THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I would like to see a change in the playoff structure that would get more teams in but would still result in winning the division becoming more meaningful. Have the top two teams in each division proceed to the playoffs. However, the second-place team would proceed to the playoffs down one game. In other words, the first team to win four games wins the divisional playoff series, but the second-place teams starts off down a game. The Japanese baseball league does something like this.

Relegation has nothing to do with the major league playoffs at all.  I’m pretty sure that where this happens with soccer, no second division teams appear in the premier league tournaments.

There are several ways to do relegation with professional baseball.  This is one way, not the best, but probably the simplest.

1.  Free the AAA minor league teams.  The MLB teams still control the AA and A minor league teams, for player development and injury rehabilitation.

2.  Free agents can sign contracts with AAA teams or MLB teams, and maybe the AAA teams also participate in the draft.  They don’t have farm systems -that is an advantage the MLB teams would have- but would have expanded rosters to allow them to keep carrying injured players.  Free agency would be extended to veteran AA players who have missed the show.

3.  Decide how many bottom dwelling MLB teams you want to relegate, and how often.  Anywhere from two (one per league) to six (one per division), and not necessarily every year, you could relegate the teams with the worst regular season record over a multiyear period.

4.  Once a MLB team is relegated, a top AAA team replaces it.  The AAA team that replaces it takes over the share of the league revenues of the former MLB team, as well as that team’s farm system.

5.  The AAA leagues are associated with the two major leagues, and geographical groupings of the AAA teams are associated with the division.  So its not strictly “the best” AAA teams coming in.  If the Pirates, for example, are relegated, a National League associated AAA team in the Eastern timezone switches with the Pirates and enters the NL East.

6.  Players on relegated teams remain under contract with their current team until they would normally become free agents or are traded.  Trades between AAA and MLB teams would be possible.

I don’t see how something like this would erode the identities of the two leagues.

Though expansion has arguably tracked population expansion and the expansion of the MLB recruiting pool, as color and geographical barriers dropped, this scheme would take away some of the impetus for expansion.  New cities would enter the major leagues all the time, while having a AAA team would not be so bad.  Fan loyalties to their local teams would probably intensify, anecdotal evidence indicates this is the case with the soccer systems that have lots of independent local teams, divided into tiers of different quality.

I don’t think the ammendments that you make, not allowing the 10 teams from the bottom division (CL) to have a chance to make the playoffs at all would be a good idea.  You’d have 10 teams, likely smaller market ones with a 0.0% chance of making the playoffs/advancing to the W.S. from day one.  With relegation we’d likely have missed the 2008 Rays and 2010 Padres plus a few others.  Having ten teams with a 0.0% chance of winning it all from the outset, is worse than the BCS.

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The top CL teams are equvalent to the bottom AL and bottom NL teams.
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I don’t think this is can be taken as an accurate statement.  There would be instances where the top CL team(s) would be equivalent to the middle and upper level AL/NL teams.

I still favor the (in our make believe relegation world) three tier system, with 5 playoff teams coming from the top tier, 2 from the middle tier and a play in game from the bottom tier to decide the last playoff spot.  Chances are one of the ten worse teams from the previous season are going to rebound to be good enough to be considered as a #8 seed (See Rays 2008, Rockies 2009, Tigers 2009, Padres 2010).  This system would give some added life to the non large market teams.

Maybe you break it down like he said, 10 in the AL, 10 in the NL, 10 in the CL.

Relevant to this discussion. The team with the best regular season record in the CL goes to MLB automatically. From there you have a playoffs. Maybe these playoffs include 3, 4, or 6 teams, whatever. The winner of the playoffs gets the second spot in MLB. (If the same team wins, maybe second in the playoffs, or second in the regular season.

If you want 4 teams up and down each year, maybe have the top 2 CL teams automatically go to MLB and they play for the Challenger Series (the CL Championship), and the other 8 play a playoff, top 2 make it up.

The point is, I like having the regular season mean something so that a deserving team will be ensured making it, (since Playoffs are a crapshoot), and some fun playoffs to make it exciting.

What doesn’t make sense to me is how you can have the top 2 teams in the second-bananas league have a chance at both the playoffs and be in the position to promote to the top league.  You setup a situation where the second-bananas team can play in the World Series, and still not be able to be promoted to the first-league (unless of course you make that an additional opportunity for promotion).

Getting 6 teams from the top 20 teams, and 2 teams from the bottom 10 teams is not at all how MLB currently works.

I noted the numbers in the past, and it was something like 2 teams out of the bottom 15 market-size teams make it to the playoffs.

In Jeff’s case, he’s giving 2 teams of the previous year’s 10 worst teams in the playoffs.  No.  That’s not good.

The most you can do is make the winner of the CL league play in a wild-card with the 8th best of the premier league to a spot in the playoffs.  And if they win, they automatically promote.

Then, you have the #2 in the CL league and the bottom 2 in the premier league duking it out for who is the other team that gets to be in the premier league the following season.

Correct, two teams from the bottom tier league making the playoffs is not good.  Niether is having none.  If the former is what you meant in your original post then I agree.  If it is the latter, which is how I read it (Bold: They don’t deserve it at ALL), then I disagree.

Oh no!  I blew it!

Xei/6: I definitely meant the former, and I also said the latter.  Now, for competition-purposes, if you need to have ONE team make it, I’m ok with it, but only in a play-in spot.  So, that gives them say a 40% chance of making it.  In the end, 7.6 make it from the previous season’s top 20, and 0.4 make it from the previous season’s bottom 10.

I suppose we should just look at what actually has happened.  Give me a few minutes…

yeah i dont get why the CL would get any playoff spots.  their playoffs are getting into the Majors. 

i think they should scrap the NL and AL completely, move the bottom 10 teams to the CL, with the remaining 20 in MLB.  Then the 10 most profitable (could be figured several different ways) AAA teams go to the CL (with compensation or reassignment for the MLB or CL teams that lose an affiliated team).  relegate/promote 4 teams total between CL and MLB.  the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th team in the CL can have a round robin for the final promotion spot.  likewise with the 19th, 18th, 17th and 16th MLB teams.  8 teams from ONLY the MLB make the playoffs and are seeded into a best of 5 knock out tournament and reseeded after every round until the WS, which is best of 7 (obviously).  Furthermore, concurrent to the regular season is a champions league of world baseball clubs. MLB teams would be too dominant at first, but it would be open to entire club rosters so you could send your AAA or even AA players to play the best pro teams in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, the Caribbean and elsewhere. i much prefer this for global baseball promotion than nation based competitions.  no salary cap and no salary floor. 

not perfect but i think it would be rad. 

and of course the league that most desperately needs promotion/relegation is Div I NCAA football, but that a whole ‘nother debate.

Let’s see, from 1998-2008 (11 seasons), there were 85 teams with at least 90 wins and 96 with at least 89. 

The bottom 108 teams had 74 wins and the bottom 119 teams had 75 wins.

If we count a playoff team as one with 90 wins, and the second-league team as a team with 74 wins or fewer, we get approximately our model of 8 playoff teams and 10 second-league teams.

The question is therefore: how often has a team with at most 74 wins in year T gone on to win 90+ wins in year T+1.

By my count, of those 108 teams, 5 went on to win at least 90 games.  So, that’s the kind of model you should design, where a second-league team has about a 5% chance of making the playoffs.

If you have 10 teams in the second-league, and you guarantee one team, that’s 10%.  If you make them play-in for the 8th spot, that’ll be closer to 5%.

So, that’s the system I’d advocate.

@#9
Let’s say you started this system off in 2008.  One of those CL teams would be the Tampa Bay Rays who finished the 2007 season off with a record of 66-96.

In 2008 they won 97 games in the toughest division in all of baseball.  Had they been stuck in the CL league for the 2008 season, they would not even make the playoffs and have a shot at the title (caveat no CL team makes playoffs).

Heck, from the sounds of it this would not even gaurantee them a spot in the upper division(s).  They would then have to win some kind of playoff game/series/crapshoot against a lesser team that season from the upper division.

I don’t feel comfortable with that kind of setup.  There are other examples of this, but the Rays is the best one in recent years.

I think you have to give one auto birth to the CL league, let them have a play-in game if you want or just take the top CL team.  Then promote the top two CL teams, and demote two from the upper division(s).  I don’t think it is a good idea to make it hard for teams to move up.

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If you have 10 teams in the second-league, and you guarantee one team, that’s 10%.  If you make them play-in for the 8th spot, that’ll be closer to 5%.

So, that’s the system I’d advocate.
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Which is exactly what I said in #3.  Do I win a cookie? 

I don’t get why any second division teams have to get into the premiere league playoffs myself.

The Rays can still be the Rays as long as they avoid regulation.  They can’t bump along the bottom of the division season after season until their draft picks take hold.  But they can bump along next to the bottom of the division.  They can even bounce back and forth between the premier league and the second league for awhile.  Then, when they reach parity with the Red Sox and Yankees they get into the premier league playoffs.

Ok, let’s look at promotion/relegation: how many teams that have 74 or fewer wins one season end up with 75+ wins the following season?  Because, essentially, that’s what we are talking about, as we try to figure out how many teams from the bottom third should get a promotion to the top two-thirds.

The answer is 46 out of 108, or a bit over 40%.

And for the opposite, how often does a 75+ win team end up with 74- wins in the following year?  That’s 44 out of 222, or 20%.

Therefore, you need to average about 4 teams to be promoted each year and 4 teams relegated each year.

So, you have the top 3 teams in the second-league automatically promoted and the bottom 3 teams in the premier-league automatically demoted.

And then the 4th and 5th teams in the second-league playoff against the 17th and 16th teams in the premier league.  The two winners get to be in the premier-league.

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So, there you go, we have designed a system of the second-league having a reasonable chance at playoffs according to recent history, as well as determining using recent history the optimal teams for promotion/relegation.

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I gotta say that you guys are awesome.  You have great ideas, and good insight, and you give me the inspiration I need to have fun.  Without you guys, I’d be bored half the time.

#11 - that is true, the rays may not have gotten a shot at the WS.  thats what happens when you have have multiple tiers.  quite often a team in the lower tier is better than one or many teams in the tiers above them.  if the rays wanted to guarantee a shot at the WS in 08 then they would have to make sure they started the year in the majors. 

but they wouldnt have had to play a team in the Majors to get promoted.  if they won the CL or second division or whatever, they are automatically promoted.  if the finish in the next 4 spots (or 3 or 2, whatever) they play those teams to move up.

its not perfect but its how everyone in europe in soccer does it.  i like it a lot better than giving a lower division team a shot at the WS anyway.

When the NHL had its expansion, they put the 6 original teams in one division, and the 6 expansion teams in the second division.  They made sure to limit the number of inter-division games (so that the expansion teams would “look” like they had a decent record).  And the Stanley Cup was guaranteed to be one team from each division.

The expansion teams never won of course for those first few years, but for competitive purposes, it was needed to be done.

Therefore, having one team from the second-league play-in for the 8th spot is quasi-acceptable, and wholly necessary.

@#15
I prefer to take the regulation system used in Europe for soccer or w/e country and league we are borrowing from and improving upon it to meet and conform to the culture and history of baseball in our country.

Kind of like the Chinese taking ahold of capitalism and applying it to their culture and norms.

Relegation with American/MLB characteristics.

haha, can’t believe I said “regulation” instead of “relegation” in the first sentence. 

CL Champ vs. #8 from MLB. A best of 3, at the site of the 8th best team from the upper league, winner makes the playoffs as the 8 seed.

The winner of the CL gets a chance at the playoffs. Second Place gets automatic promotion, 3rd-6th have a playoff to see which of the other two get to advance to the top level.

My theory is that there should be no post-season games that are not meaningful in terms of a team still being in contention to win the championship.  Just move X number of teams up and X number of teams down. 

This is one of the pet-peeves I have with the BCS/Bowl system.

Ken: I don’t like the idea of automatic 4 teams promoted, because perhaps in some years, it should be 2 or 3, and in others it should be 5 or 6.

Keeping it at say automatic 2, and then putting 4 second-division teams in a playoff against the bottom 4 first-division teams, for an 8 team round-robin tournament with the top 4 teams getting to be in the first-division has a few good benefits.

Everyone loves tournaments. 

Having so many not-so-good teams involved gives everyone something to look forward to.

You’d get this 28-game tournament hosted at the parks of the 4 first-division teams (each of the 8 teams plays 7 games).  So, you get season ticket holders having first dibs to the tournament.

Lots of fun I think…

I’m sold. The round robin idea to figure out who advances would be pretty fun. It would be possible, in an extreme case, that a team could come from the lower division and win the world series, and lose out in the round robin. But that is nit picky and could be easily remedied.

However, you said earlier that in a typical year, 4 teams from the top 20 move to the bottom 10, and vice versa, with this tournament it is expected (given that one game is approximately a coin toss) that only 2 upper division teams would move down, and 2 would move up. Is that ideal? Either way, the concept is great!

When would you stage this tournament?

"win the world series, and lose out in the round robin”

You probably read too fast.  The #1 team does a play-in, and automatic promotion.  The #2 is automatic promotion.

The #3 through #6 goes into the prom/releg tournament, along with the bottom 4 teams of the premier-league.  We expect 2 of those 4 bottom teams to be promoted.

In total, that’s 4 bottom-rung teams promoted on average (min 2, max 6).

Right you are, I did read too fast, then this is perfect, all you have to do is figure out a time to hold the tournament. Sorry for the misunderstanding, I mean, I am still at work.

#17 - i’m not saying the way i suggested is the best BECAUSE it’s how the do it in europe, only that some of the elements are done in europe and it works fine there (though no euro soccer league would have a perfect analog to what i suggested either).  i can see wanting to tweak it for north american audiences but i dont think its necessary.

to me, if you’re going tiered divisions, the lower divisions shouldn’t have a shot at the WS.  otherwise don’t bother with promotion and relegation in the first place.  especially with a 10 team 2nd tier and nowhere lower to go. if you want a ring, get promoted and THEN make a WS run.

but that’s just me, all the suggestions are fun to imagine too.

#25 I suppose in this case study, you’d first need to define why you’d be going to a relegation or tiered division system.

Personally, I don’t see any benefit to the health of MLB by rewarding the good teams, which are more often than not the larger market teams, at the expense of the mostly smaller market teams.  A pure relegation system which gave “no shot” at the playoffs to a group of mostly smaller market teams would be just another advantage for the larger market teams.  Why not just disband eight to ten teams.  Attendance is already bad for the smaller market teams, why make it much worse.

To me, the relegation system that I perceive would be structured in a way to “gaurantee” a seat at the table for the little guy, instead of locking them out of the room completely for x number of years.  I think relegation in baseball can only work as a type of quota system.

I am not saying I prefer this to what we currently have, but I see it as the most acceptable relegation system for MLB.

I think Tango in his conclusion came up with a solid result.  Only thing I would change to this 20/10 2 tiered system is get rid of the little post-season tournament for moving teams up and down.  I can’t see this as very exciting and it would drastically change the trade/waiver deadline dynamics.

This is an amusing exercise.

#26 ah, good point, well the other very important ingredient is eliminating geographical barriers to entry for new teams. your right in that it doesnt make much sense, to me anyway, without that as well.  so no more territoriality.  big markets would get more teams and most smaller markets would get relegated.  or they could find a national audience and compete.  it would level things for the little guys because you’d presumably have more teams in the big market, chipping away at the big market monopolies and the larger fanbases they enjoy.

so that would probably change my acquisition of AAA teams suggestion from the original comment.  i am also coming around to the idea of top 2nd tier playing bottom 1st tier teams for spots.  both ways would be interesting.