COMMENTARY

Divisional Play and the Wild Card

In 1903 the World Series was established as a competition between the best team in the National League and the best team in the new American League.  The Series was not played in 1904, but was resumed in 1905.  Until 1969 the format was the same -- the teams with the best record in each league played each other for the World Championship.

In 1969, Baseball expanded to 24 teams, and it was decided to divide each league into two Divisions.  They were named East and West (although there was some faulty geography going on, especially in the National League, where Cincinnati and Atlanta were placed in the West Division).  This presented a problem.  Since each league now had two Division winners, a League Championship Series was required to determine the league's representative in the World Series.  When the two division champions had similar records, this was not too bad.  There was some limited inter-Divisional play, but the schedules were different enough so that if a team with a slightly poorer record won the League Championship, it could still be considered the best team in its league by assuming its Division was stronger.  In fact, for the first three years of Divisional play, the team with the best record in each league always won the League Championship.

In 1972 that changed when the Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates for the NL title.  But the two teams' records were only a half-game apart (this was the year of the first player strike), so that was not considered a problem.  But 1973 was another story.  In that season, the New York Mets finished with a .509 winning percentage, worse than three teams in the West Division, but good enough to win the East.  Despite the 16½ game difference in their records, the Mets beat the Cincinnati Reds for the NL Championship, and came close to winning the World Series, losing to Oakland in 7 games.  Had they won, the "best team in baseball" would have been a team with the 9th best record during the season.

From 1972 through 1993, the best two teams in each league met in the World Series only 6 times in those 22 seasons, just about what would be expected from the laws of probability.  But something happened in 1993 to make things even worse. 

In 1993, the Atlanta Braves and the San Francisco Giants staged a classic pennant race.  Each team was a powerhouse, and would win over 100 games.  Unfortunately for San Francisco fans, the Giants "only" won 103 games, while the Braves managed to win one more than that.  When the Philadelphia Phillies beat Atlanta for the NL title, the prevailing "wisdom" was that the Braves and the Giants, being the two best teams in the league, should have played for the title.  There was talk of how "unfair" it was that the Giants did so well and did not make it to the Postseason, despite the fact that the League Championship was a means to determine the World Series participant, and not an end to itself.

So for 1994 the format was changed again.  Now there would be three Divisions in each league, and a "Wild Card" (to handle the 1993 Giants scenario). This would necessitate a third round of playoffs, to determine which team would go to the League Championship Series.  Atlanta was moved to the East Division (somebody found a map), to make sure the two teams would not compete head-to-head again in 1994.  Apparently no one stopped to think about what the new format would do to the pennant races.  All of the excitement of the 1993 race was due to the fact that only one of the two teams would make it to the League Championship series.  With the Wild Card, both teams make it, so all of the slowly building excitement of the pennant race is exchanged for a brief three of five playoff series.

As the 1994 season progressed, it became obvious that the three Division idea was seriously flawed.  The four teams in the AL West were the four worst teams in the league.  The Texas Rangers, with a .456 percentage, were in first place.  While they probably would have lost in the Division Series, anything can happen in such a short series.  We could have had a league champion (or worse, a World Champion) with a losing record.  This problem was solved in a unique manner -- the baseball strike came along and cancelled the rest of the season, including the World Series.  Had that not happened, the 3-division and wild card arrangement might have been abandoned right away.

Baseball recovered from the strike eventually, and since then we have been living with the flawed divisional setup.  Pennant races are non-existent.  In most cases, what would have been a pennant race is irrelevant, because the team that finishes second is usually the Wild Card.  The only thing that approximates a pennant race is the Wild Card competition.  But this is a competition between lesser teams, and therefore not as interesting.

In 1997 the Baltimore Orioles and Atlanta Braves were obviously the best teams in their respective leagues.  Both teams were in first place (with the best record in the league) for most of the season.  Everyone looked forward to the matchup between these two teams.  But, instead, we were treated to the Florida Marlins (a team that finished 9 games behind in its own division) and the Cleveland Indians.

In 1998 the New York Yankees won 114 games during the regular season.  That should have been an automatic ticket to the World Series.  They were obviously the best team in the American League.  They did make it, but had to go through the Texas Rangers and Cleveland Indians (who had records 26 and 25 games worse than the Yankees) to get there.  It would have been a travesty if someone else had represented the American League that season, but it could easily have happened.

In 2000, we had the Subway Series.  The New York fans had been waiting for that one since 1956.  But the Mets were only the 4th best team in their league that year, and could not even win their own division.  And the Yankees were even worse, finishing with the 5th best record in the American League.  While the Series was interesting, and featured two very good teams, how can anyone say it was a competition to determine the best team in baseball?

From 1991 through 2000 (excluding the strike year 1994) the Atlanta Braves have finished first in their division each year.  This is a remarkable achievement, but what is not generally known is that, from 1992 through 1999 (again ignoring the strike year) they had the best record in the League each season.  This is a much more impressive achievement, and puts them on a par with the New York Yankees teams in the 50s and early 60s.  But their failure to win more than one World Series (caused, at least in part, by the divisional format) has tainted that achievement in many peoples' minds.

Baseball has made a number of changes in recent years that have been taken from the NFL, even though the two sports are completely different.  NFL teams play unbalanced schedules, and the season is only 16 games long.  It's easy to argue that a 10-6 team is really better than a 11-5 team.  And the postseason "series" are only one game each.  Baseball's Postseason has grown into a month-long endurance test for players and fans alike.  By the time a team makes it to the World Series, its fans are already worn out, especially if they live on the East Coast and have been sleep-deprived as well.  It would make much more sense to cut back to two divisions each, with no wild card.  A team should have to win its division to advance to the Postseason.  (Even better would be the single-division format we use at Revisionist Baseball, but this is probably not ever going to happen.)  The World Series has been reduced to just the final round of a Postseason Tournament.  Let's restore it to what it once was, a championship series between the best team in each league.

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Copyright © 2000 William Coyle