Different Is Not Bad: CBA Includes Second Wild Card
In a year that has seen extreme labor disagreements within the NFL and the NBA, it’s extremely comforting to know that the owners and the players have reached an agreement on a new five-year Collective Bargaining Agreement — assuring that baseball will have at least 21 consecutive years of labor peace.
One of the stipulations of the agreement is that a second Wild Card spot will be added to both leagues. Five teams will make the postseason, featuring a play-in game between the two Wild Card winners, and — if Bud Selig gets his way — this change could be implemented as soon as the 2012 season.
Adding a fifth playoff team to both leagues is not universally popular amongst fans. After all, making the postseason in baseball is a badge of honor. Only 26.7% of the teams can boast a playoff appearance at the end of the season. It’s not like football or basketball, in which sub-.500 teams can slide into the postseason. Only the elite squads make the postseason in baseball, and that has a sort of innate purity to it.
Does a fifth team in the playoffs really dilute the elite status of a postseason appearance, though?
Perhaps we define a postseason-caliber team as a 90-win team. Since the 2000 season, twelve teams that won 90-games did not make the postseason. With the second Wild Card, eleven of those twelve teams would have been playing baseball in October. The exception was the 2002 season, in which the Red Sox and Mariners both won 93 games, but neither made the postseason.
While certainly not true every season, it does seem that adding a second Wild Card to both league could add overall quality — not just quantity — to the postseason.
It is also important to recognize that the drama of the postseason race would not be dampened by adding a second Wild Card team in both leagues. Sure, the best day in recent baseball history (September 28, 2011) would not have happened because the Wild Card races between the Cardinals and Braves in the NL and between the Rays and Red Sox in the AL would have already been decided. The Dan Johnson pinch-hit home run would not have shaken the rafters in Tampa. Robert Andino would not be cult hero in Baltimore (and secretly Tampa). Chris Carpenter’s complete-game shutout with eleven strikeouts wouldn’t have been so memorable.
But had the second Wild Card spot been added previously, we could have had something special in 2007.
In the American League, the Detroit Tigers and Seattle Mariners ended the season tied at 88-wins for what would now be the last Wild Card spot. The Mariners closed the year with five-consecutive wins. Instead of watching a postseason race separated by six games — as was the case in 2007 with the Yankees earning the Wild Card over Detroit and Seattle — the baseball world could have had a potential heated race in the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest for the chance to play October baseball.
In fact, if the season results would have been the exact same under the new CBA rules, — unlikely, but possible — the Tigers and Mariners would have faced off in a play-in game to get into the other play-in game. Talk about pressure.
Furthermore, in 2003, the season ended with six teams within four games of the second National League Wild Card berth. The Houston Astros finished fifth in the NL with 87 wins, but the Phillies, Dodgers, Cardinals, Diamondbacks, and Expos all were within shouting distance in the final week of the regular season. Who knows what that final week would have brought if those six teams had something significant for which to play.
That could have been some serious drama unfolding in late September.
The second Wild Card also further incentivizes winning the division. To avoid a one-game elimination series between the two Wild Card teams — in which, frankly, anything can happen and does not measure which team is truly more talented — organizations will make in-season acquisitions to win the division, not just to squeak into the playoffs. After all, a five-game series to prove superiority is much more comfortable than a one-game free-for-all.
So, in some ways, if you don’t like the new play-in game for the Wild Card, just buck up and win the division. Plain and simple.
Ultimately, adding a second Wild Card to both leagues does not absolutely diminish the quality of teams in the postseason, nor does it lessen the potential drama surrounding the last week of the season. It’s completely contextual. In 2001, for example, the spread between the first and second Wild Card team in the AL would have been 17 games. In 2007, the spread between the first and second Wild Card team in the NL would have been zero games.
It’s not better. It’s not worse. It’s just different. And in just a couple years, the change will be seen as commonplace, and it will be accepted as a part of the game. Just as it was with the original Wild Card, when it was added in 1995.
J.P. Breen is a graduate student at the University of Chicago. For analysis on the Brewers and fantasy baseball, you can follow him on Twitter (@JP_Breen).
But instead of pennant races between 90-win teams, we get pennant races between 85-win teams … or worse.
Which is really good for attendance in those towns, no? Rebuilding teams like the Nationals, Royals, and Indians can literally bank a legit playoff run based on having one more slot. That kind of momentum can lead to signing more free agents, signing up more season ticket holders, etc. I think it’s a master stroke financially, and it’s just a single play-in game, so it doesn’t upset the playoff schedule, and really you’re just trading one wild-card team for another.
A few minutes of research says that this constantly thrown about theory holds no water.
Taking an arbitrary sample size of six years back, let’s look year to year on who would’ve made it into the playoffs and how badly they missed:
2011, Red Sox and Braves. Both were one back of the WC in their league.
2010, Red Sox and Padres. The former was one back of the AL West division leader, the latter one less than the NL WC.
2009, Rangers and Giants. The Rangers had an identical record to the AL Central winner and the Giants finished three back of the WC.
2008, Yankees and Mets. The Yankees and Mets both finished the season with better records than a playoff team, the Yankees topped the White Sox (Pre-one game playoff record) by a game and the Mets beat the Dodgers by a whopping five games.
2007, Tigers and Mariners tie, Padres in the NL. Neither of the former were close, both six back of the WC, but the Padres topped the NL Central winning Cubs by four games.
2006, Angels and Phillies. The Angels missed by a full four games, but the Phillies were two games up on the NL and eventual WS champion Cardinals.
So, going back six seasons, the only team that would make it under the new rule that only won 85 games was the 2006 Phillies and they finished the regular season with a better record than one of that season’s division winners anyway. It doesn’t get much play because it hasn’t come up in a couple of years, but look at 2006-2009, that’s four years where at least one team missed the playoffs with a same or better record than another playoff team because of divisional alignment. 2008 is particularly egregious as there was a team in both leagues that sat home in October while an inferior team went on by virtue of playing in a garbage division.
In short, there is no way that adding a second Wild Card can do more to water down the competition in the playoffs than Divisional Alignment already has.
For drama and amount of money that can be made the more wild cards the better, but for deciding something close to a worthy champion, you’d do better if all the teams in each league played balanced schedules and the top team in each league ended up playing each other for the championship.
Or even if you got rid of leagues and just had every team play against every other one. The team with the best record is the champion. If there is a tie, it can be decided by a playoff. For instance, does anyone believe that the 2001 Mariners wasn’t the best team in all of baseball that year, regardless of the fact that the Yankees beat them in the championship series and then lost to the Diamondbacks?
What does a championship really mean if we can be sure in most years it does not crown the best team? Baseball is a sport where it takes a 162 game season to separate teams by three or four wins and sometimes not even that. A series while exciting is obviously not the best way to decide a champion, if we want the champion to be the best team. Looking into enough regular seasons, doesn’t the worst team in the league every so often sweep the best one? We probably don’t even have to look at that many.
If we don’t care about that and only care about drama. Then yes, the playoff format could stand innumerable more changes. After all, the most dramatic sporting event is probably March Madness, specifically because of how worthless it makes the regular season.
They should do the same as the Premiere League- two titles, one for the regular season and one for a postseason tournament.
In the EPL, It’s not so much a postseason tournament as it is three concurrent competitions: two playoff-style cup competitions and one league season, with the cups being contested over the same time frame as the regular season. They do have a postseason playoff for teams in the Championship (second division) to get promoted into the Premier League.
Having said that, I think that style would serve MLB well, as I have outlined here. It would be a radical but fun change.
There’s a link in my comment above for the word “here”…you just can’t see it very well.
” Having said that, I think that style would serve MLB well, as I have outlined here. It would be a radical but fun change.”
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jfwii –
your idea is interesting but its a logistical nightmare. the BPL style scheduling would be pretty much impossible to complete in the current time frame used by MLB. there are many factors that allow this structure to work for English soccer, which wont work for MLB,
for one thing England is only about 1/3 the size of California. you can get anywhere in the country by bus in a couple hours or plane in a matter of minutes. in the US a coast to coast flight is 5+ hrs.
each Premier League team only plays 38 regular season games – add in the UEFA games etc and youre still not even 1/3 of the way to your proposed number of MLB games – not even in the same ballpark.
and more importantly, the season lasts from mid August, to mid May. thats 9 full months. 3 months longer than the MLB schedule, or 2 months longer than MLB reg season + playoffs.
so the BPL has far fewer games in a much longer time frame.
which leads me to the next point:
a big reason why champions league can run concurrently with the regular season is because the relatively few number of games means the vast majority of regular season is played on weekends, leaving the tues/weds open for UEFA play.
this is in stark contrast to what would be necessary for a 160-180 game schedule, which would require games basically every single day.
just not a feasible solution
You’re over-thinking it. The answer is 162 regular season games. And 7 game playoff series. Sample size. Done.
I would like to see baseball switch back to two divisions per league (even though it’s unbalanced). That would eliminate teams like the ’06 Cardinals from having a protected playoff spot. That particular club had fewer wins than the wild card winning Dodgers and the Phillies (who missed the playoffs).
Alternatively, the single playoff game could be held between the two teams with the worst records, regardless of division standing.
In the two division American league the 87 Twins won 85 games and ended up taking the world series.
For the last 10 years, here are the average wins for the three divisions, plus the next four teams [Div1, is the division winner with the best record, not a particular division]:
Div1 99.4 wins
Div2 94.6
Div3 89.9
WC1 93.7
WC2 89.4
WC3 86.9
WC4 84.2
So, the WC is generally just slightly worse than the second best divisional team and the second WC team is just slightly worse than the third divisional team. Sounds fair to me– if you’re going to let in that ‘lousy’ division winner, you might as well include a second wild card team that would be pretty comparable.
This is a great argument for the old 1-Wild Card system. Clearly WC1 belongs in the playoffs. Maybe WC2 deserves to be in as much as Div3, or maybe it doesn’t, but including WC2 *cripples* WC1, who clearly belongs more than either of them.
So the system punishes the AL east since the WC is usually the second place team there.
No, it is not fair. A one-game playoff is fair to no one. It is, and should remain, a last resort to resolve ties for playoff positions.
This is more an argument to why divisions should be eliminated. The solution is simple if the concern is admitting only worthy playoff competition. Instead of trying to compensate for a screwy/lopsided three division/wild card system, just get rid of divisions and take the best seasonal records. We keep trying to justify the weirdness of this system with more weirdness.
The problem is, this is the only feasible way to create a semblance of fairness now that the Pandora’s Box of six divisions has been opened.
Looking back at the last decade’s worth of AL/NL Central division standings, that’s basically a third of the MLB that would never stand for going back to the two division format because every other year would end with no teams from the midwest in playoffs. Look at 2008 again for a nice example of how this could end. If there was a system of “four best records” in 2008, we’d have ended up with the Angels and three East Coast teams, and that’s with the East Coast teams all having to face each other eighteen times (And noting that the Blue Jays only finished three back of the Yankees). Imagine 2008 had a system where the top four teams made it, regardless of division and we operated under a system where the Angels didn’t manage to get to 100 wins by playing in a four team division where everyone else finished under .500. If all teams were facing an equal schedule, it’s entirely realistic the AL could’ve been represented in 2008 by the Rays, Red Sox, Yankees and Blue Jays. Sure, that’s the most “fair” situation, but imagine the hand-wringing from the rest of the AL’s fans.
It is worse. It once again lowers the threshold required to make the playoffs, resulting an even greater crapshoot and diminishing the achievement of winning a World Series. It adds an extra layer of difficulty for the second best team in a tough division – a team that is not only still burdened by the unfair division of teams but must now throw its post-season existence to the fate of what is essentially a one-game roll of the dice. To say that it makes no difference and to compare it to the inception of the original wild card simply ignores the fact that many fans haven’t accepted playoff expansion as a justifiable change to the game. Somehow playoff races don’t feel as important when a handful of teams have a playoff spot secured and are simply playing out the stretch.
It’s definitely worse…
After a 162 game regular season, you finish with the 4th best record in the league… The team with the 5th best record in the league is in your division (3rd place) and maybe with several fewer wins. We’re going to give that 3rd place divisional team a chance to leapfrog the 2nd place divisional team in 1 day?
Judging by what we’ve seen in the standings the last decade, it’s certain to happen. In general, Isn’t this just the “163rd game” being played every year, tie or not?
And what happens if your’e the second wild card team who is lucky enough to have a Pedro Martinez caliber pitcher in turn to throw the playoff game? The playoff system has become way too asymmetrical.
1 game series, 3 game series, 7 game series, 7 game series
To have each series weighted so differently in value is embarrassing, and It makes me fume to think about how this system devalues the way a pitching staff effects the outcome during the regular season, as compared to how it can during the playoffs. Two totally different rotation approaches. You can buck up and win the division, but still doesn’t change the fact that you only have 3 games to advance to the league championship. This system still devalues the meaning of why there’s so many games played during the regular season to determine playoff worthiness.
sorry i meant 1G, 5G, 7G, and 7G series
Agree with this 100%. Period.
Well said. I believe the division series with the winner of the wild card team will be severely impaired. Not only do they to face the top team, now they have to do so when they likely used either their #1 or 2 starter in the play-in game, thus reducing the chance to have their top guy start 2 games in a DS. I don’t like it.
The wild card team(s) should be impaired. They didn’t win their division. Plus, the wild card team often doesn’t play the top team. See the AL East over the last few years.
I like the one game playoff between the WCs, but I think the next series should be 7 games.
Impaired? That doesn’t make sense, because to reverse the point of view, you’re not giving preferential treatment to the division winners. You’re only postponing the start to their playoff.
Look on the bright side, now future children will never have to suffer the injustice of a postseason without the Yanks or Red Sawx…
It’s true. This is a great arrangement. For those who didn’t like TWO playoff teams from the AL East every year, now you can have THREE which quickly whittles back down to two. 😉
So now what will the Orioles and Blue Jays have to bitch about?
To me, the biggest improvement is handing back the importance of winning the division to avoid the play-in game, and giving an advantage to the #1 seed because they’ll be playing a WC team that just used up their best pitcher (presumably). Combine that with more teams playing for a playoff spot deeper in the year, and I much prefer this structure.
Garold, you don’t see an advantage to winning the division vs. being the wild card in having home-field advantage? If you are a wild-card, the only time you can have home field is if you’re league randomly wins the all-star game and you get to the world series.
Home field is next to worthless
Homefield proves extra revenue to the team. Ask the Rays if they enjoyed the extra 1.5 mil or so they pulled in from just 2 extra home games. I bet they wish they had 3 extra.
I fully agree with Garold. This increases the level of competition for both the division titles and the #1 overall seed. To me, it’s worth the expense of adding one more (worse) playoff team from a purely competitive standpoint. Assuming that MLB doesn’t put 3–4 days between the play-in game and LDS, I’m betting that the #1 overall seed wins more Division Series than they would have under the old format due to the pitching edge.
But this isn’t the problem. The problem isn’t about watering down the playoff competition. Even by increasing to the top 5 teams in a league playoff we will most likely see just as strong a pool of competition as usual.
The issue is how we are determining the advancement of these teams within the pool. We are applying a completely different winning criteria for advancement within the regular season and each series that leads to the WS. This is the issue.
I’m kind of surprised that a stats site like this doesn’t have an article out that passionately disagrees with the direction. People get up in arms when someone mentions Wins or ERA in determining the trueness of a crummy end of season award, but a playoff circus like this to determine a MLB champion so far gets indifference? Maybe i missed something…
Please explain how having different winning criteria in a playoff series vs. the regular season is a problem. Seems to me there is a single factor involved, which is time. The only thing that would change this is if it were arbitrary.
You are not missing anything. Everything you said is true. The playoff structure just got even more blatantly stupid…or I mean, more politically correct. In 20 years half the teams in each league will be playoff bound. It will never stop now.
Let’s flip the current state upside down then. What if we tried this playoff format…
WC2 vs WC 1 (7 game series)
WC vs D1 (7 game series)
D2 vs D3 (7 game series)
League championship (5 game series)
World Series (1 game series)
Is this better? worse… or just different… A significant part of making the playoffs, is using a full pitching staff, most notably a “4-5 man rotation”. When you shorten a series greatly and/or add rest in between games, the team’s pitching reasons for making the playoffs and their reasons for advancing or not advancing throughout the playoffs become more distanced. Let’s keep the system relatively consistent, and have teams rely on the balance of their roster, just as they did during the regular season. A sudden death playoff matchup in baseball is not the way to go, unless it’s a tie breaker (like extra innings).
This is only an improvement if your team has a high payroll. The average payroll rank of the number one seed compared to the rest of its league over the last decade was 3.9th. So if you aren’t a top four payroll in your league, you’re highly unlikely to be that seed.
Which is the big reason I think this was done. It makes it less likely a small market team ends up in the World Series. MLB hates it when some little city gets to the big stage because the TV numbers suck.
Here’s why I hate it: http://www.platoonadvantage.com/2011/11/why-i-hate-new-postseason-plan.html
(I get nothing from extra page views, just too complicated to explain in a comment.)
The biggest issue is that I suspect we’ll see a lot more 95-win vs. 87-win play-ins, where the wildcard might even be the second-best team in the league and has to basically flip a coin for its life against a clearly inferior team, than the exciting ones you describe.
This. In my opinion, the two teams entering the post-season with the worst records should have to play-in. That will give teams in crappy divisions incentive to actually win some more games…
2 Leagues
4 Divisions (ALE, ALW, NLW, NLE)
Division Winners Receive Byes into LDS
2nd and 3rd place in each division play 1″Wild Card” Play-in game
Winners Play best-of-5 against Division Winners in LDS
Division Series winners play each other in LCS
LCS winners play in WS.
**This is how it should be**
Why have a regular season? Only the worst team in every division doesn’t have a shot at the World Series?
As a Twins fan I’m all for this. It means there is a chance the Twins can get past the Yankees (much better odds in a 1 game series than 5).
Congratulations, MLB! You now have the 2nd-worst playoff system in all of sports after the BCS.
The NASCAR Chase is pretty bad.
This would have been a great change if they were to re-seed the teams after they qualify. No bonus points for winning a soft division. We should have learned from the embarrassment that was the 2010-2011 Seattle Seahawks. Just seed them 1-5 in order. That way, the 1 seed would become meaningful–you get to face a relatively mediocre 4/5 seed after they most likely just burned their ace. Huge advantage there.
I guess this is what passes off as parity in baseball. Set up a playoff system in which being good at baseball is of minimal importance. Then brag about how some mid-market team somehow goes on a magical run to the World Series.
This would have been a good argument if one of the two NL East teams had made it to the WS last year. Or the year before that…
Turns out 162 games is a lot. If you win your division, you’re good. If you just miss and win the wild card, you’re still good.
I think it’s kind of interesting that they are injecting a small bit of NCAA Final Four “do or die” to the playoffs, and people are up in arms. While at the same time the tournament they are emulating just a slight bit is by far the most popular in American sports, one where clearly better teams get beat by a mid-major that shoots lights out for a single game and could never replicate that performance. Okay, I’ve just outed myself as a Jayhawks fan…
That’s not a valid comparison–the best team normally wins in a single basketball game. In fact, the 1 seed wins its region almost 50% of the time. Very few games are 50/50 tossups. Almost every baseball series is a 50/50 or a 60/40 proposition.
you know there already was something incredibly special in 2007, right?
Yeah, Joba Chamberlain got attacked by bugs!
Sure, we would’ve gotten a race between the Tigers and Mariners in 2007, but we also would have lost the one-game playoff between the Padres and Rockies. Instead they both would’ve just… advanced to a one-game playoff with each other. Never mind.
If it’s your belief that winning your division is made more important by this move, why have wild cards at all?