Play-off Tiebreakers

[as5680]

I have seen a few threads about tiebreakers but none seem quite to cover the issue I saw in my AAA league in the season just finished.

I have three divisions in each subleague, with champions and one wildcard making the play-offs.

Two teams had finished tied at the top of one division at 86-76, so played a one game tiebreaker to decide the division. That left the loser on 86-77, while the next team in the wild card race had finished 85-77.

I would have expected the 86-77 team to get the wildcard as their win % was still slightly higher (.528 to .525) and they had finished the 162 game schedule with a better record, but OOTP scheduled a one-game play-off between the two to decide the wildcard (which the 85-77 team won).

I would rather the 86-77 team had got in, but unfortunately didn't notice until the play-offs had begun as I was engrossed in the major league's final week.

I wonder whether such a tiebreaker would be played in real life and if there is any way to prevent it in OOTP - would I have to manually format the play-offs based on finishing position in each division?

[hefalumps]

That one is interesting. I had a similar situation, but the two division leaders who played the one-game playoff also had the same record as the top wild card team, not a half game or one game difference like you had. In my situation, the loser of the one-game playoff still had to play the wild card team because I guess there's a real life rule that a team can't win the wild card because another team lost a one-game playoff.

Let me see if I can dig that thread up because there was a good discussion about it. I'm not sure how your situation would have been handled in real life, but I'm sure LGO might know. Maybe there's some rule about a playoff being required if you're separated by only half a game?

[hefalumps]

Here's the thread:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ml#post3550220

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by as5680

Two teams had finished tied at the top of one division at 86-76, so played a one game tiebreaker to decide the division. That left the loser on 86-77, while the next team in the wild card race had finished 85-77.

I would have expected the 86-77 team to get the wildcard as their win % was still slightly higher (.528 to .525) and they had finished the 162 game schedule with a better record, but OOTP scheduled a one-game play-off between the two to decide the wildcard (which the 85-77 team won).

Can you post up your standings as they were after 162 games? (Screenshot or type out the W-L and Pct.) Something sounds strange there.

[as5680]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Can you post up your standings as they were after 162 games? (Screenshot or type out the W-L and Pct.) Something sounds strange there.

Standing for the subleague in question after 162 games were:

Central Division
Mansfield 100-62 .617
Shrewsbury 85-77 .525
Bedford 81-81 .500
Nuneaton 75-87 .463
Lincoln 68-94 .420

Western Division
Bath 108-54 .667
Weston-super-Mare 84-78 .519
Torbay 80-82 .494
Worcester 60-102 .370

Eastern Division
Lowestoft 86-76 .531
Crawley 86-76 .531
Basingstoke 79-83 .488
Maidstone 69-93 .426
Harlow 69-93 .426

Lowestoft beat Crawley in a one-game playoff to claim the Eastern Division title, moving to 87-76 (.534) and leaving Crawley at 86-77 (.528). I would have expected that to be the end of the regular season but the next day there was a play-off for the wildcard between Crawley (86-77) and Shrewsbury (85-77), which Shrewsbury won. I'm very glad that Weston-super-Mare lost on the final day or they would have been involved at 85-77 as well!

I'm not too worried about it as it was only my AAA league (and Shrewsbury got swept in the first round of the play-offs anyway) but it would be nice to know why it happened and how I might prevent it should it ever happen again.

I can quite understand the need for the playoff in the linked example - certainly makes sense not to hand a team a place in the postseason just because there was a tie elsewhere.

This all had nothing on the nightmare scenario that my major league would have faced had results on the final day gone differently - the possibility of ties in two divisions both at 101-67 and another team in a third division also tied at 101-67 for the last wildcard! Thankfully that didn't come about!

[Le Grande Orange]

Are you sure your post-season format is for only ONE wild card qualifier? Because if it was TWO then what happened makes sense. The division tie-breaker loser (Crawley) is one wild card qualifier, and Shrewsbury is the other wild card qualifier. These two then play a single game to determine who advances to the next round, just like how MLB now does it.

[as5680]

Yes, definitely only one wild card in each sub league.

The play-off between Crawley and Shrewsbury was not a postseason game, it has been counted in the regular season standings.

On the final standings, Crawley are shown as 86-78 and Shrewsbury 86-77 so both single game play-offs have definitely been included.

Crawley do not appear in the postseason bracket at all.

[Le Grande Orange]

Well, then I have no answer. There is no way at all there should have been a second tie-breaking game. The clubs did not have the same record at the end of the regular season.

[bwburke94]

I confirmed this glitch's existence a while ago.

Incidentally, you can't delete the game. OOTP will reschedule it for the next day.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by bwburke94

I confirmed this glitch's existence a while ago.

Never saw it myself, but then, I was looking at other tie scenarios to see how OOTP would handle them.

[as5680]

Originally Posted by bwburke94

I confirmed this glitch's existence a while ago.

Incidentally, you can't delete the game. OOTP will reschedule it for the next day.

Thanks - glad to know that it should not have taken place rather than wondering if there was a rule I didn't know about!

I guess if such a situation were to happen again then all I could do would be to close OOTP and replay the game if the 'wrong' team were to win, to try to make sure that the right teams got into the play-offs even by the wrong method.

[hefalumps]

So here's my theory on what I think happened.

As my scenario demonstrated (see the link in the third post of this thread), if a team is tied for a playoff spot at the end of the season, even if a separate tiebreaker results in that tie being broken by a half game, OOTP still schedules the tiebreaker. Apparently this was a recent rule change I was unaware of that would prevent, for example, a team getting gifted a wild card spot because a team they were tied with lost a one-game playoff for a division spot. So what OOTP did in my scenario made sense.

But in the OP's scenario, it appears OOTP didn't pay attention to whether the two teams were tied for a playoff spot at season's end. Instead, it just saw that they were only separated by a half game and scheduled the "tiebreaker" anyway.

So that's my theory - OOTP is only using "teams are separated by half a game heading to posteason" in its decision to schedule a tiebreaker instead of "teams were tied for playoff spot at regular season's end AND are now separated by half a game heading to postseason".

I have absolutely no way to prove my theory, but there it is.

Did that make sense?

[as5680]

Originally Posted by hefalumps

Did that make sense?

Yes that makes sense and sounds quite plausible as to what is happening. If OOTP is looking at the standings after the first single game play-off, and forgetting what the situation was before that, you can see how the mistake could come about.

[hefalumps]

Originally Posted by as5680

Yes that makes sense and sounds quite plausible as to what is happening. If OOTP is looking at the standings after the first single game play-off, and forgetting what the situation was before that, you can see how the mistake could come about.

Exactly. That perfectly sums up what I was trying to say. Thanks!

[as5680]

Of course the bizarre thing in my example is that with Shrewsbury winning the additional play-off, the teams were still separated by half a game in the standings after all (Shrewsbury half a game ahead instead of half a game behind)!