AL Wild Card Scenarios

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Fear the Wainwright.
Doesn't seem right that a team with 100 wins is out if they lose one game, but such is baseball.

Just win your division and then you don't have that problem. If there was still just one wild card, then the Giants and Dodgers would have had little motivation to play hard down to the wire since winning the division wouldn't get you much more than being the wild card would. Home field advantage would be about it.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by jayshum

Just win your division and then you don't have that problem. If there was still just one wild card, then the Giants and Dodgers would have had little motivation to play hard down to the wire since winning the division wouldn't get you much more than being the wild card would. Home field advantage would be about it.

Right but then one of them wouldn't be facing single elimination.

[nineunder71]

If ands and buts were candy and nuts…………

We’d all have a merry Hanukkah

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Right but then one of them wouldn't be facing single elimination.

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Right but then one of them wouldn't be facing single elimination.

True, but I think one of the main reasons they added the second wild card (aside from more tv money) was to reward teams for winning their division and to provide incentive to do so.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by jayshum

True, but I think one of the main reasons they added the second wild card (aside from more tv money) was to reward teams for winning their division and to provide incentive to do so.

I doubt that, I think it had much more to do with making scenarios like today possible, where more teams remain in contention until the very end.

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I doubt that, I think it had much more to do with making scenarios like today possible, where more teams remain in contention until the very end.

Keeping more teams in contention was part of it as well, but there were definitely seasons when there was just one wild card that teams didn't play for the division at the end so they could rest players or get their pitchers lined up for the playoffs because the only difference between winning the division vs the wild card spot was one home game in a series. Having to play a single elimination game now with two wild card teams makes winning the division much more worthwhile.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by jayshum

Keeping more teams in contention was part of it as well, but there were definitely seasons when there was just one wild card that teams didn't play for the division at the end so they could rest players or get their pitchers lined up for the playoffs because the only difference between winning the division vs the wild card spot was one home game in a series. Having to play a single elimination game now with two wild card teams makes winning the division much more worthwhile.

One home game in a best of five series is a pretty big deal, no?

[rats60]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I doubt that, I think it had much more to do with making scenarios like today possible, where more teams remain in contention until the very end.

It definitely was that. With 1 Wild Card 5/17 or 29.4% won the World Series. That meant that a Wild Card team had a better chance to win than a division winner. Since they changed, it has dropped to 2/9 or 22.2%, now division winners are winning at a higher rate because of that one game. I understand these are small samples, but it is all we have. There definitely was lots of complaints about how many Wild Card teams were winning before they added the second team.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by rats60

It definitely was that. With 1 Wild Card 5/17 or 29.4% won the World Series. That meant that a Wild Card team had a better chance to win than a division winner. Since they changed, it has dropped to 2/9 or 22.2%, now division winners are winning at a higher rate because of that one game. I understand these are small samples, but it is all we have. There definitely was lots of complaints about how many Wild Card teams were winning before they added the second team.

OK but seems a stretch to me. The only explanation I can come up with is that sometimes the worse of the two wild card teams is winning the one game playoff and is not as likely to win going forward, but it still seems like small sample size.