Rust Never Sleeps

[David Watts]

12 team league, 1 subleague, no divisions.
154 game schedule.

Purist in me says don't even have a post season. The team that finishes the regular season is the champion.

Then I think, sure that's the right way to do it, but not very realistic. Fans love the post season, so I'm trying to decide on the best setup.

First post season option is to simply take the top 2 teams and let them play a best of 7 or best of 9 series for all the marbles.

Second option is to allow the top 3 teams into the post season. 2nd and 3rd place teams meet in a best of 3(all games played in the park of the 2nd place team). 1st place team gets a bye. I really like this option, but I wonder how much of a factor rust becomes in this type of scenario? Should I go to a best of 9 championship series to ward off the rust factor? I like this scenario in that it makes the wild card finishers have to work to earn the right to face the best team.

Third option is to take the top 4 teams, but I would really struggle to use this option as I think it would result in some pretty bad teams getting a chance they don't really deserve. I really don't want a setup that simply rewards finishing .500,

What are your thoughts? Thanks.

Or, should I go no post season best team wins and only add the post season when and if I add divisions?

[Bobbyraz49]

Postseasons are a must IMO. Many other leagues have them.
Take care.

[sprague]

David do like I do, build your postseason into the regular season.


This is what I would do. Play the schedule out until game 140 has been played.
Then for games 140-145 reset the schedule so team 4 plays 1 and 3 plays 2 the next 6 games, teams that had to unschedule games just schedule games between them.
Then games 146-154 I would schedule now 8 games between 1-2. If the team now in 3 position is less than 8 games out (likely) then schedule 8 games between 3-4, if number 5 is 8 games out then 5 can play 6.


Every team will still play 154 games, but the playoffs are in the regular season, every win means something, and trust me, when you get down to the 6 or 8 game final set of a season and a team is 1 game back, those games down the stretch are fantastic...


no need for a playoff, just a little bit of schedule tweeking after, in say your case, game 140

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by sprague

David do like I do, build your postseason into the regular season.


This is what I would do. Play the schedule out until game 140 has been played.
Then for games 140-145 reset the schedule so team 4 plays 1 and 3 plays 2 the next 6 games, teams that had to unschedule games just schedule games between them.
Then games 146-154 I would schedule now 8 games between 1-2. If the team now in 3 position is less than 8 games out (likely) then schedule 8 games between 3-4, if number 5 is 8 games out then 5 can play 6.


Every team will still play 154 games, but the playoffs are in the regular season, every win means something, and trust me, when you get down to the 6 or 8 game final set of a season and a team is 1 game back, those games down the stretch are fantastic...


no need for a playoff, just a little bit of schedule tweeking after, in say your case, game 140

Very interesting, but I'm afraid I would screw that up beyond belief.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by Bobbyraz49

Postseasons are a must IMO.

I agree. I understand the appeal of regular season decides the best team, but I'd just much rather have a trophy for the team with the best regular season record, like the President's Trophy in hockey, and celebrate that more. Even though the Canucks didn't win the Stanley Cup in 2011, some of us took solace in them winning the President's Trophy back to back in 2011 and 2012. I remember there was some talk in 2012, "should they not push so hard and instead rest for the playoffs?", but I remember I thought, "heck no, you never know what's going to happen in the playoffs, go for the PT!".

But not having a postseason at all is cutting out so much excitement. I wouldn't argue with someone going with a small % of playoff teams, but it'd be a shame not having at least 2. It's like buying something you want/need, but then skipping out on the extras that would just make it so much better.

I'm intrigued by your 3 team idea, but with only a 3 game series I'm left wondering, what's the point? And if your league is unbalanced then the #2 seed could very well be the best team and yet they could get bounced in the first round giving the second best team the best chance to win it all.

I don't think 4 is too much, it's only 33%. I think you'd still be safe from having a bad team included as long as you don't have small (4 team) divisions. I do like the idea of giving the #1 seed an even bigger advantage like an all at home series. Unrealistic, I know, but it doesn't need to be.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by kq76

I agree. I understand the appeal of regular season decides the best team, but I'd just much rather have a trophy for the team with the best regular season record, like the President's Trophy in hockey, and celebrate that more. Even though the Canucks didn't win the Stanley Cup in 2011, some of us took solace in them winning the President's Trophy back to back in 2011 and 2012. I remember there was some talk in 2012, "should they not push so hard and instead rest for the playoffs?", but I remember I thought, "heck no, you never know what's going to happen in the playoffs, go for the PT!".

But not having a postseason at all is cutting out so much excitement. I wouldn't argue with someone going with a small % of playoff teams, but it'd be a shame not having at least 2. It's like buying something you want/need, but then skipping out on the extras that would just make it so much better.

I'm intrigued by your 3 team idea, but with only a 3 game series I'm left wondering, what's the point? And if your league is unbalanced then the #2 seed could very well be the best team and yet they could get bounced in the first round giving the second best team the best chance to win it all.

I don't think 4 is too much, it's only 33%. I think you'd still be safe from having a bad team included as long as you don't have small (4 team) divisions. I do like the idea of giving the #1 seed an even bigger advantage like an all at home series. Unrealistic, I know, but it doesn't need to be.

I wouldn't mind making the 3rd vs 2nd series a best of 5, but I still have no idea if OOTP features rust and if so how severe is it? If giving the first place team a bye and having them sit a week waiting for their series to begin, means they are at a severe rust disadvantage, I'm thinking 3 games is the better choice..

[Bluenoser]

Can't speak to that particular setup, but I run a 36 team 2 sub leagues of 18 teams, 3 divisions.

3 div winners = 2 WC's make post season.

WC's play best of 3, no off days, all games at top seed.

I've never noticed any rust because some teams were sitting during the WC series. Of course I haven't exactly been looking for it either.

How would you tell if there was rust?

I don't think it's there, not for 3 - 5 days.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Bluenoser

Can't speak to that particular setup, but I run a 36 team 2 sub leagues of 18 teams, 3 divisions.

3 div winners = 2 WC's make post season.

WC's play best of 3, no off days, all games at top seed.

I've never noticed any rust because some teams were sitting during the WC series. Of course I haven't exactly been looking for it either.

How would you tell if there was rust?

I don't think it's there, not for 3 - 5 days.

Thanks. That's what I was hoping to hear.

[thehef]

If you're a purist, then the top three choices would be:

1) No playoffs. Regular-season winner is the champ. But that's kinda boring, especially if there's no pennant race.
2) One of the four-team playoff (Shaughnessy) scenarios.
3) Split-season, where the winners of the 1st & 2nd halves play for the marbles.

Obviously, you could just have #1 play #2, but something about that just doesn't sit well with me. It's like there's some reward for coming in 2nd. If you're going there, you may as well do the four-team format...

Personally, as a purist, I wouldn't go with the scenario where #1 gets a bye while #'s 2 and 3 have a playoff to see who plays #1, because to me that's the opposite of purist...

I do exclusively historical and for the majors I stick with what was done historically, except for a few tweaks here and there (like not having best-of-nine from 1919 thru 1921, not always using the same home-away formats or same amount of travel/off days...). For minors, though, when I have them and they are single-league/no-division, I have the top two teams play for the title if I don't care about what really happens (lower minors, for example), but for minors where I do care (IL, PCL, AA, maybe Tx Lg, Southern Lg, Eastern Lg) I might do formats #2 or 3 above...

[pauwoo]

I support the second option. No adjustment for rust factor. I run leagues like this and found this option is a lot of fun.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by thehef

If you're a purist, then the top three choices would be:

1) No playoffs. Regular-season winner is the champ. But that's kinda boring, especially if there's no pennant race.
2) One of the four-team playoff (Shaughnessy) scenarios.
3) Split-season, where the winners of the 1st & 2nd halves play for the marbles.

Obviously, you could just have #1 play #2, but something about that just doesn't sit well with me. It's like there's some reward for coming in 2nd. If you're going there, you may as well do the four-team format...

Personally, as a purist, I wouldn't go with the scenario where #1 gets a bye while #'s 2 and 3 have a playoff to see who plays #1, because to me that's the opposite of purist...

I do exclusively historical and for the majors I stick with what was done historically, except for a few tweaks here and there (like not having best-of-nine from 1919 thru 1921, not always using the same home-away formats or same amount of travel/off days...). For minors, though, when I have them and they are single-league/no-division, I have the top two teams play for the title if I don't care about what really happens (lower minors, for example), but for minors where I do care (IL, PCL, AA, maybe Tx Lg, Southern Lg, Eastern Lg) I might do formats #2 or 3 above...

I didn't say I was a purist. I said the purist in me. The amount of purist in me, tends to change like the Louisiana weather ,

That Shaughnessy thing is my third option, but no way am I having the 1st place team face the 3rd place team while the 2nd place team faces the 4th. (yes I had to google)

I've never tried split season with OOTP, how does it work. What if the same team wins both halves? Does the game designate the 1st half champion in some way?

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by pauwoo

I support the second option. No adjustment for rust factor. I run leagues like this and found this option is a lot of fun.

How many games do you use for the first round, best of 3, best of 5 or best of 7?

[thehef]

Originally Posted by David Watts

That Shaughnessy thing is my third option, but no way am I having the 1st place team face the 3rd place team while the 2nd place team faces the 4th.

Speaking of the Shaughnessy format, pretty sure it encompasses all possibilities:

A) 1 vs 2, 3 vs 4
B) 1 vs 3, 2 vs 4
C) 1 vs 4, 2 vs 3

I've never understood the logic behind formats A and B. I can certainly see how - especially "back in the day" where geography might make it more logical for, say, #1 Los Angeles vs #2 Hollywood, while #3 San Francisco plays #4 Sacramento.

In bygone eras, all playoff series' were to be played without off days except when travel was necessary or Sunday baseball was prohibited (primarily an east coast thing). So even if the expense of travel wasn't a concern, using the example above, the idea that there would be no off days in that schedule (option A), whereas with option C there would be, could make sense...

But otherwise, it just seems nutty... That said, I think I may have read an old article from the pre-WWII era where the logic for option A is to be sure that one of the top teams makes the title series. But option B still completely baffles me...

Originally Posted by David Watts

I've never tried split season with OOTP, how does it work. What if the same team wins both halves? Does the game designate the 1st half champion in some way?

Here are the steps, etc.:

1. Set the number of games in OOTP (League Settings > Options, under Schedule Settings) to match the number of games in the schedule to be imported.*
2. Make sure the balanced/unbalanced setting matches the indicator in the schedule to be imported.*
3. Import schedule
4. Under Schedule Settings, check the box to Enable Split Season Format (I think this step can be done earlier; might not matter exactly when)
*otherwise you'll get an error message when you attempt to import the schedule

The above assumes you are importing a schedule (in my case, a historical schedule). I assume you can skip this step and with whatever schedule is defaulted, OOTP will split the schedule (see the first item below).

Some notes...

- If the imported schedule is 201 games, OOTP split the season at 100 games. So it appears that for determining where to split the season, OOTP divides the total number of games in half, and in the case where the total number of games is an odd number, it rounds down. (If you have a historical schedule that, say, split a 200-game season at 105 games, I don't think there's any way to do this in OOTP; it will split the season at 100 games... I could be wrong and just haven't figured this out yet...)

- Standings: Once you start the 2nd half of the split-season, on the Standings panel the standings will continue to reflect the cumulative standings, but this can be changed via the dropdown in the vicinity of the top left of the panel, where you can choose Overall, First Half, or Second Half standings. Beneath the main standings the team & record of the 1st half winner will be shown, and beneath that the team & record of the 2nd half leader. In addition: Overall, 1st half, and 2nd half records/standings can be found on the Expanded Standings panel, although the teams are locked-listed in the order of the first half standings.

- Come playoff time OOTP will know to match the first half winner vs second half winner.

- Home field advantage goes to the half-winner with the best record, assuming default settings. Pretty sure that you can edit this, though, based upon how you set the number of games & home-away in your series.

- In the case of the same team winning both halves, it will match the overall 1st place team against the overall 2nd place team.

- The Custom Playoff option is disabled when Split Season is enabled. So, for example, if you wanted to have something whacky like having the top two finishers in the first half qualifying, along with the top two finishers for the 2nd half, you can't do that. At least not that I can figure out (not that I've really tried to figure it out).

[MathBandit]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Second option is to allow the top 3 teams into the post season. 2nd and 3rd place teams meet in a best of 3(all games played in the park of the 2nd place team). 1st place team gets a bye. I really like this option, but I wonder how much of a factor rust becomes in this type of scenario? Should I go to a best of 9 championship series to ward off the rust factor? I like this scenario in that it makes the wild card finishers have to work to earn the right to face the best team.

I like this a lot, and use a similar version for my league. I go more extreme and make it a 2-game series though where 2-seed just needs to win 1.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by David Watts

12 team league, 1 subleague, no divisions.
154 game schedule.

Purist in me says don't even have a post season. The team that finishes the regular season is the champion.

Then I think, sure that's the right way to do it, but not very realistic. Fans love the post season, so I'm trying to decide on the best setup.

First post season option is to simply take the top 2 teams and let them play a best of 7 or best of 9 series for all the marbles.

Second option is to allow the top 3 teams into the post season. 2nd and 3rd place teams meet in a best of 3(all games played in the park of the 2nd place team). 1st place team gets a bye. I really like this option, but I wonder how much of a factor rust becomes in this type of scenario? Should I go to a best of 9 championship series to ward off the rust factor? I like this scenario in that it makes the wild card finishers have to work to earn the right to face the best team.

Third option is to take the top 4 teams, but I would really struggle to use this option as I think it would result in some pretty bad teams getting a chance they don't really deserve. I really don't want a setup that simply rewards finishing .500,

What are your thoughts? Thanks.

Or, should I go no post season best team wins and only add the post season when and if I add divisions?

I doubt you’ll see even the 4th best team finishing at .500. Where baseball and football have had teams with .500 and losing records make it to the playoffs, it’s almost always division winners from bad divisions. Even now that the NFL has expanded to almost half the league making the playoffs, the final wild card spot in both leagues should be held by an at least 9-8 team and if there’s a sub .500 team making it, it’ll be like the Panthers or Bucs.

If you are the most concerned about that, the obvious answer is to have one big division.

[pauwoo]

Originally Posted by David Watts

How many games do you use for the first round, best of 3, best of 5 or best of 7?

I do a best of three, in the higher seeds park, no days off.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by pauwoo

I do a best of three, in the higher seeds park, no days off.

I will say that even here, if you’re really and truly concerned that bad teams might win too often, you’d want to keep the series as long as possible. Even with home field advantage, it is waaaay more possible that a 4th seed gets lucky for 2 straight games than 4 out of 7. It might not even need to be 2 straight lucky games, just one outing by a better starting pitcher followed by one lucky roll of the dice.

[markprior22]

Sorry...tried to make a joke...fail

Originally Posted by David Watts

12 team league, 1 subleague, no divisions.
154 game schedule.

Purist in me says don't even have a post season. The team that finishes the regular season is the champion.

Then I think, sure that's the right way to do it, but not very realistic. Fans love the post season, so I'm trying to decide on the best setup.

First post season option is to simply take the top 2 teams and let them play a best of 7 or best of 9 series for all the marbles.

Second option is to allow the top 3 teams into the post season. 2nd and 3rd place teams meet in a best of 3(all games played in the park of the 2nd place team). 1st place team gets a bye. I really like this option, but I wonder how much of a factor rust becomes in this type of scenario? Should I go to a best of 9 championship series to ward off the rust factor? I like this scenario in that it makes the wild card finishers have to work to earn the right to face the best team.

Third option is to take the top 4 teams, but I would really struggle to use this option as I think it would result in some pretty bad teams getting a chance they don't really deserve. I really don't want a setup that simply rewards finishing .500,

What are your thoughts? Thanks.

Or, should I go no post season best team wins and only add the post season when and if I add divisions?

[MathBandit]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I will say that even here, if you’re really and truly concerned that bad teams might win too often, you’d want to keep the series as long as possible. Even with home field advantage, it is waaaay more possible that a 4th seed gets lucky for 2 straight games than 4 out of 7. It might not even need to be 2 straight lucky games, just one outing by a better starting pitcher followed by one lucky roll of the dice.

I find the modified 2-game series works well enough for me. Especially as then they need to go into the series against the rested 1-seed having just used their two best arms.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by MathBandit

I find the modified 2-game series works well enough for me. Especially as then they need to go into the series against the rested 1-seed having just used their two best arms.

If it’s a play-in, OK, but if it’s the first round of the regular playoffs, as in 4v1, I don’t think I wish to eat that pie today sir.