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Sydin posted:I don't mind the idea of expanded playoffs period, I just dislike this current format which offers functionally zero incentive to winning your division. The best team in baseball and the worst-record playoff team both get dumped into a best of three series in the first round, so why sweat winning the division if you can comfortably grab one of the five billion WC spots? If the format was tweaked so that, for example, division winners got a bye in the first round and the wild cards had to weed themselves down a bit before playing the division winners, then fine whatever have fun expanding the playoffs. See, this is where they could follow the NFL model (or at least how the NFL used to do it, I dunno if it has changed). Having a first round bye and home field throughout was a huge incentive to win, and that'd be easy to work into an expanded format.
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Oct 21, 2020 18:55
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I don’t think any of the playoff formats are going to change how much people care about a single regular season game. I don’t feel a palpable difference between an MLB game (one of 162, recent history of 4-5 teams per League making the postseason) and an NBA/NHL game (one of 82, 8 teams per Conference making the postseason). Each individual one is largely meaningless outside of good matchups and rivalries. As hilarious as it sounds, a 100+ win team getting bounced by an 80 win team in a 3-game series is dumb and bad. Unless it happens to the Red Sox.
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Oct 21, 2020 19:11
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The only rule change that I am a hard no on is the stupid extra-innings runner on second rule. Where did they even come up with that?
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Oct 21, 2020 19:21
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bewbies posted:Counterpoint to the con expanded playoffs argument: But beyond that, I am not convinced that tanking is a problem in baseball to begin with. This isn't the NBA where a #1 draft pick can single handedly take a team from the basement to playoff berth. Just being bad for several years is no guarantee that an MLB team will be talent stacked in the years to follow. Identifying and developing baseball talent is more difficult and less of a sure thing than some other sports. The Dodgers have a ton of home grown talent despite drafting low for a decade now. The Angels have been poo poo for a decade and can't make the postseason even with the greatest player of all time on their roster. I don't think there are particularly strong incentives to tank right now, but it's a PR line teams are happy to use to justify cost cutting and many fans would rather embrace that than admit their team is just being run poorly. What we should want is an incentive for the large majority of teams to try to win every year. Not just be "good enough" to snag that last postseason spot but be as good as they can possibly be. Way back when teams relied on gate receipts for the vast majority of their revenues, there was a plain financial incentive here. Good teams put more buts in the seats and made more money. But as the sport has diversified revenue streams and dispersed them over many years (decade-long local tv deals...) this has evaporated. bawfuls fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Oct 21, 2020 |
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Oct 21, 2020 19:23
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FlamingLiberal posted:The only rule change that I am a hard no on is the stupid extra-innings runner on second rule. Where did they even come up with that? My guess is that MLB was getting poo poo from networks about how it's annoying to program around MLB games, which is why you have Manfred crusading about game length and trying to artificially limit the amount of extra innings.
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Oct 21, 2020 19:28
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Sydin posted:My guess is that MLB was getting poo poo from networks about how it's annoying to program around MLB games, which is why you have Manfred crusading about game length and trying to artificially limit the amount of extra innings.
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Oct 21, 2020 19:29
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bawfuls posted:I'd rather watch superteams and scrub teams than a league full of .500 teams. At least in the former case, you get superteam vs superteam in October. For this reason it is not even clear to me that MLB should be working so hard to "discourage tanking" in the first place. I don't think an expanded playoffs would lead to everyone being mediocre...you'd still have about the same number of good teams, you'd just have fewer really bad teams. In any case, I think it is pretty clear that most mid- and small-market teams have gone in with the supertank model, not only because it helps build the farm through higher draft picks and trades, but also because it is cheaper for the owner than maintaining a semi-competitive team during a rebuild. Only a handful of teams have the financial wasta to both build the farm and keep the competitive window open, and now that they (particularly the Dodgers and Yankees) seem to have figured out that the best way to stay consistently competitive is to invest in the farm, the rest of the league is going to have to try that much harder to build their own farms. We're in agreement that the best model for both league and sport is to keep the majority of teams actively trying to win on a consistent basis. Giving more teams access to a playoff lottery ticket is a good way to do this. If the league continues to get more extreme with the supertank model, eventually interest is going to erode in smaller markets, which in the long term, will hurt both league and sport. Unless, of course, your preference is the Dodgers in the World Series every year.
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Oct 21, 2020 19:37
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I feel like the runner on second is a this-year only thing, they were trying to cut down on long games since everyone was playing 6 games a week or whatever in the condensed schedule
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Oct 21, 2020 19:39
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wyoak posted:I feel like the runner on second is a this-year only thing, they were trying to cut down on long games since everyone was playing 6 games a week or whatever in the condensed schedule They've been floating the runner on second rule for like three years.
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Oct 21, 2020 19:45
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The fact that the Dodgers have been to the World Series 3 of the last 4 years doesn't rally alarm me. Good teams tend to put together runs. That happens in the NBA and NFL even with playoffs built for parity. I'm not personally convinced baseball is in some kind of tanking crisis. Maybe it is and I haven't been paying enough attention but I think baseball tends to have that "we're gonna get cancelled any minute now" attitude. It takes a lot to build a dynasty and money doesn't just do it. Do I want to see a way to incentivize more teams to go for it and retain stars? Of course. But I'm not convinced that letting .500 teams into the playoffs does that. It might make for a few less trade deadline deals but teams are gonna decide whether they're gonna keep a Mookie Betts or not regardless of a 1 year outside shot at a playoff run.Timby posted:They've been floating the runner on second rule for like three years. Yeah, the extra innings rule was used in the minors last year and the last WBC. Its a pet plan of Manfred's and he just used the covid season to get it in the door.
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Oct 21, 2020 19:57
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bewbies posted:I don't think an expanded playoffs would lead to everyone being mediocre...you'd still have about the same number of good teams, you'd just have fewer really bad teams. bewbies posted:I don't think an expanded playoffs would lead to everyone being mediocre...you'd still have about the same number of good teams, you'd just have fewer really bad teams. Oakland and Tampa compete every year without tanking and without big payrolls. The Royals were trash for like 15 years before winning so that's not much of a reliable tank-to-title pipeline. The Angels have run large payrolls around Mike Trout and still only made the postseason once in a decade. But the Cubs and Astros won following a tank period so the average baseball fan thinks it's a proven strategy. bewbies posted:We're in agreement that the best model for both league and sport is to keep the majority of teams actively trying to win on a consistent basis. Giving more teams access to a playoff lottery ticket is a good way to do this. If the league continues to get more extreme with the supertank model, eventually interest is going to erode in smaller markets, which in the long term, will hurt both league and sport. Unless, of course, your preference is the Dodgers in the World Series every year. I also disagree that a superteams-and-scrubs league will erode the sport long term. That was basically the way it worked for the first 50+ years. Superteams provide national appeal in a sport that otherwise struggles to find it, through bandwagon types and by offering a larger than life villain for other teams. A league full of .500 teams with a random half of them making the postseason lacks narrative appeal. bawfuls fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Oct 21, 2020 |
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Oct 21, 2020 20:15
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Bip Roberts posted:Also front loading the playoffs with a short series is really annoying if a 105 win team is now two hung sliders from gone. This actually rules as long as it isn't your team on the losing end
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Oct 21, 2020 20:28
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bawfuls posted:No because there would be no incentive to build a 100 game winner instead of a ~85 game winner. Multiple teams pretty much said as much this year when the format was announced: there was no reason to push for winning the division because seeding is irrelevant. Agree, which is why I said above that it makes sense to provide some kind of structural element to incentivize having the best regular season record (ie, first round bye plus home field advantage). quote:Smaller and mid market teams have gone in on tanking because it is a way to frame their cost savings that is palatable to a lot of fans. There is not sufficient evidence it's a reliable way to build a winning team. But people *think* it is, the sports media acts like it is, so many owners use it as cover. Agree, I even said exactly this in the part of the post you quoted. The thing I don't really understand is how we get from agreement on this issue, to the belief that a smaller/more exclusive playoff format would de-incentivize tanking. Think of it this way: regardless of the validity of the supertank strategy, the small playoff format got us here, and keeping the format the same isn't likely to change it. We're in agreement that the central issue at play here is players not being paid what they're worth, and I'm sure you agree with me that the incoherence of the CBA is the central problem. Without major changes to the CBA (which, lol of course not) then we want to incentivize owners to pay out more money to mid-career guys, with the goal of being more competitive. Seems to me like a golden ticket to the playoffs and a 12.5% chance of WORLD SERIES PARADE AND RALLY is an excellent incentive. quote:Again, you are missing the incentive structures that a large postseason field has in baseball. If a .500 record is all it takes to virtually guarantee a postseason slot, and we know that postseason baseball is largely a crapshoot, then what is the incentive to try to build a 100 win team? I think you (and lots of others) might be underestimating how useful it is to have a good team in the postseason. I agree it isn't exactly so pure as a European soccer format where there is no postseason tourney and you win the league solely by consistent excellence over the course of the year, but I also think that most of the time, the WS winner was one of the two or three best teams in the playoffs. Certainly, having more teams in the hopper would dilute the elite teams' chances, but what's that if not more incentive to sign better players?
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Oct 21, 2020 20:38
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Add a salary floor you cowards
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Oct 21, 2020 20:50
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bewbies posted:I think you (and lots of others) might be underestimating how useful it is to have a good team in the postseason.
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Oct 21, 2020 20:59
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Gerblederp posted:Add a salary floor you cowards
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Oct 21, 2020 21:06
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I think it's worth mentioning (apologies if I missed it) that Manfred said it likely wouldn't be 16 teams again but ideally more than 10. Given his past statements, I think it's likely they are looking to 14 teams which could, in theory, give the best record in each league a bye past the 3 game round. If they go that route, there's at least some incentive to field a good team. I dunno that I care all that much about the playoffs being expanded except to say 3 game series are bunk as hell and that first round should be 5 followed by all 7s.
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Oct 21, 2020 21:51
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There also is the issue that there is no space in the schedule to do that without either shortening the season or going into November. It only worked this year because they got rid of off days in the DS and CS with neutral sites.
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Oct 21, 2020 21:57
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If they add 2 more teams via expansion then it might soften the blow a little, but I agree with everyone else that it's dumb as hell and a clear tactic by the owners to be able to get success for cheaper
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Oct 21, 2020 22:01
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bawfuls posted:There also is the issue that there is no space in the schedule to do that without either shortening the season or going into November. It only worked this year because they got rid of off days in the DS and CS with neutral sites. Yeah thats a fair issue and I dunno what the solution to that is. Maybe the owners would rather lose some regular season revenue if theres a better chance of getting a piece of the postseason pie?
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Oct 21, 2020 22:04
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The real question is does the union recognize how badly owners want expanded postseason cash and are they going to play hardball over it?
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Oct 21, 2020 22:12
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Gerblederp posted:Add a salary floor you cowards
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Oct 21, 2020 22:15
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is it a hot take to say I wouldn't mind if the regular season got shortened a bit That way they can add more on the front end of the postseason and players could get more off days
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Oct 21, 2020 22:19
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Strelok604 posted:is it a hot take to say I wouldn't mind if the regular season got shortened a bit Hmmmm... maybe 154 games would suffice??
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Oct 21, 2020 22:24
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Contract two teams, move to a fully balanced schedule (27 opponents * 6 games each = 162 games) and play the World Series between the top two teams each year  Alternatively, expand to 32, fully balanced schedule with no interleague (15 opponents * 10 games each = 150 games). Play 5 game series and you'd also reduce travel. bawfuls fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Oct 21, 2020 |
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Oct 21, 2020 22:39
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bawfuls posted:The real question is does the union recognize how badly owners want expanded postseason cash and are they going to play hardball over it? Considering the Union probably isn't all that opposed (and a large percentage for) for more shots at the Piece of Metal, In gonna go with "No" Only fans/media are against more playoff spots
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Oct 21, 2020 23:33
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Considering the Union probably isn't all that opposed (and a large percentage for) for more shots at the Piece of Metal, In gonna go with "No"
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Oct 21, 2020 23:41
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Or jsut realize that the more the owners want something the less the players should
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Oct 21, 2020 23:45
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bawfuls posted:Considering the past decade of Dodgers (and for that matter Giants) Octobers... can you blame me? a fair point!
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Oct 22, 2020 01:11
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bawfuls posted:Contract two teams, move to a fully balanced schedule (27 opponents * 6 games each = 162 games) and play the World Series between the top two teams each year Once things are back to “normal” MLB is going to expand ASAP if for no other reason than the quick infusion of cash. They’ll want to keep some form of interleague though, for the rivalry bullshit at least.
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Oct 22, 2020 01:49
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i'm glad the rear end in the jackpot video is making the rounds again https://twitter.com/JOSH_BENNY/status/1319072745355939843?s=20
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Oct 22, 2020 01:52
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Really thought this article on how apparently it is counterproductive and not worth it to shift against righties was really interesting. https://www.theringer.com/2020/10/21/21526283/defensive-shift-world-series-los-angeles-dodgers-will-smith-tampa-bay-rays
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Oct 22, 2020 02:32
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Blake Snell looking in for the sign looks like a confused qtip.
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Oct 22, 2020 06:46
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IMO the tanking narrative is just to excuse ownership being cheap and waiting to luck into a few players developing at the same time. It’s not like sucking for five years guarantees you five stars all ready in year 6. The draft isn’t really the franchise fixer like in the NBA or NFL. Farm development seems to be way more impacted by international development than the amateur draft. The issue is we’re in a world where winning and being good is incidental to most teams’ goals. It’s something you do just enough to not lose customers. To fix that you either need to incentivize winning more or punish losing more, which a self policing organization will not do in the era of Greed is Good II: The Rise of the MBA. If you want tanking to go away, add a salary floor, positively tie rev sharing to the season record, remove the international free agent cap, and randomize the draft.
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Oct 22, 2020 13:10
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Well Played Mauer posted:IMO the tanking narrative is just to excuse ownership being cheap and waiting to luck into a few players developing at the same time. It’s not like sucking for five years guarantees you five stars all ready in year 6. The draft isn’t really the franchise fixer like in the NBA or NFL. Farm development seems to be way more impacted by international development than the amateur draft.  The narratives about the Royals/Cubs/Astros tanking and making a direct correlation between that and WS wins is complete bunk, but the owners know they can sell it to fanbases. "It's a copycat league," "trust the process," and the like sound good in interviews but it just gives them a pass for not trying to win for long periods of time. Also they can point at the A's/Rays/Indians/etc. and say "Hey look money does not equal wins!" but between revenue sharing and national/RSN TV deals, every team could afford an $50 million+ MLB payroll easily. But instead certain teams intentionally field 70-win teams and rake in the cash without really trying to improve.
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Oct 22, 2020 14:53
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https://twitter.com/LaVelleNeal/status/1319334510580944901 oh cool the only actual good rule change is on the chopping block
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Oct 22, 2020 19:14
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That’s annoying and you better believe that the league is going to demand a concession for that
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Oct 22, 2020 19:20
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They can bring back the in the NL only after kyle hendricks hits a dinger.
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Oct 22, 2020 19:24
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R.D. Mangles posted:They can bring back the in the NL only after kyle hendricks hits a dinger. Cool Kyle is a finalist for NL Gold Glove  Contreras and Rizzo too, the Rawlings twitter is releasing them now.
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Oct 22, 2020 19:25
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Bregor posted:https://twitter.com/LaVelleNeal/status/1319334510580944901 Now that the players have gotten a taste Manfred is gonna dangle it as a bargaining chip during the CBA negotiations. Universal DH is like, one of the few rule changes the union actually likes, so of course they're not getting it for free.
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Oct 22, 2020 19:29
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