Both the current alignment of the American League and the unbalanced schedule that amplifies the economic imbalance in major league baseball have created an unforgiving landscape where - for the also-rans of the division - the horizon never seems to get any closer.
The Orioles aren’t complaining, mind you, because they know how that would look, and it wouldn’t do any good anyway, but they aren’t the only ones who have noticed the inequities of a system that requires them to play almost a quarter of their regular-season schedule against the two highest-payroll teams in the American League and nearly half of it in the game’s most competitively and economically unbalanced division.
Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon wasn’t complaining either when he pointed out last week that his team - theoretically - could play a total of 95 games against the other AL East teams this year, if you count preseason games, regular-season games and a hypothetical seven-game AL Championship Series against a division rival.
He was talking more about the strategic issues that come with that kind of intradivisional familiarity, but he could just as well have used it to illustrate the folly of such uneven distribution of talent and resources.
What I’m trying to say here is that the schedule is broken and it needs to be fixed, not just so the Orioles actually have a chance to make the playoffs if they improve substantially over the next few years, but also for the good of the entire sport.
Gamingboy
Posted: March 09, 2010 at 02:58 PM |
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1. Jose Canusee Posted: March 09, 2010 at 05:08 PM (#3475678)The Orioles averaged 34K attendance for their 18 “home” BOS/NYY games, but that’s somewhat offset by the 18K they averaged for their 18 home TOR/TBR games. They averaged 22K in their non-division games.
A fully balanced schedule might cost them 50-100K in attendance over a season. I couldn’t tell you what the marginal revenue impact of losing that attendance would be, but I imagine that the Orioles would happily give a few million bucks from Yankees and Sox fans for a better record and a better shot at the playoffs and all of the revenue potential that provides.
I wonder just how eager Angelos would be to give up those 8 or 9 extra home dates against the Yankees and Red Sox in exchange for more games against the Royals and A's, along with a better chance of sneaking into a wild card spot about once every ten years. Not to mention what the Yankees and the Red Sox might have to say about losing 8 or 9 games against each other.
Ok, I'll stop b****ing now...
How many wins does the unbalanced schedule really cost the Orioles? More than three?
Balance the schedule and get rid of the divisions (at least for the purposes of the playoffs). The top 4 teams in each league make the playoffs, with the 1 and 4 seeds and 2 and 3 seeds facing each other in the first round. If all four teams come from the AL West or AL East, so be it.
Well that's a different story. I'm just pointing out the schedule itself isn't really an impediment to the Orioles' playoff hopes. Whatever they do to the schedule, they still have to figure out a way to be better than at least one of those two teams (and, obviously, the Rays and Jays as well).
That would be the worst-case scenario, IMHO. September baseball was already made less exciting by the Wild Card - going to an NBA-style playoff would pretty much make the regular season pointless, as it is in the NBA. Who cares which 85-win team finishes in 4th place? Boring.
Concur.
I'd rather see a 2nd wild card, with the 2 WC's playing a 1-game play-in to see who advances in to playoffs.
I think we've had this argument before, but what makes the NBA's regular season pointless is that 50% of the teams make the playoffs. No one cares about the last few teams fighting for the 7th and 8th spot because they're generally mediocre teams. A fight for the 4th playoff spot out of a 16 team league would be a lot more interesting. Plus, finishing with the best record would be a big advantage if that team gets to play the 4th seed, so a fight for the 1st spot could also be interesting.
I doubt it - seeding doesn't matter in baseball, as you can tell by the numerous World Champions to come out of the Wild Card. A mediocre team can't beat a good team in a best-of-seven series in basketball, but it can in baseball.
What would happen is that the top couple teams in each league would coast through the last two weeks of the season, playing September callups and resting regulars, and not worry about where they're seeded.
It makes a ton of sense, from a revenue standpoint.
Yes, the dumbest schedule in baseball was the AL's from 1978-93 - 78 games against your own division, 84 against the other division, with no wildcard.
The balanced schedule part may maximize revenue (or it may not; I'd say it depends on the nature of the markets in the league), but pairing it with a divisional structure is simply dotty. The divisions become entirely arbitrary; they may as well be determined by alphabetical order or something.
The owners love the unbalanced schedule because it minimizes games outside their home time zone. Nobody east of the Rockies wants to take those West Coast trips; the unbalanced schedule means they don't have to, at least not often.
The Wild Card is simply the logical answer to the three-division format, and the three-division format makes sense if your goal is to play as many games as possible in your own time zone.
The old two-division format with the unbalanced schedule that the NL had worked well from a competitive standpoint, but the owners hated it. The Reds and Braves hated taking all those trips out to California, and the Cubs and Cardinals were willing to bring the whole league down rather than switch places with them.
At one point or other in the second half of the 1981 split season, if you arranged the AL into one league, the AL East would have constituted just about the entire first division.
P.S. What's weird is that BB-Ref's Schedule & Results pages for 1981 don't divide the season into halves. They treat it as if the combined standings determined the playoff teams. This makes no sense at all.
By the end of the decade, the roles were reversed - the 1989 AL East Champion Blue Jays would have finished tied for fourth place in the AL West.
EDIT: And if you click on B-Ref's Season Summary page for the 1981 season for each league, it gives the first-half, second-half breakdown.
the system doesn't require that BOS and NY have the 2 highest payrolls.
The Orioles should propose leaving the divisions and schedule as is but determining the playoff teams by alphabetical order.
Let's go A's!
Not saying I am for the idea (I'm not), but you could make seeding matter by giving the #1 seed a game in hand in the first series. Play six games, the #1 seed needs 3 wins to advance, the #4 seed needs 4. #2 vs. #3 would be as normal.
As we've discussed many times, I don't like the Wild Card. But if we're going to have it, we could reduce its problems by introducing some manner of meaningfully punitive obstacle for the Wild Card team in the post-season tournament. As has been pointed out, the current "seeding" is demonstrably ineffectual.
I like the idea of having the top two non-first-place teams meet in a single game play-in. Not only would that game be exciting, but avoiding the play-in would be a real incentive for a team to win their division.
We already have this, it's called the American League Central.
The only problem I could see would be when teams finished tied. You have a play-in to get to the play-in? Or a play-in game where the winner takes the division and the loser goes to another play-in game? Could be some scheduling issues.
Plus, if you schedule it on the off-day, you make them disrupt their pitching.
So, the WCs have a 50:50 chance of immediate elimination, and will have to throw their best available arm on no extra rest.
Teams would fight damn hard for the division titles to avoid this. It could bring back some of the playoff race atmosphere when you have two great teams in a division. they couldn't coast anymore, secure in the WC.
EDIT: And if you click on B-Ref's Season Summary page for the 1981 season for each league, it gives the first-half, second-half breakdown.
I realize that, but what I'm referring to is that on the individual teams' Schedule & Results pages, the day-to-day cumulative standings combine the two halves, rather than ending with the end of the first half and beginning anew at the start of the second half, which is how the postseason was determined.
As a result, you get the bizarre sight of the Reds winning the 1981 "NL West race" by four games, when in any non-theoretical sense no such NL West race actually existed. It's as if the page was formulated by a committee consisting of Steve Treder and John McNamara. For all this page shows, the entire schedule between June 12th and August 9th might as well have been cancelled by a giant monsoon.
This year, the season ends on Sunday, October 3, and I believe the playoffs are scheduled to begin Wednesday, October 6. Let's say the Red Sox and Yankees finish tied for first place in the AL East, and both are guaranteed playoff spots under the existing structure.
With a "play-in", the Yankees and Red Sox would play to determine the Eastern Division champion on Monday, October 4. The winner would get the day off, the loser would play the "play-in" game (against, say, Seattle) on Tuesday, October 5.
With a "play-in", the Yankees and Red Sox would play to determine the Eastern Division champion on Monday, October 4. The winner would get the day off, the loser would play the "play-in" game (against, say, Seattle) on Tuesday, October 5.
Sounds fun to me!
The winner might get a day off, but they are still forced to use a starting pitcher that otherwise would be rested. Let's add to your scenario that the Yankees and Red Sox both have 100 wins, while the West and Central winners both have 92 wins. You are now penalizing the two best teams in the league by making them play extra games.
That doesn't bother me. The goal is to make teams want to win the division and avoid being the Wild Card.
The "play-in" would probably be considered part of the playoffs as the game in Dayton is for March Madness. So MLB would generate a non-playing tiebreaker to determine the division winner with the other team playing Seattle on Monday.
I thought about that, but then thought that avoiding the "play-in" was worthy of a game to decide it, rather than going back to look at head-to-head matchups.
Had the 1993 Giants won game #162, that very thing would have happened, while the Phillies waited. And it did happen in 1978 in the AL. Winning the division is winning the division.
Aesthetically, I like the unbalanced schedule, in spite of the competition issues. I have read that when the AL went to 14 teams in 1977, some people wantted to go with a 20/6 schedule, which would have saved travel costs, still added up to 162, and been cool in other ways, but supposedly some of the west coast teams wanted the Yankees coming in twice a year instead of once.
Exactly. If the overriding concern was "fairness" to the best teams, then you wouldn't have a playoff at all - just declare the team with the best record the champion. Any time you include a playoff, you compromise on "fairness".
Yes.
Exactly. If the overriding concern was "fairness" to the best teams, then you wouldn't have a playoff at all - just declare the team with the best record the champion. Any time you include a playoff, you compromise on "fairness".
And yes.
Doesn't happen that often, but unless you've got a very strange definition of "good team", I think the 2006-07 Golden State Warriors (42-40) qualify.
What I think is funny about this is that under certain circumstances (mostly predicated on where the various teams are in the rotation on October 3) both teams would have an incentive to forfeit either the tiebreaking game or Game #162 and play Seattle even-up for the play-in on 10/4 rather than give Seattle an extra day of rest while burning your own next best remaining starter on 10/4 and likely facing a superior pitcher on 10/5. Except I guess that if you DO win the tiebreak game, your team gets the day of rest while you watch your rival throw their 2nd best remaining starter against a Seattle ace, a win-win situation for you. Very interesting set of choices.
I was thinking the play-in game would be on 10/5 regardless.
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