Making the playoffs in a standard 24-team league?
or..
Once you make the playoffs, winning the World Series?
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Anybody that's been on this site for any extended period of time knows that 100+ win teams lose in the playoffs way too frequently (often to a <85 win wildcard team). I would say that your chances of winning the World Series is purely luck driven and as a playoff team, regardless of your team's record, your chances are essentially 1 in 8.
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Since 8 teams out of 24 make the playoffs, your odds are 1 in 3. If you are an owner who have had lots of success, it's probably 50% or even higher.
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Bottom line, the skillful owners make the playoffs more times than not, but after that, you have to win three coin flips in a row to win the Word Series.

So why did I post something that seems pretty obvious?
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I guess I want to address the various tournament point systems. Tournaments like the WIS Championship and others are probably awarding points for both regular season success and for playoff success. I am questioning the point system for the playoffs. If we can agree that winning in the playoffs is like winning coin flips, why are we rewarding ANY points for this? You use all your skill to draft a great team, and manage them to a successful season (maybe even 100 wins) and that gets rewarded with some measure of scoring system. Then your 100-win team's coin lands tails on the first flip, while an 85-win team's coin lands heads three times in row, and now he somehow has more total points than you despite building a clearly inferior team.

In a perfect world, regular season record would have some correlation to playoff success, but that's not really the case. The correlation may even be negative. There really needs to be a home field advantage built in (like basketball), but that's a whole other topic.
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I realize that the argument from the other side might be "Well I built my team to win in the playoffs, not to win 95-100 games in the regular season". And this is a legitimate argument. I'm sure a few folks try this, but there such a slim margin or error for doing this, it's probably not that common.
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The other issue is that division alignment is generally random and a team can get lucky by winning a weak division with 82 wins. Then they win 3 coin flips and now have more tournament points than that unlucky 91-win team in the tough division that misses the playoffs.
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Are we rewarding skill or rewarding luck?

I think I am more in agreement with you than not.

This post might be relevant:
https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=471377

For those running tournaments, consider eliminating playoff bonus points, or make those points so small, that coin flip playoff results don't determine the overall final results.

The WIS Championship is the only tournament I've been involved in, but in the last eight WIS Championships only three different people have won it. Seems like skill is being rewarded there, unless those three people are just the luckiest guys in WIS.

I would also push back on playoff success being negatively correlated with regular season record, unless you've got actual numbers to back that up it feels highly unlikely to me.

There's no doubt regular season record is a better indicator of ability than playoff record, but there's also a good amount of luck in the regular season as well. The league chat is always full of people complaining about underperforming their expected win percentage, and rarely features anyone acknowledging luckily outperforming their expected win percentage. Also in order for someone to make a huge jump up the tournament standings during the playoffs they would need to have done well enough in the regular season to earn several playoff spots, so you're not gonna get total scrubs winning or even finishing near the top of any tournament leaderboard.

I might be open to a minor tweak in the scoring formula if you're suggesting one, but I think you're a bit too focused on what you perceive as fair and not enough on what's fun. Having several owners with a theoretical chance at winning the tournament going into the playoffs is a good thing, makes it more fun for more people. There's always going to be a major luck element, I think in most cases if you replayed the tournament with identical rosters you'd frequently get wildly different results, and what you see as a clearly superior 100 win team might turn into an 85 win team purely based on chance.

Luck is a big factor due to short series lengths but winning in the playoffs is not a coin toss.

Here's data from this year's WISC. Owners are ordered by the % of their playoff teams that go on to win the WS. You will see a lot of familiar names near the top. Winning the WS with 1 out of every 4 (rather than 1 out of every 8, like random chance would imply) is substantial.

Players not in the WISC this year who come to mind are elites like WaitNSee and mberg.

Owner	Champ%
brianjw	27%
boogerlips	27%
plargtime	26%
d_rock97	26%
gwhouse	25%
marinerrott	25%
chargingryno	25%
ozomatli	24%
hebdomad	24%
Fusion27s	24%
firesalt	24%
mjkrunner	23%
ArlenWilliam	22%
hawkkev	22%
BigScungil	22%
jfranco77	21%
skinndogg	21%
jmissirlis	21%
rbow923	20%
doctorcc	20%
06gsp	19%
besterateam	19%
sford	19%
ronthegenius	18%
pedrocerrano	18%
skilly006	18%
markeking	18%
contrarian23	18%
redsfive	18%
redcped	18%
discodemo	17%
glowguy	17%
wink0094	17%
barracuda3	17%
Jdh34	17%
Franze33	17%
bsubroncoos	17%
buddhagamer	16%
WavelandGuy	16%
justinlee_24	16%
PennQuaker	16%
donaldjtrump	16%
odalisgagne	16%
yogi20	15%
Humdogs	15%
calhoop	15%
cstrohmier	15%
footballmm11	15%
toysboys	15%
newarkwilder	15%
mllama54	15%
jbohrman	14%
oldtimer59	14%
31013	14%
mensu1954	14%
dorkster	14%
Jtpsops	13%
Bill_James47	13%
teamhydro	13%
razorclams	13%
jetscanes	13%
ballsweatsux	13%
mildnhazy	13%
frank_drebin	13%
marvin_katko	13%
mpitt76	13%
PrimetimeTW	13%
redsox666666	13%
rpmunn	13%
NebHusker	12%
magicdreamer	12%
scottharra	12%
tigerrott	12%
just4me	12%
techmobo	11%
beauchamp	11%
trd3	11%
DCNats4000	11%
DarthDurron	11%
fire13	11%
Area51man	11%
happyhours	11%
mdc2276	10%
bigsteve12	10%
cubbies84	10%
tridentric	10%
wstevens07	10%
nordawg	10%
toddcommish	10%
willthrash	10%
mickr9	10%
babad13	10%
duhbigcat	9%
Chisock	9%
garmansouth	8%
deathdealer	8%
thebubbaq	8%
ledfoot	8%
DoctorKz	8%
daddyzander	7%
big_dowg	7%
Sonofodin52	6%
midknight	6%
npg32433	4%
mars2010	2%
scjensen51	0%
3dayrotation	0%
MitchellBade	0%
brickster44	0%
3boysnj	0%
billyb1173	0%
Quarantine	0%
adlorenz	0%
LosGatos	0%
Taxman2008	0%
GeorgeHRuth	0%
jdobry	0%
Ribbentrop	0%
steelerfan19	0%
mitch_cama	0%

For that same set of owners, the correlation between playoff team to championship ratio, and regular season win%, is .59, which is moderately strong.

I think there is about the same amount of luck in the regular season as there is in the playoffs. I’ve had 83 win teams that were better than 100 wins teams, yet failed to make the playoffs due to my division having 4 strong owners who all finished with 80-90 wins, versus 100 win teams that had two owners with less than 40 wins in their division.

I don’t necessarily have an opinion on how points should be applied to regular season vs. playoffs - but I think there’s randomness in this entire game. I think I’d probably agree that playoffs tend to have a bit more luck, but simply due to the fact that better competition/parity in skill will leave more up to the randomness of the sim. Good owners will beat bad owners, but when you have two good owners going against one another, it makes sense that there will be more “luck” involved.

I don't play in the tourney's. So in this talk, I am an outsider.

But I always design my teams to basically creep into the playoffs, but be more dominant there, with consideration to the TOC as well.

My regular season W% is .576. My playoff W% is .624. My World Series W% as to winning when there (not games, I don't have that info.) is .729,

I disagree with your assessment that winning in the playoffs is a coin flip. And frankly if a simpleton like me can figure that out. I'm sure the more scientific WIS players can to an even higher degree.

And my alias Winter Frost won 8 of 10 Open leagues. (That was my response to Miami_Tilt's challenge.)

Anyway, just thought I'd drop this.

Clearly, luck is a factor during the regular season, as proven by my "Same Roster Challenge" theme, where we all had the exact same players and ballpark. The range of wins by team went from 66 (low) to 97 (high).... with everyone playing the EXACT SAME ROSTER. The thread summarizing this theme is here.
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Obviously, a short series (especially the stupid "best-of'5" first round series) means even more luck. I will admit that my personal experience is biased. I used to keep track of every single team I played, the theme, their regular season record and playoff results. I even submitted a post in the forums many years ago, showing all the failed playoff performances by my 100+ wins teams - something stupid, like 2 out of 25 won the World Series (I wish that thread still existed). And also showing how much better my sub 90-win teams did in the playoffs.
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I will concede that the correlation probably isn't negative, especially in open (or progressive) leagues, where the manager skill and/or roster talent differential is even more pronounced. But in theme leagues (which is pretty much all I play in), especially competitive theme leagues where there isn't that much of a difference in managerial skill or roster talent, I bet the correlation is very small. And I still believe the correlation is negative for my teams.

That being said, I will admit that I don't typically go out of my way to try and build a "playoff dominant" team. I simply build a team to win as many games as possible, so I guess it makes sense that all those 100+ win teams lose - they are probably playing against teams like the ones Grizzly builds.

As a person who had four teams make the playoffs in the first round of last year's WISC (16th in regular season wins), then saw those teams win a combined total of 7 games and barely make it to round 2, I'd agree. Anything can and does happen in a short series. Even IRL, teams such as the 1906 Cubs, 1954 Indians, 1969 Orioles, 1993 Braves/Giants, and the 2001 Mariners don't win world series or even get there. Luck is obviously more of a factor in a short series than in the regular season.

It's also fair to point out that winning percentages in the sim can be skewed negatively by playing in progressive leagues or positively by playing in more open leagues. If you stay with a progressive for several seasons, there will eventually be rebuilding seasons. Winning a title in 10% of the seasons in a long-running progressive is a terrific record.

One of the problems with this argument is that it can be true for an owner, even an owner who plays a lot of teams, and yet still not be true overall. Out of all the playoff teams in WIS history, 793 just isn't a very large amount.

Posted by PennQuaker on 4/15/2021 9:16:00 PM (view original):
As a person who had four teams make the playoffs in the first round of last year's WISC (16th in regular season wins), then saw those teams win a combined total of 7 games and barely make it to round 2, I'd agree. Anything can and does happen in a short series. Even IRL, teams such as the 1906 Cubs, 1954 Indians, 1969 Orioles, 1993 Braves/Giants, and the 2001 Mariners don't win world series or even get there. Luck is obviously more of a factor in a short series than in the regular season.

It's also fair to point out that winning percentages in the sim can be skewed negatively by playing in progressive leagues or positively by playing in more open leagues. If you stay with a progressive for several seasons, there will eventually be rebuilding seasons. Winning a title in 10% of the seasons in a long-running progressive is a terrific record.

"It's also fair to point out that winning percentages in the sim can be skewed negatively by playing in progressive leagues or positively by playing in more open leagues. If you stay with a progressive for several seasons, there will eventually be rebuilding seasons. Winning a title in 10% of the seasons in a long-running progressive is a terrific record."

PQ is dead on here. I have played approximately 550 progressive teams over the years with less than 25 championships and a win pct of .510. Hurts my overall record but I enjoy playing in them and have built several "friendships" over the years being in progs.