Postseason Discussion Thread (2014)

[HalfSmokes]

You guys can pile on SF all you want but I'm right there with him.  Baseball is far too long of a season for it to mean so freaking little.  If they want to advance the idea that finishing with a better record really matters, they need to structure it so that this is the case beyond any doubt.

Championship tournaments are by their very nature heavily based on luck, but this is ridiculous:

Part of me wishes it was best record in the NL vs best record in the al for world series with some kind of mid season tourney (maybe with a couple of Nippon league teams). I also heard an idea of a whole baseball tourney, I.e. what ever date the rosters freeze at 25, a tournament with every aa, AAA, and mlb team (single elimanination would require less games per team than a seven game series)

[sph274]

last year both number 1 seeds played in the World Series. the playoffs are broken because that doesnt happen when our team is the number 1 seed? the year before that it was two number 3 seeds(and the ALCS was between 1 and 3). it isnt like the wild cards dominate every year. the nats choked. it sucks, i know.

[mitlen]

Part of me wishes it was best record in the NL vs best record in the al for world series with some kind of mid season tourney (maybe with a couple of Nippon league teams). I also heard an idea of a whole baseball tourney, I.e. what ever date the rosters freeze at 25, a tournament with every aa, AAA, and mlb team (single elimanination would require less games per team than a seven game series)

FA Cup

[HalfSmokes]

FA Cup

exactly

[The Chief]

last year both number 1 seeds played in the World Series. the playoffs are broken because that doesnt happen when our team is the number 1 seed? the year before that it was two number 3 seeds(and the ALCS was between 1 and 3). it isnt like the wild cards dominate every year. the nats choked. it sucks, i know.

Neither your numbers nor mine can really be used convincingly after only 3 years (small samples), but it feels far too soon to be having an all-wildcard world series.

[HalfSmokes]

last year both number 1 seeds played in the World Series. the playoffs are broken because that doesnt happen when our team is the number 1 seed? the year before that it was two number 3 seeds(and the ALCS was between 1 and 3). it isnt like the wild cards dominate every year. the nats choked. it sucks, i know.

they playoffs are broken because you render 162 games meaningless, I've felt this long before the nats had any chance of the playoffs let alone the best record

[Vega]

You guys can pile on SF all you want but I'm right there with him.  Baseball is far too long of a season for it to mean so freaking little.  If they want to advance the idea that finishing with a better record really matters, they need to structure it so that this is the case beyond any doubt.

Championship tournaments are by their very nature heavily based on luck, but this is ridiculous:

Finishing with the best record, or at least winning your division does matter. Ask Pittsburgh and Oakland. Besides, there is no way to structure it beyond a shadow of a doubt unless you start the best teams off with a two win advantage already or something equally stupid. In any case, no one here was complaining before the Nats lost this year, so it sounds like you and SF are just bad losers.

[sph274]

they playoffs are broken because you render 162 games meaningless, I've felt this long before the nats had any chance of the playoffs let alone the best record

should we not have playoffs at all? i dont understand, you dont like the concept of postseason play in any sport?

edit: i know we lost, but nobody else thinks the KC Royals getting to the World Series is even kind of cool? doesnt the wild card equal it out at least a little bit so smaller market teams have some sort of chance? or do we really want to watch a WS with only big market and budget teams?

[The Chief]

Finishing with the best record, or at least winning your division does matter. Ask Pittsburgh and Oakland. Besides, there is no way to structure it beyond a shadow of a doubt unless you start the best teams off with a two win advantage already or something equally stupid. In any case, no one here was complaining before the Nats lost this year, so it sounds like you and SF are just bad losers.

Actually I hated the new system from the moment they announced it, and I've never been a big fan of the 5-game series, either, so yeah...  maybe don't assume so much.

[HalfSmokes]

should we not have playoffs at all? i dont understand, you dont like the concept of postseason play in any sport?

pennant winners playing for the championship (worked fine for far longer than we've had the wild card) with some other tournament if you feel like you need that to keep fan interest.

[spidernat]

If you expect the team with the best record to win it or at least be in the WS every year they should just do away with the playoffs and make it a 180 game season and have the best two records play it out like they used to. The regular season is not meaningless as it gives teams with better records advantages that some teams just aren't able to capitalize on.

[HalfSmokes]

If you expect the team with the best record to win it or at least be in the WS every year they should just do away with the playoffs and make it a 180 game season and have the best two records play it out like they used to.

don't most people consider those years to be baseball's golden age? If you think 5 games is enough to differentiate teams, then why bother with a 162 game season?

[sph274]

the two teams with the best records playing for a championship essentially knocks like 70% of the teams out of contention by mid July. It eliminates any playoff competition and tv viewership will probably drop off the face off the earth. that will never happen, there is a reason it is a thing of the past. maybe we should stop paying these guys multi million dollar salaries while we are at it, i miss the good old days.

[sph274]

don't most people consider those years to be baseball's golden age? If you think 5 games is enough to differentiate teams, then why bother with a 162 game season?

the 162 game season is there to weed the good from the bad. only 8 teams make it into the divisional round. this isnt some massive tourney with the dregs of the leagues. you play for a right to play in the playoffs, with some advantages. the nats had home field advantage in the nl, and got to play the team with the worst record in the NLDS. they played those games to earn the right to play in the playoffs. maybe if they had decided to show up we wouldnt even be having this conversation.

[spidernat]

Even with this coin I get the feeling Storen/Werth/Ramos/Span/Gio/Desmond/Laroche would go up and call tails and we'd lose the series anyway.

[mitlen]

Ahem.    It's about the money.

[spidernat]

the 162 game season is there to weed the good from the bad. only 8 teams make it into the divisional round. this isnt some massive tourney with the dregs of the leagues. you play for a right to play in the playoffs, with some advantages. the nats had home field advantage in the nl, and got to play the team with the worst record in the NLDS IN 2012 AND IN 2014. they played those games to earn the right to play in the playoffs. maybe if they had decided to show up we wouldnt even be having this conversation.

[welch]

There is something wrong when the two wild-card teams meet in the World Series. My preference:

(1) Team with the best record in the AL plays the team with the best record in the NL. No inter-league play. Eliminate the DH. The best against the best, and nobody has seen players from the other league since spring training. Anticipation builds. Can the 1933 Nats hit Carl Hubbell's screwball? Can Cleveland's 1954 super-team even lose a game to the Giants...with Bob Feller, Bob Lemmon, Early Wynn, and Mike Garcia pitching, what chance do the Giants have?

(2) Since the Lords of Baseball make money by having multiple playoff rounds:

- Reduce to one wild-card team. Allow an extra day after the season ends for any ties to be played-off, but then go right to a seven-game series between the WC and the division winner with the best record. The other two division winners meet. Reasoning? The wildcard team should be at a disadvantage; should not have the advantage, which I suspect they have, of playing straight on from the regular season. Seven games rather than five because a five game series is more like a coin-flip.

- Cut the two central divisions. Best in the Eastern Division plays best in the Western Division. Seven games. Reasoning: three rounds of baseball playoffs are too many. Baseball gets lost in the NFL college football rush.

[imref]

There is something wrong when the two wild-card teams meet in the World Series.

I disagree.  If you don't want WC teams having a shot at the WS, don't have WC teams.

[houston-nat]

then apparently it isn't is the most important aspect of a teams playoff success.

Just because something is the most important aspect doesn't mean it's the determining one. For example, the most important part of having a car is that it gets you places without breaking, but some people still bought Pintos.

[HalfSmokes]

Just because something is the most important aspect doesn't mean it's the determining one. For example, the most important part of having a car is that it gets you places without breaking, but some people still bought Pintos.

if it's the most important, there should be some correlation between having it and winning, but that isn't the case http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/playoff-baseball-is-not-all-about-the-pitching/

[spidernat]

Just because something is the most important aspect doesn't mean it's the determining one. For example, the most important part of having a car is that it gets you places without breaking, but some people still bought Pintos.

So LAC? 

[PC]

This year really isn’t a good example for comparison because what happened this year is unlikely to happen again, for a while, at least.  The Angels were unlikely to advance very far in the playoffs because their starting pitching was so poor, perhaps the worst in the playoffs, in either league.  CJ Wilson isn’t anybody’s #1 starter.  Few #1 seeds will have starting pitching as bad as what the Angels had when they got to the playoffs.

You’re also unlikely to see the offense of a #1 seed collapse so completely like the Nationals did.  Just being the #1 seed keeps most teams out of the camps the Nationals and Angels fell into.  Most #1 seeds will be good enough and play well enough that they’ll be able to win at least one series instead of going 1-6 like they did this season.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Neither your numbers nor mine can really be used convincingly after only 3 years (small samples), but it feels far too soon to be having an all-wildcard world series.

Chief - teams that did not have the best record or even one of the two or three best records in their league have been winning pennants and world series practically since the leagues were split into divisions.  1973 NY Mets had the 4th best record in the league but won the pennant.  It is inherrent in any World Series format other than best record, each league, head to head.  Maybe what you want is to go back to the format before 1969.  There's an argument for it, but I think the problem you raise is inherrent in any playoff that is not limited that way.

[mmzznnxx]

If the Nats were the WC team and got all the way to the WS, no one here would be complaining or writing it off as a string of good luck, but rather "heart" and "guts" and all sorts of other fluffy adjectives.

I don't understand how you could even like sports if the first thing on your mind for the postseason is improper sample size. You're always going to have a poorer sample size unless you have a second 162-game season for just playoff teams, which would be retarded.

It's not a broken system, it's being a fan of a choking team.