Proposal for Postseason changes

[Orioles0615]

Or the O's could just not choke and play better

[Frobby]

Just now, Orioles0615 said:

Or the O's could just not choke and play better

I could have repped you for this, but I didn’t like the “not choke” part.   I’ll just leave it at “Or the O’s could just play better.”   If we were ahead 2-0 or even tied 1-1, this thread wouldn’t exist.  

[tntoriole]

Our team’s fortunes aside, i do believe the current playoff structure still reduces the historic value of a 162 game season marathon to determine league champions in short series of games. 
 

But this is not going to go backwards due to the money and beliefs that playoffs engage communities more in baseball fanship, which are both true. 
 

No weighting formula will correct this.  Either you have league champions by 162 game performance or you have league champions by playoff performance over several weeks.  The two ways are fundamentally incompatible with each other. 
 

 

[btownoriole]

34 minutes ago, tntoriole said:

Our team’s fortunes aside, i do believe the current playoff structure still reduces the historic value of a 162 game season marathon to determine league champions in short series of games. 
 

But this is not going to go backwards due to the money and beliefs that playoffs engage communities more in baseball fanship, which are both true. 
 

No weighting formula will correct this.  Either you have league champions by 162 game performance or you have league champions by playoff performance over several weeks.  The two ways are fundamentally incompatible with each other. 
 

 

I think this was the thinking when the NHL created the "President's Cup."  Hockey's playoffs are the 2nd-biggest crapshoot behind baseball.

[Frobby]

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/layoffs-havent-hindered-playoff-teams-historically/

[justD]

I don’t care whether it impacts teams or not. I do care that everyone was miserable - fans and broadcasters anyway - with two days without baseball last week. For Os fans it was a miserable 5 days without Os games and then this interminable wait from midday Sunday til late Tuesday.

Something is just way off about it. Fans of the best team in the AL shouldn’t be left going through withdrawal while waiting and waiting and waiting to see their team play. 

[slakattack]

16 hours ago, Bahama O's Fan said:

Simple. Eliminate divisions, in fact, even leagues. Completely balanced schedule and take the top 8 or 12 ir whatever teams. Seed according to record

After auto-seeding, how about we just use the individual players' metrics to determine the outcome of the playoff rounds and award the championship based on that? Then the following year, redistribute all the talent evenly across the uni-league and start over again.  And since we're homogenizing everything, let's do away home field advantages, 50% of the time when you're in your town, you are the visiting team and you have to bat first and wear away uniforms. Speaking of uniforms, they should all be standardized so that the names and numbers are only one script style and of a uniform font size, also team colors should be limited to 2 primary colors - white and black, so that no team has an unfair style advantage...

[Just Regular]

Some day I hope they grow the pie by lengthening the series instead of admitting more mediocre teams.

For a minute in the beginning, it took 5 wins to win a World Series. 

[DrungoHazewood]

I want two 16-team leagues with no divisions and whoever has the best record in each league gets a big 20-foot long pennant that says League Champion to fly over their stadium forever.

After that you can have any kind of October Madness tournament or tournaments you want, and even give whomever happens to get through that a trophy, too. I'd even have an 8-team NIT among the eight teams with the worst record and whomever wins that gets the #1 draft pick.

Whatever fixes you make to the playoffs as they exist today are largely window dressing. Nothing is going to change the fact that short series, be them 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 or whatever games, are just slightly weighted coin tosses to declare a champion.

Edited October 10, 2023 by DrungoHazewood

[MCO'sFan]

For the second year it looks like atleast two of the bye teams will be eliminated. That's 50/50 both years. When your best teams only have a 50% advance rate, there is something wrong with the format. They need to figure out how to lessen the layoff for the by teams. They are not going to go to fewer teams so the only way to do it is to eliminate the days off and have floating start dates. No day off between the regular season and the WC rounds. One day off between the end of WC round and start of DS. If they gad done that this year the O's would have started the series on Wednesday with three days off. Five days off are too many and the way the WC series are set up, as long as you win, you are not at much of a disadvantage and maybe even have a few advantages. That's not how it is supposed to work. 

[MacAdoo]

You can protect the significance of the most grueling regular season in professional sports AND appease the money-making interest of more teams in the playoffs by simply rewarding the higher seeded team in the following manner:  They must simply win one less game. They must win two before the lower seeded team wins three or must win three before the lower seeded team wins four. The World Series is then a straight up best of seven. 
 

Problem solved. 

[dzorange]

15 minutes ago, MacAdoo said:

You can protect the significance of the most grueling regular season in professional sports AND appease the money-making interest of more teams in the playoffs by simply rewarding the higher seeded team in the following manner:  They must simply win one less game. They must win two before the lower seeded team wins three or must win three before the lower seeded team wins four. The World Series is then a straight up best of seven. 
 

Problem solved. 

So a team can win Game 6 down 2-3 in a series and win the series? Or Game 4 down 1-2? C'mon. Like that's going to make things better.

Edited October 10, 2023 by dzorange

[dzorange]

The playoffs aren't supposed to be fair. They just need to make some minor tweaks. Perhaps going back to the one game playoff for the Wild Card round would be an option. At minimum, no one is going to complain about getting a bye if they don't have to play a one game playoff. Plus it would mess up the wild card teams rotations a little more, and wouldn't allow one team to get into a groove.

Edited October 10, 2023 by dzorange

[MacAdoo]

1 minute ago, dzorange said:

So a team can win Game 6 down 2-3 in a series and win the series? Or Game 4 down 1-2? C'mon. Like that's going to make things better.

If they’re the higher seeded team, yes. As I said, it puts extreme value on the regular season while still allowing an excess of others to compete for a title whereas just a generation ago they’d be watching from home. 

[rm5678]

1 hour ago, MCO'sFan said:

They are not going to go to fewer teams so the only way to do it is to eliminate the days off and have floating start dates. No day off between the regular season and the WC rounds. One day off between the end of WC round and start of DS. 

I completely agree that 5 days off is too much and penalizes the team, but the day off between the regular season and the WC round is necessary because of potential rescheduling of rained out games. This year the Mets & Marlins almost needed to finish a suspended game on that off day.