Went 67-94 only 5 1/2 games outta first in Division WHAT?
 

So, I am so disappointed in my team we were dominating this year 67-94! Yet, we could not wrap up the division my manager should be fired!


In all seriousness, WHAT? Attached is the roster expansion record and season end I honestly have never seen a time that a division was so wretched that everyone had losing records crazy.


Have any of you ever seen this?

73-89 matches the worst division champ I've seen in the standard structure.

Oof. Only 1 team in the entire rest of the league outside your division was actually worse than the division winner...

Damn, I knew this was bad :/

Wow. Met fans in your universe have a legitimate beef.

Color me impressed...what an outlier.

I saw that, I am like damn 90-72 and still can't pull it out haha

Though all 5 teams in the division went 5-5 or 6-4 in the last 10 games, heh.

Even the Phillies would have won that division. LOL. There was actually something similar back in the mid-90's. when the Texas Rangers won the AL West but finished only two games over .500 or thereabouts. Not as bad a record as your division champion but a similar situation. Or as close to a similar situation as I can remember.

IRL when the strike broke in August of 1994 the Texas Rangers "led" the new look AL West ('94 was also the first year of 3 divisions) with a 52-62 record, which works out to around 74 or 75 wins if they kept that up.

The Rangers were 10 under .500 (52-62) in 1994 and leading the AL West by 1 game when the strike hit. The rest of the season was canceled. That same year, the Dodgers (58-56) were 2 over .500 at the strike and led the NL West by 3 1/2. That was also the first year of the three-division alignment, though teams were playing a balanced schedule at that point.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/l.../AL/1994.shtml

https://www.baseball-reference.com/l.../NL/1994.shtml

Can't wait to see this happen in real life baseball. And it will. That's because divisions are meaningless. And leagues are on the way to the same. Why?

Because if a team is going to be champion of something, others in that something need to be their major competitors. In today's baseball, they're not.

Ideally a champion of something would play all of its games against those competing for the same championship. Like in pre 69 baseball. When division play was introduced in 69 the separation of the leagues remained, and teams played the majority of their games, 90, against division opponents.

Now the schedule is complete BS with interleague play, natural rivals unbalanced opponents, etc. Its so bad Baseball Reference developed a strength of schedule calculation. There is absolutely no reason to need a strength of schedule calculation in a sport where each team plays 162 games. There is PLENTY of games provide an equal schedule.

Divisions function to prevent baseball from throwing 15 teams into one set of standings then then having to try to explain why the 5th best one should be in the playoffs. But its all fake. Divisions mean nothing. Actually they make it worse. Because as bad as it is letting a clearly 5th best team into the playoffs, divisions allow teams even worse than that in.

But I suppose this has about as much chance of getting fixes as we have of getting rid of the DH and unjuicing baseballs.

Interesting there is zero support for baseball's current division alignment. So why do people play ootp with the real life alignment? They don't have to.

Mostly because I'm too lazy to fix it myself

You are 100% right. I personally like regional divisions. My work around is simple. I manually edit the playoff match ups at the end of the season so the teams with the most wins regardless of division alignment play. If anyone is curious, OOTP does a fantastic job of recognizing my edits in the historical index. I also think it adds some flair to my save when you don't have a team represent a division for a few years in the playoffs.

Go Brewers!

As a fan, I like the divisions. I like knowing who we need to try and beat to get in the playoffs. I also like that divisions make it a bit easier for smaller market clubs to get into the playoffs. As a Reds fan, we can occasionally make a run at the division. It also gives rivalries more meaning. We play the Cardinals and the Cubs more often than other teams, and those games are more meaningful. That certainly helps fan interest, IMO.

Eliminate them and the league becomes like the Premiere League, a few teams consistently fighting for the top and a lot of teams that are always in the middle or bottom.

Do you also adjust the schedule so that it doesn't have you play more games against teams in your division? Otherwise, the "Top 5 teams" may not be a good reflection of the actual top 5. My Reds would have been quite happy to play the Marlins 19 times, instead of only 7.

Yea, I should have been a bit more clear. I'm mostly a fictional player, so I create my divisions where there are enough teams overall to play a balanced schedule, so it works. The divisions are more cosmetic truly speaking. I imagine you would definitely have to do some schedule manipulation/expansion or contraction to do this in a standard game.

Get rid of the Rays and another team and there's 28 left. That makes 14 per league 7 per division. No interleague or natural rivals play.

18 games vs each team in division, 9 home 9 away, 18 x 6 = 108. 8 games vs each team in leagues other division 4 home 4 away, 7 x 8 = 56. Total 164 games.

Each division winner has won something meaningful, a division where they played the majority of their games, and there's no arguments about schedule strength.

Or, for those who think the Rays should live (fine with me, just get them out of St Pete) then expand by two. 8 home 8 away in division. 7 x 16 = 112, 4 home 4 away out of division 6 x 8 = 48. Total games is 160.

Sorry, but for those who think 20% or 25% of the league ought to make the playoffs, there's no solution that will prevent you from whining about teams with records that indicate they obviously don't belong.

Anyway, I don't let the stupidity of real baseball screw up my games. Right now I'm at 24 teams in 1976 and I'm going to delay the next expansion for a few years then expand by four teams.