TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

New Playoff Format Propsal

How Baseball can Increase Fan Interest and Revenue without Lengthening the Post-Season

MLB occasioonally suggests adding more games or teams to the post-season to increase revenue and fan interest. The proposals I've heard sound like they'd basically have an NHL-style hugely complex post-season, which is a bad idea. The playoff format of baseball should be changed, and there's a way to do it which would increase fan interest, speed up the schedule, and make sure every game of every playoff series up to the World Series matters.

I've hatched a lot of hare-brained schemes for reforming baseball over the years, and I haven't gotten a single call from Commissioner Selig to follow up on any one of them...but, on the premise that if I mention them long enough and hard enough something will happen, here's another. Baseball's strange form of conservatism and radicalism about its playing conditions -- astroturf and the DH are OK, but allowing a pitcher to pitch from the left and right sides to the same batter are verboten, etc. etc. -- will probably prevent consideration of this kind of scheme, but I'm going to throw it out there on the merits.

Right now, the post-season format has many flaws. The most notable is the unequal number of games in the first round (five) versus the second and third rounds. More serious for the competitive chances of any given team, the luck of the draw on opponents -- now determined by strength of finish relative to the division -- is relatively arbitrary. Teams currently don't play the same schedule, so the records don't mean the same thing. And a club which has hotly contested a division or wildcard spot down the stretch is at a distinct disadvantage to a team that won in a cakewalk, even if in winning they are walking away with an easy division against predominantly weaker opponents. That's because they have no chance to re-set their starters, and in a best of five series, even with a superior team that may mean they're three-and-out.

Imagine, for example, the differences in the Astros' chances had they had to run Clemens out on Sunday to play for a tie for the wildcard spot followed by Oswalt in a playoff game on Monday. That would mean they wouldn't have Clemens until Game 4 in the post-season or Oswalt until a Game 5, and would be starting out the post-season with their 4th and 5th starters. Compare that to the reality of having been able to re-set their rotation against the Braves now.


Baseball has considered going to a seven-game LDS series, which I think is a mistake because it would set the World Series even further back on the calendar. I have suggested putting a week of "off" days between the end of the regular season and the start of the post-season, which baseball isn't about to do, either -- for one thing, it might lose marketing momentum of fans closely following the final days of races for playoff spots.

My plan is to eliminate the current LDS/LCS format to determine a World Series qualifier in each league, and use a "League Championship Tournament" format. Here's how it would work.

You have four teams in each league qualify for the playoffs, as now. Instead of a single-elimination playoff series format, each team would play the three other post-season qualified teams three times each --- three series of three games each.

Assume the four teams are ordered Seed 1, Seed 2, Seed 3, Seed 4 according to their regular-season records.

The best record in the league (Seed 1) would play all its games at home. The second-best (Seed 2) would play two series at home, one away (the single road series, of course, at Seed 1). Seed 3 would get two road series, one at home. Seed 4 would play all three series on the road.

So instead of a three-to-give game first round, we'd have a nine-game first round. This should take ten days.

How, you may ask, does this shorten the playoff season? It doesn't, but it gets more games played in the same amount of time. It lengthens the "first round" (LDS) and shortens the "second round" (current LCS).

This round robin takes up nine games. The top two finishers of this round robin would face one another in the "final phase" of the LCS, which would be a traditional best of seven -- with a twist. The twist is the first series in the round robin between the two teams that qualify counts toward the best-of-seven. So there would be a maximum of four additional games for the final LCS.

For example, say the Braves and Dodgers have the two best records in the round-robin, but in their mini-series, the Braves beat the Dodgers 2-1. They then "start" the LCS from that point -- two games to one -- with the Braves playing at home because they had the better record in the roub robin.

This means that the first ten games of the post-season schedule would be set in stone. No more "if necessary" for games in the third or fourth day of the post-season. This also means that, theoretically, every team would be "in it" for at least five games and probably for as many as seven games.

So what about teams that have been "eliminated"? You might have a team that, say, drops its first six games and then has three against a team still "alive". The secret is to add some incentive for this team to win above and beyond pride: an extra draft pick in the amateur draft, a larger share of the post-season pot for the higher they finish, something like that. But the reality of the numbers is this just won't happen that often. If a team loses 0-6 their first two series, that means the other teams maximum spread would be 3-3, 3-3, and 6-0. Obviously the 6-0 team only has to win one game in the last set to "clinch" a spot in the final round of this format, while the two 3-3 teams would be duking it out. Only if they're duking it out with one another and the 0-6 team is facing the 6-0 team is the latter series "meaningless".

The team with the best record in the round-robin phase of the tournament would get home-field for the remaining four games in the Championship round. Tiebreakers for getting into the championship round would go on head to head play in the tournament, and then overall tournament record, and then regular-season record.

Here's a sample schedule based on this year's NL finishers:

Seed 1 - Cardinals
Seed 2 - Braves
Seed 3 - Dodgers
Seed 4 - Astros

Days 1-3: Astros at Cardinals, Dodgers at Braves

Days 4-6: Braves at Cardinals, Astros at Dodgers

Day 7: Astros at Braves, Dodgers at Cardinals
Days 8-9 (as necessary) Astros at Braves, Dodgers at Cardinals

Day 10: off day.

Day 11: LCS Game "4".
Day 12-14: LCS Games 5-7, if necessary.

This gets us to the end of the first two rounds of playoffs in just two weeks -- exactly what we have now. The maximum number of games a team would play is 13 (9+4), as opposed to the current format where the maximum is 12 (5 + 7). The minimum number of games a champion would play is 10, as opposed to the current 7.

Here's the real beauty of this scheme. The minimum number of games any single team would play would be seven (assuming an 0-7 of 1-6 team where they are playing a team in the final round of the round robin that has a four-game advantage over all three teams by that point). It's more likely that all four teams would end up playing eight or nine games, since relative records will count.

And, the minimum number of playoff games -- contests -- is 19. Right now, that number is ten -- assuming two three-game sweeps followed by a four-game sweep in the LCS in the current format.

So you can book nearly twice the guaranteed advertising revenue, and especially in local markets where a team might be three-and-out now, you're guaranteed at least seven games will be played. If MLB is concerned it has a big-market team to keep up viewership, here's a way to ensure no big-market team in the playoffs will be eliminated in the first week.

From a competitive standpoint, this would mean every team at a minimum has to go through its rotation twice. So teams that have two dominant starters would not be at the huge advantage they are under the current format, where an opposing team with four "B" pitchers never really has a chance. This essentially negates any advantage a team that has been able to "set" its rotation by clinching early has over a team that has to fight down to the wire to qualify for the playoffs. The latter team may be a bit more tired, of course, but they'll at least get a chance to match their best on the field.

I would leave the World Series format as is. That has a century-long history, and it's best to keep playing it the same way. But we've changed the "qualifying" formats five times since 1969, so there are no sacred cows to worry about here.

posted by The Crank 10:10 AM