for every one by the leading team until the score evened up, or the innings evened up with the score back within 1. (For example, say the Tigers lead the Red Sox 7-3 after 5 innings. The Red Sox hit for their 6th and 7th innings before the Tigers use their 6th, after which the score is still 7-4 Tigers. If the Red Sox can tie or take the lead in the 8th inning, then the Tigers will keep batting until they either regain the lead or catch up in terms of innings at bat. If they are still down, they will take their 9th inning as well, and the Tigers can close out the game while only actually taking 6 innings at bat. Not only would this speed up the games, it would also take out the most boring part of baseball (watching a team hit with a decent lead).

Now, I feel like this would make the game much more exciting and could develop a lot of new fans, but there would obviously be traditionalists that disliked the concept as well, so as a compromise, I'd institute it in the American League only. People who liked baseball "the old way" would just have to be National League fans, and then when the leagues did finally meet in the World Series, there would be a lot more hype as the matchup between the old way and new way of playing baseball.

That thing about having the trailing team continuing to bat would be interesting and potentially more exciting. It would totally mess up the stats though.

I think the leading team in one of the MTV Rock N' Jock softball games elected to just skip their turn at bat and get to the bottom of the inning to finish the game quicker.

the se mindset that variance = auto bad is bad. the #1 goal of sports is entertainment

Ummm, lengthening the first round gives all the other teams in an even greater advantage by allowing them to rest. While whoever advances is in even bigger trouble than currently.

The new system works okay for now. It separates out the 1 through 5 a little bit better. I feel this current way is LESS of a crapshoot than before...because now the division winners are better rewarded with a better advantage and incentive. 4 and 5 get to sniff the postseason but also have to roll the dice in the first round AND don't get to rest and set their rotation. Perfect. Whoever wins the 4 v 5 is now at a pretty big disadvantage. I like putting motivation on winning the division.

Lol at 9 or 11 game series. Although they actually did used to have a 9 game World Series about 100 years ago. Seriously. Look it up.

this is actually a con, imo.

what is the point of having a 162 game season if not to let teams separate from each other?

more playoff seeds = more teams in the hunt at the end and it may seem like it creates more drama but it actually does so at the expense of the regular season. as you put in more and more teams, it becomes much more about what happens in the postseason than in the regular season. (ie, NBA/NHL)

the last thing you want in a 162 game regular season, is to detract from the importance of that regular season.

a 1 game playoff for the wildcards is actually preferable to a series because it makes winning the division that much more important and lets you add a playoff team without cheapening the regular season by much.

ideally though i would prefer to go back to last years format, or possibly the same 8 team setup with a new divisional structure.

i think instead of playing the games they should just run 10000 computer simulations given the team rosters and $tat$ and tell us who the best team is. ZERO VARIANCE

+1 to everything in this post

Go back to the way to use to do it. 2 leagues no divisions World Series no playoffs. Perfect solution IMO but its not going to happen, so why not let everybody into the playoffs?

My proposal is keep the 3 divisions in each league but make the wildcard for the fourth playoff spot a true wildcard.

The three division winners advance to playoffs. The division winner with the best record plays the wildcard winner and 2 and 3 play each other.

Every non division winner is put in a seeded single elimination tournament with the team with the better regular season record getting HFA.

This format gives everybody a chance while giving teams a bigger incentive to win their division and to get the best record in the league.

OP,

How did you come up with your 9 and 11 game series assumptions? I know you said player health and fan engagement were involved, but if the main goal is to reduce variance, can you say to what degree the variance would change under those types of conditions?

Say you average around 72 at-bats per playoff game. Best of 7, your minimum average at-bats are 288. Best of 9, your minimum is 360. Best of 11, 432. Would those extra 100+ at-bats spread over multiple games between two teams make a significant difference in generating a truer outcome for the series? I'm skeptical.

This is a very impractical way of approaching the problem. At what point would you be satisfied that the "best" team won? How do you measure that? Not to go all anti-sabr, but at some point you have to surrender to the fact that some variance happens in sports. You can't have teams play 1,000 games and be 99% certain of which one is the best team. If you feel the playoffs are that much of a liability in contributing to the enjoyment of the game and/or crowning a champion, you might as well do away with playoffs altogether and just base it all off the regular season.

Also, I agree with wheatrich's comparison to the BCS system as far as implementing a formula to determine the best teams, this would clearly be terrible.

I'd like to see MLB go back to the way it used to be: cut 10 games from the regular season, cut interleague and divisions, have everyone play a balanced schedule within their respective league, maybe keep the LCS, and have the world series be between the top AL and NL team (OT, but I'd implement a salary cap and stop coddling pitchers too, pitch counts are the worst).