2009 Playoffs

[JMGC]

Woot, my Marlins are doing much better than I expected. Hopefully we can keep this up and get into the play offs.

[Canada8999]

actually, where do we have the playoff rules posted?

[Colby]

actually, where do we have the playoff rules posted?

No where for right now.  The rules may be different next year, but it will always be division based with a playoff format the same as MLB.

[Canada8999]

No where for right now.  The rules may be different next year, but it will always be division based with a playoff format the same as MLB.

So for this year, will we follow a typical head-to-head playoffs with the same scoring categories/weighting?  One week per series?

[Colby]

Twelve more days, but if the playoffs happened today, the match-ups would be the following.

Phillies vs. Braves*
Dodgers vs. Brewers

Yankees vs. Red Sox*
Angels vs. Twins

*wildcard

[Colby]

The playoffs start on Saturday, and everything seems to be wrapped up although the Cardinals could steal the NL Central (as they do deserve it in real life).  Of course, the Franchise GM Cardinals do not have Matt Holliday to help their offense out.  The Marlins and Rays are even more qualified, but there is only one wildcard each in baseball, and those will probably go to the Red Sox of the AL and the Braves of the NL.

Meanwhile, the first three picks of the draft look set in stone with the Mets, Orioles, and Pirates topping off the bottom.

Rank     Team     Score
1    New York Yankees    310 - AL East
14    Minnesota Twins    186 - AL Central

7    Los Angeles Angels    246 - AL West
3    Boston Red Sox    293 - AL Wildcard

2    Philadelphia Phillies    301 - NL East
10    Los Angeles Dodgers    227 - NL West

3    Atlanta Braves    293 - NL Wildcard
8    Milwaukee Brewers    239 - NL Central

Rank     Team     Score
5    Florida Marlins    274
6    Tampa Bay Rays    247
9    St. Louis Cardinals    229
11    Colorado Rockies    223
12    Arizona Diamondbacks    197
13    San Francisco Giants    191
15    Texas Rangers    174
15    Seattle Mariners    174
17    Oakland Athletics    164
18    Toronto Blue Jays    162
19    Cleveland Indians    154
20    San Diego Padres    148
21    Chicago Cubs    147
22    Houston Astros    143
23    Kansas City Royals    137
24    Chicago White Sox    126
25    Cincinnati Reds    123
26    Washington Nationals    118
27    Detroit Tigers    113
28    Pittsburgh Pirates    101
29    Baltimore Orioles    87
30    New York Mets    53

[lp815]

Anything could happen in the AL West tonight, the Rangers are all over the standings every night. Driving me crazy. :-)

[Colby]

Anything could happen in the AL West tonight, the Rangers are all over the standings every night. Driving me crazy. :-)

They have been all over the map.  I think the biggest surprise is the NL Central.  This is the Cardinals' division this year, but this version lacks the addition of Matt Holliday.  I guess the pitching tandem of Carpenter and Wainwright is not enough?

[Colby]

I will do this after tomorrow, but I wanted to see how all of the teams would stack up if you transformed the data to wins and losses.  Now, obviously the Yankees will not have six times as many wins as the Mets.  Those points are a matter of how teams stack up against each other overall.  What I did to get the following was divide each team's score by the average score (186).  This was the number of wins each team had after July 1st (when we started this league).  The most wins a team could have at that point was 81 since it is halfway through the season.  I then noticed that there were about five teams with 100 wins or more and four teams with 100 losses or more.  I felt that this was too much and the distribution needed to be squeezed slightly.  I then took the 2nd half wins and raised it to an exponent of 75%.  Adding this to a 0.500 score for the 2nd half gave the following.

New York Yankees    100-62 (0.617)
Philadelphia Phillies    99-63 (0.611)
Boston Red Sox    97-65 (0.599)
Atlanta Braves    97-65 (0.599)
Florida Marlins    95-67 (0.586)
Tampa Bay Rays    91-71 (0.562)
Los Angeles Angels    90-72 (0.556)
Milwaukee Brewers    89-73 (0.549)
Los Angeles Dodgers    88-74 (0.543)
St. Louis Cardinals    88-74 (0.543)
Colorado Rockies     87-75 (0.537)
Arizona Diamondbacks     83-79 (0.512)
San Francisco Giants     82-80 (0.506)
Minnesota Twins    81-81 (0.500)
Texas Rangers     79-83 (0.488)
Seattle Mariners     79-83 (0.488)
Oakland Athletics     77-85 (0.475)
Toronto Blue Jays     77-85 (0.475)
Cleveland Indians     76-86 (0.469)
San Diego Padres     75-87 (0.463)
Chicago Cubs     74-88 (0.457)
Houston Astros     74-88 (0.457)
Kansas City Royals     73-89 (0.451)
Chicago White Sox     71-91 (0.438)
Cincinnati Reds     70-92 (0.432)
Washington Nationals     69-93 (0.426)
Detroit Tigers     68-94 (0.420)
Pittsburgh Pirates     66-96 (0.407)
Baltimore Orioles    63-99 (0.389)
New York Mets    56-106 (0.346)

The Mets, Cardinals, Rangers, and Tigers performed worse than expected for the year.  The entire AL Central was horrible with the division leader (Twins) coming into the playoffs with a 0.500 record.  The Nats did better than expected thanks to that 0.500 first half.  The Red Sox, Rays, Padres, Diamondbacks, and Marlins did much better than expected.  The Red Sox made a couple of moves this year, and so did the Padres, Marlins, and Tigers.  The Rangers had issues in their front office, and the Cardinals didn't take advantage of an open trade marker where Holliday ended up going to the Angels.

ENJOY the analysis.

(BTW, this is the type of stuff I expect to see in next year's MLFB Blog)

[Colby]

Playoffs start tomorrow!

Indians pulled ahead of the Twins in the AL Central.
Brewers have a slight lead over the Cardinals in the NL Central.
Marlins closed the gap on the Braves in the NL Wildcard.

ALL OF THESE COULD CHANGE AFTER TONIGHT!