September 29, 2020

"It wasn’t pretty the whole way. We took a beating sometimes, had ups and downs, and we were able to find a way and sneak in."

Said Christian Yelich, quoted in "Can The Brewers Beat The Dodgers? Christian Yelich Thinks So/Milwaukee's Offense Needs To Turn Things Around If The Brewers Hope To Make A Playoff Run" (Wisconsin Public Radio). The Brewers finished the season — the 60-game season — at .483. They were in 4th place in their division. But somehow they're in the playoffs. They're going up against the Dodgers, who finished the season at .717. But maybe they can "find a way and sneak in."

Here are the predictions for the playoffs at FiveThirtyEight. I don't understand how they're doing the playoffs in this crazy year. Why is the worst team playing the best team at this stage? Here's an explanation:
As has been the case since 2012, there will be four rounds. But instead of a round featuring a sudden-death Wild Card Game with the division winners resting, the format will be as follows:

Wild Card Series (best-of-three, with all games at the higher seed’s home ballpark): No. 1 seed vs. No. 8; No. 2 vs. No. 7; No. 3 vs. No. 6; No. 4 vs. No. 5.

Division Series (best-of-five, with traditional 2-2-1 home team/road team format at neutral sites): Winner of 1-8 vs. Winner of 4-5; Winner of 2-7 vs. Winner of 3-6. Home-field advantage goes to the higher seed.

League Championship Series (best-of-seven, with traditional 2-3-2 home team/road team format at neutral sites): Winner of 1-4-5-8 vs. Winner of 2-3-6-7. Home-field advantage goes to the higher seed. 
According to FiveThirtyEight, the Brewers have a 2% chance of winning the World Series. The Dodgers have the best chance — 32%.

48 comments:

gilbar said...

baseball? what's that?

Oh Yea said...

"Why is the worst team playing the best team at this stage?"

Normal seeding in a sports bracket (NCAA basketball tourney best example) in order reward the teams that played the best in the regular season with the easiest path to the championship. Of course this could backfire with the short opening series (best of 3) if the "weaker" team has 2 good pitchers but no depth.

Wince said...

Pro sports is dead to me, now more than ever.

James K said...

It's standard in every sport for the best and worst seeds to play each other in the first round. I'm not sure why we pay any attention to 538, though. I'll take the Brewers at 50-1 odds if Nate wants to bet.

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Big Mike said...

The Nats are zero percent. Wait ‘til next year.

Fernandinande said...

Why is the worst team playing the best team at this stage?

They're not "worst" and "best", they're just differently abled.

Joe Smith said...

I used to love baseball...going to a game was magical when I was a kid.

Over the years that all kind of faded away with the advent of life.

Now with the wokeness factor, I just don't give a fuck anymore.

Even further, I hope every professional league that pledges allegiance to BLM utterly fails...

William50 said...

We are big Brewer fans in our house and when the Brewers lost their last game we thought oh crap there goes the playoffs, but then the Giants came through by losing too! Here's hoping the Dodgers will be over confident and the Brew Crew can sneak 2 by them. Go Brewers!

Curious George said...

"Why is the worst team playing the best team at this stage?"

It's the first round of the playoffs. The best teams always play the worst teams that qualify more or less. In most years there would be a wildcard one gamer, and in football they have "byes"...

And Yelich is right. In baseball anyone can beat anyone in a three game series.

Temujin said...

Hockey just completed a long round robin tournament followed by a long playoff run. They ran it with two bubbles- one in Toronto, one in Edmonton. All teams in the Eastern Conference were housed in hotels and had to stay in Toronto- bubble-ized- until their team got knocked out of a playoff series. In the west, out in Edmonton, Alberta, the same thing was done.

Then the Eastern Conference Champ, Tampa Bay, had to move to Edmonton for the Stanley Cup Finals, which were completed last night, with Tampa Bay winning the Cup.

In all- the players have not seen their kids or wives in person in over 2 months. Just hanging around each other, in their hotels, in the arena, for weeks. But, no issues with Covid. The play was extremely intense and well done. It was a great playoff.

Baseball has a job to be nearly as excting. Too bad very few know how great a game hockey is.

mezzrow said...

This Cubs fan looks forward to a playoff matchup between the Cubs and the Brew Crew.

We'll be for you until we aren't.

Fred said...

The best record should get the weakest opponent. It is a reward for competing successfully. Besides, you want the best teams to appear late in the tournament. No sense having 1 play 2 early on.

tim maguire said...

It's normal for the team with the best record to play the team with the worst record in the first round. But why are there teams with losing records in the playoffs at all? Why should a team that couldn't win even half its games get an opportunity to get hot in the last weeks and win it all? Why bother with the regular season under these conditions?

Baseball was the last sport to use the regular season to make teams prove they deserve a shot. Now? No more.

PM said...

Really like your blog, always fascinating.
Quite fond of your daily pictures.
My Mom was born in Madison.
Should be a great, competitive series
that we win.
- Dodger fan.

Ann Althouse said...

"Normal seeding in a sports bracket (NCAA basketball tourney best example) in order reward the teams that played the best in the regular season with the easiest path to the championship. Of course this could backfire with the short opening series (best of 3) if the "weaker" team has 2 good pitchers but no depth."

But in baseball, the best team hasn't had to face a wild card team. It's weird that the Brewers are in this at all. They're wild card. They should be playing the other wild card team. And then the next stage would involve the best team playing whoever won that wild card game (a single game). Here, you have the wild card team getting into a series, not facing sudden death, and the best team could be eliminated in a 3-game series with the second of the wild card teams. We could be going forward without the great and dominant Dodgers just because the below-.500 Brewers managed to win 2 games against them.

Bay Area Guy said...

It's tough to watch a baseball game, with no fans in the stands, and your team isn't playing.

I was watching the the Dodgers v A's (my team) the other night, and after 2 or 3 innings, you get the shpilkes.

mccullough said...

538 is a joke.

Fake Science based on ersatz modeling.

Every team starts with a best-of-three series. Anything can happen in a short series.

After the first series, there is no home-field advantage.

Yelich had an off season in the 60 games. But the Dodgers pitchers don’t want to face him. Bellinger also has an off season, but the Brewers pitchers don’t want to face him either.

The Dodgers are the favorites because they have good players and solid pitching. But their closer is shaky. That’s why the Nats beat them last year.

Also, Kershaw is very inconsistent in the post season. He’s pitched some great games and he’s been rocked a number of games.

The odds Kershaw pitches well are 50-50.



campy said...

The Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn. Fuck 'em.

mezzrow said...

"We could be going forward without the great and dominant Dodgers just because the below-.500 Brewers managed to win 2 games against them."

At the end of a 60 game season replete with 7 inning games, universal designated hitters, expanded rosters, and a runner on second to start every inning past the ninth.

Noted, professor.

Now go eliminate those Dodgers. Victory over justice. It's the way of the world in 2020.

The best team doesn't always win, but the winning team does. True for both elections and baseball.

Captain Curt said...

The wild card games are what are often called "play-in" games, to get the number of teams down to a power of 2 for elimination rounds.

With 3 divisions in each league, the two teams not winning a division but with the best record typically have had a "play-in" game, to get the number of teams down to 4.

This year, with the short season, MLB decided to structure the playoffs like the NHL and NBA do every year, with more teams making it, but more straight seeding by season record.

rcocean said...

The real question is why so many teams in the playoffs? The wild cards were created to increase interest in the long season. With the absurdly short season, they should have just allowed the top 4 teams from each league in the playoffs and had the standard 5 Game Playoff.

BTW, NBA finals are this week, and Lebron James is in them again. That makes 10 out of the last 13 years, where Lebron is playing in the finals. He's broken Magic's record of 9 final appearances. He may be the stupid and ugly, but he knows how to play BB.

Curious George said...

"I don't understand how they're doing the playoffs in this crazy year."

Here is the "why." Money. This format provides more playoff games, and since there is no live attendance they need the higher dollar playoff TV games to cut their losses.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

Baseball is heading towards a NBA-style playoff system. MLB expanded the number of wild card teams to try and spark interest in this shortened season. The more teams in the playoffs, the better? This season, 16 out of 30 teams will make the playoffs. In 1995, the season that saved baseball in Seattle, there were the three division winners plus one wild card team. Last year, MLB had expanded the wildcard teams to two with a just a single, sudden death playoff game before starting the division series. Now we have five wild card teams. Pretty soon, it'll be nine teams, so the regular season will be just for fun, with hardly any impact on the world series winner.

Yancey Ward said...

Didn't everybody make the playoffs this year?

Yancey Ward said...

The Brewers (and the Reds) are those "honor students" every parent brags about with their car stickers. This year, the playoffs are participation trophies.

Original Mike said...

"It's weird that the Brewers are in this at all. They're wild card."

I would say there is no wild card this year. They're just having the top 8 teams play in a seeded tournament. Because of the virus. From Chy-Na.

Original Mike said...

"But why are there teams with losing records in the playoffs at all?"

Because they needed 8 teams. The 8th team had a losing record. What are they going to do? I guess they could have given the first place team a bye.

Fernandinande said...

Even further, I hope every professional league that pledges allegiance to BLM utterly fails...

Quillette: "Black Lives Matter and the Mechanics of Conformity"

Summary: BLM is based on falsehoods and BLM intends to remain ignorant, and "activists" in general tend to know less about their subject of activism than does the general public.

Jeff Brokaw said...

Its 2020, Jake.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

Campy said:

The Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn. Fuck 'em.

My father took me to about three games a year at Dodger Stadium during the 60's/early 70's. He had box-seat season tickets through his company. We had great times. We were there in 1968 when <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Drysdale>Don Drysdale</a> set Major League records with six consecutive shutouts and ​58 2⁄3 consecutive scoreless innings. Great times, except for the traffic trying to leave Dodger Stadium after the game.

Yancey Ward said...

Sort of like Biden and Harris having actual chances to be President.

daskol said...

Never let a crisis go to waste: all these baseball rule tweaks to speed up the game and change the playoffs put me in mind of lame duck deBlasio and his miserable minion Carranza transforming public schools in ways the public had explicitly rejected during normal times, capitalizing on COVID chaos. One notable difference is that if I don't like these MLB changes, I don't have to watch baseball, but I still need to get my kids educated. I don't think of myself as a conservative person, but all these assholes making the most of these crises have me reevaluating my stance on change and the various vectors its agents use to pursue it. I don't think I like it much.

Bruce Gee said...

And now the Brewers without Burnsie. Can Suter and the bullpen replace him? Um. First pass answer is never.

JaimeRoberto said...

My third favorite team, behind the A's and the Giants, is whoever is playing the Dodgers. So go Brewers!

boatbuilder said...

What’s the difference between Joe Biden and the 2020 Boston Red Sox?

Joe Biden comes out of the cellar occasionally.

James K said...

It's weird that the Brewers are in this at all. They're wild card. They should be playing the other wild card team.

"Wild card" is when there's an odd (or non-power of two) number of teams that make the playoff. Baseball went to two wild card teams plus the three division winners a few years ago, and the two wild card teams played a one-game playoff to be the fourth team to make the playoffs. I believe the winner of the wild card game was put up against the team with the best record. But this year they have 8 (2^3) teams in each league, so no wild card.

NCAA basketball has a similar system, I think, with some number of teams playing an initial elimination round to get in the 64(2^6)-team championship.

Big Mike said...

Didn't everybody make the playoffs this year?

Not the Nats!

mccullough said...

Bill Russell holds the record with 12 NBA Finals appearances.

LeBron is now tied with Kareem with 10 appearances.

Sam Jones has 11 appearances.

PM said...

"The Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn. Fuck 'em."

In 1957, to help the cause, a Los Angeles ad agency called Carson-Roberts ran a daily ad in the NY papers informing Walter O'Malley what the temperature was in sunny L.A.

jaydub said...

When MLB elected to French kiss BLM the game became irrelevant. Fuck em.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Normally, I'm a big Brewers fan. This year? Don't care. The SJW posturing irritated me, but even without it - it's simply ridiculous that the Brewers are in the playoffs. They are under .500. The last 2 playoff seasons were exciting because they had put together a good team and good seasons. Yelich was great and fun to watch. Watching a mediocre team muddle into the playoffs simply because other teams sucked as bad as they do - yeah, no, that's not interesting to me.

Jim at said...

Pro sports is dead to me, now more than ever.

Yep. And what's funny is how easy they made it for me to walk away after 46 years of being a fan.

Jeff Brokaw said...

After all the insanity this year, and all the cancellations of all the things (for mostly stupid and illogical reasons) ... I’m just thankful we had a baseball season at all — and now get to watch the playoffs!

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

The Cubs have Darvish and Hendricks both pitching excellent so a 2 out of 3 series is a great format for them. They have not been hitting well most of the season and won the division on the strength of their starting pitching. I don't think they will go far unless the main guys at least hit average. The Dodgers are very good and they are being punished the most in this format as they are probably the best team.

Readering said...

I like 2 of the playoff teams, Dodgers and Yankees. This system hurts the former and helps the latter.

320Busdriver said...

We got our $ back for our 20 game pack. That’s all I really cared about this season. We’ve watched nearly all the games on tv. Be nice if Locain made a surprise appearance. But, covid.

JaimeRoberto said...

I like 2 of the playoff teams, Dodgers and Yankees.

You've said a lot of things I disagree with over the years. This has to be the worst.