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ojoe · 10-31-2022, 07:57 PM

With the offseason approaching and me feeling a little dissatisfied with my current historical replay, I thought I’d try something new. So I decided to go back to 1901 and re-create each year’s playoffs, using the baseball’s new playoff format. Six teams from each league, byes for the top two seeds. Start with a best-of-3 Wild Card round at the home of the higher seed. Five-game Division Series, 7-game LCS and World Series.

This is partly inspired by the way the playoffs worked out this year. We had four 100-win teams in Major League Baseball, and of them, only Houston won a playoff series. Two of the four top-seeded teams with a bye ended up being knocked out in the Division Series (both in 4 games), and then a third bye team was pushed to the limit by what was considered to be the weakest division winner. (No shade to the Guardians - they’re on the way up. But of the six division winners, most of us would probably rank them 6th.) So I thought up this project. These exhibitions don’t take long, so I figured, why not?

Some things to note:

I’ll usually be simulating all games. Most of the time, I’ll set up the tournament and just simulate to the end, but I may also sim day-by-day and occasionally stop and play out a deciding game.

Having six playoff qualifiers in each league of course means that ¾ of the teams from 1901 to 1960 are in the playoffs. I decided I didn’t care. This isn’t real, so let’s see if there’s anything really chaotic.

I actually started with 1901 and then thought I’d be more likely to lose interest if I went chronologically. So I put every year from 1902 to 2021 in a random number selector and spun it about 120 times to get the order.

This is fantasy, so I reserve the right to throw in whatever wrinkles I feel like at any time. I don’t know what those wrinkles might be at the moment, but I will report them.

For series from 1901 to 1972, I will not use the DH. For series after, I will use the universal DH. This surprises me, as I prefer NL style, but these will be run as a single exhibition league so I won’t be able to have the AL teams use it and the NL teams not. And no DH means benching some big names that I don't want to lose.

Like in real life, division winners are seeded ahead of Wild Card. That means the 2021 Dodgers have to play the Wild Card Round. But then so do the 1993 Giants.

Sometimes in real life, games were rained out and were never made up because they did not affect the standings - but they would have affected the standings if the current format was in play. In those cases, I go by winning percentage. So if I look down for the 6th seed and say one team was 87-75 and another, because of a rain out, was 87-74…well, the 87-74 team advances. (This is going to be most relevant for 1981, when the strike caused teams to play anywhere from 103 to 111 games. 1981 will be the 46th season of this experiment, if it lasts that long.)

Tiebreakers:

1. Head-to-head (if it’s a three-way tie, I check to see if one of the teams had a losing record against both the others - if so, then that team gets the lowest seed; if not, I proceed to the next tie-breaker)
2. Pythagorean record (basically, run differential, but Baseball-Reference has the Pythagorean record right at the top, and it’s easier to see than calculating runs scored v. runs allowed)
3. Runs scored
4. Runs allowed
5. If somehow it’s still tied, I’ll just pick the team I like better. But I don’t expect anybody will be tied through four rounds of tiebreakers.

I’m playing either 25 or 30 man rosters. The early years I’ll stick with 25, and for post-expansion years I’ll use 30. It’ll depend on what I feel like at any given time. Certainly for 21st Century teams it’ll probably be 30.

And finally, when (and if) I get to 2020, the playoffs will actually be smaller than they were in real life. So, sorry to the Marlins and Reds in the NL and Blue Jays and Astros in the AL. Every year is going have six teams per league in the playoffs. (But 2020 came up 108th when I picked years at random, so I will probably abandon this well before then.)

I don’t have many expectations as to how this is going to turn out, but I have some questions, such as:
How many will the Yankees win? I imagine it’ll still be more than anybody else, but 27? They’re bound to lose some of those Ruth/Gehrig/DiMaggio/Mantle titles - but they may also pick up a few, maybe even in years where they narrowly missed the postseason in real life.
How many sub-.500 teams will win?
How will the bye teams do over time? Will they end up winning ⅔ or ¾ of their Division Series, or will it be a 50-50 crap shoot?

So, first up...1901

10-31-2022, 07:57 PM	#1
ojoe Minors (Double A) Join Date: Jul 2012 Posts: 101	What if?: Expanded Playoffs from 1901 With the offseason approaching and me feeling a little dissatisfied with my current historical replay, I thought I’d try something new. So I decided to go back to 1901 and re-create each year’s playoffs, using the baseball’s new playoff format. Six teams from each league, byes for the top two seeds. Start with a best-of-3 Wild Card round at the home of the higher seed. Five-game Division Series, 7-game LCS and World Series. This is partly inspired by the way the playoffs worked out this year. We had four 100-win teams in Major League Baseball, and of them, only Houston won a playoff series. Two of the four top-seeded teams with a bye ended up being knocked out in the Division Series (both in 4 games), and then a third bye team was pushed to the limit by what was considered to be the weakest division winner. (No shade to the Guardians - they’re on the way up. But of the six division winners, most of us would probably rank them 6th.) So I thought up this project. These exhibitions don’t take long, so I figured, why not? Some things to note: I’ll usually be simulating all games. Most of the time, I’ll set up the tournament and just simulate to the end, but I may also sim day-by-day and occasionally stop and play out a deciding game. Having six playoff qualifiers in each league of course means that ¾ of the teams from 1901 to 1960 are in the playoffs. I decided I didn’t care. This isn’t real, so let’s see if there’s anything really chaotic. I actually started with 1901 and then thought I’d be more likely to lose interest if I went chronologically. So I put every year from 1902 to 2021 in a random number selector and spun it about 120 times to get the order. This is fantasy, so I reserve the right to throw in whatever wrinkles I feel like at any time. I don’t know what those wrinkles might be at the moment, but I will report them. For series from 1901 to 1972, I will not use the DH. For series after, I will use the universal DH. This surprises me, as I prefer NL style, but these will be run as a single exhibition league so I won’t be able to have the AL teams use it and the NL teams not. And no DH means benching some big names that I don't want to lose. Like in real life, division winners are seeded ahead of Wild Card. That means the 2021 Dodgers have to play the Wild Card Round. But then so do the 1993 Giants. Sometimes in real life, games were rained out and were never made up because they did not affect the standings - but they would have affected the standings if the current format was in play. In those cases, I go by winning percentage. So if I look down for the 6th seed and say one team was 87-75 and another, because of a rain out, was 87-74…well, the 87-74 team advances. (This is going to be most relevant for 1981, when the strike caused teams to play anywhere from 103 to 111 games. 1981 will be the 46th season of this experiment, if it lasts that long.) Tiebreakers: 1. Head-to-head (if it’s a three-way tie, I check to see if one of the teams had a losing record against both the others - if so, then that team gets the lowest seed; if not, I proceed to the next tie-breaker) 2. Pythagorean record (basically, run differential, but Baseball-Reference has the Pythagorean record right at the top, and it’s easier to see than calculating runs scored v. runs allowed) 3. Runs scored 4. Runs allowed 5. If somehow it’s still tied, I’ll just pick the team I like better. But I don’t expect anybody will be tied through four rounds of tiebreakers. I’m playing either 25 or 30 man rosters. The early years I’ll stick with 25, and for post-expansion years I’ll use 30. It’ll depend on what I feel like at any given time. Certainly for 21st Century teams it’ll probably be 30. And finally, when (and if) I get to 2020, the playoffs will actually be smaller than they were in real life. So, sorry to the Marlins and Reds in the NL and Blue Jays and Astros in the AL. Every year is going have six teams per league in the playoffs. (But 2020 came up 108th when I picked years at random, so I will probably abandon this well before then.) I don’t have many expectations as to how this is going to turn out, but I have some questions, such as: How many will the Yankees win? I imagine it’ll still be more than anybody else, but 27? They’re bound to lose some of those Ruth/Gehrig/DiMaggio/Mantle titles - but they may also pick up a few, maybe even in years where they narrowly missed the postseason in real life. How many sub-.500 teams will win? How will the bye teams do over time? Will they end up winning ⅔ or ¾ of their Division Series, or will it be a 50-50 crap shoot? So, first up...1901