With the post-season underway and the two Wild Card games complete, many people have been questioning the format of October baseball. A large amount of these questions come from the validity of a winner takes all Wild Card game established in 2012. This year, the Wild Card game was played between the second and third best teams in baseball, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs respectively. Many felt that with teams as good as the Pirates and Cubs, one game couldn’t, and shouldn’t, decide who the better team was.
Well, as with many things, the voice of the masses were unheard. The game was played and the Chicago Cubs were crowned the winners.
Despite what many feel is unfair, maybe the Wild Card game is just a symptom of a larger post season problem?
I think it’s well known that the Major League Baseball playoffs don’t necessarily crown the best team in baseball. If this were true, the team with the best regular season record would win the World Championship a disproportionate amount of the time. Checking the number of World Series victors in the past 45 years, only 14 of those teams also led their league in wins. Not only is this a very small percentage, but the Wild Card team has often gone on to win the World Series (in recent memory, the 2014 San Francisco Giants) even though, in theory, they should be the weakest team in the competition.
What all this shows us, is that the playoffs aren’t a good way of measuring who the best team in baseball is. Most of the time, not even a 162 game season can do that. If it could, surprise teams like this years’ Texas Rangers, who have won 21 more games than they did last year with virtually the same team would be more prominent in the postseason.
Along with this huge swing in wins, we can also look at a teams Pythagorean Record. A team’s Pythagorean Record (or Pythag Record), tries to account for a team’s expected number of wins by looking at the team’s offense differential (runs scored vs. runs allowed). Looking at this years’ playoff teams, there isn’t a single instance where their actual record matches their Pythag Record. In every case, team’s either over or underperformed. What this can tell us is that baseball has a lot of variability, even after 162 games. To say that the best team in baseball can be determined within a couple of series in the playoffs is ridiculous.
So what does this all come down to? The realization the playoff baseball is almost purely for entertainment of the fans. The one game Wild Card situation is not optimal for rewarding the better team, nor is the rest of the post season. So while people complain about this one aspect, they’re ignoring the even more important fact that the playoffs, although intended to be fair, are simply not. October baseball is meant to be exciting, and the Wild Card game fits that bill perfectly. A do or die situation is a game any fan of any team can enjoy. So while the Wild Card game is imperfect, so are the rest of the games in October. Instead of complaining about the inequalities, just enjoy the last couple weeks of great baseball left this year.
