I was curious on the World Series participants as I had a couple top seeds get knocked out, including my best team (104-win 1925 Tigers). I think the results will surprise you (they surprised me!)

World Series Participants

League 1

Giants: 1961 (76 wins) - the worst playoff team of any (I would know, I was in that division!), condolences to #1 seed pedrocerrano's 1921 Giants (95 wins, .590 Exp%)

Yankees: 1938 (96 wins) - was one win behind the league leader but this was the best team--they had a .633 Exp% and their win total was only held back by their 8-18 1-run record

League 2

Dodgers: 2023 (94 wins) - 2nd-best team behind 2015 who won 99

Red Sox: 1907 (97 wins) - definitely the best team, 8 wins clear of next best and highest Exp% as well

League 3

Cardinals: 2004 (94 wins) - best team and best Exp%

Indians: 1919 (101 wins) - best team and best Exp%

League 4

Pirates: 1914 (104 wins) or 1909 (95 wins) - both teams from toughest division in the entire round, though pedro's 1914 squad is clearly the top dog

Athletics: 1911 (98 wins) - best team and best Exp%

League 5

Cubs: 1912 (109 wins) - the overall #1 seed of the round and absolute juggernaut does come through

White Sox: 1914 (92 wins) - the 1920 Sox were better by 5 games and almost 50 Exp% though this was the 2nd-highest win total for CHW

League 6

Braves: 2010 (98 wins) - best team and best Exp%

Tigers: 1946 (87 wins) - unfortunately, my 104-win 1925 team lost; this 1946 team was 1 win behind 2nd-best and did have the 2nd-best Exp%

League 7

Phillies: 1980 (99 wins) - best team and best Exp%

Orioles: 1972 or 1999 (both 92 wins) - amazingly these top 2 seeds tied in wins AND in Exp% (.555), though the 91-win 1974 team had a slightly better Exp%

League 8

Reds: 1963 (92 wins) or 1924 (86 wins) - my 1987 top seed (98 wins) got knocked out, these finalists were 2nd and 4th in wins (and 2nd and 3rd in Exp%)

Twins: 1930 (84 wins) or 2004 (87 wins) - schwarze's top seed 1921 (92 wins) got knocked out, but this was a balanced league--in fact, the Exp% leader (calhoop's 1912) was at .555 but won just 82 games and finished last in their division--with the top 5 teams all having 82-92 wins and Exp% between .525 and .555 (both finalists were a part of that fivesome)

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Final tally:

#1 seeds: 7 already advanced, whoever wins the Orioles will count (they tied for the top seed), and the Pirates are still alive, so 8 or 9 total
- That means at least half of the 16 leagues will have their top seed go to the World Series.
- I'd add the 1938 Yankees as one more that was probably the true best team.
- Outside of the Giants, no matter who wins the remaining series, I think the rest of the league winners will be respectable, either the #2 seed or very close to it.

This seems better than usual for the top teams, I would think?

Wow - that is surprising. Since all but one of my teams got knocked out, I hadn't been following all of the other leagues, except acknowledging when a below .500 team won in the first round.

Thanks for posting.

Doesn't surprise me at all. The top teams actually make the world series very frequently, but no one mentions it because it's not unusual. Whereas every single time there is a big postseason upset, people call attention to it in the forums. I forget what the psychological term for that is, but our brains then anchor on the upsets because they create more buzz and more conversation. Years ago I did a long post in the forum looking at the relative frequency of upsets in WIS versus MLB postseasons. Within a small margin, they were very similar.

It's worth remember that of the 5 teams in MLB history with the most wins, four of them lost in the postseason:
1906 Cubs
2001 Mariners
2022 Dodgers
1954 Indians

Only the 1998 Yankees, among the top 5, won the title.

Other teams in the top 15 of most wins include the 1969 O's, 2021 Giants, 2019 Astros, and 1931 A's. All of them lost. Quite frequently these teams lost to clubs with far fewer wins in the regular season.

We overestimate the frequency of upsets in WIS and underestimate how often they happen in MLB, even to the very best of the best teams.

It's not the 100-Win teams that fail to win the World Series that I constantly harp on, it's the number of times near-.500 or sub-500 teams beat those 100-win teams in the Best-of-5 wildcard round. That happens way more frequently than in real life due to the mere fact that below .500 teams never make the playoffs in real life.

In fact, since the 1969 expansion (excluding 2020, 1995 shorter seasons), when the playoffs expanded, only one team with fewer than 87 wins has ever beaten a 100+ win team... 2023 Arizona (84-78) beat the Dodgers (100-62). If we extend the record of the worse team to 87 wins, the 100-win teams are 6-2.

In real baseball, there is a measurable home field advantage. Years ago, I posted multiple seasons of real life team home/road splits, that proved this. We know that there is no built in home field advantage in the sim, so it makes perfect sense that the "better" team will win a short series at a rate worse than in real life. This is undeniable.

Do we have "memory bias", only remembering the upsets and not remembering the times our better teams beat the bad teams? Certainly. But whatever the sim winning percentage% of the better team in the playoffs is, it's lower than it should be. Implementing some measure of home field advantage in the sim would get the sim closer to real life.

I do agree that implementing a small home field advantage would be a beneficial change, for sure.
There are other idiosyncrasies in the sim that savvy owners often exploit - being able to run a 2-man rotation in the postseason for example. Often - certainly not always - the difference between a 100-win team and an 85-win team is depth of pitching. In the postseason in WIS, that advantage almost entirely evaporates.
A better pitching fatigue model would at least partially fix this, along with a host of other "gameable flaws" in WIS.

Posted by contrarian23 on 3/5/2025 10:32:00 AM (view original):
I do agree that implementing a small home field advantage would be a beneficial change, for sure.
There are other idiosyncrasies in the sim that savvy owners often exploit - being able to run a 2-man rotation in the postseason for example. Often - certainly not always - the difference between a 100-win team and an 85-win team is depth of pitching. In the postseason in WIS, that advantage almost entirely evaporates.
A better pitching fatigue model would at least partially fix this, along with a host of other "gameable flaws" in WIS.

Agreed.