Tie-breakers

[Scruff]

I realize I'm late to the party, but could the Pirates/Padres tie for seeding scenario further back be being broken by something like Pythag record?

[oman19]

Just giving this a bump so if seeding/tie-breadkers get some love I can give you some cash lol.!

[Isryion]

An online league I'm in had a three way tie for a wildcard spot. One team was excluded completely. Additionally, the game has improperly seeded the first round with the wildcard playing the bottom division winner for the last couple of seasons in the same league.

[oman19]

Originally Posted by Isryion

An online league I'm in had a three way tie for a wildcard spot. One team was excluded completely. Additionally, the game has improperly seeded the first round with the wildcard playing the bottom division winner for the last couple of seasons in the same league.

Thanks for the input. Hopefully we get the seeding issue taken care of. The 3 way tie has happened to me in the past i think you can take care of that manually by scheduling the games yourself. Have not had it happen to me in awhile but it would be nice if the game took care of it right by itself.

[Markus Heinsohn]

A three-way tie for a WC should have been handled properly by OOTP 13 already.

Anyway, this issue is on my list and I will have a look at it, but I cannot promise these wild things with 5+ teams tying for something. 4 is the max that will be handled by the game.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

A three-way tie for a WC should have been handled properly by OOTP 13 already.

Anyway, this issue is on my list and I will have a look at it, but I cannot promise these wild things with 5+ teams tying for something. 4 is the max that will be handled by the game.

That makes sense, but IIRC MLB did design a tie-breaking system for 5 teams for one place.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

A three-way tie for a WC should have been handled properly by OOTP 13 already.

See my tiebreaking thread in the beta forum, Markus.

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Anyway, this issue is on my list and I will have a look at it, but I cannot promise these wild things with 5+ teams tying for something. 4 is the max that will be handled by the game.

MLB rules specify tiebreaking procedures for ties involving up to four teams, and for ties for up to three playoff spots simultaneously. So OOTP should at least mimic those rules, especially since MLB now has the two wild card qualifier playoff format.

Where MLB rules get a little complicated is how they distinguish between ties for a division title from ties for a wild card berth. In a purely wild card (or positional qualifier) tie situation, it's easier.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

That makes sense, but IIRC MLB did design a tie-breaking system for 5 teams for one place.

Sure. But in my testing using short-season leagues (schedules lasting just 30-36 games) I very rarely had any five-way ties. Even four-way ties were rare. So for a full season league a five-way tie is highly unlikely. (In the 137 years of major league history there's never even been a three-way tie.)

Now, that said, I did hit an interesting scenario once in a test league using the current MLB playoff format. I had a tie situation which was not covered by MLB's current rules. The standings looked like this:

  NORTH DIVISION
       
# St. Paul     21  15  .583   —
# Green Bay    21  15  .583   —
  Minneapolis  16  20  .444   5.0
  Madison      16  20  .444   5.0
        
CENTRAL DIVISION
        
x-Flint        23  13  .639   —
# Ann Arbor    21  15  .583   2.0
  Rockford     12  24  .333  11.0
  Clinton      12  24  .333  11.0
        
SOUTH DIVISION
        
# Kansas City  21  15  .583   —
# Dayton       21  15  .583   —
  Fort Wayne   20  16  .556   1.0
  St. Peters   12  24  .333   9.0

St. Paul and Green Bay are tied for the North Division title; Kansas City and Dayton are tied for the South Division title, with all four of those teams having the same record as the best wild card team, Ann Arbor. In effect, a five-way tie for four playoff spots (two division titles and two wild card berths).

The open question is how MLB would resolve a scenario like this. The most obvious answer is for the first day to feature the two games to determine the division champions. The losers of those two games would then join Ann Arbor to play a three-way tiebreaker to determine the two wild card teams. The problem is that this process would take three days to complete (one day for the division ties and two days to determine the wild card qualifiers). With the addition of the Wild Card Game in each league, MLB does not have the space in the post-season schedule for three days of tiebreaking. MLB rewrote its tiebreaking rules such that all tie scenarios would be resolved in a maximum of two days.

Given this, I suspect MLB would resolve the scenario in just two days. In which case what would happen is that Ann Arbor would automatically be declared one wild card qualifier. On the first day games are played to determine the division winners; on the second day the two losing teams from the first day meet to determine the second wild card qualifier.

(As it happened, that is what OOTP did to resolve the tie. Only it assigned the home fields incorrectly, plus it only scheduled one tiebreaking game per day when in fact the two division tiebreaking games should have been played on the same day.)

[oman19]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

A three-way tie for a WC should have been handled properly by OOTP 13 already.

Anyway, this issue is on my list and I will have a look at it, but I cannot promise these wild things with 5+ teams tying for something. 4 is the max that will be handled by the game.

Markus thanks so much! I completely understand not trying to program a 5 way tie. The seeding issue has drove me wacky ever since TonyM quit doing his playoff editor utility. This gets taken care of this game will be my dream come true. I am ordering the moment I get word you have this some Markus love lmao

[Le Grande Orange]

For what it's worth I took all the MLB tiebreaking scenarios described here and created fictionalized standings for each which illustrate what each tie scenario might look like, along with the schedule of games that would be played to resolve it.

One can even retroactively apply the new tiebreaking rules to the older single wild card qualifier playoff format, and, for the most part, the procedures work the same.

[oman19]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

The standings looked like this:

  NORTH DIVISION
       
# St. Paul     21  15  .583   —
# Green Bay    21  15  .583   —
  Minneapolis  16  20  .444   5.0
  Madison      16  20  .444   5.0
        
CENTRAL DIVISION
        
x-Flint        23  13  .639   —
# Ann Arbor    21  15  .583   2.0
  Rockford     12  24  .333  11.0
  Clinton      12  24  .333  11.0
        
SOUTH DIVISION
        
# Kansas City  21  15  .583   —
# Dayton       21  15  .583   —
  Fort Wayne   20  16  .556   1.0
  St. Peters   12  24  .333   9.0

Interesting choice of cities there in your standings. I'm from Michigan and grew up in Flint. Nice to see them dominate in something. lmao

[Isryion]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

A three-way tie for a WC should have been handled properly by OOTP 13 already.

Just for your information, in this case, it wasn't. Check here: Home

Tigers, Angels, and Athletics all had the same record (88-74). Angels and Athletics played a tiebreaker (which is why they have a total of 163).

Yes, the commish could have set up custom playoffs, but I'm not sure if he missed it or assumed the that some other tiebreaker was applied. Either way, I do think the game should handle it properly in the first place. I realize you guys work hard and this is a great game, so I am not complaining, just pointing out something that needs to be fixed.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by oman19

Interesting choice of cities there in your standings. I'm from Michigan and grew up in Flint. Nice to see them dominate in something. lmao

I set up the league using, if I recall correctly, the Midwest region. I kept randomizing the cities until I got a list that I liked (that is to say, a list of places which I mostly recognized).

[oman19]

A little birdie told me that this issue was addressed. As promised I just put my pre-order again to help support the best development team in existence.

Markus would you mind elaborating how seeding and ties in general will be handled going forward in this new version? Thank you so much!!!!

[Dalwhat]

Originally Posted by David Watts

It also needs to work properly for 1 subleague 1 division leagues with no playoffs. When 2 teams tie there should be some form of playoff game, instead one has to do this manually. It's been forever since I played using this format, but in the past when 2 teams tied for second place, an unneeded playoff game would be scheduled. Not sure if this was ever corrected either.

I recently played a league of this format in v13 and ended up with the top two teams tying and the game not appearing to be interested in scheduling a decider. Hopefully 14 will sort this out, although my first league will have two divisions so it won't be an immediate issue.