As Seen in Daily Sports (Japanese) / デイリースポーツオンラインのコラムから
I’ve only been following Japanese professional baseball for seven years, but in some ways, I am a kind of “veteran” in the foreign NPB fan society. Often when new fans come in, the first things they ask about are some of the major differences between the “new” version of this game they have loved much of their lives. One of those is the tie game.
“What? You have ties? In baseball? There’s no tying in baseball!”
But, I reason with them (despite their misquote of Tom Hanks’ famous line in A League of Their Own), the vast majority of fans come to games by train. Those trains stop running at a certain time, and the ball clubs have a responsibility to make sure fans can get home on (or before) the last train.
This is met by a nod of resignation, like, “Makes sense, but I still don’t like it.”
I don’t like it, either. But for the most part, I have accepted it as a unique part of the game that makes it “Japanese.” This year, though, I am ready to see the system changed.
As of August 29, there have been 75 ties in NPB this season in 588 games. That means roughly one in every 8 games, or four per week, ends without a winner determined. Now, this year is exceptional in two ways, so I get that this high percentage of ties is an anomaly: there are no extra innings due to the novel coronavirus, and there are fewer disappointed fans in the stands to experience those ties, also due to Covid.
But there is an even bigger reason that this system sucks, and I have to go back to 2014 to refresh your memories as to why this is. The Pacific League season ended with two teams atop the standings: SoftBank Hawks were 78-60-6, while the Orix Buffaloes were 80-62-2. Both teams were 18 games above .500… but which one, in your estimation, had the “better” record? I would say the Buffaloes, who won two more games than the Hawks. (Look at it this way: 140 games yielded the same 78-60-2 mark, and in the 4 games with differing results, the Buffaloes went 2-2, while the Hawks went 0-0-4…) Unfortunately, the Buffaloes did not win the pennant because their win percentage (.563) was marginally lower than that of the Hawks (.565). You see, ties benefit teams with a record of over .500 while it punishes teams with a losing record.
Think of it in an extreme situation. A team that goes 1-0-142 over the course of a season would have a winning percentage of 1.000 while a team that went 142-1-0 would have a win percentage of .993 — but the pennant would go to the team with just ONE win. And a team that went 0-1-142 would have a win percentage of .000 which would land them in last place. Fair? Hardly.
I propose one of two things to solve this, and quickly, lest our 2021 Hanshin Tigers (3 ties) fall victim to the same scenario as the Giants TIE their way to a pennant (currently 12 sister-kissers).
Give games a tie-breaker system like they do in international play.
(Start each extra inning with runners on 1st and 2nd until a winner is determined.) Traditionalists hate it but they will get used to it. Case in point. People still bellyache about the shootout in the NHL, but most people love the five minutes of 3-on-3 that precede it. Let games actually be decided, even if extra innings start with a rather unnatural scenario! More excitement for fans (whether that means more runs or relievers escaping the rule-imposed jams unscathed), better for the game!
Change the calculation of the winning percentage so that ties punish teams over .500 while it rewards those under that mark.
In the case of a tie, each team gets a “half win” and therefore percentages would change. In the case of the 2014 Hawks and Buffaloes, they would have ended with identical .563 win percentages, and the pennant would have been decided by a better tiebreaker (head-to-head record, one-game playoff, whatever) than “how many ties did you fail to determine a winner during the regular season” (with the winner being the team who won AND lost less).
You see, the Tigers are actually in danger of losing the pennant despite being a half-game ahead of the Giants in the standings! (As is the case on August 29, when, despite having a game advantage over two other teams, they find themselves in third, for a lack of ties.) Stretch out the current records a little, and you could see the Giants finish, say, 74-54-16 (.578) while the Tigers go 80-59-4 (.575). Math that out and you have a half-game difference (Tigers up) but the Giants would take the pennant. I don’t want this, and neither do you… right? The solution, at least for 2021, is option #2 above. For 2022 and beyond, why not give option 1 a try???