Is the Postseason Becoming Too Different?
So that was a pretty enjoyable postseason. A terrific World Series, with one of the best Game Sevens of all-time, wrapped up a month of high-quality baseball, with only a few duds mixed in here and there. As usual, it was a low-scoring month, with cold weather and elite pitchers serving to make offense scarce, but that just makes for more tense, high-leverage innings.
Of course, there was one notable change this year, particularly emphasized because of Cleveland’s run to the championship. More than ever before, managers were willing to use their bullpens without regard for role or inning, with Andrew Miller serving as the platonic ideal of a relief ace. It wasn’t just Miller, though; Cody Allen entered in the middle innings a few times, while Kenley Jansen and Aroldis Chapman both entered in the seventh inning in several outings.
Some of this change was the inevitable rationalization of Major League organizations, as the concept of strict relief usage has never really been the optimal way to run a bullpen in the postseason. That was an idea in need of challenging, and it was only a matter of time before the incentives to win overcame the notion that relievers could only be used in the way they were deployed in the regular season.
But the early appearances from the game’s best relievers also had another cause; starting pitchers were removed earlier than ever, with team’s utilizing the times-through-the-order information to aggressively remove pitchers even when they’re throwing well. This was most obvious in the final game of the year, with Kyle Hendricks getting lifted after throwing just 63 pitches to 19 batters despite a comfortable four-run lead. Hendricks was one of the best pitchers in baseball this year, was cruising through Cleveland’s line-up, and the game wasn’t in any real jeopardy, but Joe Maddon went and got him anyway, not wanting to experience the third-time-through rally that is seen so often in the regular season.
Rob Arthur did a nice piece for FiveThirtyEight about this halfway through the postseason, showing the declining number of innings starters were throwing this year compared to prior years. At the point of publication, he showed that starting pitchers were averaging about 5.2 — that’s in decimal form, not 5 2/3 innings — innings per start, but now that the World Series has been played, the final total for 2016 is 5.1 innings per start, the lowest mark in baseball history.
Or, if we want to look at it another way, relievers threw 43% of all the postseason innings this year. That’s up from 39% a year ago, and over the last five years, it had held pretty steady between 35-40%, right in the same range as the 63%/37% split we see during the regular season. It certainly feels like this year is the start of a shift, and teams are going to continue to push their bullpen usage in October, especially given how well it worked this year.
But that brings up a bit of a philosophical question; how far away from regular season baseball are we comfortable letting postseason baseball get? It’s already very different in some ways, most notably the number of starting pitchers a team needs to get through, based on the huge increase in off-days relative to what we see from April through September. But with the league potentially moving towards a 50/50 split in workloads between starters and relievers in the postseason, is there a point at which we’ll wonder if October baseball is just too different from the one teams have to play in order to get there?
Some change between the regular season and the postseason is inevitable. When managing for 162 games, the incentive to win any single game is diminished, so there just isn’t the reward to justify the risks of extreme reliever usage that we just saw. In the postseason, every win is vital, and so the difference in urgency is always going to drive a different type of decision making. Toss in the extra days off, and the recipe is there for bullpen-heavy pitcher usage.
But from a roster construction standpoint, it’s a little bit awkward to be incentivizing very different players in October. While elite relievers are obviously extremely valuable in the playoffs, their value remains muted in a regular season where they can only throw 60-70 innings out of the 1,450 a team needs to get through the season. The Yankees, for instance, were built perfectly for October, and might have run over the rest of baseball had they reached the postseason with Andrew Miller, Dellin Betances, and Aroldis Chapman. But even with three high-end bullpen arms, the Yankees were just a .500 team at the trade deadline, which is why Chapman and Miller ended up pitching for Chicago and Cleveland in the World Series.
Building a team for the 162 game haul is quite different than building a team for the playoffs, so it seems like at this point, the general plan is to build a good regular season club and then try to acquire relief help at the deadline. But perhaps the recognition of that plan is what drove reliever prices up so high last winter; if you’re contending, well, great, you already have good bullpen arms, and if you aren’t, you now have the asset that everyone else is trying to trade for in July.
And with few good starters and a trio of high-end closers available this winter, it seems likely that reliever prices are only going up against. Jansen and Chapman are probably going to threaten — and maybe break — the $100 million mark, which no reliever has gotten anywhere near in previous years, and Mark Melancon is going to get paid a pretty penny too. But the teams that make big investments in these guys are going to have to hope the rest of their rosters are pretty well set, because the payoff for having these guys around won’t come if the team doesn’t make the postseason.
But the only real way to push innings from the bullpen back towards starting pitchers would be to have fewer off days in October. And that would require changing the postseason schedule pretty dramatically. Going from a 2-3-2 format to something like a 3-4 format would eliminate one off day from each series, and taking away that second rest day would make it more difficult for teams to extend their bullpens in the way they’re being used now.
Going to one off-day per series would have some other benefits, either allowing the World Series to end sooner — and avoiding the issues that come with unpredictable November weather — or by cutting down the schedule enough to expand to the best-of-three Wild Card format that many have advocated for. After all, when we’re talking about the difference between the regular season and the postseason, the Wild Card play-in games are the least regular-season like thing baseball has going right now.
But they’re also a lot of fun. I know they’re not particularly good at determining which team had the better season, but from a viewer standpoint, winner-take-all games are amazing theatre. And baseball, at the end of the day, is an entertainment product. And while it isn’t anything like the regular season, postseason baseball is still a wildly entertaining way to end the year.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I don’t see an issue. I enjoy the change, as a refreshingly altered approach to view the game and think about strategies, though I understand some people don’t like change and difference for the sake of disliking it. The single game wildcard also is quite enjoyable, I don’t see MLB ever going to a best of three (But I do see them going to a best of seven division series).
It’s not about disliking change per se, it’s that what it means to be the best team shouldn’t fundamentally change once you get to the playoffs.
I have no problem with it at all. I think it’s really cool actually. What’s wrong with having to build a team that’s going to be successful in both the long-term and short-term? It’s not like it’s a surprise to anyone. Also, it’s fun to see the different ways teams attempt to accomplish this. Like you said, it’s entertainment.
I mean, watching marathoners compete in the 100m dash might be fun and entertaining too, but before long, we’re going to start wondering why we’re watching something so profoundly silly.
Shouldn’t it be the other way around: sprinters running a 5k or something?
More like sprinters having to run a 5k to qualify for the sprint finals
We already have 5k runners jog 4.8 k before a sprint finish in just about every championship event. It is a little silly.
You have no idea how fast they are “jogging”. The first 1K of the 5K in the most recent world championship was 3:02. That’s a 4:52 mile.
Really? That’s very slightly slower than the fastest marathoner averaged over all 26 miles, I believe.
Not even half the speed of a top sprinter when actually sprinting.
Yeah, that’s jogging, even if it is a hell of a lot faster than my jogging
I think the single-game wild card is great. It should on paper give the team with the best record in each league an advantage over the other two division winners as whoever the team with the best record plays will likely have burned their best or second-best starter in that one leaving that guy only able to pitch one game in the Division series. And it gives some meaning to the division championships in general to avoid the near-coin flip of a one game wild card.
Also winner take all games are super fun for the fans. 2008 AL Central game 163 was just awesome to be at in person. Having two of those one gamers every year is great theater.
I’m also intrigued by the idea of a 2-game series like they do in Korea. The lower WC seed would have to beat the higher WC seed twice to move on, whereas the higher seed only has to beat the lower seed once. That makes WC Game 1 a win-or-go-home for the lower seed, and if successful, immediately makes WC Game 2 the winner-take-all game.
In the event that the two WC teams have the same record, I would assume you choose the higher seed based on H2H record (followed by H2H run differential, league record, etc. in the event of further ties).
Or if they are tied, just make it a 1-game series.
I think the game is too different due to the amount off off days within a series. If they eliminated the off day between games 2 and 3, the post season would look more like the regular season.
Or, managers would just run their best relievers into the ground even harder. Both Jansen and Chapman were used in a couple of absurd games as it is with 5+ run leads. Maybe that doesn’t happen without off days, but it looked pretty well like reliever stamina simply ceased to be a concern for anyone this year.
It looked like reliever stamina ceased to be a concern, and then it very nearly
cost the Cubs a championship. Chapman and Miller allowed 2 home runs and 5 runs between them in game seven and looked very pedestrian doing it, perhaps reminding everyone that reliever stamina is indeed a concern.
I suspect that Chapman’s and Miller’s Game Seven performances will give managers pause before being quite that aggressive with deploying their top relievers. Chapman probably less so, since the take-away there just seems to be that a guy who prefers to pitch one-inning saves and relies very heavily on velocity is not necessarily the best candidate to thrive if you send him out for three multi-inning outings in the last four days of the season. In Francona’s case I don’t really think he had a choice (with the possible exception of how he used Miller with a comfortable lead in Game 4–but even there I can kind of understand a “let’s just absolutely nail down every Kluber start” mentality). But if Miller’s the poster-boy for turning your best relief pitcher into a multi-inning fireman, by the end of the World Series he was demonstrating that even a guy who is built for that role physically and mentally is going to run out of gas if you lean on him too much.
Do we know that Miller “didn’t have it” in Game 7 though? Yes, he got hit harder than normal, but I’d like to see an argument citing that his velocity, movement, or command was worse in some way. Maybe it was, but even Miller sometimes gives up hits and runs.
Or maybe the Cubs’ hitters just took some better at bats against a 2-pitch reliever who was facing them for the fourth time in little over a week, even though Miller’s stuff was as good as it had been previously.
Either way, that reveals a bit of a flaw in the strategy. A three man rotation relying on heavy bullpen use means that by game seven the other team will have gotten a lot of exposure to both your rotation and bullpen aces.
Just based on watching the games he didn’t look as dominant to me in Game Seven, but that could just be reasoning backwards based on the results–“he’s getting hit, therefore I don’t think he looks as good.” The Cubs did put together some decent at-bats against him in Game One, and Fowler homered off of him in Game Five. So the kind of mythic image of him as someone whose “average” outing was multiple innings with zero runs allowed was over-blown. Even the absolute best pitcher isn’t going to meet those expectations across many innings versus playoff-caliber lineups.
Well said. In Game 1 of the World Series, I actually wondered if Miller was at the point of being not sharp due to too long since he’d pitched in a game. Miller had 5 days off between the ALCS and Game 1 of the World Series.
I see nothing wrong with the recent changes. It’s a fad. It will come and go like others before it. I propose naming it after the man who recently popularized the strategy with 2 WS appearances: The Yost Effect.
Is it a fad if it also works and will probably continue to be used until something else changes?
More obvious than making the 7-game series 34 rather that 232 would be to make the 5 game series 23 instead of 221.
I don’t see either suggestion working. The “road team” should never have at any point in the series played so many more home games than the “home team”. I dislike 2-3-2 but I understand the reason for it to maintain the flow of the series. Giving the road team 2, or even 3, home games before the home team even gets one themselves is pretty advantageous for the road team.
The Division Series used to have the 2-3 format, and that was changed for the reason that Buhner notes.
Just take away an off day and it doesn’t matter if you keep the 2-2-1 format. Since we’re playing some day games at this point in the postseason anyway, create a staggered schedule that allows the day-game teams to travel that night and play the next night game.
Plus, this would help even out the issue that some teams make the postseason but never have a prime time game.
The issue for me is that we should want the same criteria that defines the best team in the regular season to also give advantages in the postseason. I think Dave’s right here; if the Yankees had somehow made it to the postseason with Miller, Betances, and Chapman, they would very likely have made it very deep into the postseason – despite being a largely mediocre team other than those three pitchers. As a fan, that’s not what I want to see in baseball, which is one of the reasons I am glad the Cubs won. They were a far better and deeper team than the Indians, but Francona’s strategy of consolidating all the innings to only his best pitchers masked that fact.
Postseason baseball will always be problematic just by the nature of the game. It’s like crowning the winner of a marathon by making the top ten finishers return the next day to compete in a 100-yard dash.
I think if the world series this year was jays vs giants, you would have seen a ton more innings from starters than the bullpen. It might just be the fact that the indians had probably the best bullpen in the league and maddon didnt trust his relievers outside of 3-4 key guys.
The Indians part of this makes sense because of all their injuries, but I would have expected the Cubs of all teams to rely heavily on their starting pitching.
Well, the Cubs’ starters did throw 60.2% of the team’s 155 post-season innings. (That is including Lester’s 3 innings in Game 7 as reliever innings.) So their relievers pitched less than the 43% of innings that we saw across all teams this postseason.
And the total innings number is small enough that specific events can move the percentage meaningfully, Hendricks left a game against the Giants in the 4th inning because he got hit by a line drive. Two or three more innings from him in that game would have moved the starters’ percent up 1 or 2 points. The Cubs and Giants played a 13 inning game. Removing 3 or 4 reliever innings from the numerator and denominator – if that had been a shorter game – would have moved the percent up 1 or 2 points.
Of course hypotheticals could have gone the other way – more extra innings games – but different circumstances in just those two NLDS games could have gotten the Cubs up to 63% or 64% of postseason innings from their starters.
I kind of agree, though I feel like if I think about it more I might still go either way. I want to bring up something kind of related though: one thing that has bothered me a little more than the difference is the very existence of these relievers that are practially untouchable. On the one hand, watching them is pretty cool, but as far as playoff drama goes, having a stretch of 2 innings, which are also usually the most important 2 innings, where you basically know the game is going to remain static, is not that fun to watch. The idea that a team needs just to carry a lead through the sixth and then the seventh-ninth are in the bag is kind of depressing.
That is partly why game 7 was so great. Andrew Miller, Aroldis Chapman, and Brian Shaw, all virtually untouchable earlier in the postseason, all gave up big runs, probably in large part because of their absurd usage eariler in the postseason. So, in a sense, this new type of baseball takes first, and then it gives. In the early rounds, these fresh relievers can turn some games kind of boring, but at least you know that by the time the world series rolls around, you’re looking at accumulated fatigue as a real player that adds some excitement. I just don’t know if it is a worthwhile tradeoff.
And to be clear, I’m not blaming anyone, I mean, what we’re seeing are just players that are too good at their jobs.
As I said above, I’m asking for evidence (velocity, movement, or command) that Miller’s pitching was off in Game 7 versus similar stuff but just better results from the Cubs. I’ve seen that discussion for Chapman in posts here that mention his diminished velocity and command in Game 7, manifested in problems getting swinging strikes on his fastball. It’s possible that something was off with Miller in Game 7, but so far I’ve seen that assumed in the comments without evidence.
As for Shaw, he had a very good playoff run but he was also a 3.94 FIP / 3.58 xFIP / 3.24 ERA reliever this season with similar career numbers (3.63 / 3.67 / 3.04, respectively). His usage was hardly “absurd” in the postseason: he ended up pitching a total of 10.1 innings across 11 games.
As for any argument that Shaw was giving up hits in Game 7 because he was gassed, let me quote from August’s post about the 1-2 pitch that Zobrist hit for a double: “Shaw located a pitch that had worked for him all year, a pitch that was right in line with their gameplan against Zobrist, a pitch harder than almost any he’s ever thrown, and Zobrist did what fantastic hitters do, what World Series MVPs do.” In other words, Shaw threw a very good pitch, but Zobrist hit it hard.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/ben-zobrist-will-not-be-underrated-by-the-history-books/
It’s not really that important to my point. If anything, it supports my point if Miller was his usual self; in that case, it took just an extremely unlikely event–a team hitting Miller–to make that last game what it was, and that it happened in game 7 is coincidence, and the most likely outcome was a boring game 7.
Also, Shaw probably didn’t belong in my original grouping, and Cody Allen’s scoreless postseason also supports my concern about boring games.
The only issue with a 3-4 home and away split is that if it’s a quick series, one of those teams get screwed out of ballpark revenue. The owners would not agree to that.
Teams split gate revenues in the playoffs, but the team with the better record could have complaints about home-field advantage and potentially getting in a hole.
Not a problem, for the reasons stated by others. Actually, makes it much more interesting to see varying managerial strategies rather than the standard stuff.
I’m posting to add that to me it appears that there’s also a small trend to use starters on short rest or as relievers. Shorter starts makes this more feasible and seems reasonable. And, for all we know, teams may start experimenting with this during the regular season, or at least in September when fighting for a playoff spot.
Then is the real question, should teams drastically change the way they use the bullpen in the regular season? Could you build a credible pitching staff around two, high innings starters, and 8-9 flamethrowers who can get you through the lineup once, every other day?
Seems that might be a cost efficient way to go for some teams (Rockies)…
I don’t think you could find any starters who could pitch every other day. I also don’t think a team could find the 8-10 effective 1-2 inning relief pitchers who could throw every other day.
To mimic what we saw in the post-season, a team would need 4 starters who would be expected to go 4-6 innings each start. They would then need at least 5 or 6 relievers.
I made a similar comment the other day, also citing the Rockies as a good candidate to try something like this. I’m glad others are thinking this way, as I think this kind of experimentation would be fun to see, if a little hard to get used to. Relating to the premise of this post, I’m not sure why we should assume the postseason should revert back to being more like the regular season; I think we should be more inclined to assume the opposite.
I don’t think anyone is talking two starters alternating like turn-of-the-20th-century staffs, but a four- or 3.5-man rotation could work if you rarely let them go three times through the order. I’m currently looking at applying Gini Coefficient to staffs’ innings distributions to see whether it positively correlates to outcomes, though I don’t necessarily expect that to be the case, as more “equitably” distributed innings distributions are likely to be symptoms of collective ineffectiveness and injuries under current strategy norms.
Why do we need to go from 232 to 34? Why not just remove the travel day? They do it all season long. You could make getaway days day games in the DS and CS, I know they would never sign up for it in the WS, but keep the format, ditch the travel days.
Because the disincentive is still long-term, compared to the short term incentives. Teams are still incentivized to use their best pitchers and to just deal with the fallout later, assuming they don’t get eliminated. It would be like a game of chicken, forcing a manager to choose between a storm of criticism for not using his best guy and possibly completely wringing the guy dry in a 7-day 7-game stretch.
That schedule gets a bit tricky, though, because rainouts could really screw up a postseason schedule that has very few off-days built in.
It’s not so much a problem for the World Series, but let’s say that the LCS’s and LDS’s have no travel days and only one off day after them. Two rainouts in a series and then you’re pushing into having to change the schedule for the next round.
The main difference between bullpen mgmt in the postseason v regular season is probably that in the postseason more of the relief innings are higher leverage. So for the postseason it does mean that its the closer types who pitch longer outings. For the regular season, its the lower leverage relievers who should be pitching longer outings. Regardless, teams really do need to IMO break out of the one-inning max straitjacketed mindset for their bullpens and hopefully this postseason will do that. More rest/recovery between appearances is what keeps bullpens fresh – and more innings/appearance easily leads to more innings/season as well.
The other change that might really be useful is the 100-pitch-and-pull. There was a great article here a couple months ago showing that that practice has resulted in LONGER outings (more injuries?) than used to be the case with low-end rotation guys and shorter outings for high-end guys. So the distribution around 100 pitches has merely compressed as the number itself has become an obsession. This is kind of insane for a strategy that was created mainly to protect YOUNG arms from injury/overuse. Hopefully some team can let their better veterans (esp contact-mgmt ones) just keep pitching longer into games. I’m pretty sure ‘complete games’ are not the first step on the road to perdition and golly maybe even modern player/snowflakes are capable of more than 15 or so in a career. And constrict the lower-end (and prob younger too) to the 2TO and/or shorter counts. With the innings (and more since teams could prob open an additional slot for position plyrs) made up by the multi-inning or 1TO relievers.
Here’s a radical idea: have double-headers in the playoffs. Right now, a 7 game series is spread over 9 days. You could go double-header, travel day, double-header, single-day game, travel day and then 2 single-day games. That would give you 7 games in 7 days which is closer to the season work load. This would also allow for 7 game divisional series without lengthening the playoffs or shortening the regular seasons.
Not sure it is practical but I was thinking this before games 6/7 how awesome it would be to have a double header end it all. This would actually make it even less like the regular season ut would be a lot of fun. I am aware though that teams nor television broadcasts would like this.
My biggest problem with the way pitching staffs are handled in the postseason was the hook was just a little quick for some starters. Prime example is Hendricks. He was cruising fairly well, most of the trouble he got into was due to defensive miscues, and he was still pitching fairly effortlessly. I have no problem pulling him after he gets into trouble, but a singular walk with a 4 run lead is hardly getting into trouble. He appeared to be pretty on at the time he was pulled. Yes there is the fatigue issue, which is negated by the 63 pitches, well under what he normally throws. Yes there is the 3rd time through the order issue, but I don’t see a reason to not have him go until there are signs of trouble. At very minimum he should have had one or two more batters until he was pulled. Who knows, he could have induced another grounder and immediately got out of the inning very quickly.
It goes back to the risk aversion issue. Yes when there is large risk, it should be averted. If there is minor risk you can let it play out a little more. In the Hendricks case, you had actually added risk by removing him in my mind by riding Chapman hard most of the series, and then not giving him the extra rest on Game 6. Sometimes they eye test is better to go with on the numbers, and the eyes said Hendricks was fine. A little bit more out of Hendricks while he is going fine compared to a possibly gassed Chapman.
I feel it also came back to haunt the Indians with Miller as well. While the workload wasn’t insane, the usage was a bit abnormal for him, and humans are humans.
For the postseason, it is better to pull a starter too early than too late. Pulling too early means adding stress to the bullpen, but that is hard to quantify and very likely to have no effect. Pulling too late greatly increases the chances of allowing runs and losing the game in progress. It’s generally an easy choice, especially when you know there is no game afterwards.
They pulled Hendricks for Lester, which for me was primarily a risk because it involved putting Lester in a situation he is definitely not accustomed to, and also doing something Maddon said he wouldn’t do, which is start Lester in the middle of an inning with runners on.
As far as Chapman goes, one would really hope that the team could get a good assessment of his state before the game, so that they aren’t wondering if he’s fatigued when they are deciding to put him in. Assuming they are evaluating their own guys well enough, putting in a new pitcher is not much of a risk in most situations (Lester being perhaps a notable exception).
I agree that it is almost always best to pull too early instead of too late. The history of baseball is littered with pitchers who were left in too long and were lost for a time getting shelled while they should have been pulled. Prior and Pedro are two amazing examples. That said, I also think there is a such thing as too too early. If Hendricks is having that game in the regular season he goes 7+. He should be able to get 5+ in the playoffs with that performance.
I honestly think the game is 100% in the bag for the Cubs in 9 with Hendricks finishing the 5th. Lester 6-8 and Chapman coming in for the 9th. This way you are still limiting risk, you are keeping your players in roles they are more comfortable with by Lester coming in with a clean inning, and Chapman limited to an inning due to the possible fatigue.
Hendricks actuallly struck out Santana too. If the umpire had made the call correctly he likely would not have gotten pulled and we would not have had all the late game drama.
“how far away from regular season baseball are we comfortable letting postseason baseball get?”
For me we’re past that point. I’m a lifelong Cubs fan, so happy with the end result, but what I watched wasn’t the Cubs team I watched for 162 games.
Sports will always be a bit different in the playoffs, where teams rely on their top players more. Basketball teams will shorten rotations from 10 men to 8 or 9, hockey teams will skate the 4th line less, etc. I have no problem that 5th starters don’t pitch in the playoffs and perhaps the sport is better for the off days in that we don’t see players, especially catchers, needing a day off.
But a sport where Kyle Hendricks is twice pulled in the fifth inning while pitching effectively and the Indians use a 3-man rotation, really isn’t the sport I love.
For the World Series, I’d like to see game 5 be a Sunday day/afternoon game and eliminate the travel day before game 6. I suspect the same could happen during the LCS with a well placed day game used to remove a travel day. It’s partially due to the Indians success but they played only 15 games in the month after the regular season ended. Playing “every other day” changes the game too much for my liking.
Game 7 I would have left Hendricks in the game.
In Game 3 I wouldn’t say that he was “pitching effectively in the 5th”. Bases loaded with 1 out in the 5th of a tie game. The last two hitters had been a hit by pitch and a walk. He hadn’t given up any runs yet, but he’d had traffic on the bases every inning. He was on the third time through the order, with Lindor and then Napoli due up. It’s the sort of spot that managers probably ought to pull starters more often than they do, even with regular season bullpen usage considerations.
I think the answer is that yes it’s a problem, but no, there isn’t anything anyone can really do. Every change will have unintended negative consequences.
I think the biggest thing to do would be to incentivize having the best record in each league. Make up new trophies, give players financial bonuses, raise banners, etc. The problem now is that you have two seasons – a marathon and a sprint – and only one means something to the fans and players. Make both ‘races’ have weight and importance, and you somewhat fix the problem.
That wouldn’t change this year, of course. But it would (rightfully, in my view) reward the Cubs with the credit they deserve for two huge accomplishments (the season wins and World Series).
I think postseason baseball is less “different” than September baseball is. I have a bigger problem with September baseball than I do the way playoffs are managed. Playoffs are always going to be managed differently from the regular season, starters will be handled differently, elite relievers will be leaned on heavily, etc. I don’t see any way around that, no matter what changes you make.
I do think a one day off per series format is a good idea, but not in a 3-4. A 3-4 is horribly unfair to the team with “home field” advantage, not just on the field but in terms of stadium and city revenue. Instead, why not have a Game 5 day game and then Game 6 the following day?
Using 2017 for example, find a way to have the World Series start on Tuesday, October 24th. Play Game 1 and Game 2 on the 24th and 25, off day on the 26th, Game 3 and 4 on the 27th and 28th, a Sunday day game for Game 5 on the 29th, then Games 6 and 7 on the 30th and 31st. I think a Sunday day game would be a huge draw and would be a good alternative to the games starting at 8 ET and ending at midnight. It probably couldn’t be a 1PM ET start, especially if there is a west coast team involved, but maybe around 3PM?
Outside of that, I’m not sure what the other options are.
I’ve always been an advocate of making the LDS a best-of-7, because I hate the idea of making the best teams especially vulnerable to a best-of-5 to kick-off the playoffs. Best-of-7’s are already SSS-volatile as it is, but obviously it’s long been the standard baseball playoff construct. The best-of-5 existed in the LCS for 16 years, and then they extended it, and for good reason. I wish they had never brought it back for divisional round play.
This isn’t really a “fix”, but I feel like this could work:
a) eliminate the wild card game, or make it a best-of-3. An isolated winner-take-all game that could, theoretically, have two teams with vastly different records, is a terrible thing that Bud Selig foisted on us (if this existed in 2001, the 85-77 Twins would’ve only needed one win over the 102-60 A’s to advance to the divisional round. FOH.)
b) make the LDS a best-of-7; already explained above.
c) eliminate one of the travel days in the LDS and LCS (will never happen in the World Series). It can either be after Game 2 or after Game 5; it could be a choice for the top seeds in each league to make in the LDS, and be alternated between or whatever in the LCS. (As in – in each league, LDS1 gets their travel day after Game 2, LDS2 after Game 5, and in the LCS, the AL gets theirs after Game 2 and the NL after Game 5.) It seems like a workable solution.
Because I agree with Cameron otherwise. Playoff baseball is fun, but with the four-team/three-round format that exists today, with 22-28% of each series tied up in off-days (compared to ~11.5% of the regular season, and even that’s an imperfect figure), the game really becomes fundamentally different in a significant way, and not a way that I enjoy too much, personally. As a Yankee fan, I love seeing Andrew Miller pitch, but it’s kinda bizarre that a relief pitcher, even one as good as Miller is, goes from being only semi-important in the regular season to being legitimately one of the three most valuable players on the roster in a playoff setting.
Again, it’s fun to watch, but it’s a significantly different ballgame.
I like that the postseason requires managers to adapt to different usage patterns, though I understand that reasonable minds can differ on that point.
I do have one issue with fewer off days, as well as a separate one with a 3 game wild card series.
On the first, I like the fact that the off days give us some days with fewer games in the LCS and LDS rounds. The way that the off days line up in the LCS, for example, means that a couple games of each series have that day to themselves. I suspect it helps attract viewers who are baseball fans but not fans of one of the two teams in the series, because watching two games in one day is a big time commitment that not everybody can make. This year, for example, Indians-Blue Jays got overshadowed by Cubs-Dodgers in the national media, but at least the ALCS had some days when it was only the game and not sticking Toronto and Cleveland fans with an early start time when lots of people are still at work. That feeds into separate business/ratings reasons that broadcasters like it. I’m just saying that, as a fan, I enjoy being able to watch a lot of various series without almost every day turning into a seven hour time commitment. This consideration obviously doesn’t apply to the World Series.
As for a 3 game wild card series, I don’t like it because I think it means too many days off for the non-wild card playoff teams. We need to have two days available after the regular season for potential tiebreaker games (3 or 4 way ties require more than 1 game). Then we’d have a 3 day wildcard series. Then we’d presumably schedule 1 off day: necessary to accommodate the chance of a rainout if nothing else. So we’re looking at division winners having 6 off days after the regular season before they play a game. I think that’s just too long for both players and fans.
the extra off days also allowed the truncated Cleveland rotation to get through. with less off days the Miller thing wouldn’t have worked. the cubs might have had an easy time or maybe the Indians wouldn’t have even made it past the blue Jay’s (I know the series was a blow out but if the starters and relievers already were banged up from facing the Sox every day it might have been different).
I am not hating on the Indians. they did an awesome job to overcome those injuries and I would even say overall they were the best playing team of this postseason considerimg all three series. they certainly more than deserved what they achieved but they did get helped by the schedule while a deep team like the cubs can’t really maximize all their assets.
Great post, followed by a great discussion. To me, it doesn’t seem like rocket science to put together a team that can do well in both the reg. & post season, and have a manager flexible enough to succeed in both environments. I also don’t see any pressing need to change the playoff format, except for maybe expanding the divisional series to best-of-7. (Although that in and of itself means either shortening the regular season or altering other parts of the post-season tourney.)
As a Cubs fan, I started throwing things around the room when Maddon took Hendricks out, a move that was unnecessary even by “cutting-edge/playoff-baseball/outside-the-box” criteria. Maddon sometimes thinks too much and over-manages. Stuffing yourself into a tight, little box of your own design is not thinking outside the box: he wasn’t managing the game unfolding in front of his eyes, but following a rigid script come hell or high water. (“I must get Lester into this game, no matter what” . . . ) Hendricks continuing for another couple of innings gave the Cubs a better chance to win than replacing him with a tired starter who (by the way) can neither field his position nor hold baserunners. Bottom line for me: regular season or post-season, manage the game in front of you in such a way as to maximize your chances to win, whether it means having a conga line of relievers starting in the third inning, or letting your starter pitch effectively into the 7th or beyond. I am just as uncomfortable with this new orthodoxy of bullpen use as I have been with the older ones.
Yes.
I think Francona managed to overcome his SP deficiency due to injury while maximizing his best player which was Miller. If his 2 and 3 were healthy, he’d probably manage like he did the Red Sox while going 8-0 in the WS and coming back from 3-0 and 3-1 down in those ALCS.
I think Madden managed not to lose and tried too hard to match Francona and reduced his greatest strength (SP’s) while overplaying his weakness which was his bullpen outside Chapman.
In the end both Miller and Chapman were burnt out and each side almost lost the title because of it and Madden needed 2 relievers to get 3 outs and Francona needed an unreliable SP in the 10th which cost him the title.
I think game 7 might have helped push things back away from the extreme bullpen usage we’ve been seeing. If Cleveland scores in the 9th, Maddon is basically Grady Little for pulling Hendricks. It was a bad move for every reason. Also, the lack of effectiveness from Miller and Chapman could be blamed on being overworked. When their teams needed them most, they weren’t themselves.
The Postseason isn’t broken, other than that every game takes 4 hours and ends just past midnight.
You want to fix the rest issue? Make Games 2 and 5 day games (3 pm EST? 1 pm may be too early) and travel that night. The players union would probably balk, but it would be nice to see the end of a couple of these games. Coming west coast to east coast would suck a little,
Ratings may dip a little for those two games, but it would be a much better “event”… people get psyched for the World Cup, with games at all hours of the day. Baseball is meant to be played during the day, with some success in the earlier rounds of the playoff.
#7in7 (7 games, 7 days)… let’s start the movement.
The weather is the biggest difference to me. The “boys of summer” should not have full-face ski masks on during a baseball game.
My suggestion: Return to a 154 game season, increase the # of double-headers during the season, have fewer off-days during the playoffs, and get to the World Series in late September.
November baseball is absurd. I should not have the most important games of the baseball season on my TV when I have 3 inches of snow in my yard.