48-team league...playoff scenarios (OOTP)

[Young Drachma]

I'd post this in the baseball forum, but I don't want to upset the crickets.

So my 300+ year old league is now rebooted and I started over with the same teams but merged some other structure and so now we're at 48 teams because I was feeling crazy.

I've been alternating with the playoff structures over the past five seasons since rebooting the league.

First I had the league at 8 per league (16 playoff teams) and then I cut back to 12 teams (6 per league) where the two worst division champions had to play wild cards.

Now heading into the 7th season after five seasons of the 12 team setup, I'm debating what to do with my postseason structure. For now, I'm considering keeping the 12-team structure but rather than have two wild cards have the chance to potentially advance to the division series, I intend to pit the 5th and 6th seed (the two wild cards) against each other in one wild card series and then the two worst division champions in the other wild card series.

Very NCAA-like I know.

I'm looking for some ideas/thoughts/feedback.

[Young Drachma]

Also trying to figure out the best series length. Right now I'm kicking the tires on a 5-7-7-9 setup. I always have a 9 game championship and a 7-game LCS. It's the first two rounds that I debate most often about. My regular season now starts in early March so I don't have to worry about the season pushing into November.

[Bobble]

I voted 16. I think about 1/3 of teams is the sweet spot. You get more teams in it for longer but don't have half the league make the playoffs.

[EagleFan]

Where is the 8 team option? :) 8 divisions of 6, division winners only.

[Young Drachma]

Where is the 8 team option? :) 8 divisions of 6, division winners only.

I hadn't ever considered this, but I guess it's an option. ;)

Take for instance this season. I've attached the current standings by subleague.

I don't like the idea of an 88-win team getting in over 90-something win teams that might even have a better H2H record against them.

[Young Drachma]

Consider testing out a split season format for this year. I think given how long baseball's season is, having the season split into two parts could be super interesting and if a team is struck with an injury or otherwise needs a reboot it could work well for them. This feedback is great though thanks gang.

[EagleFan]

Consider testing out a split season format for this year. I think given how long baseball's season is, having the season split into two parts could be super interesting and if a team is struck with an injury or otherwise needs a reboot it could work well for them. This feedback is great though thanks gang.

I haven't tried split season in a while. Have they fixed the standings for the second half of the season? I remember the standings always showed overall record and not just second half record (maybe I was doing something wrong). I think the teams would be ordered by the second half record but that just made it look even odder.

[EagleFan]

dola: The thing I dislike about split season, even in real life, is that it leaves a hole in which the actual best team of a season could miss out of the playoffs completely. I have seen that a bunch of times in minor leagues where a team that tears up the first half loses a lot of players to the majors and ends up the second half with a poor record and a team that has been in the mix all year but just missing out to the hot first half and hot second half teams.

1st half
Team A 48-33
Team B 47-34
Team C 44-37

2nd half
Team C 49-32
Team B 47-34
Team A 43-38

Overall would be
Team B 94-68
Team C 93-69
Team A 91-71

But Team B watches from home... kind of sucks. (I actually dislike that more than a division winner having a worse record than a team that misses the wild card :) )

[Young Drachma]

You were right about the split season. i opted against it when a 100-win team was going to miss out on the playoffs. And yeah it fixed the split season winners now so it displays both 1st half and 2nd half leaders but it doesn't show the GB or anything so it's still borked.

[Young Drachma]

After a bit of realignment, going to experiment with 16 again next year but not seed wild cards the lowest. So basically there's no incentive to winning your division at all, it's all about home field really. I'll be curious to see what the end result looks like.

Outside of a tiebreaker, I don't like playoff byes, I like teams to play the same amount of games (in football it makes more sense to have byes obvi) especially in baseball, so having everyone have to suit up in the first round make sense.

I'll be curious to see if it leads to a fluke champion and whether that bothers me or not enough to do something about it. Just seems off to have soooo many teams and not have more than a third of them post-season eligible.

But this past year I simmed with just 10 teams and it worked okay, only one of the wild cards managed to get through and they won the whole thing pretty handily.

[cuervo72]

dola: The thing I dislike about split season, even in real life, is that it leaves a hole in which the actual best team of a season could miss out of the playoffs completely.

The '81 Reds say hi. :)

[stevew]

My vote is 2.

What's so wrong with league 1 regular season champ meeting league 2 regular season champ in a single round playoff for the title. Hell, make it a best of 15 or something.

[Young Drachma]

Haha, I forgot I was posting at FOFC.

[Young Drachma]

PLAYOFFS WHO NEEDS PLAYOFFS? IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR BABE RUTH IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME. Jokes aside, I'm not even ruling this out. I think it'd be interesting to see a setup where only a few teams get in and I get to immerse myself in only the elite teams for a while.

[Young Drachma]

After trying two years of 18 TEAMS for goodness sakes (With wild cards winning pennants but not titles) in both years, I'm doing a season with only division champs (and a schedule that's entirely intradivision)

Then I think sticking permanently (for now) with the 12-team setup. It's the best balance for my buck. I think if OOTP rendered the playoff tree better, I'd probably be more excited but the fact that you can't even look at it appropriately just makes me feel even weirder about a setup like that.