Read it in Japanese on Daily Sports / トレバーの虎場はこちら
First, let me get this out of the way. This is Japan. No amount of complaining or logical arguments about “how things are done in America” will change things. This country is unique, and most sports reflect that in their rules. And you know, honestly, this complaint about the playoff format is common outside of Japan, but not given a second thought here. (Kind of like the Curse of the Colonel, which most people in Japan know little about.)
What does the format look like, anyways? You need to know that the playoffs are relatively new to NPB. Case in point, the last Hanshin Tigers pennant in 2005 sent them straight to the Japan Series. The Pacific League (2004) has had some shape of playoffs for longer than the Central (2007), but it’s still in its infancy. It is not a flawless format, not by any stretch of the imagination.
The second place team hosts the third place team for a best-of-three, and the right to face the league-winning team. There are still ties in the playoffs, so technically the second place team needs just a win and a tie to advance. (That is how the 2014 Tigers won, and trust me, fist-pumping and hugging looks weird after a stalemate.)
The winner of that “Climax Series First Stage” then travels to the home stadium of the champs for a best-of-seven. The entirety of the series takes place there, and to sweeten the pot even more for the regular season winners, they get a one-game advantage before play even starts. That’s right: They need to win just three of the remaining six games, on their home turf, against an inferior opponent, who has just spent the top of their rotation to get there. Check that. Two wins and a tie would suffice. How’s THAT for fair? How stupid is THAT?
My argument is that it is not stupid at all, and that in fact it is closer to fair than the MLB system. Are you telling me that the 2019 Los Angeles Dodgers, for example, who dominated baseball for 162 games, should receive an “advantage” of just ONE extra game on their home field? “Hey, nice work over the past five months, guys. Enjoy the bonus of sleeping at home one extra night.” (I know. It’s America. The system works just fine and does not need me sticking my nose in there.)
So here are a few reasons I like the NPB format, and why it isn’t as unfair as it looks at first glance. (Note that I am not claiming it is the perfect set-up, nor that other leagues should adopt it. Again, unique culture = unique rules.)
- The team that won the regular season has proven itself to be the superior team over a long stretch of time. Plenty of teams get hot for a few weeks at a time, but it takes talent, health, and good management to finish ahead of all the competition over a 143-game schedule. The reward should not just be a single game bonus (1/143 = 0.6%). Give these guys incentive to play for more than that. That one-game advantage can easily be nullified by a timely seeing-eye single or Texas Leaguer, but that hardly makes the road team deserving of advancing.
- Besides, when you have just 12 teams in your league and six make the playoffs, it’s really not that hard to sneak in with a mediocre record. Those teams do not deserve equal footing with the elite.
- It shortens the schedule some. Yes, weak argument… but playing all the games in one stadium in one city allows for the series to be done in 6 days. No travel days, no rest days. Go go go! (As for the rest of NPB scheduling logistics, those need some serious work… especially rain-outs and make-up games!)
- It’s not as ridiculous an advantage as you think. Why even bother playing these, you say? Well, in the past six years alone, the visiting team has beaten those stacked odds three times. That’s a 30% success rate, which is probably higher than you thought, right? You see, there is a disadvantage to being the champs, too. You basically have 10+ days of no baseball while you wait for your opposition to be determined. You also cannot advance scout as thoroughly, as you do not know who you’re facing until 48 hours before the start of the series. The underdogs know who they’re going to face if they advance.
Now, as I said… this is not a flawless playoff format. I don’t think there exists such a thing in any league anywhere. (Though from a personal perspective, nothing NOTHING beats the Stanley Cup Playoffs in terms of guaranteed excitement!) But here are a few things they can do to fix the current set-up.
- Set up the advantage on a scale. You win the league by 0.0 to 1.5 games? You get four home games. By 2 to 3.5? Five at home. By 4 to 5.5? All but one at home. Six to 9.5? You get the entire 7-game series at home. Only if you win by 10 or more games, the format remains as it is now.
- Tiebreaker for the 0.0 game difference goes to the team with the most wins, not the one with the higher win percentage. The 2014 Orix Buffaloes got screwed out of the pennant when the SoftBank Hawks tied more games, thereby ending the year with a higher win %. Not fair.
These suggestions make it harder to set the schedule in stone, but think about the ramifications. A team that has clinched the pennant with 10+ games on schedule still has something to play for right until the end. If they slack off and the second-place team claws to within a couple of games of them, their advantage is slimmer in the playoffs. The teams who are fighting for the playoffs are not just trying to get in… they are trying to lessen the handicap imposed on them should they advance.
That’s my take on this “crazy” “stupid” “unfair” playoff system. Now, I am just a spindly blogger who doesn’t actually go through the rigors of the regular or postseason… but to give proper weight to the grueling regular season, as well as to properly incentivize the battle for supremacy, there should be a bit more creativity in how the postseason is scheduled. Don’t you think???