BZ 3444: Home field advantage to wrong team in playoffs

[spitfire]

Fictional league, latest patch. Custom playoffs, 1st round matchups determined by position, top four teams in the division make the playoffs. First round matchups are 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3. My team finished tied for 1st but was given second place on a tie-breaker [be nice if there was a news story talking about tie-breakers and maybe making a bigger deal out of outstanding regular season records, but that's for another topic]. I defeated the 3rd place team while the #1 club went down to defeat. Second round matchup then is 2 vs 4. As my team finished higher in the standings, I should be the home team, but for whatever reason the #4 club got home field advantage. Other division appears to have the correct home-field situations, as did the first round matchups in both divisions. But here am I on the road again. Bug?

[Tony M]

I'll try and play out a season like that and see if I can replicate it. At first glance the custom playoffs option only says "Base first round on (Seedings/Position)" so I think that the bracketing shown in the first round then follows through as that all the way to the final.

[spitfire]

Originally Posted by Tony M

At first glance the custom playoffs option only says "Base first round on (Seedings/Position)" so I think that the bracketing shown in the first round then follows through as that all the way to the final.

That's the way it looks to me also. It seems that the winner of the 1 vs 4 series was awarded home field for the second round of the playoffs against the winner of 2 & 3, even though in this case the winner was the 4th place team. Surely the game should be smart enough to compare the records of the two teams in a playoff series to determine which should get home field. It can do that to resolve a tie in the standings, so why not for proper set-up of a playoff series? This wasn't a complicated situation. I'm surprised the game didn't handle it correctly.

And speaking of that, how is home field determined in the finals? I have a two-league set-up with the league champions meeting in the finals. In the example above, my team went on to win the playoff series we started on the road when we should have been at home. We then went up against the champion of the other league, which also finished in 2nd place over there. My team had 91 wins on the season, our opponent had 103, and there was no interleague play and thus no head-to-head games between our two teams during the season. Yet my team got home field in the finals. How does THAT work?

[Le Grande Orange]

Do note that if you are unhappy with the post-season schedule for a given series, you can change it in the schedule editor. Just delete the game-generated schedule and put in your own. You can thus assign home field advantage to whichever team you want, in whatever weighting you want (e.g. you could use a 2-3-2 home field rotation for a best-of-seven series, or 2-2-1-1-1, or 3-4, or even give one club all seven games at home). Just schedule all the possible games required for the series (e.g. for a best-of-five series, schedule all five games).

Note however that you cannot change playoff matchups. You can only alter when and how the matchup will be played.

There are quite a few more customizable playoff options that were proposed but have not as yet been included in the game (home field assignment for each series was one of those).

Originally Posted by spitfire

My team had 91 wins on the season, our opponent had 103, and there was no interleague play and thus no head-to-head games between our two teams during the season. Yet my team got home field in the finals. How does THAT work?

Two possibilities come to mind (you'd have to test them to see if either is correct):

1) League which won the All-Star Game (assuming you had one);
2) Alternates each year between each league (what MLB used to do prior to 2003)

[spitfire]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Do note that if you are unhappy with the post-season schedule for a given series, you can change it in the schedule editor. Just delete the game-generated schedule and put in your own. You can thus assign home field advantage to whichever team you want, in whatever weighting you want (e.g. you could use a 2-3-2 home field rotation for a best-of-seven series, or 2-2-1-1-1, or 3-4, or even give one club all seven games at home). Just schedule all the possible games required for the series (e.g. for a best-of-five series, schedule all five games).

Note however that you cannot change playoff matchups. You can only alter when and how the matchup will be played.

There are quite a few more customizable playoff options that were proposed but have not as yet been included in the game (home field assignment for each series was one of those).

Thanks for the input. It's good to have the option of getting under the hood and changing the schedule for a series. Still, in a simple case like 2 vs 4 in a league, it would be optimal if the game were smart enought to reckon that 2 should get home field.

Two possibilities come to mind (you'd have to test them to see if either is correct):

1) League which won the All-Star Game (assuming you had one);
2) Alternates each year between each league (what MLB used to do prior to 2003)

Ah yes. Those are possibilities. I do have an all-star game and I note that my league won the game this year. I'm not saving boxscores etc. so can't look back at prior seasons to check that out. Wasn't there an option in a prior version to have the all-star game determine home field in the finals? I hate the idea of an exhibition game having any ramifications on the season, historical though it may be.

I hope Markus will continue to add options to the playoffs. While byes may be too difficult to be worth the trouble at this point, it would be a fine thing if we could have the option to determine home-field by team record when you get past the first round. Certainly having the 4th place team get home field over the 2nd place team within a league doesn't seem right, even though it can be edited.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by spitfire

Still, in a simple case like 2 vs 4 in a league, it would be optimal if the game were smart enought to reckon that 2 should get home field.

Of course. But customizable playoffs are still a work-in-progress (and didn't get any enhancements this year that I recall).

[spitfire]

A quick update ..... in the next season of my league, the fourth place team in the other league once again received home field in the second round of the playoffs as an apparent reward for knocking off the first place club. As LGO suggests, it appears that the winner of the 1 vs 4 bracket always gets home field in the next round against the winner of 2 vs 3, even when it's the fourth place team that advances. In the finals, my western team received home field over that cinderella fourth place team from the east. I'd like to think it was because I had more wins, but last season showed that this doesn't seem to enter into the equation. The east won the all-star game this season, so my western team wouldn't get home field out of that. It would appear then that the game is either alternating home field in the finals or is possibly assigning it randomly. No idea which, though the former seems more reasonable a supposition.

I would hope that the home field advantage in custom playoffs could be addressed at some point, even if byes or other options aren't on the table as yet. If the issue is that the game would have trouble handling all the possible configurations that players could come up with, then perhaps simply allowing the player to set home field for each series (rather than doing same through editing the schedule) would be a possibility.

[battists]

Spitfire, thanks for your detailed troubleshooting. I logged this issue as #3444, and I'll try to get Markus to take a look.

Thank very much!

Steve

[spitfire]

No problem Steve, glad to do what I can if it makes for a better game down the road.