Wildcard Playoff Format Fairness

[tommybaseball]

Any Major League team can defeat any other Major League team in a short series. There should be a distinct advantage for finishing with the best record in your league in order to give meaning and validation to the long regular season.

The Wildcard team should have to defeat their opponent (the team with the best record in the league) three times while the team with the best record should only have to defeat the Wildcard team twice. This would restore a sense of fairness and balance to the playoff format.

Thoughts?

[EdTarbusz]

I thnk the wild card team should be eliminated after one loss in the Division Series.

[gman5431]

Any Major League team can defeat any other Major League team in a short series. There should be a distinct advantage for finishing with the best record in your league in order to give meaning and validation to the long regular season.

The Wildcard team should have to defeat their opponent (the team with the best record in the league) three times while the team with the best record should only have to defeat the Wildcard team twice. This would restore a sense of fairness and balance to the playoff format.

Thoughts?

I dont like to use the word hate, but.... i hate that idea. Once a team qualifies for the playoffs, the slate should be wiped clean. Also, it will only enhance the major market and high payroll teams, who in the long run over 162 schedule will produce the most wins. The best part about the playoffs is that everyone starts over and its anyones to win. Every Cards fan i know admits they were the worst if not the worst team of the 8 in the 2006 playoffs and i will admit they were the hottest once it was said and done and they raised the crown.

I do agree with the contention that it isnt exactly fair that the WC team isnt at any disadvantage other then not getting home field. While i'm not 100 % on board with this suggestion, because i dont want the regular season importance to get watered down, this is an idea i have heard that seems interesting.

There are 5 playoff spots in each league, the 3 division winners and 2 WC winners. The two WC winners in each league play a best of 3 or 5 series. The winner of that advances on as the WC winner into the playoff format we currently have. This makes it that the WC winner must win 4 series instead of 3 to capture the championship.

I have thought about this idea and could go either way. While i think it would increase competition which is good, once again i dont want MLB to become like the NBA's regular season, where it doesnt mean squat.

G Man

[leecemark]

--I'd like to see the road made more difficult for Wild Card teams - and more of a reward for being the best team over 162 games. What I would like to see is a move to 2 wild card teams, but with a 1 game playoff between them to advance to the next (current first) round.
--This would obviously make things more difficult for the WC - enough that teams wouldn't be mailing it in the last few games because they have the wild card to fall back on if they lose the division. It would reward the league's best team by letting them have an extra ay or two to set up their pitching while their first round oppoent was playing a do or die game. I favor this over a 3 or 5 game playoff because the longer rest might serve as a disadvantage to the team getting the bye. Baseball is very much a game of timing and sitting a week after the season would probably hurt more than help a team.

[Brooklyn]

--I'd like to see the road made more difficult for Wild Card teams - and more of a reward for being the best team over 162 games. What I would like to see is a move to 2 wild card teams, but with a 1 game playoff between them to advance to the next (current first) round.
--This would obviously make things more difficult for the WC - enough that teams wouldn't be mailing it in the last few games because they have the wild card to fall back on if they lose the division. It would reward the league's best team by letting them have an extra ay or two to set up their pitching while their first round oppoent was playing a do or die game. I favor this over a 3 or 5 game playoff because the longer rest might serve as a disadvantage to the team getting the bye. Baseball is very much a game of timing and sitting a week after the season would probably hurt more than help a team.


I do like this idea. Forces the wildcard teams to spend their best pitcher, too, unless of course they were fighting up to the very last day and didn't have the rotation set.

I don't like doing it for more then 1 game - with a season this long, I don't want to see more teams in, but i thin the 1 game playoff is a good compromise. I would just fear that TV would eventually pressure MLB to expand it

[GordonGecko]

The whole premise that a wildcard team is somehow less deserving is completely bogus. Milwaukee got the WC this year with 90 wins while the Dodgers only had 84. It's actually completely plausible that a wildcard team could have the 2nd best record in the league, what do you do then?

It's shouldn't be taken as less of an accomplishment that a team didn't win the division to get in, since the teams are split up into three buckets based purely on geography and not on merit. Once you're in, you're in, may the best team win.

I agree that anything can happen in a 5-game series, which is why all postseason series should be best-of-7

[gman5431]

I do like this idea. Forces the wildcard teams to spend their best pitcher, too, unless of course they were fighting up to the very last day and didn't have the rotation set.

I don't like doing it for more then 1 game - with a season this long, I don't want to see more teams in, but i thin the 1 game playoff is a good compromise. I would just fear that TV would eventually pressure MLB to expand it

This is a good idea. I would like to see it as a 3 game series though. Bring back DHs during the season (never will happen) and maybe even play a DH for the first two games of the WC playoff too....

G Man

[bob]

The whole premise that a wildcard team is somehow less deserving is completely bogus. Milwaukee got the WC this year with 90 wins while the Dodgers only had 84. It's actually completely plausible that a wildcard team could have the 2nd best record in the league, what do you do then?
Agreed. Look at this year. boston win 95 games and go throw as WC while the white sox with 89 and go throw as division winners. The yankees would have won the AL central, but were only 3rd in their division. The WC gives good teams who deserve to be in the playoffs but happened to play in a tougher league a chance at glory.
Oakland in 2001 won 102 games and would have coasted to victory in any other division that year, but they happened to have the 116 win Mariners in the way. Would it be fair that the A's (.630) were given a much harder postseason campaign while the AL central winning Indians (.562) were given a much easier time? The wildcard levels the playing field somewhat.

[Imgran]

Just take the 4 best teams regardless of division. That's the best way to guarantee a fair access to the postseason and an equitable treatment of every baseball team.

Respectfully yours
Hank

Seriously, give me some reason to believe that the system is broken before proposing fixes.

[Evangelion]

If you have a reason before Divisional Series between 2 WC teams. Doesn't that mean that three other teams are sitting around during this time. You can view this as a benefit and negative. This setup is different compare to football where a week rest can do wonders for a team due the high level of physical contact in that sport, in baseball, I don't know sitting around for week to week plus would benefit the other three teams.

[spark240]

The whole premise that a wildcard team is somehow less deserving is completely bogus.

Disagree.

Milwaukee got the WC this year with 90 wins while the Dodgers only had 84.

They're in different divisions, played different schedules, no comparison.

It's actually completely plausible that a wildcard team could have the 2nd best record in the league, what do you do then?

Salute the better team that beat them in their own division.

It's shouldn't be taken as less of an accomplishment that a team didn't win the division to get in, since the teams are split up into three buckets based purely on geography and not on merit.

It has nothing to do with how the divisions are divided. You could divide them based on uniform colors, or the number of letters in the team names; the only important element is the schedule. If teams in a given division are playing each other much more frequently than other opponents, then their relative standings will reflect the relative quality of the teams within that subset... no matter how the subset is drawn. (If the schedule is "balanced" across multiple divisions, then I agree, the divisions are arbitrary and unfair.)

[Imgran]

Salute the better team that beat them in their own division.

Alright, let's use the most absurd example.

In 2005, the NL West division-winning San Diego Padres were 82-80.

The NL Wild Card winning Houston Astros were 7 wins better, and went on to lose in the World Series to the Chicago White Sox.

Do you really meen to tell me that there's a problem with the Astros not getting into the playoffs when a freakin 82-80 team can do so?

[sflnyc]

There are 5 playoff spots in each league, the 3 division winners and 2 WC winners. The two WC winners in each league play a best of 3 or 5 series. The winner of that advances on as the WC winner into the playoff format we currently have. This makes it that the WC winner must win 4 series instead of 3 to capture the championship.

I've never seen that idea proposed, but that is a good one and I like it.

[Imgran]

What that would have meant this year is a one-game NYY-BOS playoff, and a one-game NYM-MIL playoff.

[spark240]

Oakland in 2001 won 102 games and would have coasted to victory in any other division that year, but they happened to have the 116 win Mariners in the way.

I like the A's, and they had a great team that year, but it was unfortunate that they were not eliminated by that greater Mariners team. The 2001 season in Seattle was historic, but it meant less than it should have, because of this.

Consider, a seven-game World Series (or LCS) between two teams-for-the-ages is better than a shorter series between two pretty-good teams; the drama and the glory are not just in the victory, but in the struggle and, yes, sometimes in the defeat. The 1975 Red Sox (for example), I think many would agree, were a better team than some teams which have won the Series in other years; they're remembered because they battled hard and lost, to a still-greater team.

Similarly, the 1993 Giants, a great team, should be remembered for racing the Braves to the end of the regular season in the NL West--and being overcome, and eliminated at the very end by a single game. That's way more dramatic and interesting than if both teams had qualified for the playoffs, and the Giants had lost a first-round series to the Phillies several days later.

[spark240]

Alright, let's use the most absurd example.

In 2005, the NL West division-winning San Diego Padres were 82-80.

The NL Wild Card winning Houston Astros were 7 wins better, and went on to lose in the World Series to the Chicago White Sox.

Do you really meen to tell me that there's a problem with the Astros not getting into the playoffs when a freakin 82-80 team can do so?

Look, I understand that some people--possibly because of when they became interested in baseball, or their relationship with other sports that do things differently--may have different conceptions of what a "season" and "playoffs" are supposed to be about. If what I'm saying really doesn't make sense to you, try to step back from your conceptions for a moment.

In a divisional system with unbalanced schedule, the Astros in effect are not competing with the Padres during the regular season, just as they are not competing with the White Sox and Yankees during the regular season (though they might have an interleague series with them). The 2005 Astros were pretty good, but of the subset of teams that played the NL Central schedule that year, the Cardinals had proven themselves the best. Of that set, the Cardinals had earned the right to play on.

If you think that the 2005 Astros had more right to advance than the Padres (simply because they had more wins), then why not say that the Cardinals and Braves had more right than either, and just send those two teams directly to the NLCS? Or send the Cardinals and White Sox directly to the World Series? Or simply say the Cardinals were the best of all with 100 wins, and just give them the trophy, no playoffs required? All of these suggestions are equally nonsense, because the teams have played different schedules; it cannot be logically and definitively stated that a 100-win team is better than a 95- or 89-win team in a different league... without playoffs.

The whole point of having playoffs at all, the entire premise of a "postseason," lies in the fact that the teams have been competing against different standards during the season--different combinations of opponents--and, having proven themselves each within their separate subsets, must now be tested against one another. There is no such need when two teams have played in the same division all year.

Drawing two (or, God help us, more) teams from any one division carries the implication that the "regular season" actually isn't determinative. It cheapens the season, the long season which is one of the things that makes baseball better than other sports, making it just a sort of qualifying round for the real event. (Is it any wonder some "fans" actually say that they don't pay any attention to baseball, until the playoffs?)

In short, both the regular season and the playoffs would be more logical--and have the potential for greater drama--if there were no wild cards.

[spark240]

I do like this idea. Forces the wildcard teams to spend their best pitcher, too, unless of course they were fighting up to the very last day and didn't have the rotation set.

This is what I don't get... why go to all this trouble to "make the road more difficult" for wild card teams? The concept implicitly recognizes that WCs are "less deserving," that they should have a harder road... so why admit them at all? Why devise a system to cripple their rotation prior to the series with the rested division-winning team, when you can just leave them out to begin with, and get on with the games among the deserving teams? :confused:

[KCW]

The whole point of having playoffs at all, the entire premise of a "postseason," lies in the fact that the teams have been competing against different standards during the season--different combinations of opponents--and, having proven themselves each within their separate subsets, must now be tested against one another. There is no such need when two teams have played in the same division all year.

I understand your point, but I don't agree that two teams in the same division have competed against the same standard all year because too many things change over the course of a season. Two teams in a division do not necessarily play exactly the same number of games against every other team (especially in the case of interleague games). One team might face another team early in the season, while a separate team might face them later in the year after they have made a bunch of trades and roster moves and are a very different team.

In fact, I would argue that a wild card team that has more wins than a division winner in the same league is almost always in a tougher division, and thus faced a tougher schedule on average (interleague can skew this though). I don't think it's an accident that wild card teams have had a history of being successful in the postseason, because most of the time, they really were the second best team in the league during the season instead of the fourth best.

[leecemark]

This is what I don't get... why go to all this trouble to "make the road more difficult" for wild card teams? The concept implicitly recognizes that WCs are "less deserving," that they should have a harder road... so why admit them at all? Why devise a system to cripple their rotation prior to the series with the rested division-winning team, when you can just leave them out to begin with, and get on with the games among the deserving teams? :confused:

--Because the wild card keeps more teams in the race in September and gives their fans something to root for. That is a worthwhile goal - and something MLB would never give up anyway. The number of teams making the postseason can only go up and never down for economic reasons. I'm fine with that, but think teams that did less to earn their playoff berth should have to do more to succeed once they get there.

[Zagi-CRO]

The whole premise that a wildcard team is somehow less deserving is completely bogus. Milwaukee got the WC this year with 90 wins while the Dodgers only had 84. It's actually completely plausible that a wildcard team could have the 2nd best record in the league, what do you do then?

It's shouldn't be taken as less of an accomplishment that a team didn't win the division to get in, since the teams are split up into three buckets based purely on geography and not on merit. Once you're in, you're in, may the best team win.

I agree that anything can happen in a 5-game series, which is why all postseason series should be best-of-7

Yes, I agree with you. The whole premise is wrong. Simple, that's criteria - WC-team have a chance to win the WS, also.
But I agree that 5-game-series isn't good - best-of-7 is more fair.

[gman5431]

Yes, I agree with you. The whole premise is wrong. Simple, that's criteria - WC-team have a chance to win the WS, also.
But I agree that 5-game-series isn't good - best-of-7 is more fair.

I think eventually money will dictate that all series will go to best of 7. Wasnt the LCS only 5 games when it first began? I bet 20 years from now the playoff system will be quite different, i see my idea of expanding to 2 WC possibly comming into play.

G Man