TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Life Imitates Rotisserie, Redux

Team USA managed to blow one against Team Canada, a fall of an All-star team to one made up primarily of low-A ball players, independent league holdouts, and major league rejects. Of course, in any given game it's possible to lose like this, which given the unforgiven round-round and up format of the WBC could be fatal enough. But Team USA may have just played its way out of the tournament completely thanks to an incredibly poorly-constructed tiebreaker system that is part World Cup Soccer and part rotisserie baseball.

You see, the tiebreakers are (reproduced below in whole), after head to head play has been considered, Runs allowed per 9 Innings, Earned Runs allowed per 9 innings, and bating average. Yes, the latter two make the Official Scorer a potential decider of winners and losers. Bearing in mind that ties are allowed -- mandated after 14 innings of play ending in a tie, or in the case of rain -- it wasn't so hard to imagine these tiebreakers would come into play. But now that USA has booted one to Canada, we have the unseemly prospect of three teams in the pool being tied with 2-1 records -- that is, if Mexico beats Canada and the US beats South Africa tomorrow -- and each of the top three teams having beaten one of the others, and we go to "goals scored" or the baseball equivalent to determine the winner.

This may be fine for soccer, but last I heard, a team which wins by a 9-8 score wins as much as one that wins by a 1-0 score. And since the USA has now given up 8 earned runs, it stands at the bottom of the Runs allowed tiebreaker going into tomorrow's games. This means that if, say, Mexico and Canada colluded (or it just so happens) that Mexico beats Canada by a 1-0 score, both Mexico and Canada would advance and the US would stay behind.

Since the other dumb thing about the WBC format is that teams in the first pools who advance still play one another in the second round, and it would be in Canada and Mexico's interests to advance without team USA in the mix in the second round, there certainly is incentive if not for them to collude, at least to lay up into a small-ball strategy.

Hey, I love the WBC idea -- I just wish they hadn't used the idiotic International Baseball tournament format for it. Bud Selig may keep repeating about how excited the rest of the world is, but the US audiences will tune out in droves without the US participating in the latter two rounds. I, personally, will be glued to my TV, because there have been some fun games so far and when we get into elimination-round baseball with the DR and Cuba going head to head, it's going to be something wild. But the WBC may be doomed to die with its inaugural meeting if there isn't some kind of revision of the dumb opening round format.

A tiebreaker? In baseball? What were they thinking?

Official WBC Tiebreaking rules follow.

In Round 1, the Teams in each pool shall be ranked according to the percentages of games won in Round 1. The two Teams with the highest such percentages in each pool shall advance Round 2. In Round 2, the Teams in each pool shall be ranked according to the percentages games won in Round 2, without regard to the results of Round 1. The two Teams with the highest such percentages in each Round 2 pool shall advance to the Semifinal round.

Ties shall be broken in the following order of priority:

The team that defeated the other tied team head-to-head in a given Round shall be ranked higher in the pool standings for such Round.
The tied teams shall be ranked in the standings for that Round according to fewest runs allowed divided by the number of innings (including partial innings) played in defense in the games in that Round between the teams tied.
The tied teams shall be ranked in the standings according to fewest earned runs allowed divided by the number of innings (including partial innings) played in defense in the games in that Round between the teams tied.
The tied teams shall be ranked in the standings according to highest batting average in games in that Round between the teams tied.
Standings shall be determined by the drawing of lots, conducted by WBCI.
Note: Standings and Tie-Breaking Procedures are based on IBAF rules.

posted by The Crank 4:14 PM