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The trouble with a bye in baseball would be that the good teams' pitchers would be getting rusty while the wild cards kept getting their pitchers some work, increasing the chances that after the wild card round a not-so-great team would pull off an upset and deprive the fans of a good match-up between top teams later on.
The whole idea seems like a silly way to artificially create the kind of nail-biter you have when two teams go down to the last day in the regular season and then are still tied for a playoff spot, so they have the one-game tiebreaker. Fine as a necessary way to break a tie, but as a standard part of the playoff schedule it seems like just that many more teams that don't really deserve to be there making it into the post-season for no particularly good reason. Pretty much every year we already have a team or two in the playoffs that has no chance of ultimately being the champion, but just might get hot and knock off a better team that otherwise might have been involved in a classic series between two good teams later on. Now they're just bringing in that many more teams with no chance to do anything but possibly get hot just long enough to upset some team good enough to be worth watching well into the playoffs if not for the upset. Not a good idea.
Nor is the idea of scheduling as a standard part of the playoffs a one-game round. In baseball any team can beat any team in one game. That's the whole point of deciding the issue with an entire series. Really dumb move, but about what I'd expect from Selig.
What happens almost every year is that you get a division winner hovering around .500 in a division like the NL West that makes it in. I do think this benefits the NL more because a team that rarely makes the playoffs might slide in. In the AL you stand a GREAT CHANCE of 3 AL EAST teams making it in and it seems like the Yankeese are in every year while the Red Sox and Rays alternate in and out. Now they might all make it.
What happens almost every year is that you get a division winner hovering around .500 in a division like the NL West that makes it in. I do think this benefits the NL more because a team that rarely makes the playoffs might slide in. In the AL you stand a GREAT CHANCE of 3 AL EAST teams making it in and it seems like the Yankeese are in every year while the Red Sox and Rays alternate in and out. Now they might all make it.
Everybody always uses the NL West as that example I hate it. NL West has probably had more wild cards than any other division in the NL since the birth of the wild card.
What happens almost every year is that you get a division winner hovering around .500 in a division like the NL West that makes it in. I do think this benefits the NL more because a team that rarely makes the playoffs might slide in. In the AL you stand a GREAT CHANCE of 3 AL EAST teams making it in and it seems like the Yankeese are in every year while the Red Sox and Rays alternate in and out. Now they might all make it.
As I understand this new arrangement, the wild cards do not both necessarily have to be second-place teams. The wild cards are the teams with the two best records of those that did not win divisions, so it is possible for a third-place team to make the playoffs. It's possible that in recent years, since the Rays have gotten good, there may have been seasons when the three best teams in the AL have all been in the east. I'll agree that it's obviously a less than perfect arrangement when one of the top three teams in either league does not even make the playoffs while other teams that are not as strong get in by winning weak divisions.
No system is perfect, though. Under the new system it's entirely possible that you could have the best three teams in a league all in one division, all making the playoffs, while a second-place team in another division does not make it in, even when they may be better than the winner of a weak division. The reality is that the only way to ensure that the best team in a given season was the champion would be to stop having playoffs altogether, and just have one big league, with every team playing each other team the same number of times, then declaring the first-place finisher the champion. Any setup which chops the teams up into divisions and uses playoffs to determine the champion runs the risk of having an unworthy team that gets hot at the right time end up as the official champion and/or having some teams fall short of even making the playoffs when lesser teams than they do make it in. That's not going to be alleviated by this new arrangement.
What the new setup does do, though, is pin too much on one game for each pair of wild cards. Suppose that the AL East big three of recent years turned out to be the three best teams in the league. The idea of having them all make the playoffs loses some luster when you look at the reality that two of the three would play each other in one game before the postseason even really got going, and then one of them would be gone. And, because anything can happen in one game, it might be the second-place finisher that never made it into the real playoff rounds--the ones decided by series rather than single games.
At least under the system of recent years, if you happen to have a year when the top three teams in a league are all one division, the best two of those teams get into the real competition. Under this new arrangement, the second-best team in a league could barely get its foot in the door and then be gone before the postseason has even really warmed up, all because of the way the ball bounced at a critical moment in a single game. Doesn't look like such a great system to me.
Nor is the idea of scheduling as a standard part of the playoffs a one-game round. In baseball any team can beat any team in one game. .
There actually isn't much of a difference between the odds involved in a single game and a three or five game series, that the differences are anything beyond perception.
Let us say that we have a team which won 100 games for a .617 winning percentage and they are playing one of those seemingly unqualified teams, say one that went 88-74, a .543 winning percentage.
The odds of the first team prevailing in a one game playoff, based on the regular season winning percentage are about 6.2 chances out of ten while the second team has 5.4 chances in ten. Extend those odds to varying length series and you get:
7 games:
Team A wins 4.3 games
Team B wins 3.8 games
9 games:
Team A wins 5.6 games
Team B wins 4.9
11 games
Team A wins 6.78 games
Team B wins 5.9 games
13 games
Team A wins 8.0 games
Team B wins 7.0
So, you see that before a full game difference emerges, 13 games would have to be played.
Turning that one game playoff where it was 6.2 to 5.4 in favor of the first team, into a three game playoff, yields odds of:
Team A wins 1.8 games
Team B wins 1.6 games.
Make it a five game series and:
Team A wins 3.0 games
Team B wins 2.7 games
So, the actual difference between a one game playoff and a short series, is pretty much nothing. You aren't solving the problem you raised...that any team can win one game, because any team can also win a short series. You are not shifting much in the way of advantage to Team A by making it three games instead of one.
And of course the odds of a one game playoff for the wild card being a game between a 100 game winner and an 88 game winner, are awfully dang long. The higher probability is that it will be a game between a team which won about 88-90 games against a team that won about 86-88 games. Those two would need to play a hundred times for the odds to favor the team which won more by a full game.
The perception will certainly be as you described....all the marbles on one game? The problem is that playing three or five games may solve the perception, but it won't make but a tiny cosmetic difference in terms of "fairness."
After two or three more playoff expansions, we may see two sub-.500 clubs meeting in the WS. But the establishment will gladly accept such mediocrity because of all the extra revenue that was generated in August and September due to having half of MLB involved in the playoff chase. It's all about moolah.
As I understand this new arrangement, the wild cards do not both necessarily have to be second-place teams. The wild cards are the teams with the two best records of those that did not win divisions, so it is possible for a third-place team to make the playoffs. It's possible that in recent years, since the Rays have gotten good, there may have been seasons when the three best teams in the AL have all been in the east. I'll agree that it's obviously a less than perfect arrangement when one of the top three teams in either league does not even make the playoffs while other teams that are not as strong get in by winning weak divisions.
No system is perfect, though. Under the new system it's entirely possible that you could have the best three teams in a league all in one division, all making the playoffs, while a second-place team in another division does not make it in, even when they may be better than the winner of a weak division. The reality is that the only way to ensure that the best team in a given season was the champion would be to stop having playoffs altogether, and just have one big league, with every team playing each other team the same number of times, then declaring the first-place finisher the champion. Any setup which chops the teams up into divisions and uses playoffs to determine the champion runs the risk of having an unworthy team that gets hot at the right time end up as the official champion and/or having some teams fall short of even making the playoffs when lesser teams than they do make it in. That's not going to be alleviated by this new arrangement.
What the new setup does do, though, is pin too much on one game for each pair of wild cards. Suppose that the AL East big three of recent years turned out to be the three best teams in the league. The idea of having them all make the playoffs loses some luster when you look at the reality that two of the three would play each other in one game before the postseason even really got going, and then one of them would be gone. And, because anything can happen in one game, it might be the second-place finisher that never made it into the real playoff rounds--the ones decided by series rather than single games.
At least under the system of recent years, if you happen to have a year when the top three teams in a league are all one division, the best two of those teams get into the real competition. Under this new arrangement, the second-best team in a league could barely get its foot in the door and then be gone before the postseason has even really warmed up, all because of the way the ball bounced at a critical moment in a single game. Doesn't look like such a great system to me.
Who said anything about second place teams? It is just the teams with the best record that didn't win a division and it can be from the same divisions. then they have a one game playoff to see who moves. Pretty simple.
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