[Attitude Adjuster]

Should we change the first playoff tiebreaker to regular season record? Currently playoff tiebreakers are 1) ERA/OPS, 2) W/HR, 3) Saves/SB, 4) WHIP/Avg, 5) K/RBI, 6) Holds/Runs, 7) Losses/K, 8 ) Head-to-head matchup record.

[Mikey]

Yes.

Why should a random set of stats from a TIED matchup carry more weight than a season’s worth of results?

Why is ERA more important than K’s? Why are runs more important than OPS? Or whatever.

[DevSop]

I think we can tweak the categories if you don't like what we have but the match is still decided on the week it is played, not what happened 3 months. Tiebreakers are always going to go against someone but I'd rather lose based on what my team did in that week than what happened previously. And I say that as someone who if higher seeds won tiebreakers automatically would have gotten me 3rd this year.

[Mikey]

Oct 9, 2022 0:09:14 GMT -5 DevSop said:

I think we can tweak the categories if you don't like what we have but the match is still decided on the week it is played, not what happened 3 months. Tiebreakers are always going to go against someone but I'd rather lose based on what my team did in that week than what happened previously. And I say that as someone who if higher seeds won tiebreakers automatically would have gotten me 3rd this year.

I won the 2013 title on a tiebreaker that I would’ve lost under my proposed rule. If I remember correctly, that was the one that moved us to change the rule from just ERA to a joint batting/pitching tiebreaker.

Which was an improvement.

What I’m arguing here is that if we score matchups every week of the season on 14 unique categories, and those 14 unique categories count evenly in the standings for 24 weeks or whatever the regular season is, why do two of them count more than the rest of them, progressively, when the games matter the most.

This is some Manfred ghost runner shit - ONLY IN THE PLAYOFFS.

Yes, the division champs with byes already have an advantage by not playing a first round matchup. They’ve earned that. But this doesn’t just apply to the semis. This would apply to matchups in the first round - with no byes - and to potential final matchups, where the opponents could both have already attained byes or have come from the wild card round.

This isn’t a proposed extra advantage on top of a bye. This is a “the scores count the same as every other matchup all season” proposal. And by doing so, a tie must be broken in another form or fashion.

If I’m the 6 seed in the playoffs, I enter each week knowing I have to score more points than my opponent - no matter what the categories I find those points in are. Because they all count the same. To be the man you gotta beat the man.