Projecting a 12-Team Playoff Structure
Last month, I went over some possible playoff structures in an attempt to design a format that allowed for playoff expansion while still preserving the value of adding a star to the roster. I focused on 14-team structures for a couple of reasons: it was more of a challenge to make a 14-team system that didn’t grossly alter team incentives and I suspected that the players would be willing to accept the larger field if it helped them achieve some of their other negotiation priorities.
Well, we’re a month later, and there’s a little more clarity. While there is still a lot to iron out and little idea as to when the league and the players union might reach a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement, there seems to be some kind of very preliminary sorta-agreement on a 12-team playoff system, though ownership has apparently been very resistant to allowing the more highly-seeded teams any advantage outside of the traditional home field-based ones (meaning no knockout run or “ghost wins”).
So let’s take our lockout projected standings and project the playoffs based on a system in which the best two division winners receive byes, the third division winner plays the lowest seed in a three-game series, and the other two Wild Card teams play their own trio of games against each other. The playoffs then proceed from there.
The American League
| Team | W | L | GB | Pct | Div% | WC% | Playoff% | WS Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York Yankees | 90 | 72 | — | 55.6% | 39.1% | 44.3% | 83.4% | 9.1% |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 89 | 73 | 1 | 54.9% | 27.4% | 47.7% | 75.2% | 6.5% |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 88 | 74 | 2 | 54.3% | 25.5% | 47.8% | 73.3% | 6.1% |
| Boston Red Sox | 83 | 79 | 7 | 51.2% | 8.0% | 35.0% | 43.0% | 2.0% |
| Baltimore Orioles | 64 | 98 | 26 | 39.5% | 0.0% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.0% |
| Team | W | L | GB | Pct | Div% | WC% | Playoff% | WS Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago White Sox | 88 | 74 | — | 54.3% | 70.7% | 7.9% | 78.6% | 7.0% |
| Cleveland Guardians | 78 | 84 | 10 | 48.1% | 12.0% | 11.1% | 23.1% | 0.7% |
| Detroit Tigers | 76 | 86 | 12 | 46.9% | 6.9% | 7.1% | 14.0% | 0.3% |
| Minnesota Twins | 75 | 87 | 13 | 46.3% | 5.9% | 6.3% | 12.3% | 0.3% |
| Kansas City Royals | 74 | 88 | 14 | 45.7% | 4.5% | 5.0% | 9.6% | 0.2% |
| Team | W | L | GB | Pct | Div% | WC% | Playoff% | WS Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Houston Astros | 91 | 71 | — | 56.2% | 70.9% | 16.1% | 87.0% | 11.6% |
| Los Angeles Angels | 81 | 81 | 10 | 50.0% | 10.7% | 24.0% | 34.7% | 1.5% |
| Oakland A’s | 81 | 81 | 10 | 50.0% | 10.6% | 24.3% | 34.9% | 1.5% |
| Seattle Mariners | 80 | 82 | 11 | 49.4% | 6.9% | 18.7% | 25.6% | 0.9% |
| Texas Rangers | 73 | 89 | 18 | 45.1% | 0.9% | 4.5% | 5.4% | 0.1% |
The National League
| Team | W | L | GB | Pct | Div% | WC% | Playoff% | WS Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta Braves | 90 | 72 | — | 55.6% | 49.1% | 30.3% | 79.4% | 8.1% |
| New York Mets | 88 | 74 | 2 | 54.3% | 34.3% | 35.5% | 69.8% | 5.7% |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 82 | 80 | 8 | 50.6% | 9.5% | 24.5% | 34.0% | 1.4% |
| Miami Marlins | 80 | 82 | 10 | 49.4% | 5.7% | 18.5% | 24.2% | 0.8% |
| Washington Nationals | 75 | 87 | 15 | 46.3% | 1.3% | 6.4% | 7.8% | 0.1% |
| Team | W | L | GB | Pct | Div% | WC% | Playoff% | WS Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Louis Cardinals | 89 | 73 | — | 54.9% | 49.0% | 25.0% | 74.0% | 6.6% |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 88 | 74 | 1 | 54.3% | 39.3% | 28.2% | 67.6% | 5.2% |
| Cincinnati Reds | 80 | 82 | 9 | 49.4% | 8.5% | 16.7% | 25.2% | 0.8% |
| Chicago Cubs | 76 | 86 | 13 | 46.9% | 3.0% | 8.1% | 11.1% | 0.2% |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 68 | 94 | 21 | 42.0% | 0.1% | 0.6% | 0.8% | 0.0% |
| Team | W | L | GB | Pct | Div% | WC% | Playoff% | WS Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 94 | 68 | — | 58.0% | 63.7% | 29.1% | 92.7% | 14.4% |
| San Diego Padres | 90 | 72 | 4 | 55.6% | 31.9% | 48.1% | 80.1% | 7.8% |
| San Francisco Giants | 81 | 81 | 13 | 50.0% | 4.2% | 25.6% | 29.8% | 1.1% |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 72 | 90 | 22 | 44.4% | 0.2% | 3.1% | 3.3% | 0.0% |
| Colorado Rockies | 66 | 96 | 28 | 40.7% | 0.0% | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.0% |
Don’t laugh that I’m projecting 162 games! We’re simply trying to see the effects of a change to the playoff system and since most seasons that aren’t 2022 hopefully will feature 162 games, it makes sense to look at the standings at this level.
If you’re focused on getting higher playoff chances, well, you’ve got that. Even the expected basement dwellers of the league sneak above the 0.0%/0.1% doldrums. The Pittsburgh Pirates almost move the decimal point, nearing a 1% projected shot of postseason play. (Whether the Pirates having that realistic of a chance at the postseason is a feature or a bug is a judgement I will leave to the reader.)
To get an idea of how the playoff probabilities changed, I ran the old system against the new system. You might notice that the World Series probabilities in the old system vary a bit from the ones you saw in the lockout projections. That’s because I’ve been tinkering with this model in recent weeks. It now considers the distribution of performances on rosters and calculates playoff team strength slightly differently than regular season strength. Here are the projected changes:
| Team | Old Playoff% | Old WS% | New Playoff% | New WS% | Playoff Change | WS Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tampa Bay Rays | 61.7% | 5.5% | 73.3% | 6.1% | 11.6% | 0.6% |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 63.8% | 5.9% | 75.2% | 6.5% | 11.4% | 0.6% |
| New York Yankees | 74.3% | 8.6% | 83.4% | 9.1% | 9.1% | 0.5% |
| Boston Red Sox | 30.5% | 1.5% | 43.0% | 2.0% | 12.5% | 0.5% |
| San Diego Padres | 70.4% | 7.5% | 80.1% | 7.8% | 9.6% | 0.3% |
| San Francisco Giants | 19.7% | 0.8% | 29.8% | 1.1% | 10.2% | 0.3% |
| Oakland A’s | 24.8% | 1.2% | 34.9% | 1.5% | 10.1% | 0.2% |
| Los Angeles Angels | 24.7% | 1.2% | 34.7% | 1.5% | 10.0% | 0.2% |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 23.5% | 1.2% | 34.0% | 1.4% | 10.5% | 0.2% |
| Miami Marlins | 15.8% | 0.6% | 24.2% | 0.8% | 8.4% | 0.1% |
| Seattle Mariners | 17.4% | 0.7% | 25.6% | 0.9% | 8.2% | 0.1% |
| New York Mets | 58.7% | 5.6% | 69.8% | 5.7% | 11.1% | 0.1% |
| Cincinnati Reds | 17.3% | 0.8% | 25.2% | 0.8% | 7.8% | 0.1% |
| Washington Nationals | 4.3% | 0.1% | 7.8% | 0.1% | 3.5% | 0.0% |
| Chicago Cubs | 6.8% | 0.2% | 11.1% | 0.2% | 4.3% | 0.0% |
| Texas Rangers | 3.0% | 0.1% | 5.4% | 0.1% | 2.4% | 0.0% |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 1.5% | 0.0% | 3.3% | 0.0% | 1.8% | 0.0% |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 0.3% | 0.0% | 0.8% | 0.0% | 0.5% | 0.0% |
| Colorado Rockies | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.3% | 0.0% | 0.2% | 0.0% |
| Baltimore Orioles | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.0% |
| Kansas City Royals | 6.7% | 0.2% | 9.6% | 0.2% | 2.8% | 0.0% |
| Minnesota Twins | 8.8% | 0.3% | 12.3% | 0.3% | 3.4% | -0.1% |
| Detroit Tigers | 10.4% | 0.4% | 14.0% | 0.3% | 3.7% | -0.1% |
| Cleveland Guardians | 17.5% | 0.8% | 23.1% | 0.7% | 5.5% | -0.1% |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 87.9% | 14.6% | 92.7% | 14.4% | 4.8% | -0.2% |
| Atlanta Braves | 70.3% | 8.3% | 79.4% | 8.1% | 9.1% | -0.2% |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 57.7% | 5.6% | 67.6% | 5.2% | 9.8% | -0.4% |
| Houston Astros | 81.6% | 12.0% | 87.0% | 11.6% | 5.4% | -0.5% |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 65.5% | 7.2% | 74.0% | 6.6% | 8.4% | -0.7% |
| Chicago White Sox | 74.8% | 8.8% | 78.6% | 7.0% | 3.7% | -1.8% |
The changes in World Series probability didn’t follow the exact pattern I originally expected. Division winners take a hit, but a team like the Dodgers, with a high projected chance of sitting out the Wild Card round, sees the least damage. Top teams also see some of their loss mitigated by their opponents in the LDS and LCS being weaker; the last Wild Card will advance sometimes and take out the usually superior third division winner. Speaking of, the format was especially hard on the third division winner, as that team is now being thrust into a best-of-three series when they previously got to watch the Wild Cards duke it out. Naturally, the winners of the Central divisions suffer the most here.
I expected the most advantaged teams to be those in very tight divisions, but I was surprised by the magnitude of the advantage. The AL East has four very solid teams, and the Yankees, by virtue of limiting their downside, was the only division winner to see their World Series probability improve in the new system.
Now, just how bad is that third Wild Card?
| Wins | NL % | AL % |
|---|---|---|
| 73 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 74 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 75 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 76 | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| 77 | 0.1% | 0.2% |
| 78 | 0.3% | 0.6% |
| 79 | 0.8% | 1.4% |
| 80 | 1.9% | 2.9% |
| 81 | 3.4% | 5.5% |
| 82 | 6.0% | 8.4% |
| 83 | 9.1% | 11.1% |
| 84 | 12.0% | 13.5% |
| 85 | 13.8% | 14.4% |
| 86 | 14.0% | 13.0% |
| 87 | 12.5% | 10.7% |
| 88 | 10.0% | 7.4% |
| 89 | 7.1% | 5.0% |
| 90 | 4.4% | 2.8% |
| 91 | 2.4% | 1.5% |
| 92 | 1.2% | 0.8% |
| 93 | 0.6% | 0.4% |
| 94 | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| 95 | 0.1% | 0.0% |
| 96 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 97 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 98 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 99 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
In the simulations, every win total from 73 through 99 made the playoffs as the third Wild Card. Suffice it to say, these years have enough chaos to make Jay Jaffe happy. In the 73-win year, the Dodgers, Padres, Giants, Cardinals, and Mets all won 100 games and there was quite a drop-off from second Wild Card, the Reds, at 85 wins, all the way down to the Braves at 73.
Now, we’ll have to wait, possibly for a while, to find out what the actual playoff format looks like or even how many games we will play this season. But upon examining it, I feel better — or at least less grumpy — about the playoff expansion than I previously did. In March 2022, that counts as good news.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
yikes
“Don’t laugh that I’m projecting 162 games!”
I’m…not laughing :‘(
I have no idea how fans lived through the Dark Ages aka the 154 game schedule. 🙂
154 games would sound great right about now
We’re going to be lucky to get 54 games.
Per team, or total?
I am appalled that win totals 73-81 have such a large chance of winning. Also, they’ve gotta figure out a way to give all division winners a bye.
I’d be more inclined to give byes to the best record, reagrdless of division. The White Sox, as an example, are probably the 5th or 6th best team in the AL, but will cakewalk to a division title because of how bad the rest of the division is.
As part of that cakewalk, they’d probably pick up one of the best records anyway.
The owners’ whole objective here is to reduce the incentive to spend by increasing randomness. They aren’t interested in giving any byes.
Easy! Just add a couple of more playoff teams. (/s)
Honestly, with a 12 team playoff structure, I’d sort of like to go back to two divisions. Then you get that nice “big reward for winning your division” that makes the current system oddly more traditionalist friendly than the one wild card system (and justified any unbalanced schedule.)
Failing that, four divisions. Just seems a bit uneven to have three divisions but the third division winner treated so differently.
I don’t think owners will go for that because they like having the unbalanced schedules that lead to rivalries. Like most people would assume that the Rays would want to leave the AL East, but really they’d most likely want to stay to keep all that gate revenue from Yankees and Red Sox games. It’s not about winning; it never has been for most teams.
Rays have won the season series against the Red Sux and Yankees most years in the last decade, bring it on. Its the games against the Royals and Rangers we always seem to struggle with
“you” have gone 31-21 against the Royals and Rangers over the last 5 seasons
I’ve never thought it was fair to give such big advantages to division winners in the first place. Teams never needed extra incentive to win their divisions over just making the playoffs, or at least that would be true if the playoffs didn’t keep expanding and becoming more diluted as a result.
As it is, I’d rather see the teams with the 2 best records in each league get the bye. Besides, the odds are that at least one wild card winner will have a better record than a division winner the majority of the time, anyway.
I might be missing something here, but if there are 5 teams that win 100 games in a league and another team that wins 85, shouldn’t the 73 win team NOT make the playoffs if only 6 teams are getting in and they didn’t win their division?
I probably misread the line, it was very late. I’ll check that.
Just checked, the Giants were the team to not win 100 games, I was looking at the next line for the next sim. The magic of using an eight point font size on a 1440p monitor at 4 AM!
I do not envy your eyes, good sir!
So a sub-.500 team could make the playoffs, and then go a relatively ordinary 13-10 and win the World Series
Only a matter of time. We’ve already had 83 win (2006 Cardinals) & 85 win (1987 Twins with insane home field advantage) champs. & that was with 4 or 8 team playoffs.
Trust me, it sucks. I’m a Tiger fan & watched them lose to both the above squads in the WS/LCS despite having 12-13 more wins
I think this also reduces the number of trades at the deadline. More teams will think they have a chance at that third WC by the trade deadline, so there will be very few sellers. Pretty much, anybody within spitting distance of .500 in mid-July can delude themselves into thinking they’ve got a shot, so the only sellers will be the really bad teams and they aren’t going to have a lot of assets to sell, or else they wouldn’t be so bad. They may get a better return on those trades, but having fewer players available means fewer trades happen. Expanding to 14 teams makes it even worse.
I think it’s pretty clear what effect this would have on the supply of MLB contributors to trade at the deadline. While I can’t really predict the entire nature of how this would play out in other areas, it’s especially unclear how this would affect the nature of demand at the trade deadline. It’s possible that because lots of teams would be guaranteed to make the playoffs that it would reduce the number of buyers. It’s also possible that it would dramatically increase the number of buyers, either because it would disincentivize spending in the offseason as teams wait to see what they’re made of before making moves to improve the team.
In late July, the first place Rays would be able to dump two or three of their ‘big’ contracts and still easily able to make the playoffs.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the MLBPA’s proposal for ghost wins is probably the best way to make lemonade out of these lemons. Shifting the bar for making the playoffs downward will definitely disincentivize the best teams from spending, but might incentivize other teams to start making moves in earlier years of their rebuilding cycles than they would have otherwise (it also might not do this). But ghost wins is a pretty serious advantage, so then that would incentivize teams at the top to avoid that situation. I don’t think this would necessarily incentivize more spending than under the current system, but it’s possible that it could end up in roughly the same place.
Why have a regular season? The owners might prefer a lockout that ends with a 20 game season and playoffs for all 30 teams. Less pay for players and more playoff revenue for them.
As a White Sox fan, this sucks!
Also generally as a fan who doesn’t want mediocre teams advancing in the playoffs lol
My solution: Top two teams get a buy. Team 3 vs Team 6 and Team 4 vs Team 5. Teams 3 and 4 have home field and only have to win one wild card game. Teams 5 and 6 have to win two wild card games (essentially the same as the ghost win). This incentivizes every spot in the playoffs, and expands the wild card round with more possible games while only adding one extra day. After the wild card round, same set up as the current playoffs, but with fewer off days.
The problem with this is that unless the teams are playing the same schedule the seeding of the teams is not really fair right? The current AL east may end up with #5, 6 teams just because they play in a division with 4 solid teams whereas the #3 and 4 teams may come from a division with only 1 or 2 above .450 teams.
While true, no one mentions that in any other sport. NFL teams don’t play the same schedule, neither do NBA teams. Hell, even college FB & BB teams don’t with the unbalanced conference schedules.
I understand the desire for 100% fairness, but, I think that horse has left the barn years ago.
Wow. How wins did AZ and CO end up with in the 73 won for 3rd wild card iteration? Couldn’t be many if LA, SF and SD hit the century mark
Connor Joe hit 80 HRs in simulation #977
CO won 74 last year. And although SD was far from 100, SF and LA were way above it.
I do kinda like that this new system would push division winner by default type teams (looking at you CHW!) to try and improve past the other division winners to get that ultra-valuable bye.
Would it? If the rest of the division is awful, then with all the intra-divisional games the winner should be able to coast to a pretty good record regardless
If you compare the longest division crown droughts or Super Bowl/World Series appearance droughts by franchises, the NFL and MLB are essentially equal. But I do think that if you surveyed the average or casual fan, they’d agree that the NFL has more parity.
The MLB owners clearly believe (or make the argument, if you prefer) that is because of the extra playoff spots, combined with the stricter NFL salary cap. Even though the Browns, Lions, Raiders, Jets, and Dolphins never win their division, their fans feel like they have a chance.
Yes, it’s a selfish argument by the owners and probably would keep player salaries down, but at the same time, “let’s do what the NFL does” has a lot of appeal when the NFL is successful. (Would that it extended to “make it fairly easy for people to watch games.”) If baseball fans oppose it (and I do), we also need to make the case for why MLB does have parity, why a second place divisional finish out of the playoffs is worth paying attention to, why larger playoffs would cannibalize the regular season, etc.
The biggest reason is actually that they only have 18 regular season games, which obviously can’t be copied by MLB.
So the argument is that MLB is never going to have the same kind of parity no matter what they do, so we don’t need to excessively water down the strength of playoff teams just to attempt to chase an impossible dream.
17
I feel like the NFL has a lot more parity in the middle. The league is very top heavy with some teams being high seeds every year – Green Bay, Kansas City, whatever team Tom Brady is playing for (theme of good QB’s here), maybe one or two more. There are some perennially really bad teams, but mostly there is a churn of 20 – 24 mediocre teams that oscillate between pretty good and pretty bad. The majority of the playoff teams come from that group, so there is a good chance one gets lucky in any given year and wins three games.
Baseball isn’t that much different. You have the Dodgers, Astros, Yankees, Rays, and maybe Red Sox and Cardinals who are almost always in it at the end of the season, some teams with no interest in competing ever, and teams in the middle that cycle in and out of the two groups. It seems to me that the middle class in baseball is smaller, there are a few more teams in each of the “good” and “bad” groups, and that makes it seem like there is less parity in MLB.
There’s a fair amount of recency bias in that assessment. The Astros were the worst team in baseball not so long ago, and the Rays have been on a roll only for the last few years. The Red Sox drafted 3rd overall just last year. It’s really only the Yankees and Dodgers that haven’t been even mediocre in many years, although the Dodgers’ misery ended “only” about a decade ago.
12 is fine. Nothing beyond that unless we get like 6 expansion franchises please.
Agreed. The NHL and NBA playoffs have long been ridiculous in how many playoff teams they have, made even worse by how they insist that every round be a best-of-7.
Yeah they are way too long and grueling. Outcomes heavily determined by who has healthy star players by the end of the death march. I know a lot of fans love the NHL and NBA playoffs, but I’ve never really understood why.
I am not sure giving a team a bye week is at all helpful in baseball. We know taking a day off usually affects hitting in baseball. Taking a week off will take everyone out of any zones. I really think the team that has to keep playing throughout the playoffs will have an advantage most of the time (obviously to many extra innings and the like would hurt). As a result, the better teams will win the WS less.
I’m doing a more advanced look at some point, but I’ve been reviewing the KBO and there seems to be no underperformance of teams taking significantly longer byes there; top seeds have no problems despite missing 2-3 weeks completely, not just a single three-game set.
There are some famous anecdotes in baseball though.
Yea, this is not as bad as I feared. One of the worst parts of the playoffs is that the top wild card is often stronger than the worst division winner. This kind of puts them on equal footing, given the 3 and 4 seeds are similar.
If we can’t have the 2021 Dodgers eating Atlanta’s lunch, this is the next best thing.
The best of 3’s are still sketchy, and having the best team have like a 15% chance to win it all is very crapshooty.
But if they can find ways to encourage competition, this isn’t the worst.
Buccos up .5%? Are you kidding me? Christmas day reading this, thanks king