Fictional Divisional Alignment

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by buckeye22

I like 8 divisions of 4 and HEAVY on divisional play. We're talking 30 games against the other 3 in your division, no interleague, 6 against the other 12 in your league.

From a realism perspective of marketing, that many games against such a small number of opponents is probably not liked by a club try to sell tickets to a sporting event. There is always a desire to have a variety of opponents coming to town, so fans have more choice. Seeing the same three teams 15 times each season and everybody else just once is probably not ideal from the marketing/business point of view. And professional baseball is a business.

[David Watts]

What would you do?

Current League setup:
18 Teams
1 Sub-League
3 Divisions of 6
132 game schedule-12 games against teams in division. 6 against out of divisions teams

How would you setup you post season?

Would you go 3 division winners and one wildcard?
Or
Would you go simply division winners and give the division winner with best record a first round bye?

Not worried about which particular setup would be used in real life to bring in the most dollars. This is OOTP, so I'm simply trying to decide which method will lead to the more exciting league --regular season and post season.

[NoOne]

in that situation i'd go 4. just simpler.

also, you'd want to think about hte dynamics of a bye with jsut 2 series. you will definitely have more dynasties in that setup than one with a bye -- as just one example. i could see that being intriguing to many and a negative for many.

so it will come down to personal opinion of any side effects.

imo, that's a bit too much of an advantage going straight to the World Series. what if the have some injuries and such.. they won't be weeded out earlier etc..

what's your opinion on "deserving" etc...

i ignore "what it would be in RL" too when i setup a league. it's all about competition and limiting b&llsh^%. 18 games vs divisional oponents and no one else is too many boring games for the 'people'... too bad for the 'people' LoL

[Charley575]

Originally Posted by David Watts

What would you do?

Current League setup:
18 Teams
1 Sub-League
3 Divisions of 6
132 game schedule-12 games against teams in division. 6 against out of divisions teams

How would you setup you post season?

Would you go 3 division winners and one wildcard?
Or
Would you go simply division winners and give the division winner with best record a first round bye?

Not worried about which particular setup would be used in real life to bring in the most dollars. This is OOTP, so I'm simply trying to decide which method will lead to the more exciting league --regular season and post season.

When I started my league, there was no Wildcard. I added it after seeing that there were a lot of very good teams (95+ wins) getting left out. That's with 8 teams in a division, though. 6 is enough to be sure of at least one good team per division, so I'd say experiment. You can always change it after a few seasons.

[Charley575]

So I looked at some numbers:
Since my team is in the Eastern Conference I sampled the Western Conference only to eliminate any human factors. The league was started in 2000. Wildcards were first introduced in 2007. We are currently in the 2026 season so we have 19 seasons of wildcard play to analyze.
Findings:
The 1 seed won the league championship 9 times (47%). the 2 and 3 seeds each won 5 times (26%).
The 3 seed won the wildcard playoff 9 times over the 2 seed (47%)
The 3 seed won more regular season games than the 2 seed 11 times (58%), including a 99 win wildcard in 2018.
In 2021 there was a pronounced strong division/weak division dynamic. The Milwaukee Bulls won the North division with 85 wins. That's the fewest wins of any team to make the playoffs over the 19 seasons. They also had the only winning record in the North division that year. There were 5 90+ win teams in the South division, and we play with an unbalanced schedule. The Bulls were swept by the 3 seeded Phoenix Cobras (97 wins) in 2 games in Round 1.
A total of just 6 teams made the playoffs win fewer than 90 wins (11% of all playoff teams), and with the exception of the aforementioned 2021 Milwaukee Bulls, none had fewer than 88.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with these results. Thoughts?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by David Watts

How would you setup you post season?

Would you go 3 division winners and one wildcard?
Or
Would you go simply division winners and give the division winner with best record a first round bye?

You could do something different and go winter league-style. Have a three-team round-robin, with the top two finishers moving on to the league championship.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by NoOne

i ignore "what it would be in RL" too when i setup a league. it's all about competition and limiting b&llsh^%. 18 games vs divisional oponents and no one else is too many boring games for the 'people'... too bad for the 'people' LoL

You are fortunate your virtual fans don't care about opponent diversity!

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by Charley575

So I looked at some numbers:
Since my team is in the Eastern Conference I sampled the Western Conference only to eliminate any human factors. The league was started in 2000. Wildcards were first introduced in 2007. We are currently in the 2026 season so we have 19 seasons of wildcard play to analyze.
Findings:
The 1 seed won the league championship 9 times (47%). the 2 and 3 seeds each won 5 times (26%).
The 3 seed won the wildcard playoff 9 times over the 2 seed (47%)
The 3 seed won more regular season games than the 2 seed 11 times (58%), including a 99 win wildcard in 2018.
In 2021 there was a pronounced strong division/weak division dynamic. The Milwaukee Bulls won the North division with 85 wins. That's the fewest wins of any team to make the playoffs over the 19 seasons. They also had the only winning record in the North division that year. There were 5 90+ win teams in the South division, and we play with an unbalanced schedule. The Bulls were swept by the 3 seeded Phoenix Cobras (97 wins) in 2 games in Round 1.
A total of just 6 teams made the playoffs win fewer than 90 wins (11% of all playoff teams), and with the exception of the aforementioned 2021 Milwaukee Bulls, none had fewer than 88.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with these results. Thoughts?

you have a choice of going by position or win pct... if you dind't like 11 times that a higher win team didn't have home advantage?

in mine, it's 100% divisional, so i look at records as apples to oranges and stick with the position from their divisional standings. if there was more interdivisional play, like mlb, i would prefer the win % being the seeding method.

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

You are fortunate your virtual fans don't care about opponent diversity!

my 55.6k stadium cna make more than 220+million a year... it seems to work out alright

i think a 54.2k maxed out at 230some million? this one can get higher, obviously. just haven't tried. not with normal teams, though lol. ~200M with non Fun-Leagues.

18gp is roughly what the current mlb does now (19 divissional games?).. but, i have 10-team divisions instead of 5, so it's not that bad... but if it were 38gp i wouldn't mind either

[Charley575]

Originally Posted by NoOne

you have a choice of going by position or win pct... if you dind't like 11 times that a higher win team didn't have home advantage?

in mine, it's 100% divisional, so i look at records as apples to oranges and stick with the position from their divisional standings. if there was more interdivisional play, like mlb, i would prefer the win % being the seeding method.

No I'm fine with that. Home field advantage is the reward for winning the division. The fact that the 3 seed won more games than the 2 seed more than half the time justifies the wildcard in my opinion, which was the point that was intended to make. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.

[NoOne]

you can still do both..

eg you can make the division winners always > wildcards in seeding... then if you want win% or divisional seeding to take precedent that's an option.

only if you dislike a higher win% not having home field advantage -- outside of divisional winners. (tick box options for each) -- it wasn't a suggestion as another wrinkle to use/not use.

[dannibalcorpse]

Just to throw my two cents in - I did an expansion save out of the 2017 quickstart so there were 16 teams in each league - split it up into four 4-team divisions, and customized the playoffs so each division winner gets in and there's one wildcard team; the division winner with the worst record has to play the wildcard winner. So you don't wind up having too many teams get in, and there's still some chance for correction if an 82-win team wins the division and faces a 90-win team in the wildcard game.

Same playoff setup as now, too - WC game is 1 and done, 5 for the LDS, and 7 for the LCS/WS.

[Charley575]

I hate the One and Done. I just do. Nothing in baseball is one and done, except tie breakers. One and Done sucks.

[Elektranaut]

I have 36 teams divided into 2 leagues each with 3 divisions of 6 teams.Only the divisional winners make the play-offs.The team with the best record in each league gets a bye and plays the winner of the play off between the other 2 divisional winners in their respective league.There is no inter league play.

[Elektranaut]

well that's another thread I've finished off

[inverarity]

Originally Posted by Charley575

I currently have the same setup. 2 Leagues, 2 Divisions of 8 in each. For the playoffs, there is 1 wildcard from each league. #1 Seed gets a first round bye. 2nd Seed plays an all home 3 game series against the WC to advance to the league championship, which is set up as a traditional 2-3-2 series.
I had tried the 8 divisions of 4 teams in a previous league and hated it. There's always that one garbage division that spits out a "champion" with a losing record. I think I had a 75 win team get in once (162 game season). I swore never again. (Don't get me started about the current NFL setup. That's bull____.)
Anyways I'm quite happy with the way I have it set up now.

I'm going to try this setup in my year 2022 season. I started an MLB league with a 2 team expansion, and set it up as 8 divisions, 4 teams each. I didn't like the results. It wasn't the expected issue of under .500 teams making the playoffs, it was the fact that none of the divisions had good pennant races. Only 1 of them finished with the 2nd place team 3 games behind the winner; the rest were 5+. I think having so few teams and so many games separates the teams too much, compared to a 16 game schedule in football.

Anyhow, I moved to 4 divisions, 8 teams each, with the top 3 in each division making the playoffs (and having a true division playoff: 3v2 for a best of 3; then 2v1 for a best of 3, all games at home). That just didn't feel like baseball.

So now I'll try the 4 divisions, 8 teams in each, with a wildcard in each league.

[The Game]

I switched from 2 divisions back to 3 with 4 expansion teams: Montreal, Havana, Portland & Charlotte joining the league. I think the WC race was fantastic this season. ANA beat OAK in a 1 game playoff.
2026

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Charley575

I hate the One and Done. I just do. Nothing in baseball is one and done, except tie breakers.

And even that wasn't always the case. Best-of-three to settle a first-place tie was the rule for many years.