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MLB Changes 2017


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1 minute ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

If you do that, you destroy the point of finishing first, perpetuating the problem that the wild card has created. Letting non-champions into the playoffs undermines the meaning of the regular season.   The beauty of the 1969-1993 setup was that it carried forth the first-place-or-go-home ethic that had been in every baseball league since the sport began.  

 

 

and I live in the real world where we're never going back to non-wildcard baseball. I'm trying to correct the flaws inherent to the wildcard which are that the schedules are unbalanced between teams vying for the same spot and you can advance in the playoffs as a wildcard without beating the team that won your division (see: 2012 Cardinals). In my system making the LCS requires being one of the two best in a large division of 8 with everyone playing a matching schedule (interleague included), and then defeating a division opponent in a best of 7 championship round which would in a sense mean that you're a division champion. If you go through all of that you earned your spot in the LCS and that's a tougher road than the 73 Mets, 87 Twins, and any other low win outlier had to squeak through in the old system. 

 

1 minute ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

That actually doesn't bother me at all.  If a team has finished first in its division, then it deserves to be seen as a champion and to make the playoffs.  

Some years there will be a wide disparity in wins amongst division winners; some years there won't be.   In 1973 the Mets were the only team above .500 in the N.L. East, with fewer wins than all but two teams in the N.L. West.  There's nothing wrong with that.

 

There's a lot wrong with that. You just spoke about undermining the meaning of the regular season and I can't think of anything more undermining than an inferior team advancing for the sole reason that they were on the fortunate side of an arbitrary dividing line. It also robbed fans of the best matchup in the playoffs too, results of that particular NLCS be damned. 

 

If you only have 4 teams in divisions it further cheapens the achievement of winning a division championship further because you only had to be better than 3 others (like the AL West was before Houston) and increases the frequency of bad teams winning their division. I don't know why you'd want to increase the chances of that happening. Ooooh you beat the Mariners, A's, and Angels. Real impressed. BFD, Texas. 

 

The truly most equitable thing would be one league with a single table and the team with the best record at the end gets a trophy and they don't have playoffs, but that's not going to happen so it's not worth discussing. 

 

 

1 minute ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

Also, those trends fluctuate rapidly.  The year before the Mets won the N.L. East with 82 wins, the division's champion had 96 wins, more than the champ of the N.L. West.  Even though the Big Red Machine tended to have more wins than anyone else in subsequent years, the N.L. East champs averaged 90 wins; and before long until the Phillies started winning 100.  

 

 

1 minute ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

Winning the division is the only important thing.  In the very exciting 1985 season which I mentioned above in my comment about not liking today's Yankee fans, the Yankees won 97 games, far more than the 91 which were won by the A.L. West champion Royals.  (This was in fact the second straight year in which the Royals won the A.L. West with a win total that was less than that of the Yankees, as the Royals' 1984 win total was surpassed by five of the seven A.L. East teams.)  And the 1985 Mets won 98 games, which was more wins than the Dodgers had as N.L. West champions.  But we didn't go around saying that the Yankees and the Mets should have been in the playoffs at the expense of the Royals and the Dodgers.   

 

 

Bolded, Yeah I agree, which is why making them as large as possible to create a truly elite tier of playoff teams is the way to go, shrink them down into 8 groups of 4 and you wind up with way more cases like the 85 Mets. I don't understand why you'd invited that likelihood to increase. 

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If you had four four-team divisions per league, then a case of a sub-.500 divisional champ, while very unlikely, could conceivably happen. This is not a big deal. 

Whereas, if you had two seven-team or eight-team divisions per league with the first-place and second-place teams both making the playoffs, you guarantee that there are no pennant races ever. This, by contrast, is a huge deal. So, congratulations; you have managed to find a solution that is even worse than the current system.

With four four-team divisions per league there would be pennant races in each division every year. The slight chance of a sub-.500 divisional champ is more than made up for by the increase in meaning of the regular season.
 
 

 

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14 hours ago, Old School Fool said:

 

The NBA has been on a slow decline since Lebron moved to the Heat. The league started to rely on multiple all-stars forcing their way onto teams for absurd amounts of money and the existence of the Warriors essentially breaking the game with their incredible skill have turned the NBA into a waste of time. I love Basketbal and I'm not gonna turn on it but there's something wrong with the game today that wasn't there 10 years ago. Even then, the 2016 Finals was the most exciting it's been in years.

Basketball by its very nature is the sport that can be most influenced by the individual, I think. It's the reason the NBA Finals seems to frequently have rematches (Lakers vs. Celtics in the 80s, anyone vs. the Bulls in the 90s, Warriors vs. Cavs in the 10s, etc.) I mean, it's not a coincidence the teams with the most championships generally had some of the greatest players of all time, too. Compare this to, say, hockey. Sure, the Oilers were great, but Gretzky alone couldn't will them to championships, nor could he win with the Kings or Blues.

 

Anyway, that's my problem with the NBA. When one team is full of great players, why even watch? They're just going to dominate. Maybe it's because there are more things in basketball that can be controlled, unlike in baseball where so many elements can't be controlled (weather, etc.) And, of course, the NBA should not be letting more than half the league in. It will never happen, but I would love to see NBA go full old-school MLB: two divisions per conference, only allow in, say, the top two teams from each division. The first round would be a division final, second round would be a conference final. The fact the NBA playoffs take nearly two months is ridiculous. 

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3 hours ago, McCarthy said:

and I live in the real world where we're never going back to non-wildcard baseball. I'm trying to correct the flaws inherent to the wildcard which are that the schedules are unbalanced between teams vying for the same spot and you can advance in the playoffs as a wildcard without beating the team that won your division (see: 2012 Cardinals). In my system making the LCS requires being one of the two best in a large division of 8 with everyone playing a matching schedule (interleague included), and then defeating a division opponent in a best of 7 championship round which would in a sense mean that you're a division champion. If you go through all of that you earned your spot in the LCS and that's a tougher road than the 73 Mets, 87 Twins, and any other low win outlier had to squeak through in the old system. 

What you're describing seems a bit like what the NHL has returned to (and has always been the case in the AHL), where "division champions" aren't actually named until after the first or second round of the playoffs, so the conference final is only the division champions. I like this format, even if it's largely semantics. At least in the NHL, it guarantees the first two rounds are always between division rivals, so the third round can only ever be the winners of divisions A-D. Sure, it takes away a lot of variety since the possible opponents are much more restricted, but I think it's the best way to continue to produce "real" division champions while accepting the wild card format.

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3 hours ago, McCarthy said:

There's a lot wrong with that. You just spoke about undermining the meaning of the regular season and I can't think of anything more undermining than an inferior team advancing for the sole reason that they were on the fortunate side of an arbitrary dividing line. It also robbed fans of the best matchup in the playoffs too, results of that particular NLCS be damned. 

This is one of the reasons MLS ignores divisions and even conferences in the playoffs. It simply allows the 16 best teams into the playoffs based on their record and nothing else. Of course, they maintain the "conference" terminology, so you get odd scenarios like Colorado winning as the "Eastern Conference" champ, but otherwise, this is another good way to strike a balance between letting many teams into the playoffs and not favoring weak divisions.

 

Frankly, this is what I want the NBA to do. Especially with how much stronger the West appears to be season after season. Just let the best 16 NBA teams into the playoffs, do the usual seeding (1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc.) and call it a day.

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19 minutes ago, dont care said:

It's not though, best records should get best seeds, especially when almost half the teams are making it to the playoffs

 

There's another problem right there: too many teams in the playoffs, more than twice as many as there should be.  

 

Essentially, the regular season should be thought of as the "first round" of the championship competition; and the division champs are the winners of that round who have earned the right to advance.  In other words, there should be only as many playoff teams as there are divisions.  

 

In each conference, you could give the top division winner a bye while the other two division champs play one another for the right to play the top division winner for the conference championship.  This would be a much better format that the current system.

 

The fact that the NBA's playoffs are often regarded as the "second season" shows how terribly undervalued the regular season is.  The whole competition would be much more interesting if the regular season had higher stakes, and if the playoffs were less of an interminable slog. 

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3 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Eek, no.  In fact, the NBA made a big mistake when it stopped awarding division winners the top seeds. I cannot fathom the fixation that some people have with undermining the regular season.

That's what I'm saying... The NBA has basically admitted divisions are meaningless at this point, which is why I'm saying to just let in the 16 best teams. Keep divisions around purely for scheduling and regular season rivalries.

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3 hours ago, dont care said:

It's not though, best records should get best seeds, especially when almost half the teams are making it to the playoffs

More than half, actually. There are 30 teams and 16 are let in. I think it should be cut down to 12, but of course that will never happen.

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18 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:
If you had four four-team divisions per league, then a case of a sub-.500 divisional champ, while very unlikely, could conceivably happen. This is not a big deal. 
 
 
A system that doesn't guarantee all the best teams in the postseason is a bad system. Talk about undermining the regular season. The regular season's purpose is to determine the best teams. Teams are valued by the number of wins they earn. An 80 win division champion playing in the playoffs instead of a 95 win second place team makes no sense and would render the regular season meaningless when instances like that are possible. Your system would create far more instances of this inequitable disparity than necessary. Why invite that likelihood at all? 
 
 
18 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:
Whereas, if you had two seven-team or eight-team divisions per league with the first-place and second-place teams both making the playoffs, you guarantee that there are no pennant races ever. This, by contrast, is a huge deal. So, congratulations; you have managed to find a solution that is even worse than the current system.
 
A. There'd still be pennant races. You incentivize finishing first by giving the winning team 5 or all home games in the first round. Those races for first would last most of the season. B. the battle for second place would be where true interest would happen. It wouldn't have the title of "Division Champion", but that's meaningless anyways. The best teams making the playoffs is what matters most. 
 
 
18 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

With four four-team divisions per league there would be pennant races in each division every year. The slight chance of a sub-.500 divisional champ is more than made up for by the increase in meaning of the regular season.

 

The achievement of finishing first in a 4 team division would be cheapened and you multiply the chances of a bad team making the postseason ten fold which would render the regular season meaningless for teams unfortunate enough to have to play in a tougher division. 

 

So, congratulations; you have managed to find a solution that is even worse than the current system.

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17 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

There's another problem right there: too many teams in the playoffs, more than twice as many as there should be.  

 

Essentially, the regular season should be thought of as the "first round" of the championship competition; and the division champs are the winners of that round who have earned the right to advance.  In other words, there should be only as many playoff teams as there are divisions.  

 

In each conference, you could give the top division winner a bye while the other two division champs play one another for the right to play the top division winner for the conference championship.  This would be a much better format that the current system.

 

The fact that the NBA's playoffs are often regarded as the "second season" shows how terribly undervalued the regular season is.  The whole competition would be much more interesting if the regular season had higher stakes, and if the playoffs were less of an interminable slog. 

 

"MLB Changes 2017"

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That's just hideous. I mean if any state needs a new flag it's Maryland with that nonsensical mish mash of ugly. I mean it looks like the back of a deck of cards or something. Just very tacky and weird.

 

Anyway...we already have pinkathon, blueathon, los crap, camo. Please let's not go down the slippery slope of "honor every damn thing in the book so we can trot out a new uniform"

 

"And here are the Mets honoring Lyme Disease Awareness Day with special tick themed uniforms"

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14 minutes ago, joey joe joe jr. shabadoo said:

That's just hideous. I mean if any state needs a new flag it's Maryland with that nonsensical mish mash of ugly. I mean it looks like the back of a deck of cards or something. Just very tacky and weird.

 

Anyway...we already have pinkathon, blueathon, los crap, camo. Please let's not go down the slippery slope of "honor every damn thing in the book so we can trot out a new uniform"

 

"And here are the Mets honoring Lyme Disease Awareness Day with special tick themed uniforms"

I think you need to read up on your history, and that of the Maryland flag. 

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2 hours ago, Bill81361 said:

As to actual changes, here's another look at tonight's Orioles jersey

 

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Didn't look as bad as I feared. In fact, the authentics make it look even better. Obviously the giveaway jersey won't compare, but I wouldn't mind wearing this

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