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I Fixed Baseball

Centerfield Oct 18 2022 07:12 AM

Keep the 162 game season. Six teams from each league make the playoffs. On October 1, each league has a 15 game round robin. 3 game series against each team. Division winners get 9 home games. WC gets 6. First place in each pool advances to a best of 7 World Series.

Gwreck Oct 18 2022 07:24 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Intriguing! I would go a step further: higher seed plays at home, always. You get #1 seed, you don't travel. #2 seed gets 4 home series; #3 gets 3, etc. #6 seed is on the road the whole time. Biggest obstacle is TV. Does having 6 “playoff” games happening on a given day increase profits enough?

Centerfield Oct 18 2022 07:33 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Yeah. The question is revenue of course. You'll have some meaningless games there at the end. But is more games overall. I think it could work. Winners would be decided on a larger sample size. Scoreboard watching. As God intended.

Gwreck Oct 18 2022 07:37 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

The math is more complicated than I can do in my head but I would expect there are many scenarios in which some games in the final series (or two) wind up being cancelled as moot. That might be ok, since it ratchets up the attention on those deciding games. BUT: you also could very well have games in a final series between a team that's out of it and a team that needs to win to advance. That seems much less compelling than the existing structure.

Edgy MD Oct 18 2022 07:40 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

That is intriguing. Another upside is that a team who has a good season but doesn't cut it in the post-season, not only has 15 games to right their ship, but fans have 15 games to process that the run is perhaps ending. And if their last few games are spoiler games, that's something.

Ceetar Oct 18 2022 07:48 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I like that better than the random wild card series/games but I'm not sure it solves any "problems". Also as important as each game is, I don't think the first couple of games are going to feel as critical. I like that the thing shifts to _POSTSEASON_ and each game feels do or die. Reducing that to a mini-season where you're still scoreboard watching and pacing other teams isn't as intense. And you're gonna get to the end and it'll be like, the Mets are playing the Braves each with 9 wins, the Dodgers have 10 and are playing the Phillies with 4. How hard are the Philles trying here? Do the Mets chances have anything to do with how well they play the final 3? Maybe not!

Gwreck Oct 18 2022 07:56 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Part of that might be solved by stacking the matchups, so that you start with 1v4, 2v5, 3v6, and finish with 1v2, 3v4, 5v6, hoping that at least one (and maybe 2) of those series become(s) irrelevant. But as noted, there's no guarantee that there wouldn't be teams with mismatched motivations.

whippoorwill Oct 18 2022 08:04 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Send it in!

A Boy Named Seo Oct 18 2022 10:41 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

It's definitely better than the current thing, and a wild card needing to win 5 extra games under your plan for the title makes the road a little harder for them. I just don't like re-doing the season after the season just finished. That's the point of the season. But CF >>> Manfred by a thousand miles.

Edgy MD Oct 18 2022 11:09 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Yeah, I'm there. In my world, the playoffs are eliminated, and even the World Series isn't safe, but not expecting to see my world come to pass anytime soon, I'd much prefer Centerfield's world to the one I inhabit.

batmagadanleadoff Oct 18 2022 11:20 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

A Boy Named Seo wrote: .... and a wild card needing to win 5 extra games under your plan for the title makes the road a little harder for them. I'm not following this. A little help? Where are you getting the "five extra wins" from? Thanks.

A Boy Named Seo Oct 18 2022 11:27 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

A Boy Named Seo wrote: .... and a wild card needing to win 5 extra games under your plan for the title makes the road a little harder for them. I'm not following this. A little help? Where are you getting the "five extra wins" from? Thanks. Oops, my mistake. We know how many wins are needed for a wild card to win the title currently, but there's no way to know under CF's plan.

Centerfield Oct 18 2022 12:25 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

If you're on board with the pool play concept, there are variations that can work too. For instance: 6 teams make the post-season in each league. Each team plays 4 series, 3 games each. Top two seeds don't have to play each other, so their schedule is easier. Top two teams in each league advance. Best of 7 LCS, Best of 7 WS. This format brings fewer meaningless games, and makes each game a little more important. You preserve the excitement of the LCS and WS.

Benjamin Grimm Oct 18 2022 12:34 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Maybe there can be some kind of next-season incentive for the teams to win the meaningless games? (Can't think of anything specific though. Maybe Dunkin Donuts in the clubhouse? I suspect there may be better possible incentives than that.)

Centerfield Oct 18 2022 12:55 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Maybe there can be some kind of next-season incentive for the teams to win the meaningless games? (Can't think of anything specific though. Maybe Dunkin Donuts in the clubhouse? I suspect there may be better possible incentives than that.) The easiest way to incentivize winning is with draft picks. So, for instance: 15 team league. Top 6 make the playoffs. Draft Order: First nine to miss the playoffs, with the 7th place team picking first, then in descending order. Followed by: First four playoff teams to miss the LCS, starting with the 3rd place team picking first. Then Seed 2, then Seed 1.

Benjamin Grimm Oct 18 2022 12:58 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Does that incentivize the players, though? Most of them probably don't expect to be with the same team by the time a draft pick has any impact.

Edgy MD Oct 18 2022 01:28 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Maybe there can be some kind of next-season incentive for the teams to win the meaningless games? (Can't think of anything specific though. Maybe Dunkin Donuts in the clubhouse? I suspect there may be better possible incentives than that.) The easiest way to incentivize winning is with draft picks. I can think of easier ways to incentivize winning — promotion and relegation, cash rewards, the right to claim contracts of players from losing teams, vacation stays in Cabo San Lucas, or a year's supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat. The sooner the draft ends, the better.

whippoorwill Oct 18 2022 01:40 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Or Jello for Charlie (I forget his last name)

batmagadanleadoff Oct 18 2022 02:29 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

This would be a non-starter with MLB. There aren't enough "Game Sevens", where the winning team advances and the loser is eliminated. Those "do or die for both teams" games are the biggest draws and yes, I know that that could also be a game five or a game three, too. Also, following this playoff system requires a larger commitment, probably more than the casual fan is willing to give. And if the main goal is to reduce playoff upsets, I'm not so sure this system will accomplish that. There's just too much luck in baseball, and there's no way to get around teams with better records losing to teams with lesser records more than is tolerable in short series' so long as the opposing teams are both good teams to begin with and then playing few games against each other. Even the old pre-1969 system didn't guarantee that the WS winner would be baseball's best team because the WS and in fact the entire playoffs consisted of no more than seven games. But at least back then, the WS was limited to elite teams, ensuring that a top team would capture the crown. Playoff baseball doesn't establish much beyond who won the few games played. And that's fine but it's just that people want to read much more into this than is really there and then they go ballistic when their expected narratives don't pan out or when their 100 win team loses to an 89 win team, even if that 100 win team only lost two out of three instead of 40 out of 50.

MFS62 Oct 18 2022 02:34 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Why should we change the system if we don't like the result? A (hopefully) Cleveland / San Diego series? Still baseball. As Batmags said, a game seven has its own excitement, no matter which teams are involved. And if some network execs and advertisers (and bookies)don't like that, tough crap. And under the same system, it might be a NY(Mets)/LA(Angels) series next year. Who knows? And that's why it doesn't have to change. Later

Edgy MD Oct 18 2022 04:16 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I think that there'd be plenty of the equivalent of game seven. Seven's just a number. High stakes would abound for everybody.

Ceetar Oct 18 2022 04:26 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Just do the NHL/NBA style. two leagues, two divisions each. 16 playoff teams (add 16 expansions too) then 8, then 4, then 2. Four 7-game series. If you have to adjust the schedule, I don't think there's anyone attached to those last 8 games or whatever. Or explore a neutral/warm World Series. Lots of options. There's no perfect solution, but this seems to hit most of the important points.

Frayed Knot Oct 20 2022 06:44 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Please spare me anything resembling NBA/NHL style playoff systems.

Fman99 Oct 20 2022 06:45 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

=Centerfield post_id=111490 time=1666098751 user_id=65] Keep the 162 game season. Six teams from each league make the playoffs. On October 1, each league has a 15 game round robin. 3 game series against each team. Division winners get 9 home games. WC gets 6. First place in each pool advances to a best of 7 World Series.

I love it. Every playoff team gets 15 extra games. Drinking your delicious kool aid

Fman99 Oct 20 2022 06:47 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

A Boy Named Seo wrote: But CF >>> Manfred by a thousand miles. Well CF also likes baseball, so there's that.

Ceetar Oct 20 2022 06:57 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Frayed Knot wrote: Please spare me anything resembling NBA/NHL style playoff systems. What's wrong with them? Each series is seemingly treated with import, it's 7 games so it gives a little back and forth. The intensity increases with each level, and it's all the same format throughout so you're not manipulating rosters to maximize 3 games series, and 5 game series.. plus it's basically regular playing time so there's a little more consistency to it. I'd love to see sports flex those later series earlier as needed, so like if both NLCS and ALCS end in 5 games, the World Series starts 2-3 days earlier, but I know there's too much advertising/marketing/tv involved for that.

Frayed Knot Oct 20 2022 11:22 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Too many teams, too long, and it turns the back half of the regular season into a lengthy waltz with little on the line but slight advantages (or not) in 'seeding' ... and we saw how important that was recently. The Mets would have clinched a playoff spot around Father's Day this year just as the Golden State Warrior are on pace to clinch a week from Tuesday at which point 'Load Management' takes over.

Ceetar Oct 20 2022 11:47 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

well yes, all my points include 18 teams of expansion. But yes, the difference between 1 and 8 isn't as meaningful in baseball over a 7 game series, though we all seem to like to pretend it is. There's no solution that awards the best regular season team the championship most often. The real solution is to place more value/prestige on winning divisions. You could do byes if you want. 4 first round series, the winner of each places the division winner from each of the 4 divisions. You could also dispense with the days off. or do the first round as 3-3-1, first 3 at team with the better record, 3 at the other team, and if there's a game 7 it's at the location of the team the winner plays. Again, no playoff system is "good" but like, the main idea is competition right, team v team, duking it out. This maximizes that. the drama and narrative of that battle. The smaller series, even the NLDSs seem like play-in games. But a first round 7 game series? even between two wild card teams? I don't think that would.

Centerfield Oct 20 2022 01:09 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Frayed Knot wrote: Too many teams, too long, and it turns the back half of the regular season into a lengthy waltz with little on the line but slight advantages (or not) in 'seeding' ... and we saw how important that was recently. The Mets would have clinched a playoff spot around Father's Day this year just as the Golden State Warrior are on pace to clinch a week from Tuesday at which point 'Load Management' takes over. Agree with all of the above. At the end of the day, the idea is to reward the best team. Small sample sizes (like best of 5, best of 7) is a poor way of doing this in baseball, where luck and randomness plays a much larger role in the outcome of any one game.

Ceetar Oct 20 2022 01:16 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

=Centerfield post_id=111643 time=1666292951 user_id=65] At the end of the day, the idea is to reward the best team.

says who?

Edgy MD Oct 20 2022 01:24 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I would like to award the best team — or, at least, the team that performs the best.

Ceetar Oct 20 2022 01:27 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

every single postseason in every sport in the history of sport has awarded the team that performs the best the title.

Edgy MD Oct 20 2022 01:38 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I move to disagree with that.

Ceetar Oct 20 2022 01:40 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

go ahead, we're about 7 layers down into semantics right now.

batmagadanleadoff Oct 20 2022 02:03 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I think that the best solution is to simply understand that the playoffs winner, especially an expanded playoffs winner isn't necessarily the best team in the respective sport. But as simple as that idea sounds, it'd be a difficult idea to truly set in given how the notion of best team as the playoff champ is so deeply embedded in the collective mindset. There'll never be a perfect solution to this. Even if there were no playoffs and the team with the best regular season record was simply crowned the champ, people would always disagree as to whether that team is truly the best. Especially if that team has the best record by only a game or three.

Frayed Knot Oct 20 2022 02:13 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

well yes, all my points include 18 teams of expansion. Oh good, because I was afraid for a minute that we were going to drift i to the realm of the unrealistic. [I]"There's no solution that awards the best regular season team the championship most often. " No solution that guarantees it but there's a simple solution to have the championship go to one of the top teams and that's to allow only the top tier teams to the playoffs in the first place. [I]" The real solution is to place more value/prestige on winning divisions. You could do byes if you want. 4 first round series, the winner of each places the division winner from each of the 4 divisions." Byes work ONCE, ask the Braves. After that there's no advantage outside of increased # of home games and that's a thin edge at best. "Again, no playoff system is "good" but like, the main idea is competition right, team v team, duking it out. This maximizes that. the drama and narrative of that battle." I call that the season itself and, quirky guy that I am, I like it. "The smaller series, even the NLDSs seem like play-in games. But a first round 7 game series? even between two wild card teams? I don't think that would." Really? I'd call it the definition of a play-in series.

Edgy MD Oct 20 2022 02:26 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=111656 time=1666296217 user_id=68]I think that the best solution is to simply understand that the playoffs winner, especially an expanded playoffs winner isn't necessarily the best team in the respective sport.

Well, I agree, but ceetar's above assertion says that this is false.


=batmagadanleadoff post_id=111656 time=1666296217 user_id=68]But as simple as that idea sounds, it'd be a difficult idea to truly set in given how the notion of best team as the playoff champ is so deeply embedded in the collective mindset.

Indeed. They are crowned champions. The one and only. So not only does the culture generally accept this position, but we are very much encouraged to.


=batmagadanleadoff post_id=111656 time=1666296217 user_id=68]There'll never be a perfect solution to this.

Wouldn't removing the playoffs entirely be a solution? Oh, wait ... please forget I wrote that, as you clearly speak to that below.


=batmagadanleadoff post_id=111656 time=1666296217 user_id=68]Even if there were no playoffs and the team with the best regular season record was simply crowned the champ, people would always disagree as to whether that team is truly the best. Especially if that team has the best record by only a game or three.

Well, folks can disagree all they want, but it's a tough argument to say that calling somebody the better team after achieving the most in a 162-game test is less credible than calling somebody the better team after a three-game test — the principle being that a larger sample size provides for a more compelling experiment.



I wouldn't like any outcome that failed to reward the cause I support, but most reasonable people would accept that judgment under that principle would be most fair, no? And they do so in the cases of other sports played in other countries, yes?

Edgy MD Oct 20 2022 02:32 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I realize that post-season revenues are a paramount concern for the powers that be, but I'm appreciating that the discussion is taking place here apart from that.

Ceetar Oct 20 2022 02:37 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

What do we _want_ to see in the playoffs? I contend that most people want to see two good teams battling it out. Really the regular season is irrelevant to this conversation. It is it's own thing, now we've got a tournament. What do we want out of that? Just going right to the World Series isn't enough baseball, and as much as the Mets and Atlanta players disagreed, you'd like to see 'second best' teams that are really good get a chance to compete in that tournament. side note: Sometimes meh teams play in tournaments. That's..probably okay. Some of the narrative drama is that underdog playing well right? It's not like the Phillies are actually devoid of talent. Front a neutral standpoint, there's plenty there to root for. We can grouse about the '06 Cardinals all we want, but some of those guys went on to historic careers. It's not really "bad" that they were in there. So we need to honest what we're trying to accomplish. (Obviously, this is all theoretical because what MLB is trying to accomplish is the accumulation of unethical levels of wealth) For me, and I think for a lot of people, we're really just looking for head to head battles between good teams, leading up to a champion. And if we're being honest, some cloudiness about whether or not they're actually "the best" is baked into the whole process.

Frayed Knot Oct 20 2022 02:56 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

1) I want the regular season to be as meaningful as possible 2) I want any post-season tourney to include those teams closest to the elite level from that just-played season Ceets' system promotes precisely the opposite of those goals and does so in spades. The idea that the regular season is irrelevant to the conversation of how to structure the playoffs boggles both logic and common sense.

Edgy MD Oct 20 2022 03:12 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I too want the regular season to be as meaningful as possible. But here's something that can satisfy both meaningful-regular-season and big-playoff perspectives. Thirty teams make the playoffs, the regular season is bypassed as the utterly pointless exercise that it subsequently becomes, and the playoff champion is the winner of a 162-game round robin tournament that begins at the start of April and comes to an exciting conclusion at the end of September.

Ceetar Oct 20 2022 03:15 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Boring. give me my tournament. Why are you fighting against more baseball?

Edgy MD Oct 20 2022 03:43 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I'm not. You can have all the tournaments that the market can bear. Nobody has advocated for tournament play more than I have. Post-season, in-season, pre-season, international. Bring it on. My imagination is a-swim with the conception of various iterations of tournament play. What is being discussed is the nature of a post-season tournament superseding the longer and more demanding 162-game regular season in declaring someone the MLB champion for the year.

Ceetar Oct 20 2022 04:17 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

that's NOT what's being discussed. We're discussing the specific postseason tournament that MLB plays. The thread was created with a suggested variant. I countered with a suggestion that the NBA/NHL way maybe is a better way to go about it. The only detraction I got was "that's too much baseball!" which is not a thing, and "there are too many teams" which, fine, but there are already too many teams. You could easily do 8-4-2 and have three rounds of 7 games each. Or, we could do real expansion, and not just the vague hints that we might get another team or two. (The main reason this won't happen is unethical monopolistic wealth obviously)

Edgy MD Oct 20 2022 04:25 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

=Ceetar post_id=111673 time=1666304258 user_id=102] that's NOT what's being discussed.

Of course it is. The conversation has grown since the thread broadened. You've even contributed to that broadening. But the original post was an attempt to suggest a system to create a champion that is a more indicative test of who is or isn't the best team, while retaining MLB's desire for a lucrative post-season product. I hope we agree on that.



If you want to accuse me of wanting less baseball, for whatever reason, I deny that.

Ceetar Oct 20 2022 04:41 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

again, there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the "Best team", so we should refocus to what we really want out of this tournament. I want 7-game (or more) series like the NHL, and bonus, i think that's probably the one that leads to the 'best' teams making the World Series more often.

Edgy MD Oct 20 2022 05:02 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

What you actually wrote is that ... every single postseason in every sport in the history of sport has awarded the team that performs the best the title. But now... there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the "Best team", I don't know what you think you're writing "again" to. The notion that "every single postseason in every sport in the history of sport has awarded the team that performs the best the title" and the notion that "there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the 'Best team'" are inherently contradictory. So it doesn't really matter. I would prefer that we award a title to the team who has best proven itself to be the best — I hope I've made that clear — and you either don't want that because every postseason ever already does that, or you don't want that, because no system whatsoever does that. And the dogs bark, and the river runs, and the rich oppress the poor, and nothing means anything, for what are words? And is our struggle not merely lengthening our long defeat? And what happens to all the yesterdays? And who knows to whom the rain returns, and which of our secrets it knows?

smg58 Oct 20 2022 05:31 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

A Boy Named Seo wrote: But CF >>> Manfred by a thousand miles. Well CF also likes baseball, so there's that. Seconded.

Frayed Knot Oct 20 2022 06:58 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

again, there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the "Best team", so we should refocus to what we really want out of this tournament. I want 7-game (or more) series like the NHL, I followed hockey for a long time and my impression then, as it is now, is if the NHL does something one way, run, don't walk, to do it the complete opposite. As one-time referee and long-time announcer Bill Chadwick was known to say; 'Hockey's gotta be the greatest sport ever invented to survive with the idiots that run it'. ... and bonus, i think that's probably the one that leads to the 'best' teams making the World Series more often. No, it's Clearly the worst way to get the best teams thru to the WS because it gives them multiple chances to lose before even getter there. Even if we give the upper seeds much better than even odds to survive each round, say a generous 70% chance of moving on in Round 1, 60% in the 2nd, and around 50/50 in the 3rd when they'd likely meet a team roughly equal to their strength, those add up to around a 1-in-5 chance that a top seed survives to even get to the WS (.7 x .6 x .5 = .21) much less win it. And the Stanley Cup playoffs almost never see the best teams through to the end. #8 seeds regularly beat #1's in the first round and the results are more random than any other sport we watch here. The NBA, with roughly the same format (though they recently decided that 16/30 team wasn't enough) stays more true to form but that's because the gap between the top teams and the also-rans is much bigger than you see anywhere else (multiple teams/yr win in excess of 75-85% of their games) and because one or two superstars can dominate a game (think LAA if Ohtani pitches everyday and the Angels decide to give Trout 40% of his team's ABs)

roger_that Oct 21 2022 04:07 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Are we overthinking this a little bit? Seems to me that any playoff system will have an inferior (85-win) team beating its superiors a decent chunk of the time, and superior (100+) win teams will get clobbered in the first round once in a while. That's why they play the games, etc. Further, some years this will occur grossly, with multiple superior teams getting beaten by inferior teams. If you don't want this to happen, stop watching the playoffs. That danger is inherent to the concept of playoffs. And actually I have stopped watching. Once the Mets are out of it, my interest in MLB goes down to the levels of interest in watching paint dry. Maybe that's why I reacted so strongly and so bitterly to the Mets getting clobbered. I wanted a few more weeks of baseball, and I felt entitled to it. Which is wrong, I know. But that entitlement is running rampant here. You watch the playoffs on the offchance that a so-so team will emerge as the Champions of the World. That's the whole ballgame, giving mediocrities a chance to show that the regular season didn't mean squat.

roger_that Oct 21 2022 05:07 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

The whole thing about the playoffs, to my mind, is admitting mediocre teams (i.e., teams other than the one that won the most regular season games) to the party but disadvantaging them so severely that they earn their right to advance by beating teams they shouldn't be beating. So what disadvantages are there to dish out? Home field, obviously, is one--not a huge disadvantage, but a reliable one. Short series--even facing a one-game "series" should be the first round for the weakest Wild Card teams, on the principle of "Yuz shouldn't even be here in the first place, you sucked in the regular season, so deal with it." I would pile a day/night doubleheader or two on the next round of playoffs, in the interest of saving time AND making it tougher for the teams that squeak into the playoffs. It also has the effect of tiring out the winner of such series, messing up their pitching, both starters and relievers, and depriving their regulars of a breather that the team they're facing in the next round gets. You pile on the disadvantages, and the team that overcomes them, if they're severe enough, will have earned their spot in the later playoff series. Are there any powerful disadvantages I'm forgetting about?

Fman99 Oct 21 2022 05:33 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

=roger_that post_id=111684 time=1666346833 user_id=128] Are we overthinking this a little bit? Seems to me that any playoff system will have an inferior (85-win) team beating its superiors a decent chunk of the time, and superior (100+) win teams will get clobbered in the first round once in a while. That's why they play the games, etc. Further, some years this will occur grossly, with multiple superior teams getting beaten by inferior teams. If you don't want this to happen, stop watching the playoffs. That danger is inherent to the concept of playoffs. And actually I have stopped watching. Once the Mets are out of it, my interest in MLB goes down to the levels of interest in watching paint dry. Maybe that's why I reacted so strongly and so bitterly to the Mets getting clobbered. I wanted a few more weeks of baseball, and I felt entitled to it.

This is pretty close to exactly how I feel on this topic.

Frayed Knot Oct 21 2022 05:45 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Not over-thinking things at all. What I'm arguing against here is the whole concept that the purpose of playoffs is to be a second chance way station for everyone from those who were almost good enough to win down through the kinda good teams plus a group of assorted mediocrities. My idea of the best use of a post-season is to pit regional/league winners against each other and crown a winner for that particular season from the survivor of a knock-out tournament. I don't see the attraction in including those teams that were shown over the long haul of a complete season to be a cut beneath the top teams and even less in including those several cuts below them.

roger_that Oct 21 2022 06:59 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Frayed Knot wrote: I don't see the attraction in including those teams that were shown over the long haul of a complete season to be a cut beneath the top teams and even less in including those several cuts below them. Problem here, as I see it, is that the 1973 Mets would have been laughed out of the playoffs, instead of going on to beat the Reds, and very nearly the A's. Were they a cut below the Reds, Dodgers, and Giants who all won many more games than the Mets that year in the NL West?

Ceetar Oct 21 2022 07:27 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Edgy MD wrote: What you actually wrote is that ... every single postseason in every sport in the history of sport has awarded the team that performs the best the title. But now... there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the "Best team", I don't know what you think you're writing "again" to. The notion that "every single postseason in every sport in the history of sport has awarded the team that performs the best the title" and the notion that "there is no system that even approaches an indicative test of who's the 'Best team'" are inherently contradictory. So it doesn't really matter. I would prefer that we award a title to the team who has best proven itself to be the best — I hope I've made that clear — and you either don't want that because every postseason ever already does that, or you don't want that, because no system whatsoever does that. And the dogs bark, and the river runs, and the rich oppress the poor, and nothing means anything, for what are words? And is our struggle not merely lengthening our long defeat? And what happens to all the yesterdays? And who knows to whom the rain returns, and which of our secrets it knows? if you can't tell the difference between those things, which btw, was something I _responded to_. I'm not the one that separated those two concepts. They are different. This, more for Frayed Knot, is something I'm not sure of how it actually shakes out: an NHL style playoffs leading to the best/most talented/regular season champion team winning the most often versus not. Yes, there are more rounds. But there aren't really.. the Dodgers path to the title was already 3. I did propose an idea of first round byes for division champs, leading to only 3 7-game series. That would be the same as right now, except the first series would be longer, and longer series are going to favor the better team, as it (mildly) limits the luck and random variation. Like, if the Mets had a 7 game series against the Padres, I think they might've pulled it out. At least, even going to game 4 I'd still feel reasonably "in it". But I think we should value regular season stuff a little more. Not necessarily try to reward it in this tournament, but just like, treat it as meaningful. This was my stance on 2022 anyway, if the Mets had lost in the tournament, but had won the division, I'd have felt like "okay, you won this thing and lost the other, tough break, but good season" but when you lose both, it's disappointing. Move to a 4-division setup with 7-10 teams each, and winning that becomes more impressive. There's something grander, more important sounding, even in leagues that give you 8 playoff teams, to be like "my team won the division 7 of the last 8 years" versus like "we made the playoffs every year!" different caliber of thing.

Edgy MD Oct 21 2022 07:30 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

=Ceetar post_id=111692 time=1666358841 user_id=102] if you can't tell the difference between those things, which btw, was something I _responded to_.

I'm baffled by your implication that I can't tell the difference. Of course they are different. That was why I wrote that they are inherently contradictory.

metsmarathon Oct 21 2022 08:40 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

ok, hear me out, because i honestly hate what i'm about to type. maximally expanded playoffs akin to what the nba has to offer are probably the best way to ensure that the best mlb teams continue deep into the playoffs. why? because given a long enough series (and lets assume 7 games is long enough) the vastly better teams should win more often. so let's just say the playoffs are open to the top 16 teams. your NL matchups are: dodgers/giants | braves/brewers | mets/phillies | padres/cardinals your AL matchups are: astros/white sox | yankees/orioles | guardians/rays | mariners/blue jays i think those series are much more likely to end up with the top two teams in each division advancing, and maybe more likely have three of the top four. The regular season is still about seeding, and maybe you give the top two seeds in each league all home games in the first round, and give the 3-seed 6 home games, and the 4-seed 5 home games. make it worth a team's while, financially at least, to aim for the higher seeding. The second round of the playoffs is more like what we used to be used to with the division serieses, but the top seeds likely have just been tuning up against the 7-8 seeds, and the 3-6 seeds are busy brawling with each other. so there's less of the concern with a good team getting iced, waiting for its bye week to be over. but they still have a hope of resting tired players more. and go from there. if a low seed really has a run in them, well, damnit, they'll have to fucking earn it more this way, instead of just having one good week. i mean, i rather hate the overall idea here. but i think it could be the way to get the best teams deeper into the playoffs, at least without going back to a more limited postseason. i'm really on the fence here, too. because as much as i like to have the regular season be as meaningful as possible for the most amount of teams, i also greatly enjoy seeing cinderella teams go on a really hot streak and prove their mettle knocking down the juggernauts.

Benjamin Grimm Oct 21 2022 08:48 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I do think that too many teams are in the playoffs, but given that we're at that number, I favor longer series over shorter ones. I'd make the Wild Card series a best of five and the Division Series a best of seven. This would add another five days or so to the postseason calendar. I don't think that's such a big deal. Start the season a week earlier and schedule as many of the early-season games as possible in warm weather cities or domed stadiums.

metsmarathon Oct 21 2022 09:00 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

the short serieses are what really fucks things up. but long serieses AND top-seed byes fuck things up even more. ...or at least as much.

roger_that Oct 21 2022 09:51 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

the short serieses are what really fucks things up. but long serieses AND top-seed byes fuck things up even more. ...or at least as much. Wrong wrong wrongedy wrong! We need MORE short series for the 83- and 86-win teams. Not even a series. The two (or four) lowest seeded teams play one game to see who gets into the next round. Unfair? You dont like it? Tough--win more games in the regular season. The winners of the one game WC gets to play three games at the next-seeded teams' park, and the winner there gets to play (on the road) a team that's had a BYE for the past few days. 1, 3, 5, 7 games, all on the road for the lowest seeded team. The plural of "series" btw is "series." Like "deer" and "deer."

metsmarathon Oct 21 2022 10:22 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

the short serieses are what really fucks things up. but long serieses AND top-seed byes fuck things up even more. ...or at least as much. Wrong wrong wrongedy wrong! We need MORE short series for the 83- and 86-win teams. Not even a series. The two (or four) lowest seeded teams play one game to see who gets into the next round. Unfair? You dont like it? Tough--win more games in the regular season. The winners of the one game WC gets to play three games at the next-seeded teams' park, and the winner there gets to play (on the road) a team that's had a BYE for the past few days. 1, 3, 5, 7 games, all on the road for the lowest seeded team. The plural of "series" btw is "series." Like "deer" and "deer." except that every time a team sweeps their own series and loses the next, there's a fuck-ton of handwringing about them going cold from too many days off. it's actually among the reasons why they changed the schedule in 7 game serieses, aside from too many rest days not looking like real baseball. it was also stated as a concern going into this off season for the top seeds to be sitting around waiting for their games. you go from playing every day to sitting on your ass for a week. you lose the edge, or so the worry goes. i actually REALLY liked the old format, where the two wildcard winners would face off in a winner-take-all one game play-in. i thought it perfectly rewarded the best teams while punishing the lower seeds with the enhanced cruelties of fate. but, that still doesn't appear to sufficiently reward the top seeds, or so says the handwringing over the NL playoff results thus far. so if having too few of the top seeds make it past the first round is indeed a problem, this is one way to fix it. that i have already stated that i hate. so there. and finally, i should think that in my, what, twenty years of posting on mets boards, that any instruction on the proper spelling of a word, or correct grammatical semantical usage, is either unnecessary or completely wasted on me. i'm either irredeeemably illiterate, or just stubbornly make awful stylistic choices because i think it makes me look cool but mostly just makes me seem illiterate but honestly i don't give a shit because i'm stubborn and too heavily invested in my style to ever change and i'm going to go cry now because i'm a terrible person who thought it would be fun to write serieses instead of series because life it too painfully dull to not write deers and meese instead of deer and moose when tapping out uncapitalized musings over baseball errata and oh my god what am i even doing here when i could be curing cancer and pressing the shift key more regularly i'm sorry i'm so so sorry.

Frayed Knot Oct 21 2022 10:47 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Oct 21 2022 12:40 PM

My final input on the topic: - the '73 Mets won their division. THAT gets them into the playoffs. If wins alone is going to be the standard then get rid of divisions. - I'm perfectly willing to discuss Byes and lengths of rounds and so on, although do keep in mind that baseball has weather issues that other sports don't so can't go on for 10-12 (or 30) weeks like the NBA. What I DON'T WANT is plumbing the depths of mediocrities to see how many of them we can cram into a tourney because even though they weren't actually good enough to win anything it might hurt their feelings if they were left out and orange slices and participation trophies just aren't enticing enough. The fact that the Nationals COULD win the WS this year with a run no one knew they had in them is a lousy reason to include them in the playoffs, and that goes for whoever the 10th thru 16th best teams were too.

roger_that Oct 21 2022 11:50 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

"a fuck-ton of handwringing" is a good phrase. I'd add "from ignorant jackasses whose next real thought will be their first one." All you have to do see the value of BYEs, as I've said before, is to give teams the choice: you can rest for four or five days, or you can play for your lives and, if you lose, go home. Which choice will teams take 100% of the time? So why are we even discussing "BYEs: Good or Bad?" any more? Because of ignorant jackasses? Let 'em bray. Serieseses.

metsmarathon Oct 21 2022 02:00 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I love a plurality of serieseseses. Gimme all the series of series I can handle. There is a legit argument that rest can work against baseball players who are used to playing every day. I guess I shouldn't listen to the current and former players and executives who bring it up as a possible concern. Give the top seeds two weeks off. They'll be so crazy fresh nobody could possibly beat them. Let's them take the whole next season off. Advance directly to the next years World Series. Sigh. Silly me for considering the affect on a player who is used to playing every day, for whom timing and rhythm and pattern and process is vitally important, and throwing that all right out the window when the games matter most. Silly me for also saying outright that I don't particularly care for my proposal but suggest only that it may be a way to better effect the desired outcome of Better teams advancing further. Byes. Byes for everyone. Top seeds get two rounds of byes. Maybe even three. Four perhaps. When players come back from the dl, they often need to spend time getting back into game action. But in the playoffs, make em sit as long as possible. That's what's best. When relievers don't pitch in game action for a week, we worry if they'll be ready to go. But sure. No reason at all to think that a bye might have a negative effect. Byes get your better teams that one round deeper into the playoffs. Yes. But are they actually good for those teams, aside from increasing their odds of getting only exactly that far? Does taking the week off make that team better able to play at a high level, or can it be a posssible detriment? Bray tell.

Ceetar Oct 21 2022 02:08 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

From a more realistic front, I think given that the teams are raking in money via TV contracts, they might actually be open to dropping games from the regular season schedule. MLB (ESPN) wanted to add two MORE teams to the postseason. You could counter that with a shorter season and another/longer playoff series formats, because the money from ESPN probably more than covers the revenue from 4 games. This is just a logistical thought, nothing to do with quality of competition in the playoffs or anything.

Ceetar Oct 21 2022 02:10 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

=metsmarathon post_id=111720 time=1666382443 user_id=83] Byes get your better teams that one round deeper into the playoffs. Yes. But are they actually good for those teams, aside from increasing their odds of getting only exactly that far? Does taking the week off make that team better able to play at a high level, or can it be a posssible detriment?

I'm sure some guys get rusty and what not, but it's probably overwhelming a good thing for these teams.



Hell, if we'd held onto the division, we'd probably have a healthier Marte. deGrom and Scherzer both may have been battling things. These guys get beat up over the course of the season. Rest is soooo valuable. You can do things to try to make up for over-rest, timing issues, etc, but only time really heals injury.

roger_that Oct 21 2022 02:53 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

But are they actually good for those teams, aside from increasing their odds of getting only exactly that far? Does taking the week off make that team better able to play at a high level, or can it be a posssible detriment? Yes, they're good for those teams. No, the disadvantages of BYEs (while they exist) are overwhelmingly outweighed by the advantages, even casting aside the value of advancing into the next round uncontested. It's so clear that BYEs favor the team that gets them that I'm more than slightly puzzled why you want to have this discussion. The teams that get them not only wouldn't trade places with the teams that don't, but they wouldn't even talk or think about turning one down for 3/4th of a second. Now, it might be worth a theoretical discussion if we were talking about a week off, or ten days off, but we're not. We're talking about three or four days off, with planned, scheduled workout times, extra physical therapies, etc. If we were talking about two weeks off, I'd concede that at some point, your argument would have some merit--but even then, so would mine. There comes a period of time off that your side wins the argument, but we're not nearly there with a three-day or four-day layoff. Let me give you one example: say a starting pitcher has to suffer a minor injury, a mild sprained ankle that makes him miss a start, and maybe two. Conservatively you put him on a 15-day IL, and have him do some throwing on Day 10, and it turns out that he's fine. So when he comes back on Day 16, rested, uninjured, having thrown 50 or 60 pitches on Day 10, are you thinking "He's going to be a mess. We'd better score 12 or 15 runs today, because he's been resting his arm for two weeks so he's going to get lit up like the 4th of July"? No, at worst you're expecting him to be his usual self, and you're probably rooting realistically for him to benefit from the rest and relaxation. I certainly am not expecting a disastrous outing. This topic is only slightly less dumb than, oh, "Is it better for a pitcher to be ahead in the count or behind?" and backing up your side by arguing that often HRs are hit when the pitcher has an 0-2 advantage. Yes, there are occasions that being ahead doesn't work out, but that's still the way the smart money is bet, and suggesting otherwise, or even that it is an open question, doesn't get you a discussion but rather a puzzled look and the question "Are you OK?" . .

metsmarathon Oct 21 2022 09:15 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

having trouble finding data one way or another. sabermetricians seem to study every little detail they can find, but little is done looking into byes and how they affect team performances. if byes were of benefit, or at least neutral, then one would expect to find that a team that has a bye would have a better-than-expected winning percentage against the team without. if byes were a disadvantage, we would expect to find that a team with a bye was disproportionately likely to lose against a team without a bye. see, i'm just looking here at the chances of a team with or without a bye winning a game at a given round. obviously, having the bye greatly improves your chances of making it to that round, since there's no chance you fall short. i'm looking at how well that bye-d team does once they're there. the best i could find is this. not sure how great the source is, but it has numbers at least. In the 16 times that a team has had a five-day layoff, that team is 7-9 in the ensuing playoff series. Even more interesting however, is how these long layoffs used to be a good thing. From 1995-2005, teams with the five days of no baseball went a perfect 5-0 in the next playoff series. Since 2006 however, those teams are 2-9. ... In fact, having the longer layoff over your next opponent has proven to put teams at a slight disadvantage. In the 27 years of the wild card era prior to this October, there have been 103 postseason series played (This is NOT including the division series played from 1995-2011 as those teams had the same number of days off. It does include the 18 division series played between the top seeded team and the team that won the wild card game starting in 2012). In that time, 15 times have two teams played each other with the same number of rest days before the playoff series started. In the other 88 series, the team with MORE days off has won the ensuing playoff series only 42 times while losing to the team with less rest 46 times. And much like the instances when a team had five or more days off, prior to 2006, the more rested teams actually did better, going 14-16 in those series, with three instances of teams having the same number of days off. all i'm saying is, it's not completely crazy to think that taking a lot of time off before the playoffs might not be the best preparation. data suggests it. do you have data to suggest otherwise? I offer a solution that keeps the top teams more engaged, while also drawing in more teams, attempting to appeal to both pulls. I agree. anecdotally, it makes sense. rest your players. slather them with all the physical therapy in the world. great wonderful massages for everybody. super rest, plenty of sleep. only that may not be the best preparation when you need to keep your senses keen. you take too much time off and your body starts to think that the fight is over. and it can take a bit to get back to where you were. recent playoff performances indicate this to be true. i mean, shit, we worry when pitchers who are used to a 5 man rotation suddenly have to perform with 5 days of rest. right? or did i imagine that? do i imagine that everyone (maybe not everyone) bemoans that as being a key factor in the angels struggles despite ohtani - that american pitchers cannot adjust to a 6-man rotation and a japanese pitcher to a 5-man rotation, creatures of habit that they are, that the difference to their established routines is great enough to have noticable effect on their performances. (i think it's that the depth chart has to go one deeper, and you get less sarts out of the good guys, but what do i know - i'm a braying jackass) but back to the matter at hand. does it hold true that the benefits of rest overweigh the benefits of play? i guess we'll see, won't we. padres manager bob melvin, of course, seems to think that playing in teh wild card round helped him get past the dodgers. Padres manager Bob Melvin believes his club's path leading up to the NLDS may have benefited them. “Typically the Wild Card teams are in that position anyway,” Melvin said. “It's always been that way where the teams that get in through via Wild Card are not only playing with intensity up to the end, but they're also playing well to get in. “And there's probably something to be said that when you're playing well and you have a lot of confidence, you get into the postseason, then there isn't as much expectation on you, then maybe that's a pretty good way to go about it. Yet you do have to play another round. “Obviously everybody aspires to win the division, get a little time off. But there might be a little something to that.” anyway. whatever. i'm done arguing for a playoff format i don't want, and have repeatedly stated that i don't like. y'all think rest helps teams win games. i think the evidence points differently. go mets.

roger_that Oct 22 2022 03:54 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

not sure how sarcastic you're being, mm, in citing Melvin "of course" believing that playing an extra series helped his team win the next round. That's super-positive managerial spin ("I think breaking a leg ultimately helped my player develop running skills he wouldn't have developed otherwise, and I wish more players would break their legs....") but I don't think it's much evidence for anything. It's one thing to look backwards to a series you've won and cite all the (idiotic) reasons you think you won it, but try asking a manager of a losing series if getting to the next series via a BYE would have been preferable. Buck Showalter, for example. "Hey, Buck, did playing SD help or hurt your team this post-season?" Even if the rustiness (speculated on but far from proven) hurt you more than the rest and recovery helped (a very dubious argument in itself), the BYE's assurance of getting to the next round blows the argument away. If rust is 60% and rest is 40%, it's still a no-brainer to take the BYE. And I'm submitting it's a no-brainer to peg rust at 10% and rest at 90%. Another thought experiment: Let's say the Mets use Edwin Diaz in a normal one-inning save for Saturday's game but get blown out on Sunday, so he sits. Then Monday's a travel day, and Tuesday they blow out their opponent so he sits again. Wednesday night, they have a one run lead in the ninth, so he comes in to save the game. How worried are you that Diaz has had three straight days of inactivity? Not at all. You're thinking "Perfect. Diaz has had three days to rest, he's not tired or overworked at all. I'm expecting three straight outs here" , right? Now contrast that with the opposite situation: Diaz has pitched in all three games, with Monday off, and you bring him in for the fourth straight game. This is a scary situation, I think. At some point, and I think the fourth straight game is that point, you're reasonably apprehensive that you're working Diaz too hard, that you just can't keep pitching him that much and not expect his pitching to suffer. It may even be that Buck keeps him out of the game that fourth straight game and uses someone else as the closer that night, and no one blames him even if that someone else gets lit up. What we're talking about is the same situation x 25. You're relying on a very small sample size of games to make your point. I'm not saying you're a braying jackass, btw. You're citing anonymous braying jackasses in making your case, but you're not being one. You're just defending a weak case.

Edgy MD Oct 22 2022 08:19 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

The reason that there is little offered by saberbetricians for or against the benefits of byes is mostly because there is no data beyond what we've just witnessed.

roger_that Oct 22 2022 08:32 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Right. Tiny sample size. So you have to use other parts of your brain

Ceetar Oct 22 2022 09:21 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Zero teams granted a bye have ever failed to advance out of the first round, and a non-zero teams that HAVEN'T ( think 2022 Mets) been granted a first round bye have failed to advance. Seems pretty conclusive to me. The percentages for non-bye teams to win that next series would have to be so lopsided that even republicans believed it for it to outweigh that.

roger_that Oct 22 2022 12:40 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

=Ceetar post_id=111757 time=1666452116 user_id=102] Zero teams granted a bye have ever failed to advance out of the first round, and a non-zero teams that HAVEN'T ( think 2022 Mets) been granted a first round bye have failed to advance. Seems pretty conclusive to me. The percentages for non-bye teams to win that next series would have to be so lopsided that even republicans believed it for it to outweigh that.

Yes, of course, goes without saying. Sigh.



To me, the interesting part of the discussion would be: what sort of edge would you have to give the BYE team to be willing to give up the advantage of having the previous series off? For example, take the Mets (please). The Braves got the BYE this time, but what could you give them to give the Mets the BYE and have the Braves play the Padres instead, while the Mets sat and watched TV for four or five days? To make having the rest and the rust so costly to the Braves that they would prefer playing the Padres and taking their chances? Having the entire next series (should the Braves beat the Padres) in Atlanta doesn't cut it, I'm sure. And I'm hard-pressed to think of other advantages you could have given the Mets such that the Braves would have chosen to play the Padres series.



Not that I'd want that kind of swap to even out the advantage of the BYE. I'd like to make it even bigger, if I could. But can you think of some edge that could make a team give up the BYE and play the games instead?

Ceetar Oct 22 2022 04:49 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

you could trade them a win. Braves will play the Padres, but if they advance to the NLCS and play the Mets, they start 1-0.

roger_that Oct 22 2022 04:55 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Very interesting idea. I like it.

Benjamin Grimm Oct 22 2022 06:00 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

That notion (a ghost win) was proposed during the CBA talks earlier this year. I seem to recall that it was the players who rejected it, but someone here (Gwreck maybe?) recalls that the players suggested it and the owners rejected it. One of us is wrong, but I haven't checked to verify which side proposed and which rejected.

roger_that Oct 22 2022 06:58 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Benjamin Grimm wrote: That notion (a ghost win) was proposed during the CBA talks earlier this year. I seem to recall that it was the players who rejected it, but someone here (Gwreck maybe?) recalls that the players suggested it and the owners rejected it. One of us is wrong, but I haven't checked to verify which side proposed and which rejected. Well, whoever rejected it, would you trade it for a BYE?

batmagadanleadoff Oct 24 2022 12:13 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Edgy MD wrote: There'll never be a perfect solution to this. Even if there were no playoffs and the team with the best regular season record was simply crowned the champ, people would always disagree as to whether that team is truly the best. Especially if that team has the best record by only a game or three. Well, folks can disagree all they want, but it's a tough argument to say that calling somebody the better team after achieving the most in a 162-game test is less credible than calling somebody the better team after a three-game test — the principle being that a larger sample size provides for a more compelling experiment. I didn't say that it was "less credible". That would be an enormous understatement. I said that it wasn't credible at all. No mathematician in the world --well, no sane mathematician-- would ever conclude that a team that is one or three games better than the next over 162 games played is the better team and that luck or chance could be ruled out in explaining the one or three game advantage.* And this is so obvious given these particular numbers that I'd be willing to bet my life on this without even bothering to work out the math. This doesn't mean that the team with the better record isn't necessarily the best team, but that the numbers don't prove it out. But people hang their hats on W-L records and are ready to dismiss the 101-win Mets as chokers because they lost to an 89 win team in the playoffs. Fans see that 12 game difference that the Mets enjoyed over the Padres and imagine an enormous advantage for the Mets, probably because a team that wins its division by 12 games likely knows, in August, that it's gonna finish in first place -- and winds up clinching first place comfortably. And if the second place team finished 12 games out, you can only imagine how far back the rest of the division finished out. But here's the thing: the Mets didn't win 101 regular season games playing the Padres only. They also played bad teams. The dregs of baseball. They played as many bad teams as they played good teams. If they played the Padres exclusively all season long, it's virtually guaranteed that they would've won less than 101 games. So in a playoff series, the difference between the Mets and Padres --two good teams-- is much smaller than appears. And that's before accounting for luck, especially baseball luck which is more prevalent than say, basketball luck, and randomness and that they're only playing three games at most. In that setting, the Mets edge over the Padres, if there even was one, was tiny. Infinitesimal. This really is a series of coin flips. And the coin flipper can't control the outcome of a coin flip. So this is about as random as could be. *In math terms, this means that having a one or three game lead in the standings over 162 games played is statistically insignificant to reject the null hypothesis that the one or three game lead is random or due to luck or chance. In other words, there's not enough proof to declare to a high probability that the team with the best record is in fact, the best team.

batmagadanleadoff Oct 24 2022 08:22 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Here's some simple counting math. I counted all the head-to-head playoff series' since expanded playoffs were introduced (1994, but that was the strike year in which playoffs were canceled, so 1995) to determine how often the team with the better regular season record won its playoff series and how often the team with the lesser record won its playoff series. I ignored the one game do or die series', which were played from 2012 through 2019. Also, I ignored the entire 2020 post season as that was the Covid shortened season and regular season records consisted of only 60 games. So how'd they do? It's a goddamn coin flip, pretty much. The team with the better record won 51% of the series'. Which means, obviously, that the team with the lesser record won its series' 49% of the time. Teams with better record --- 97 series' won Teams with lesser record --- 91 series' won Maybe some other time, I'll break this down further, to see how teams with a three or four game edge, for example, did as compared to teams with, say, a five or six game edge. Of course, breaking down the series' into smaller groups will reduce the sample sizes for each group, so there's that to consider.

Edgy MD Oct 24 2022 10:09 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

All I mean to suggest is that only so much time should be indulged to a foolish idea. Graciousness toward a minority view — even a majority view that you find to be insupportable — is always important. But when there comes a point where you realize your interlocutor has exposed him- or herself as working in bad faith — clinging to an ideology that assures him or her of some shadowy worth, or is just a contrarian who finds worth in being disputed — it's time to move on. So if "people would always disagree as to whether that team is truly the best," I, in my fake role as fake king of baseball rules can only indulge that line of reasoning for so long. Let's advocate for the best, and let folks who would always disagree anyhow piss into the wind. A short series is a far less accurate indicator of who the better team is than a season-long round-robin. As you seem to suggest, this is self evident. We agree. If I were somehow able to personally prune playoff rounds from MLB, I would, and there is only so much time I could give to anybody who argued that this crowns a less-credible champion. Eventually, the best answer is, "If hockey is so great, feel free to watch hockey." Being jerked around by bad faith arguments is no way to go through life. Elevating playoffs over league play is a bad idea, institutionalized and backed by money though it may be. I can understand it being kept alive by greed and zealotry and power and apathy and powerlessness and culture and conservative dispositions, but not by bad faith.

A Boy Named Seo Oct 24 2022 10:30 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

except that every time a team sweeps their own series and loses the next, there's a fuck-ton of handwringing about them going cold from too many days off. it's actually among the reasons why they changed the schedule in 7 game serieses, aside from too many rest days not looking like real baseball. it was also stated as a concern going into this off season for the top seeds to be sitting around waiting for their games. you go from playing every day to sitting on your ass for a week. you lose the edge, or so the worry goes. i actually REALLY liked the old format, where the two wildcard winners would face off in a winner-take-all one game play-in. i thought it perfectly rewarded the best teams while punishing the lower seeds with the enhanced cruelties of fate. but, that still doesn't appear to sufficiently reward the top seeds, or so says the handwringing over the NL playoff results thus far. so if having too few of the top seeds make it past the first round is indeed a problem, this is one way to fix it. that i have already stated that i hate. so there. and finally, i should think that in my, what, twenty years of posting on mets boards, that any instruction on the proper spelling of a word, or correct grammatical semantical usage, is either unnecessary or completely wasted on me. i'm either irredeeemably illiterate, or just stubbornly make awful stylistic choices because i think it makes me look cool but mostly just makes me seem illiterate but honestly i don't give a shit because i'm stubborn and too heavily invested in my style to ever change and i'm going to go cry now because i'm a terrible person who thought it would be fun to write serieses instead of series because life it too painfully dull to not write deers and meese instead of deer and moose when tapping out uncapitalized musings over baseball errata and oh my god what am i even doing here when i could be curing cancer and pressing the shift key more regularly i'm sorry i'm so so sorry. mm's last paragraph is the best closing track since "Purple Rain".

Edgy MD Oct 24 2022 10:42 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

LoL.

roger_that Oct 24 2022 10:43 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

It used to make some sense to wonder if the team that won 94 games was better or worse than the team that won 103 games because they'd played different opponents during the regular season, so who knew really which had faced stronger opposition. The World Series settled all that. Or so we pretended to think, absent further information. Now not so much. You don't have to look very far this year to find a team that dominated all of baseball for the first 85 games of the season, and fell apart to mediocrity for the final 85 games, playoffs included. Were the Yankees a great team in the playoffs, or a mediocre team? Were the Mets strong, based on the whole regular season, or weak, based on their final month? "That's why they play the games" but now I wonder. You could solve all the weather issues by taking the names of every team that won more than half its games, and picking one name out of a hat to settle the question of who is that year's World's Champs. Save a lot of time that way.

MFS62 Oct 24 2022 12:16 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

If I had a choice, I'd rather fix an unsatisfactory (I'm not sure it's broken) playoff system than implement many of Manfred's recent "fixes" to the game itself.(e.g.- ghost runner, universal DH) But after reading some of the solutions here, I'm not sure which, if any of them, I would pick. Later

Benjamin Grimm Oct 24 2022 12:25 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I think simpler is better. Expand the Wild Card Series to best of five and the Division Series to best of seven.

metsmarathon Oct 24 2022 01:01 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

it always will reward the best team at the time. there's simply no other way to think of it than that if your team has the misfortune of an ill-timed cold streak, you risk getting kicked to the curb despite the possibility that over any other 7-game stretch, that team would win every one. such is the case of the mets, who lost but a handful of serieses (sorry, it's stuck in my head now and i couldn't stop myself even if i wanted to) throughout the year, and then lost the biggest series to a team they would have beaten at most other points in the season. ditto the dodgers. the best way to solve that particular problem, i think, is to reward teams that can win in a longer series. every postseason series (save jeopardy-fraught play-in games, if they're your bag) should be seven games. oh. i'll propose an alternative that i'm sure will draw ire. four wild card teams. play-in tournament at the 1-seed's home stadium, or a nearby neutral dome. A vs B | C vs D. day-night doubleheader. winner plays the next day for the right to play the 1-seed the following day. not too much rest for the top seeds as to ice them, and plenty of jeopardy to keep winning a division important. wild card team has a 25% chance of advancing, given coin-flip odds. if they survive that, AND knock off the 1-seed, then good on them. playoffs go only one team deeper per league. there's not really any built-in incentive to the wild card team with the best record, other than maybe being the "home" team in the day game, so they don't have as quick a turnaround for their next game. and the second game is reseeded, so the best WC team always has "home" field. from there, seven game serieses all around. There's a chance somebody has already proposed this or something similar upstream. dunno. give it a thought. I'm not crazy about the neutral site idea, but i also don't want to worry about travel and three days and weather. but it could be done. maybe don't worry about the neutral site and just have the wild card teams jet all around the damned country in three days. whatever.

kcmets Oct 24 2022 01:19 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Not cherry picking here, but I can't see a neutral-site thing ever getting approved. A team's goal is to make the playoffs and the owners reward (or a big one) is how much gross dough they rake in in just one home playoff game. I'd love to see how much the Yankees gross for a playoff game; how much they gross from a captive rain-delay crowd that returns the following day.

batmagadanleadoff Oct 24 2022 01:33 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

it always will reward the best team at the time. there's simply no other way to think of it than that if your team has the misfortune of an ill-timed cold streak, you risk getting kicked to the curb despite the possibility that over any other 7-game stretch, that team would win every one. This. A million times. A key feature of flipping coins to simulate events in order to run statistical experiments is that the coin behaves the same way on every single flip. The coin is "fair and balanced" and flipping it will yield one of two equally likely outcomes --- either heads or tails. And if "that fair and balanced" coin is flipped 50 times and comes up heads all 50 times, the odds of that coin coming up heads on the 51st flip would still be 50%. Baseball doesn't work like that "fair and balanced" coin. The Mets, for example aren't the same Mets on "every single flip". One month, Max Scherzer is pitching like a Cy Young award candidate. The next month he's on the IL with an oblique issue. Then Scherzer's re-activated but perhaps, he's pitching gingerly to nurse his lingering oblique issue. Marte is an all-star for the first five months of the season and then he misses the last four weeks of the season entirely, with a fractured finger. He returns for the playoffs but who knows how compromised his skills are because of the finger fracture? I sure don't. Who can say that the playoff Mets were the same as the May and June Mets? They weren't. Which Padres team showed up for the playoffs? Certainly not the squad that had both Tatis, Jr. and Soto on the 26 man roster simultaneously. Yu Darvish pitched one of the three playoff games between the Mets and Padres. Is that representative of the Padres season? Did Darvish pitch one third of the Padres regular season games (54 starts)? If Darvish could start 54 of the Padres games without compromising his health, would the Padres still be an 89 win team? Or maybe a 109 win team? And all this is before one even begins to account for natural randomness, which would occur even if a baseball team really was as consistent as a "fair and balanced" coin. There's no satisfactory answer and the notion of best team will almost always be an elusive one. Me, I'm confident in believing that the '86 Mets or the '76 Reds were the best baseball teams in their respective seasons. And I'd believe that even if the '86 Mets didn't mount a miraculous once in a lifetime comeback in the Bill Buckner inning and were to lose to the Red Sox in six games. Because what the hell does six games prove? But those are rare exceptions. Fans want closure. Fans can't live with ambiguous endings (See, e.g., The Sopranos series finale.) And it wouldn't be wise for the league to market its post-season as a total luck fest where you are as likely to predict the outcome in advance as you are to guess whether a flipped coin comes up heads or tails. Not only am I certain that playoff baseball is a total luck fest, but I'm certain that secretly and internally, the baseball powers damn well know this, too. Even Young Steinbrenner.

A Boy Named Seo Oct 27 2023 09:13 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I have two more baseball fixes, both inspired by soccer because everyone loves soccer. #1) Supporters Shield This is the award given to the MLS team who finishes with the best record in the regular season. The USL also has the same type of award, and MLB has definitely arrived at a place where they need to reward the best teams with something before they get their asses kicked out in the playoffs. The team that finishes with the best record in the AL wins what I'll call the Larry Doby Shield and the NL is the Lizzie Arlington Shield (Lizzie, the first woman to play on a men's team in 1898, doncha know). In MLS, players split a pot of money, and in MLB, if you win the Doby or Arlington Shield, I declare that every player gets a cool $250K bonus, sponsored by Doritos or Charmin or hims, the maker of fine erectile disfunction pills. This year's winners would have been the Orioles and Braves. [FIMG=500]https://assets.goal.com/v3/assets/bltcc7a7ffd2fbf71f5/blteccd4c5ca214b4be/633b039291f12a1148460d8a/supportersshield.jpg[/FIMG] #2) In-Season Tournament The NBA season has kicked off and this year features the inaugural "In Season Tournament" that borrows heavily (steals) from European football and drops a concurrent competition right in the middle of the regular season. The tournament adds drama that is lacking in the regular season, brings new silverware for fans to clamor after, and offers cash money prizes for the players, so the Grizzlies now have plenty of motivation to beat the Jazz on a cold Tuesday night in Salt Lake in November. And the wins and losses in the tournament all count towards regular season records, so if the tourney idea doesn't move your needle, it's still a game on the way to the playoffs. With double the regular season games of the NBA season, MLB needs to do the same. I'm going to call ours the Castro Cup after Colombian Lou Castro, who signed for Connie Mack's Philadelphia A's in 1902 and became the first Latino player in MLB. Our tournament now has a name so it's already better than the NBA's. MLB could hype it up by having a televised draw, complete with ping pong balls and corresponding numbered envelopes revealed by team legends. And City Connect jerseys would only be worn during the Castro Cup games, giving it a different feel aesthetically. And the Cup Final would be held at Field of Dreams or wherever that game is being held. One game in the cornfield for the cup and the cash. And like the NBA, players on the winning team get $500K each, losing team $250K, semifinal teams $100K and quarterfinals $50K. In conclusion, this does not fix the playoffs in any way, but it makes the regular infinitely more interesting and meaningful, and gives new motivations to players, teams and fans. THE END

Johnny Lunchbucket Oct 27 2023 09:52 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Oct 27 2023 10:17 AM

sign me up for the supportrs shield. an IST in baseball might be fun. You'd have to craft the entire season schedule around it, and rainouts would be a problem. But let's see how the NBA does with theirs. The risk is it devalues non-IST games

MFS62 Oct 27 2023 10:08 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

A Boy Named Seo wrote: I have two more baseball fixes, both inspired by soccer because everyone loves soccer. Which is why if you suggest it that way it might be a tougher sell to MLB executives than if you didn't mention soccer. It would be running head first into the NIH (not invented here) syndrome. But I'm not sure how baseball fans would react to that pitch (double entendre intended) of "Hey, soccer has this great idea. Why don't we try it?". Later

Fman99 Oct 27 2023 10:18 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

You're saying you could make baseball as great as soccer? Jeesh, what'd we ever do to you?

Johnny Lunchbucket Oct 27 2023 10:18 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

As though baseball execs are so ignorant to not recognize what a cup-style tournament is

A Boy Named Seo Oct 27 2023 10:32 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

A Boy Named Seo wrote: I have two more baseball fixes, both inspired by soccer because everyone loves soccer. Which is why if you suggest it that way it might be a tougher sell to MLB executives than if you didn't mention soccer. It would be running head first into the NIH (not invented here) syndrome. But I'm not sure how baseball fans would react to that pitch (double entendre intended) of "Hey, soccer has this great idea. Why don't we try it?". Later No, it's a fact that everyone loves soccer, especially Fman99, so the more I mention soccer to all the MLB execs, the better.

Centerfield Oct 27 2023 11:18 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

And if you combine our ideas, when the 15 game round robin kicks off, the winner of the Supporter's Shield stays home the entire time. Atlanta, Baltimore. Congratulations. You get 15 home games starting October 1. Higher seed plays at home. 6 seed. Kiss your wife and kids goodbye. You won't see them for a while. 1 vs. 6 2 vs. 5 3 vs. 4 1 vs. 5 2 vs. 4 3 vs. 6 OFF DAY 1 vs. 4 2 vs. 3 5 vs. 6 1 vs. 3 2 vs. 6 4 vs. 5 OFF DAY 1 vs. 2 3 vs. 5 4 vs. 6 OFF DAY (or, in the event of a tie after pool play, a 1 game playoff for the right to play in the WS) World Series

A Boy Named Seo Oct 27 2023 12:07 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

By God, we've done it. We've fixed baseball. https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExbmphNHE5eTE4YzVxZjY5d3FqcTl5aDRqeGt3NTIzMmcxbWdycWgxMyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/WmpO7jZg7suIjwVz4S/giphy-downsized-large.gif>

MFS62 Oct 27 2023 12:45 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

A Boy Named Seo wrote: By God, we've done it. We've fixed baseball. https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExbmphNHE5eTE4YzVxZjY5d3FqcTl5aDRqeGt3NTIzMmcxbWdycWgxMyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/WmpO7jZg7suIjwVz4S/giphy-downsized-large.gif> Do we detect a tiny note of sarcasm there? LOL! Later

Edgy MD Oct 27 2023 08:12 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I'm all for a Cup tournament. The knockout play of hot, sexy, and wet Cup action would certainly fill the emptiness that any folks may feel from my elimination of playoffs.

Frayed Knot Dec 13 2023 06:25 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: sign me up for the supportrs shield. an IST in baseball might be fun. You'd have to craft the entire season schedule around it, and rainouts would be a problem. But let's see how the NBA does with theirs. The risk is it devalues non-IST games I had planned to dredge up this thread once the NBA's IST was over ... only to have the topic brought up in one of the all-purpose threads (cuz everything winds up in APTs) so I'm bringing it back to here lest the topic get lost. Here's my take: I have absolutely no idea what this recent NBA tourney was about, how it was structured, what it accomplished, and, most importantly, why ANYONE cared except maybe those who like garishly colored floors (special floors for special games even if it means you can't see the ball) plus even more alt uniforms. It's being claimed that TV ratings and in-house attendance was up for these games -- although I am suspicious whether those claims are actual or partially propaganda -- so the league and the hoops press is declaring it a rousing success. But what was the point? The players apparently loved it, mostly the ones who won the half-mil/per prize money. But do fans care about that?!? - The Lakers won meaning LeBron gets to have HIS name on the trophy, something Jordan, Kobe, Wilt, Shaw, etc can't claim. Wow, I guess this makes him better than Bill Russell. - LA is going to raise a banner to the rafters commemorating this feat ... as befits a team who are the champion of the late-November/ early December period of your season. Does Jan/Feb get one too? - I guess those games count towards the regular season totals but certainly the opponents being paired changed depending on results which means it has to alter the full season results even as I heard that individual records would NOT count if set during these games. So is it part of the season or not? I can't even begin to contemplate how MLB would run a version of this or what it would bring to the game over and above the current set-up.

MFS62 Dec 13 2023 06:44 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Frayed Knot wrote: It's being claimed that TV ratings and in-house attendance was up for these games -- although I am suspicious whether those claims are actual or partially propaganda -- so the league and the hoops press is declaring it a rousing success. set-up. I saw a comment on a Nets board after they were eliminated that said the tourney attendance was lower than for their regular games. IIRC is was a substantial drop (1,500/game) But I've seen no data for other teams. Later

batmagadanleadoff Dec 13 2023 06:57 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

MLB is retroactively declaring last season's September 27th doubleheader between the Mets and Marlins to have been a tournament. A tournament!! The tournament between two teams whose nicknames begin with the letter "M". And because the two teams split the doubleheader, each team winning one game --- everybody wins! Participation trophies for everybody! Commemorative jerseys coming soon. Fans in attendance will be biiled an extra 40% over the face value of their tickets. Because it was a tournament. A tournament!!!

Johnny Lunchbucket Dec 13 2023 06:59 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Lotta sour old men here.

MFS62 Dec 13 2023 07:08 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I like this idea: from Rotoworld: ESPN's Jeff Passan reports Major League Baseball will hold it's first-ever “Spring Breakout” minor league showcase games March 14-17. The series of games will showcase young players from all 30 organizations, with prospect groups from each team facing off against one another, as part of a doubleheader accompanying a regular spring training contest. Passan adds that the goal is to bring top-caliber prospects onto big league fields as opposed to backfield games at spring training complexes. Later

Frayed Knot Dec 13 2023 08:09 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Lotta sour old men here. Well then somebody needs to explain to me what I'm missing here because I simply don't get it. I don't understand what the point of this (NBA) tourney was or why, assuming I was a fan, I should care. It seems to me to be a case of the league saying it matters because we say it matters.

batmagadanleadoff Dec 13 2023 08:28 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I think that MLB should have a World Series tournament (tournament!!!!!) every month. It's not fair that only one team per season gets to win the World Series. It's not fair to the other 29 teams. So let's have an April World Series tournament. (Tournament!!!). And then a May World Series! etc., etc., etc.

Johnny Lunchbucket Dec 14 2023 05:23 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

James Naismith never demanded that the game of basketball have only one tournament a year. From the league's point of view its turning a weakness (low ratings and excitement until Christmas) into a potential strength ,(a new "tentpole" it can market and sell for big bucks to a streaming service and better compete with nfl/college fb). Disruption to the schedule was pretty minimal. Two games for each team were scheduled based on the results. And only the finalists play an 83rd game. So if you didn't care about the tournament it didn't cost you anything as a fan. If you don't want to believe the ratings were better I dont know how to convince you but fans apparently tuned in. LeBron vs Russel is irrelevant and nobody is saying that based on this.

bmfc1 Dec 14 2023 07:56 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

https://www.mlb.com/news/spring-breakout-prospect-showcase-to-debut-in-2024?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage This is a good idea. It's not earth-shattering and you might not even notice, but showcasing a team's best prospects regardless of level is smart. This way, we could see the players that the Mets received for David Robertson: Ronald Hernandez, a 20-year-old catcher, and Marco Vargas, an 18-year-old 2B. These players likely would stay "on the back fields" for ST but here they can play in the bigger ballpark and it won't cost the fans anything (which is shocking) because it will be part of a doubleheader with the scheduled spring game.

A Boy Named Seo Dec 14 2023 09:07 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: James Naismith never demanded that the game of basketball have only one tournament a year. From the league's point of view its turning a weakness (low ratings and excitement until Christmas) into a potential strength ,(a new "tentpole" it can market and sell for big bucks to a streaming service and better compete with nfl/college fb). Disruption to the schedule was pretty minimal. Two games for each team were scheduled based on the results. And only the finalists play an 83rd game. So if you didn't care about the tournament it didn't cost you anything as a fan. If you don't want to believe the ratings were better I dont know how to convince you but fans apparently tuned in. LeBron vs Russel is irrelevant and nobody is saying that based on this. Yeah I agree with all of this. I'm an NBA fan, NBA package subscriber and have a social media that has algorithm'd itself around NBA content and the IST was super popular amongst fans. Some players didn't get it (Terrence Mann on my fav team said he didn't understand it at all) and Spider Mitchell didn't like the point differential for tie-breakers, but confusion or dislike was not the majority (or loudest) opinion, in my circles anyway. And it did what Silver wanted it to do. Give fans a reason to be excited and tune in when teams were ramping up their starters minutes and managing load even load management isn't allowed wink wink. Sounds like they want to give the winner of the IST an automatic entry into the playoffs next year, which is cool, IMO.

batmagadanleadoff Dec 14 2023 09:21 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Dec 14 2023 09:28 AM

Next year, new Mets GM David Stearns will have his Mets players pretend that every regular season game is a "tournament game" (Tournament !!). This way, said Stearns, "they'll play harder, thus increasing their chances of winning games and qualifying for the post-season. I can't wait for this tournament mindset to bring out their magic clutchiness powers. They can play better whenever they feel like it. And they'll feel like playing better if they thought they were playing tournament games."

A Boy Named Seo Dec 14 2023 09:27 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Stearns got demoted to GM already? Sad.

batmagadanleadoff Dec 14 2023 09:28 AM Re: I Fixed Baseball

A Boy Named Seo wrote: Stearns got demoted to GM already? Sad. Yeah. He lost a tournament to decide his title.

Frayed Knot Dec 14 2023 03:03 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

I understand a tourney within a season when it's done the way of English football. The Premier League goes dark approximately one weekend in four (at certain times of the year) to allow teams to play in domestic FA Cup games or in one of the Pan-European tourneys if they qualify because those are separate tournaments with no connection to the PL season. They have completely different set-ups, different opponents, and different titles that are something other than just champions of a portion of a season in progress because certain games, which are essentially the same as any other games, are designated to be different just to call them different. Watching the Mets being crowned 'Champions of April', or whatever, holds no appeal to me.

metirish Dec 14 2023 03:12 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

Yeah the FA Cup is magical, any teams in the pyramid of the game get to play , kind of like the Toledo Mud Hens drawing the Mets in a knockout game , anything can happen, of course players and managers will say they play too many games with league, domestic cups and Euro competition, gets worse in a World Cup/Euro year ...MLB should play more games in division, but that's gone

Frayed Knot Dec 14 2023 03:29 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

=metirish post_id=142953 time=1702591972 user_id=72] Yeah the FA Cup is magical,

Although hasn't its importance diminished over the years (at least with PL teams) as the Premier League has grown in stature?

I remember a discussion taking place a year or two ago concerning should a team (I forget which one now, Liverpool?) play as

hard and/or play all of their stars in an FA Cup game when they also had an important PL game days later with big 'top of the

table' implications as that season was down to its final few games. The implication being that the PL title was much more

prestigious, something I don't think would have be true, or at least not As true a few decades earlier.



Of course that same dilemma wouldn't apply for lower division clubs.

metirish Dec 14 2023 03:40 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

No doubt the magic for the very top clubs has gone , but winning the cup can save a season and manager, teams like Spurs would love to win, they've not win anything in years , a team competing for the EPL title likely wouldn't mind been dumped out

MFS62 Dec 14 2023 03:50 PM Re: I Fixed Baseball

=metirish post_id=142957 time=1702593631 user_id=72] ... Spurs would love to win, they've not win anything in years

Go ahead. Rub it in.

Sigh.

Later