What does a balanced schedule mean, anyway?
ByJoe Maddon would like an easier path to the playoffs for his Tampa Bay Rays. Or at least that’s the sense I got after reading his comments on the unbalanced schedule this past weekend.
Last night, before the Rays got shellacked by the Boston Red Sox, Joe Maddon spoke with reporters about the 2010 season, and he opined on the challenging path to the playoffs. Since the Rays are suffering from the bad luck of playing in the American League, they’ve had to face the Red Sox, Yankees and Blue Jays 52 times this season, and Maddon says these teams are wearing down his club. His solution? A “balanced” schedule, whatever that means.
“I’m saying yes,” he said, answering the question of whether or not it’s been tough to reach the playoffs this year than in 2008. “Because of the [rise] of Toronto and now Baltimore, tThis is definitely a reason to argue in favor of a more balanced schedule. We wouldn’t have to see these teams as often.”
Maddon then had the audacity to complain about the remainder of his team’s games this year. The Rays have to face the Yanks, Blue Jays and Orioles, and somehow, this is, in his words, a “form of baseball masochism.” For what its worth, 15 of the Rays’ final 25 games are against teams over .500 while the Yanks play 19 of their final 24 against winning teams. Maddon attempted to clarify, “It not just about not playing the Red Sox as many times or the Yankees as many times. It’s about not playing anybody that amount of times.”
Since the dawn of the three-division league and the advent of Interleague Play, the idea of a balanced schedule as long eluded Major League Baseball. That’s because it’s tough to pinpoint what exactly a balanced schedule is. Under the current 162-game iteration, teams play their intradivision rivals more than they do teams in their league but in other divisions. For example, the Yankees play the Rays, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Orioles 18 times apiece this year, and while Tampa Bay may bemoan that tough slate, it’s one that impacts all four of its division rivals. That attention on the division isn’t the problem.
For Maddon and those who dislike this unevenness, the interdivision games and interleague contests are the real problems. The Yanks, for instance, played the AL Central-leading Twins just six times this year while the Rays drew them in eight games. The Yanks face Oakland and Seattle ten times each while Tampa Bay plays those two teams just nine times each. In a division that could be decided by as little as a game or two, every edge matters.
Over the course of a long season, the unbalanced schedule inevitable and unsurprisingly balances out. Based upon team records as of today, the Yanks’ opponents have a combined .496 winning percentage, and the Rays’ opponents have a combined .501 winning percentage. (The Red Sox, because they play both Tampa Bay and the Yanks 18 times each and the Braves six times, suffer from a schedule with a .508 winning percentage.) The numbers show that Tampa Bay’s opponents are a combined 1234-1241 while the Yanks’ are a combined 1220-1258. Over the course of a 162-game season, the difference between a .496 team and a .501 team is 0.8 wins. Maddon is crying over spilt milk.
If MLB truly wanted a balanced schedule, they would have to figure out what exactly that means. Does it mean each team plays every other team the same amount of times? Does it mean the combined weighted winning percentage of one team’s opponents must equal that of every other’s? Does it mean eliminating Interleague Play and restoring a system where the Yanks would play division rivals 13 times and the other AL teams 12 times? Whatever the answer, the schedule still rarely be perfectly even.
Barring a collapse, both Tampa Bay and the Yankees will make the playoffs this year, and Maddon’s criticism focuses more on the fact that it’s now tough for Tampa Bay to secure home-field advantage than anything else. The real issue is how the Rays will be the AL’s second-best team but will have to settle for the fourth seed in the playoffs. That, and not the unbalanced schedule, doesn’t make sense.
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If teams within a division played each other less, wouldn’t that significantly lessen what it means to win a division?
I don’t think so, Most games are not head to head. FWIW, I agree with Maddon, dump interleague and play everyone in the AL the same amount of times and if you need to dump teams to make the math work even better. File this under “stuff that will never happen”
I wouldn’t think so. The best team should win a division, and whether that’s determined through 9-12 head-to-head games instead of 18 shouldn’t be that big a deal.
I don’t think so either. Mostly because… what does it mean to win your division?
Divisional play didn’t start until 1969. There’s really not much of an historical purpose. I believe the only reason divisional play exists is so teams and MLB can force geographical rivalries down our throats, even if they are a bit far-flung (like Red Sox-Rays). More rivalries = more hype = more attention = more money.
This isn’t little league. Being better than the other teams in your area doesn’t matter.
Of course divisions give a semblance of order to scheduling, but that would need to occur anyway. When the Yanks go west, they usually face 2 or sometimes 3 AL West opponents. Or when they swing through the mid-west, they’ll face teams from the Central.
With the advent of the wild card, the organization of teams into divisions is irrelevant. Lumping them all together (like the old days) and having the 4 best teams advance to the post season would work perfectly.
It would just mean less money for the teams and MLB, which is why it won’t happen.
Does it mean each team plays every other team the same amount of times? Does it mean the combined weighted winning percentage of one team’s opponents must equal that of every other’s?
Presumably the former, as the latter would be impossible, as one could only base on the previous year.
If they wanted to “fix this” just make 1 division, top 4 teams make the playoffs.
I can get behind that too. Or 4 divisions
4 divisions would again cause the issue of the #2 team in baseball could not make the playoffs, which is the point you’re trying to avoid. By making it top 4 qualify no one that’s “deserving” of the playoffs or home field doesn’t get it.
just for fun, I came up with a 30 team, 2 league, 4 division alignment…each league’s new ‘south’ division has only 3 teams, and 1 team switched leagues, the D’Backs.
Here she goes:
AL
East:
1)NY Yanks
2)Boston Red Sox
3)Toronto Blue Jays
4)Baltimore Orioles
Central:
1)Minnesota Twins
2)Chicago White Sox
3)Detroit Tigers
4)Cleveland Indians
South:
1)Texas Rangers
2)Tampa Bay Rays
3)Kansas City Royals
West:
1)Los Angeles Angels
2)Oakland A’s
3)Seattle Mariners
4)Arizona D’Backs (swith)
NL
East:
1)Philadelphia Phillies
2)New York Mets
3)Pittsburgh Pirates
4)Washington Nationals
Central:
1)St. Louis Cardinals
2)Chicago Cubs
3)Milwaukee Brewers
4)Cinncinati Reds
South(brutal):
1)Atlanta Braves
2)Florida Marlins
3)Houston Astros
West:
1)LA Dodgers
2)San Diego Padres
3)SanFran Giants
4)Colorado Rockies
kinda fun to think about, again, that NL South is brutal.
I know it’s just a fun exercise, but the teams in the South, regardless of their meh-ness have an unfair advantage in making the playoffs. They only have to be better than 2 teams to get a spot in the post season. Look at the Rangers this year. All they have to do is be better than two .500 teams, and an awful Mariners team.
oh totally agree…just tweeking with it.
i think they should do seeding like they do in the NBA playoffs and just do seeding by overall record and then not give a rat’s ass about 2 teams from the same division meeting in the alds. It’s dumb for the rays to have the second best record, but the 4th best playoff spot (The NBA fixed this problem a few years ago).
The MLB seems to follow what the NFL and NBA do in terms of scheduling, meaning that each team plays the divisional opponents X amount of times per year, and then the amount of times you play the other teams varies.
The one difference is the interleague, and the fact that you dont play the same teams as your divisional opponents do. Thats what needs to be changed, if anything
Good points.
Bag interleague and go with the 13 vs division and 12 vs the rest.
The ‘interleague is old’ idea is a tired one, but one I agree with.
Also, I like how the NFL started doing it this year and scheduling division games at the end. Wonder if MLB could figure a way that Sept would be division games only?
This would prevent one team having to go west in sept when another doesn’t, ect…
Wonder if MLB could figure a way that Sept would be division games only?
Expand to 32 teams, and realign to either 2 or 4 divisions. That’s the easiest way to do it. Right now 4 divisions have an odd number of teams, so a division only month is impossible.
How about the top 2 wild card finishers play a three-game series to determine who wins the WC?
baseball is already played in November, adding a 3 game series to each league wouldn’t help that.
Would baseball ever scale back it’s regular season to 154 games?
No money, it’s about the money.
I’ve kicked that around idea too, but the biggest problem is that unlike basketball or football, too much time off is really tough on players. Pitchers and hitters are like machines, they need to play regularly with a few well-placed breaks. I think squeezing in the 3 game play-in would do more harm than good.
Besides, I think 4 qualifying teams is enough. 4 out of 14 in the AL and 4 out of 16 in the NL. That’s a 28% and 25% chance of making the playoffs.
Play every team in the league the same # of times, whatever that may be. I don’t need to see Jeremy Guthrie pitch 6 times a season.
I would not mind a balance schedule in which there is no inter-league play and everyone plays an equal amount of games with all the teams in the league.
With that said, I think Joe Maddon bitches a lot. I think i will call him Sir Magnus Bitchalus from now on.
Maddon sure does complain a lot.
In my hood, noisy bitch gets stitch!
You know, the inequalities between the divisions is something that has really caught my attention as of late. If this year looked like a hell ride in the AL East, a healthy Boston, some slight tweaks in Toronto and a Rays team capable of replacing lost players next year could mean a division race between four .580 teams (.600 would be impossible if they played. It raises the prospect that a team winning 100 games might not even make the playoffs, while the Rangers could cruise in there with 88 wins; Even this year has proven the massive disparity between divisions. It is quite clear then that something has to be done to fix this situation, something far more drastic than a simple balanced schedule: The divisions can no longer be geographically based. There are many alternatives to this. One is to be rid of divisions all together and go back to the old system, that the best team would win the pennant no matter what. Or, we could revise that and have the best two or four teams advance to a playoff. I’m sure that there’s other stuff, too.
big game tonite
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bring out the wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhambulance for maddon.
every team should play each other the same amount, even AL and NL… The top 4 teams from each LEAGUE would advance to the playoffs.
No divisions, even schedule…. This would bring parity because you are competeing against the entire league and not your division. This would be a fair schedule cuz you are playing each mlb team an equal amount, It would make a matchup with the red sox or mets mean something (seriously, does it mean anything to anyone anymore??? really??)
The only “disparity” could be a 5th place AL team being better than the 1st or 2nd place NL team, but who cares at that point…
oh, and I agree with Maddon…
1) It not fair that the west has four teams
2) I am sick of seing the rays, red sox, orioles, blue jays.. they feel like my in-laws or something
3) You almost NEVER get a sense of what other teams are like because you rarely see them.
4) We are not crying because we have the best record… but if we were in 4 games back of rays… It could easily be a Yankee making this argument
5) I want to see the best in the playoffs… not the 88 win cardinals; or whatever excuse for a playoff team the central divisions come up with.
Maddon is a crybaby but they do need to dump interleague play. Nobody cares about it anymore. Sure it was fun for a couple seasons but now there’s nothing special about interleague play. Then they should play a few less games vs. division and more against the rest of the league.
Dumping interleague play would also add more intrigue to the ASG and WS.
I think the notion of a balanced schedule is ridiculous. If a “balanced schedule” means that you’re playing all other teams the same amount of times, the travel would be ridiculous. If the idea of a balanced schedule means you’re playing more teams under .500, how is anyone going to predict that? Stats from the previous year? Teams can change radically from one year to another (see: Padres for up, Angels for down). I don’t think it would ever work.
Playing every team an equal amount of times and dumping interleague play—just make it a city/regional thing: Yankees vs Mets; Cubs vs White Sox, etc—are great ideas, but I don’t see MLB budging, especially on the latter which is supposed to be quite the money maker, so…
Even if Tampa isn’t playing against us, they are playing against us. Unless they are in a different division it doesn’t matter who they play. The Yankees would win just as many games playing the Pirates as Tampa would.
This is the inherent flaw with the Wild card. If you want to emphasize divisions, the unbalanced schedule is best. You can’t outright say the Twins are better than Texas because they have a better record. They play two very different schedules. Conceivably, the AL Central could be full of awful teams (Cleveland, KC, Detroit) that allows the Twins to stack up on wins. The Rangers play different teams, and they could be better (A’s are decent, M’s had pitching, Angels are ok). Regardless of whether you agree or not, the unbalanced schedule justifies division records.
If you had a balanced schedule and Boston or Chicago finished with the third best record, but missed the playoffs becauuse of the geographical nature of divisions, that’d be unfair.
On the other hand, to have a fair wild card, where teams are competing with each other, there should be a balanced schedule so that the wild card with the best record is assuredly the next best team.
My solution: Stick with the unbalanced schedule, do away with the Wild Card. It diminishes the integrity of the season.
YankeeJosh is the only one to hit the nail on the head here. Maddon’s comments about the unbalanced scheduled aren’t aimed at the AL East race…they are aimed at the Wild Card race. The 2nd place team in the AL East will have played a much tougher schedule under the unbalanced system than teams from the weaker divisions that they are competing against for the wild card.