The evolution of postseason expansion in sports

[The_Admiral]

In the NHL right now, there are only about five teams out of 30 that have no real playoff hopes. It's good for those fanbases to have something to root for.

And there are about five teams out of thirty that don't suck. I fail to see how it's good that the Carolina Hurricanes haven't been allowed to pack it in for the season when their team and pipeline are painfully mediocre and in need of rebuilding. But hey, they're still in it! Something to root for! They might get to get chewed up and spit out by the Rangers! Wide open league!

[bosrs1]

Here's something to think about. A big point that is trotted out often is that a team's ace will be burned in the wild card game and thus limiting his use in the divisional series. But how likely is that really? Aside from teams that clinch early, how much "rotation design" can/do teams really do?

Every team has a number 1 starter. And unless they don't clinch early enough, which rarely doesn't happen, they are saved for the first game of the playoffs. And even then they're often pitched anyway. So this will have an impact.

[McCall]

Yeah and most teams that are good enough to make the playoffs have more than one good starter. If a team only has their ace and nobody else, they ain't making far. Hell, they're not making the playoffs. CJ Wilson was the ace for the Rangers and he didn't really do much in the postseason and yet they made it all the way to game 7 of the World Series.

[BBTV]

Here's something to think about. A big point that is trotted out often is that a team's ace will be burned in the wild card game and thus limiting his use in the divisional series. But how likely is that really? Aside from teams that clinch early, how much "rotation design" can/do teams really do?

Every team has a number 1 starter. And unless they don't clinch early enough, which rarely doesn't happen, they are saved for the first game of the playoffs. And even then they're often pitched anyway. So this will have an impact.

Yeah but if that number 1 starter's turn happens to be on the last day or second to last day of the regular season, and the team hasn't clinched the play-in game yet, he's going to start and not be available for said one-game playoff. I would imagine that so many more teams would be alive in this situation that the 5 seed probably wouldn't be decided until the last day or two of the season, so it's unlikely that the teams competing would be able to line up their rotations and would just have to hope to get lucky. It hurts the 4 seed who in many cases (certainly not every season though) would have it locked up and go with their ace in the play-in game, hurting them in the LDS.

What post-season expansion has done is create more regular season excitement in more cities (which is always a good thing IMO) but devalued the post season so that we really can't think of the champions as "season champions" anymore, more like "tournament champions". I'm not sure there's a universe in which anyone would consider the NY Giants or the St. Louis Cardinals the best teams in their respective sports last year, but they were both hot at the end and were the Super Bowl Champions and World Series Champions respectively.

[DaytonBlue]

A couple thoughts:

The NHL playoff race has become more intense since the advent of the charity point. I believe those extra points have made the standings closer than they used to be (the one good part about an otherwise lame idea).

In the one game wild card round in MLB, I would think that every pitcher would be available just like a game 7. So even if my ace pitches on Monday, I might bring him back for a couple innings on Thursday (season ends Wednesday this year). A deep extra-inning game would give the #1 seed an even bigger advantage.

If I were in charge, I would expand to 32 teams in another 5-10 years, 4 divisions of 8. Division winners plus two wild cards. However, the division series would be best-of seven and the wild cards would only be home for games 3 and 4.

I am ok with the new format now, though, because if we're going to have wild cards division winners should receive a significant advantage for winning the division.

[pianoknight]

If MLB wants to just have an East-West alignment, then they need to have teams in numbers divisible by 4 (28, 32, 36).

(30 teams) divided by (NL/AL) = 15 teams in each. This leaves the American league with divisions of 7 teams and 8 teams.

To rectify this, some previous posters have suggested 14 teams in the AL and 16 in the NL. However, this gives an AL team nearly a 30% chance to make the playoffs while an NL team sits at 25%.

25% vs 30% doesn't seem like much of a statistical advantage, but when you step back and consider the typical number of games in a season (162), this breaks down to a 9 game difference. In other words, under this scenario, an American League team could win 9 less games than their NL counterpart and still be on equal footing.

Of course in the real world, these statistics aren't exact. But, consider that in 2011 the Cardinals (NL) were 90-72 while the Rangers (AL) were 96-66. Furthermore, when you consider the divisional standings, Boston, Arizona, LA-Dodgers, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Cleveland, Chi-SOX, and Toronto were all fringe teams within about 12 games of the divisional winner or a wildcard team.

That's 14 total playoff and almost-playoff teams.

[McCall]

A couple thoughts:

The NHL playoff race has become more intense since the advent of the charity point. I believe those extra points have made the standings closer than they used to be (the one good part about an otherwise lame idea).

In the one game wild card round in MLB, I would think that every pitcher would be available just like a game 7. So even if my ace pitches on Monday, I might bring him back for a couple innings on Thursday (season ends Wednesday this year). A deep extra-inning game would give the #1 seed an even bigger advantage.

If I were in charge, I would expand to 32 teams in another 5-10 years, 4 divisions of 8. Division winners plus two wild cards. However, the division series would be best-of seven and the wild cards would only be home for games 3 and 4.

I am ok with the new format now, though, because if we're going to have wild cards division winners should receive a significant advantage for winning the division.

Adding more team, more series' and longer series' pushes the playoffs well into November. Baseball playoffs are synonymous with October. There's a reason why the NBA and NHL playoffs are thought to be too long, about 2 months. Besides, those sports extend into the summer where it doesn't the play (both being indoors). Going farther into November can greatly affect teams still having to play in a northern city.

[DaytonBlue]

I think avoiding November could be done by only having off days on travel days. And if it rains, you play then you travel. I'd also bring FOX back in for the divisional series so all games could be played in prime time or at least start at 4 or 5 ET. It's not fun following your team in the playoffs from your work computer.

[Viper]

If MLB wants to just have an East-West alignment, then they need to have teams in numbers divisible by 4 (28, 32, 36).

If MLB would go so far as to end the AL/NL divide altogether (as has been suggested on CNN/SI), they wouldn't necessarily have to ape the other major leagues' two-conference formats. A 3-conference x 10-team alignment would not only fit the current number of teams, but be pretty straightforward territorially (i.e. each team would fit neatly into an East, Central or West conference, with no great geographical dilemmas like those associated with NHL realignment). I will post my proposal in the realignment thread.

As for playoffs in the new format, that could be pretty straightforward too: Top two in each division (seeds 1-6), plus four wild cards (7-10). Put 10 vs. 7 and 9 vs. 8 in the wild-card games, then determine the quarterfinal (formerly LDS) matchups based on which two wild cards advance.

Also, as long as they're taking the wrecking ball to the game's oldest traditions (whether they use my realignment idea or not), another thing MLB could conceivably be willing to do is rename the World Series - which, one must admit, does seem pretty silly in an organization with exactly one franchise out of 30 based outside the continental United States.