Regular Season and Playoff Schedule Thoughts

[Guest]

Every year, the baseball playoffs roll around. Nearly every year, people observe the unfairness of it all—the teams that make the playoffs aren’t always the ones that deserve it the most, and the less deserving teams have a nasty habit of doing pretty well once they get to October. And every year those whiny babies whine more and more about their stupid ideas that they think somehow make things "fair" as if that was the goal of professional sports entertainment and not some subjective nonsense. And more and more people ignore those whiny babies and their whiny baby whining about fairness and "unworthy" teams winning titles

 

Yeah, it blows when the Cubs are far and away the best constructed team in baseball but I wouldn't have it any other way.

[SouthSideRyan]

http://i.imgur.com/BBrf3yN.gif

[Derwood]

I stopped reading after "relegation". Why is that everyone's solution to everything?

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Oh god that's awful. All it takes is one dominant team and suddenly the championship is decided two months in advance and 20 or so teams have nothing to play for.

 

The author thinks it discourages tanking, but it really makes it even more desirable. You need to be one of the top handful of teams to have a chance at a title. As it is right now, the 15th best team might as well play it out and take their shot, because there's 10 spots in the coin-flips. In this format, you need a superteam to have a chance, which means even more incentive to tank for a golden-years strategy. It basically turns baseball into the NBA with a one-year delay on winning a title once you get your superteam together.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Oh god that's awful. All it takes is one dominant team and suddenly the championship is decided two months in advance and 20 or so teams have nothing to play for.

 

The author thinks it discourages tanking, but it really makes it even more desirable. You need to be one of the top handful of teams to have a chance at a title. As it is right now, the 15th best team might as well play it out and take their shot, because there's 10 spots in the coin-flips. In this format, you need a superteam to have a chance, which means even more incentive to tank for a golden-years strategy. It basically turns baseball into the NBA with a one-year delay on winning a title once you get your superteam together.

[Derwood]

If you want to discourage tanking, shake up the draft order, don't move to a silly relegation thing

[jersey cubs fan]

I stopped reading after "relegation". Why is that everyone's solution to everything?

because it works for a sport where 2 score games are a blow out in a country the size of wisconsin with teams worth talking about in 3 cities and every teenager has their "they do it so much better in europe" moment and some never grow out of it.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

dp

[Hairyducked Idiot]

It's really a terrific idea. Makes the long regular season of paramount importance, reduces incentive to be bad(or even worse than you could be), still offers a title(complete w/ randomness and entertainment value) of a playoff, and does so without the normal impractical suggestions that would be nonstarters for the union, owners, or both. It also does have a balanced schedule(or very close to it) that decides the champion(or in my suggestion, world series participants). IMO it's an improvement in every facet.

 

I'm having trouble thinking of anything that comes closer to the description of "impractical suggestion that would be a nonstarter for owners" than "hey guys, do you want to put half your teams in an inferior league with a chance to move up" and "Hey guys, do you want to eliminate the unbalanced schedule that drives your attendance?"

[jersey cubs fan]

It's really a terrific idea. Makes the long regular season of paramount importance, reduces incentive to be bad(or even worse than you could be), still offers a title(complete w/ randomness and entertainment value) of a playoff, and does so without the normal impractical suggestions that would be nonstarters for the union, owners, or both. It also does have a balanced schedule(or very close to it) that decides the champion(or in my suggestion, world series participants). IMO it's an improvement in every facet.

 

I'm having trouble thinking of anything that comes closer to the description of "impractical suggestion that would be a nonstarter for owners" than "hey guys, do you want to put half your teams in an inferior league with a chance to move up" and "Hey guys, do you want to eliminate the unbalanced schedule that drives your attendance?"

it is incredibly bad and doesn't offer any improvement.

[Guest]

It's really a terrific idea. Makes the long regular season of paramount importance, reduces incentive to be bad(or even worse than you could be), still offers a title(complete w/ randomness and entertainment value) of a playoff, and does so without the normal impractical suggestions that would be nonstarters for the union, owners, or both. It also does have a balanced schedule(or very close to it) that decides the champion(or in my suggestion, world series participants). IMO it's an improvement in every facet.

 

I'm having trouble thinking of anything that comes closer to the description of "impractical suggestion that would be a nonstarter for owners" than "hey guys, do you want to put half your teams in an inferior league with a chance to move up" and "Hey guys, do you want to eliminate the unbalanced schedule that drives your attendance?"

 

I misread the post originally, I don't think the suggested idea that the conferences don't intermingle throughout the 143 game schedule is a great idea. Instead keeping the balanced schedule across all teams(probably with more games traded for the divisional/playoff eligible schedule to keep some more inbalance) works better. That way relegation is only really about Championship/World Series eligibility, which is enough of an incentive to discourage tanking(imagine last year's Red Sox having to desperately buy to have a shot at the big prize in 2016, for example) but not a big hit that owners would particularly care.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Sure, you can come up with some scenarios where some teams would be disincentived to tank, but I don't think that's the net result of the proposal.

 

Do you think this Cubs team would have been dissuaded by a one-year delay in the results of their multi-year tank? And teams like the White Sox or Padres who have always played the "try every year" game are now never going to have a real chance at a title unless they shut it down, tank, and build up a superteam. It basically turns MLB into the NBA.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Sure, you can come up with some scenarios where some teams would be disincentived to tank, but I don't think that's the net result of the proposal.

 

Do you think this Cubs team would have been dissuaded by a one-year delay in the results of their multi-year tank? And teams like the White Sox or Padres who have always played the "try every year" game are now never going to have a real chance at a title unless they shut it down, tank, and build up a superteam. It basically turns MLB into the NBA.

[Derwood]

How bad an idea would it be to award the #1 draft pick to the team that just barely missed the playoffs, and work the draft order from there? That would strongly discourage tanking and reward teams that tried but just missed

[imb]

how many people really care about tanking, i wonder. i dont think it bothers me at all