The topic of how much playoffs should be worth comes up every year, going all the way back to when I first started this tournament.
It can be argued that my playoff point system was too rewarding for good playoff performance (5 points for making the playoffs and 5 points for each round won, plus 1 point per win). That's a maximum of 31 points for winning a World Series, and a minimum of 5 points for making playoffs and getting swept in round 1. The average teams would get about 13.7 points per playoff team.
ozomatli's new formula reduced the significance of playoff performance, which based on my recent results the past few years, is fine by me. The 10-point bonus for winning the world series does seem significant though. Winning that one game resulted in more points than my five playoff teams combined.
What is the right answer? When I enter a team in a random league, my first goal is to make the playoffs. I think making the playoffs should get something extra. It's an achievement. Yes, there is some division luck involved, but that's not any different than other types of luck, including 1-run games. It's still the goal. (1) Make the playoffs. The second goal is to win the World Series, once in the playoffs. But you do have to win the divisional series first. Then the LCS.
I like where doctorcc is going. I would tweak it slightly.
Making the playoffs: 2 bonus points
Winning Round 1: 1 bonus point*
Winning LCS: 3 bonus points
Winning World Series: 5 bonus points.
+ 1 point per game won.
*Can we all agree that making the playoffs is just a tiny bit harder than winning a best of 3 series... which means we should get some kind of bonus for making the playoffs. And to those who want to argue that "playoff teams already get rewarded by accumulating more win points", tell that to all the teams that got swept in the first round.
What this proposed formula does is reduce the variance of bonus points between the playoff teams. A World series winner will score 22 points. But there will be a lot more playoff teams with 2-4 points instead of 0-2 points.
And you won't see some 80-82 World Series winner outscoring the cumulative total of 10 teams (like me & brianjw).
8/11/2020 12:26 PM (edited)