Relevancy of the Post-season (October 16, 2003)
Lee Sinins was addressing some readers' issues of his issues with the post-season. Here is my perspective...
Some people seem to be under the impression that the World Series or the playoffs is supposed to establish who the best team that season is. This is far from the case. [Feel free to insert your own research here since the advent of division and wildcard play.]
In other leagues around the world, there is no such thing as a "postseason". The champion of the league is the team with the best record in the regular season.
The World Series makes sense when we had 2 8-league teams that never played each other. The problem started as soon as you went to 4 divisions, as if a division race really means anything, other than an arbitrary separation of teams. (A 4-league setup would make more sense from a purist standpoint.) The wild-card is an extension of division play, and necessary because of the small number of teams in each arbitrary division.
A single 8-team league worked because the best was the best. With a 4-team arbitrary division in a league of 16 teams, you leave to chance that a crappy team will get the best of a better team in a short series.
The purpose of the postseason is strictly to get a single unified (though not best) winner while making everyone alot of money, making players play under pressure, and giving fans drama. No one should think that the Yanks were the best team in the league when they won 87 games, or the Mariners were not the best team when they won 116.
The postseason is about drama, pressure, and money. From that standpoint, it's a huge success.
--posted by TangoTiger at 02:00 PM EDT
Posted 2:09 p.m.,
October 16, 2003
(#1) -
tangotiger
And this is true in other NA sports as well. No one believes that the 1993 Canadiens were the best team in the league. They happen to have a goalie, Patrick Roy, who did not play so well in the regular season, but was un-freaking-believable in the playoffs, reeling off 10 consecutive OT wins. And in 1986, the rookie Patrick Roy, after a so-so season, established his dominance again. This was done much easier after the ouster of the powerhouse Oilers at the hands of the tough Flames that year.
Don't talk to me about the World Series or Stanley Cup proving anything about who the best team is, as if "best" can be established by playing 3 or 4 teams over 20 games.
Posted 4:32 p.m.,
October 16, 2003
(#2) -
Herm Edwards
You play to win the game. Hello?
Posted 6:05 p.m.,
October 16, 2003
(#3) -
FJM
Tonight the Yankees and Red Sox will play for the 26th time this season, the most meetings ever between two teams. If New York wins they will have a 14-12 edge. Would that establish Yankee superiority? Of course not, no more than flipping a coin 26 times and getting 14 heads proves it's biased. Nor would a Boston win prove the two teams are equal, even though they would have the same number of wins.
Even if they played the entire 162-game schedule against each other you couldn't prove one was stronger than the other. For one thing, they were very different ballclubs back in April and May than they are now. Consequently, you'd have to give much greater weight to the most recent experience; i.e., this series. And that's why playoff baseball is so exciting and so unpredictable: because the importance of every play, every single pitch, is enormously magnified. The playoffs aren't about who is best on paper. A computer simulation would be the best way to decide that. They are about who is best on that particular day (or series of days) under conditions totally different than the regular season. And that's as it should be.
Posted 11:15 p.m.,
October 16, 2003
(#4) -
Alan Jordan
I will agree that the postseason isn't guarenteed to select the "Best" team because of the heavy role of chance in short series and the arbitrary grouping of teams (The Twins got in while the Mariners stayed at home). It's easy to argue mathematically that it's not the best way, repeated postseason success when it happens can be considered evidence of a quility team. Its hard to argue that the Yankees of the late 90's and early 00's weren't/aren't the best team in baseball during that period. Their postseason success exceeds the expected success that teams in the postseason would get assuming they were all equal. I could also argue that the Braves have been the best in the National leauge, but not baseball Between 91 and now based on their postseason success.
There are lots of games/contests where the main objective is to win and players have to deal with arbitrary conditions that don't necessarily reward the best overall performance then we have to decide whether they won by superior skill/strategy or luck. War, poker, presidential elections (a candidate can win the majority of votes but still loose) are a few examples. There are plenty of others.
Determining who is best or who played best is somewhat problematic, but long term success should indicate that it's probably not luck.
Yanks winning the World Series after having only won 87 games - probably luck.
Yanks winning 4 out 7 World Series - probably not luck.
Posted 12:35 p.m.,
October 17, 2003
(#5) -
RossCW
I don't know what the "best team" means if it isn't the team that won. Over the course of a 162 game season there is a lot of luck in who wins or loses. There are injuries, variations in schedules, different pitchers and teams play at different levels at different times. So you if the team that won a division isn't the "best team" what do you mean?
You can decide that you will run 150 seasons of Diamond Mind and name the team that comes out ahead the most. Or you can just as well award the "best team" title to the team with the largest seasonal run differential. But I don't think either of those really determine that. Baseball is a series of contests and the team that wins the most of them is the "best team".
To try to decide who might have won if a fan doesn't interfere with the ball, or a ball hadn't gone through someone's legs or if the series had been played 20 times, is the same as trying to decide what would have happened if a player hadn't been hurt or the teams had played different schedules or played in April instead of September. If you want to know who is the best team in baseball this year, its the team that won the World Series or the question is meaningless.
Posted 1:10 p.m.,
October 17, 2003
(#6) -
tangotiger
The question is: who is the best team in the NL? The Braves, Giants, or Florida?
Given that a team is not static, and the players that make up each team changes day to day, or month to month, what is even meant by the "best team"? The team whose players have performed better than their opponents over... what? the first 162 games (i.e., regular season)? The last 20 games (i.e., playoffs, more or less)? Was Seattle's 116 win season meaningless, because of the existence of a post-season? And if they played with European rules, where the regular season champ is the champ, then they were the best team?
While some people prescribe to the view that the objective of the playoffs is to establish the best team in a league, my perspective is that the playoffs is to create fun, money, and drama.
Neither perspective is any more right than the other.
Posted 4:10 p.m.,
October 17, 2003
(#7) -
Patriot
I think the problem people have is seperating "best team" from "champion". Based on how I define "best team", Florida is most assuredly not the "best team". But that's not a slight to them. It's just a fact. They are the champions, and saying they're not the "best team" in no way diminishes the fact that they won the championship.
Posted 4:17 p.m.,
October 17, 2003
(#8) -
tangotiger
I agree with Patriot. The Marlins are the NL champs, since they beat the contenders for the title.
Tiger Woods is the best golfer even if he doesn't win the Masters. Serena is the best tennis player, even if... etc, etc, etc. This is no slight on the champions of any of those events.
Posted 8:06 p.m.,
October 17, 2003
(#9) -
RossCW
The team whose players have performed better than their opponents over... what?
By that measure you could say the Cubs were the "best team" in the LCS since they scored more runs than the Marlins. But the rules of baseball, unlike most golf tournaments, doesn't work that way.
And if they played with European rules, where the regular season champ is the champ, then they were the best team?
But isn't that exactly the question - played by these rules who is the best team. Once you allow for different rules you might as well be talking about which team had the best golf scores.
Was Seattle's 116 win season meaningless, because of the existence of a post-season?
Of course it wasn't meaningless, but I have no doubt they would have gladly traded those 116 wins for a World Series championship. So if someone wants to say Seattle was the best team over the course of the regular season based on their record, I don't see any objection. But by the rules of baseball the object is to win the world series and Seattle didn't. You could just as well decide the team that scored the most runs or had the largest run differential was the best team.
Posted 8:56 p.m.,
October 17, 2003
(#10) -
David Smyth
This thread is 100% semantics.
If you want to define the "best team" as the one which won the most regular season games, or the most total games (reg season plus playoffs), or had the best scoring ratioo, etc., that's one thing.
But baseball has set up a specific format for declaring a champion. According to this format, the games at each step on the ladder have differing weights or value. The teams know this in advance, and are free to make whatever moves are necessary to come out on top.
I agree with RossCW. There is no intrinsic, or inherent, definition of the term "best". That being the case, the most logical thing to do is to accept the definition that has been set up in the rules of the game, and to declare the WS winner as the "best" team that year.
100% semantics.
Posted 11:16 p.m.,
October 17, 2003
(#11) -
Alan Jordan
Of course its semantics. Semantics allow someone to define best as winner of the World Series or Pennent of a leauge. Of course, everybody else is free to disreguard that definition and use another. Not arguing with you David, in fact I think the management of the Braves looks at it the way you do when they put a team together every year. I'm sure they compare themselves with the Yankees and feel woefully inferior despite what they say publicly. I think they would be quite happy with a loosing record for the season if it were just good enough to get them the wild card and they went on to win the world series.
Champions is a good term to distinguish the team that acheived the objective of the season from the theoretically murky and unobservable best team that would have won in infinite set of games.
"I don't know what the "best team" means if it isn't the team that won."
If you define the best team as the one who would win the highest percentage of games in a balanced schedule of infinite games and assuming that strength doesn't change over the course of the season, then there is still no guarentee that 160 games in an unbalanced schedule will determine who is best during a year. With a definition like that then the quality of a team is unobservable and can only estimated by observable variables such as wins, runs allowed, runs scored etc... In fact with a definition like that and considering that major leauge sports try to keep the talent level between teams equal, there may not even be a best team although there are cleary groups of teams that are better than others. One of the requisites for proving a difference between teams is that a difference exist in the first place. If one team always won, then nobody would watch the games. It is the competitive balance that keeps people interested in the games.
I wouldn't pronounce the post season irrelevent or strictly ornamental. It may not tell you the best team for the season, but the standings, computerized polls and simulations can't guarentee to do that either.
Posted 12:15 a.m.,
October 18, 2003
(#12) -
Anonymous
Posted 1:15 p.m.,
October 18, 2003
(#13) -
RossCW
How teams match up is an issue that hasn't been addressed here. It perfectly possible - maybe even likely - that the Yankees would beat the Red Sox head-to-head in an infinite game series and the Red Sox would beat the A's, but the A's would beat the Yankees. Perhaps baseball should go to a round robin league championship series where all the teams play one another instead of going head to head.
Posted 2:31 a.m.,
October 20, 2003
(#14) -
Jim
Since it's very difficult (perhaps impossible) to consistently beat the actual Vegas betting line, I would guess the most efficient way to choose the "best" team is to see which team is the favorite to win the World Series at the end of the regular season. I'd guess the Vegas favorite wins the World Series more often than any other prediction system (or subjective individual analysis picks), and it seems unlikely that it would matter what the exact format of the postseason is.
Posted 9:39 a.m.,
October 20, 2003
(#15) -
David Smyth
I don't like that at all. Why should the postseason have zero weight?
This could be mostly taken care of by using a different phrase. Instead of asking who was the "best team" (something which is understood by most to have a theoretical meaning), ask instead "which team played the best?". It is easier then to discuss how to weight the regular season vs the postseason. My own opinion is that the team that played the best (including playing better when it was more important) is the team that wins the WS (regardless of someone's opinion of how much was due to luck).
Posted 3:13 p.m.,
October 20, 2003
(#16) -
RossCW
I agree with Jim. The Vegas betting line is probably the most accurate predictor of the team most likely to win the World Series at the end of the season. So if you want the best team based on the regular season that would be it.
Posted 7:25 p.m.,
October 20, 2003
(#17) -
jimd
I disagree with the first Jim (and RossCW). The Vegas betting line is not an opinion about team quality, but an opinion about the gambling public's perception of the teams. The opinions of both informed and uninformed gamblers are weighted proportional to the amount of money they are expected to bet.
As a practical matter, it's probably not too far off, but the odds will be artificially lower on teams the uninformed portion of the public wants to bet on (e.g. Yankees, California due to its geographic proximity), and higher on teams with relatively few visiting fans (e.g. Florida, Minnesota).
Posted 10:39 p.m.,
October 20, 2003
(#18) -
RossCW
jimd -
You may be right. But I think Vegas odds are set by the professional (and therefore informed) gamblers. T
he odds are adjusted to keep the total payout on teams roughly equal. If a bunch of Yankee fans bet on the Yankees the odds of the Yankee's winning will go up above their "true value" and other teams will go down below their "true value". But the professionals - who are only interested in making money - will then start betting on the Yankees opponents since the odds are now below their "true value". The result is that the odds for the Yankees will drop back to their "true value" while the opponents odds will return to theirs.
That assumes that the professional gamblers, collectively, have an accurate assessment of the true value of teams and that they have enough money to move the odds when they stray from that value.
Posted 1:52 p.m.,
October 21, 2003
(#19) -
jimd
We're in agreement RossCW. I don't know if there is enough uninformed money betting on the WS to make a real difference. I've read that it can be a real issue with the SuperBowl.