Division ties at end of regular season

[remington]

I have been running a sim league in Manager Mode on OOTP6 for 25+ seasons. I had this happen a couple of seasons early on, but never really thought too much about it. It happened again in the last two seasons, though, so I thought I would mention it.

I am running 2 leagues with 3 divisions per league. My playoff structure is 3 division champs and a wildcard. Here is where the problem is. At the end of the regular season, I have two teams tied for the division championship. The computer seems to pick one team to advance to the playoffs. I've seen no aparent reason for this. In my last season sim, I had two divisions that had ties. Neither team had a one-game playoff. HOWEVER, the other league had a 1-game playoff between the two teams who were tied for the wildcard.

Is this a bug or is there some metric that it compares the head-to-head records or maybe the in-division record to decide who goes to the playoffs?

[jmm8356]

I know I saw one-game playoffs in my two league, one division per league setup when I was simming to tweak the league totals.

My first thought would be that there must be a wildcard involved for this bug to pop up. Are you sure the "other" team in the division wasn't the wildcard? In R/L, they don't play a playoff when both teams are going to the postseason anyway.

[remington]

Standings at the end of the season:
AL:
East:
Boston 89-73
Cleveland 89-73

Central:
Atlanta 96-66
Richmond 87-75

West:
Phoenix 87-75
Salt Lake City 87-75

NL:
East:
Baton Rouge 94-68
Greenville 91-71

Central:
Buffalo 108-54
Dayton 71-91

West:
Palm Beach 86-76
Los Angeles 82-80
St. Louis 82-80

Season is currently on hold. There is a one game playoff between St. Louis and LA.

[sporr]

Hmmm...I don't see how St Louis or LA even have a shot at the playoffs. In that league it should be Baton Rouge, Buffalo, and Palm Beach with Greenville as the WC.

[jmm8356]

Yeah, resolving ties in a league with a wild card seems to be pretty well screwed up. My current theory is that the wild card is determined by the game by comparing the second place teams, so if there's a tie for any second place, it has to resolve it via playoff before it can figure out who the wild card should be. Just speculation, though.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by remington

AL

East
Boston 89-73
Cleveland 89-73

Central
Atlanta 96-66
Richmond 87-75

West
Phoenix 87-75
Salt Lake City 87-75

NL

East
Baton Rouge 94-68
Greenville 91-71

Central
Buffalo 108-54
Dayton 71-91

West
Palm Beach 86-76
Los Angeles 82-80
St. Louis 82-80

Given these final standings and going by MLB rules, there is no playoff in the AL East. Both Boston and Cleveland and have a better record than any of the other second place teams in the other divisions, so both are going to the post-season. Therefore, the division title tie doesn't need to be broken with a playoff game; instead, the division title is awarded to the team which had the better record in head-to-head play between the clubs.

There is a playoff in the AL West though, with the winner getting the division pennant and a spot in the post-season, while the loser goes home.

There should be no playoff games in the NL. Greenville would be the wildcard team.

Having St. Louis and Los Angeles play a playoff game makes no sense whatsoever. Are you sure that the extra game between the clubs didn't get accidentally added to your regular season at some point and you hadn't noticed it prior to this point?

[jazzrack]

yes, this is a problem

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ad.php?t=72009

check out our standings http://www.clb.dawnstarv.us/output/league.html

and to make it worse Coors & Toyota had a 1 game playoff for no reason, neither team was going to got the playoffs.

[remington]

I have yet to proceed with the season to see who actually makes the playoffs. Will be doing so tonight. I agree with everyone who has come up with an analysis of who should win which division. Problem is, the game doesn't seem to see things that way.
No, this game was not on the regular season schedule, I know this for certain. I went to the last day of the regular season that had a game scheduled, then went to the NEXT day and clicked "sim to today" When simming was done, there was suddenly a game scheduled for that day, as opposed to it being an off day.

I just wanted to put this on the board to see if others have seen it, and let OOTP know something was amiss, and see what people have done to fix the problem...

I'll let you know who ends up in the playoffs tonight.

[sporr]

I'm wondering if you can simply delete that game and schedule the correct tie-breaker as LGO has detailed. You'd have to test it to be sure that the game recognized everything correctly after the game though.

[Henry]

Building on Sporr's comment, I would make a backup of the league and try a couple different scenarios, then share that information with everyone.

[remington]

NL playoff teams turned out the way they should have.
AL playoff teams more or less did.
Boston and Cleveland play each other
Atlanta plays Phoenix.
Salt Lake City is just bum out of luck. In head-to-head, Phoenix had 8 wins and SLC had 7, so that must be how it was decided.

Still not sure about the 1-game playoff.

[jmm8356]

Originally Posted by remington

In head-to-head, Phoenix had 8 wins and SLC had 7, so that must be how it was decided.

Or the game just got lucky... there's a history of things like this being decided alphabetically.

Originally Posted by remington

Still not sure about the 1-game playoff.

I still think that the game must determine the wild-card by comparing all second place teams, so if there is a tie for ANY second place, it has to schedule a playoff to resolve it before it can figure out the wild-card team(s).

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by remington

Salt Lake City is just bum out of luck. In head-to-head, Phoenix had 8 wins and SLC had 7, so that must be how it was decided.

Doesn't matter how it was determined, it's a mistake. The Salt Lake City and Phoenix clubs should have played a tiebreaking playoff game, since both were tied for the division title and the loser of the playoff game is eliminated from post-season play. There's definitely a glitch somewhere in the code.

Now, when it comes to three-way ties, OOTP is not set up to deal with that at all, so then it does go by team ID number or something like that. But this case is just two teams tied for the final post-season slot, so it really ought to have scheduled a tiebreaking playoff game.

Here's hoping OOTP7 will be more flexible in this regard... and maybe even incorporate the older tiebreaking regimes used back in the days when a two-way tie required a best-of-3 series to break. The three- and four-way tiebreaking scenarios there are quite interesting...

[jmm8356]

Just an idea to allow you to schedule your own tiebreakers (though the unnecessary tiebreakers are still a problem)...

Going into the last day of a season, I saw there was a possibility of a three-way tie, so I tried something...

1) Schedule a nonsense game between two last-place teams, two days after the last regular season game
2) Play/sim the games involving the contending teams
a) If there are no ties, or just normal two-way ties (in no wild-card leagues), delete the nonsense game and proceed normally
3) Schedule the first tie-breaker game for the day after the season ends, and play/sim it
4) Schedule the second tie-breaker game, delete the nonsense game, and proceed normally

This would work for four-way ties too, I would think. The only drawback would be, if you play/simmed the entire final day and there were no ties, you'd end up with an extra off day before the playoffs (after you delete the nonsense game and "Complete Day"), but you can avoid this by only playing the important games and then checking for ties before finishing the schedule.