Before Super Bowl XLVII, I examined a few prop bets that might be worth taking. How’d I do? Not terribly well… here are the results:
THERE WILL NOT BE A TOUCHDOWN
(+20,000)
This was a supreme longshot and I knew it. If it turned into a kicking contest, I could have increased my money ten times without winning any other bets. Alas, there were more than 0 touchdowns scored… in fact, there were 7.
Bet Result = -5
WHAT COLOR GATORADE/LIQUID WILL BE DUMPED ON THE WINNING COACH?
(RED +750)
If I’m not mistaken, John Harbaugh still hasn’t had a cooler full of ice cold liquid dumped over his head (mostly because champagne usually doesn’t come in coolers the way Gatorade does). I’d love to say that means that I push with my bet but I seriously doubt that’s the way Vegas works.
Bet Result = -5
COLIN KAEPERNICK WILL WIN THE MVP
(+175)
I feel pretty good about this one even though it didn’t pan out. He threw one really bad interception and looked like a deer in headlights at times but overall, for his 10th career start, he played very well. He went 16-28 with 302 yards and threw for one TD in addition to that one interception. He also ran the ball 7 times for 62 yards and a touchdown. If he had managed to sneak a pass to Michael Crabtree on that 4th and five, this would have been in the win column for me.
Bet Result = -5
REFERENCES TO THE HARBOWL, HARBAUGH BOWL, OR SUPERBAUGH
OVER 2.5 (-110)
Overall, CBS had a very straight-laced, professional broadcast of the Super Bowl and I shouldn’t have expected anything else. I didn’t actually count the references but I didn’t hear a single one so I feel safe in saying that CBS didn’t go for the cheap angle on this game and treated it like the momentous occasion that it was (you know… the SUPER BOWL).
I still think that if Fox was broadcasting it, the over/under would have been at a dozen and I still would have taken the over.
Bet Result = -20
WILL THERE BE A DEFENSIVE OR SPECIAL TEAMS TOUCHDOWN?
NO (-200)
Ouch, Jacoby Jones… ouch. Everyone knows when you’re that deep you take a knee. Oh well, it was a great play.
Bet Result = -20
WILL THERE BE A SUCCESSFUL 4TH DOWN CONVERSION?
YES (-250)
There were three 4th down “attempts” in the Super Bowl and none of the three were successful. I really figured that one of the following scenarios would play out:
- A 4th and short around the 40 yard line. A 57 yard field goal or a short yardage play with two very good running games? Seems like an easy decision – never happened.
- Someone trying to be clever. This actually did happen in the form of a fake field goal on 4th and 9 deep in 49ers territory. Were it not for a great play by Patrick Willis getting in Justin Tucker’s way (while being blocked), this would have pushed me into the win column on this bet.
- Desperation. I figured that one team would be driving late in the game with the chance to win. That part came true. However, I figured a 4th down play would occur at midfield, not at the 5 yard line. At midfield, the defense has to defend 3,180 square yards of territory. From the five yard line, that number shrinks to 795, exactly one fourth the space. I remember seeing a replay of one of the plays from the five when Kaepernick rolled out to his right and threw incomplete to Crabtree; the endzone was a mass of white jerseys and every single helmet was looking right at him. Very difficult circumstances in which to gain five yards.
So between the Ravens’ fake field goal, the Ravens’ goal line stand, and the Ravens’ decision to give the 49ers 2 points, I came up just short on this one.
Bet Result = -15
WILL THERE BE A SUCCESSFUL 2 POINT CONVERSION?
NO (-500)
I guess I can thank Ed Reed being offsides and the refs not calling it. Oh well, a win is a win. For whatever reason, I felt that Jim Harbaugh got a little timid in the Super Bowl while John Harbaugh might have gotten more aggressive. I felt like the fake field goal put Jim on his heels and set the tone for the rest of the game.
Bet Result = +4 (this is my profit and does not include the actual bet)
JOE FLACCO WILL BE THE MVP
(+225)
Flacco went 22-33 for 287 yards and threw three touchdowns but beyond that, he just seemed to be in control. When the 49ers started to come back after the power outage, Flacco never panicked and while he only led the Ravens to 6 second half points (don’t forget that he had nothing to do with the first 7 points of the second half), he made some critical throws that prolonged drives and kept the surging 49ers offense off the field. He deserves every bit of this award. Yes, Jacoby Jones had a great game in the few touches he had and Anquan Boldin made some spectacular catches at huge moments but the constant was Flacco throwing the ball.
When you factor in the fact that Ray Rice carried the ball 20 times for 59 yards and fumbled at a key moment, Flacco’s performance becomes even more important.
Bet Result = +11.25
WILL THERE BE A SAFETY?
YES (+900)
This was the cherry on top of my picks and at the time it happened, I didn’t even realize it; I didn’t remember laying a bet on a safety. Thinking of the strategy that went into that play, there were many different things that the Ravens could have done and it’d be hard to find fault with any of them.
However, the decision to take a safety was not the masterful stroke. The decision to have punter Sam Koch run around for a while wasn’t it either. It was his instructions to his offensive line, who did everything but tackle the 49ers punt rush team. If they don’t call a penalty, then Koch runs around and takes 8 seconds off the clock.
If they did call a penalty though, there are two possible outcomes. If the penalty occurred outside the endzone, the 49ers would have to decline since accepting it would mean the Ravens get to line up to punt again with 4 seconds on the clock. Declining the penalty makes the safety stand up. If the penalty occurred in the endzone, then it would be a safety. Holding is not a penalty that causes a stoppage of the clock so it still would have wound until Koch stepped out of the endzone.
In other words, blatantly committing holding on every single 49ers rusher had two end results. Re-punting from the 4 yard line with 4 seconds left or a safety with 4 seconds left. It would have been virtually impossible for the Ravens to lose unless Koch fumbled the snap and it didn’t squirt out the back of the endzone.
In a nutshell, this was a former special teams’ coach (John Harbaugh) who clearly dotted every “i” and crossed every “t” for the single most important play of the game.
Bet Result = +45
NET RESULTS
All told, I wagered 100 simoleons on nine different wagers varying in amount from 5 up to 20. I got only three correct but considering that one of them paid off to the tune of 9:1, I actually ended up losing just 9.75 simoleons. For the first 59 minutes and 56 seconds of a 60 minute game, it looked very much like I was going to lose well over half of the money I put into this thought exercise but the longshot on a safety paid off.
I hope you didn’t lose too much wagering on the Super Bowl and I certainly hope you didn’t lose anything following the fake bets I placed in my previous post. Over the next few weeks I’m going to write one more time about my re-thought power rankings in the NFL and then I’ll come out with my first MLB power rankings heading into the 2013 season.
Until then, enjoy the NBA… wait, that doesn’t sound right…
Until then, enjoy the NHL… that’s even worse…
Until then, go hug your loved ones.
Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Prop Bets and the Super Bowl
If you came up to me and handed me $100 to bet on this Sunday’s Super Bowl, how would I bet it? Before I answer this fun and completely hypothetical question, I want to say something that is anything but fun or hypothetical.
Gambling is dangerous. As radio host Colin Cowherd repeatedly says on his show on ESPN Radio, you should never gamble more than you can afford to lose. The fear of becoming addicting to gambling is one of the biggest reasons that I’ve only set foot in a casino a handful of times since turning 21. It’s fun to win and the hope that the next hand will turn around a spell of bad luck can be the easiest lie we ever tell ourselves.
Please think long and hard before placing any money on any sporting event. If you have second thoughts about the wisdom of making that bet, you probably shouldn’t be placing it. On that note, I consider myself more than a casual NFL fan but far less than an expert. I’m looking to have some fun with a few of the many available prop bets associated with the Super Bowl; I’m not looking to make money. If you use my suggestions to make bets, you are assuming all of the risk as I am not claiming to know anything more than your typical NFL fan. To reinforce the fact that this is completely a thought exercise, I will be placing bets in simoleons, the currency of Sim City.
PROP BETS
The Super Bowl very clearly shows that the United States is simply obsessed with two things; the Super Bowl itself and gambling. Before going any further, I’d suggest reading the following piece by Bill Barnwell on Grantland.com about a few various prop bets associated with this Super Bowl.
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8889349/bill-barnwell-prop-bets
There is one section that is especially important in this piece that I’m just going to quote here because before reading Barnwell’s piece, I had no idea what a line of +700 meant.
This is Barnwell’s explanation of what it means when the line of there being overtime is +700 and the line on there not being overtime is -1000:
“The "+700" figure next to "Yes" means that a bettor would receive $700 back in profit if they bet $100 on the event occurring before it actually happened. If you held this winning ticket with $100 and brought it to the counter, you would be handed back $800 (the $700 profit plus your initial $100 bet). The "-1000" figure next to "No" replaces the positive sign at the beginning with a negative sign; it indicates that you have to bet the dollar amount in question to win $100. In this case, if you wanted to win $100 betting against the possibility that there would be overtime, you would need to bet $1000. If there's no overtime, you would win $1100 (the $100 profit plus your initial $1000 bet).”
In other words, if you’re betting on a line with a negative number, you’re betting on an outcome that has a better than 50/50 chance of happening. In this context, it makes complete sense. NFL games rarely go to overtime so betting on there NOT being overtime and being correct only yields 10% on your bet.
MY BETS
In a lot of ways, I view the thought of determining which bets to make a lot like I would view a roulette table before the ball is rolled. It seems logical to me to bet smaller amounts on some longshot outcomes while betting larger amounts on more predictable outcomes to hopefully balance out the missed longshots and keep me above even. My goal is making these picks is not to maximize my potential outcome; it’s to maximize my outcome while minimizing my exposure to long odds bets.
Obviously, the list of bets that Barnwell puts forth isn’t comprehensive but I’m going to pick from that list and the list at one other website I found. First, the favorites:
MENTIONS OF THE “HARBAUGH BOWL, “HARBOWL”, OR “SUPERBAUGH”
OVER 2.5 (-110)
This seems like a complete no-brainer to me. Somehow there are people out there that think the broadcasters are going to resist using one of these catchy terms once or twice at most? While it might not be Phil Simms or Jim Nantz that goes here, you have to remember that the broadcast team includes the sideline reporters and the crew doing the halftime show. My bet is 20 simoleons on the over.
WILL THERE BE A SUCCESSFUL 2 POINT CONVERSION?
NO (-500)
In the first 46 Super Bowls, teams are 6-13 when going for two and those attempts have come in 8 different Super Bowls. However, for these purposes it must be considered that the San Diego Chargers were 2-2 in Super Bowl XXIX. Therefore, there has only been five Super Bowls with a successful two point conversion, or 10.9%.
A line of -500 implies that something has only an 83.3% chance of happening when, according to Super Bowl history, it actually has an 89.1% chance of happening. Statistically speaking, this bet feels like a very safe one. NFL coaches don’t like going for two unless they’re completely desperate and the game is basically over but the Super Bowl is the one venue where some coaches might be willing to put it on the line.
The only reason this bet doesn’t feel terribly secure is that all of the two point conversion attempts have occurred in the past 18 Super Bowls. If you use that as your sample size instead of all 46 Super Bowls, then the “yes” bet looks like a steal. This can be considered the “entertainment” portion of the post when you read along and watch me talk myself out of a particular bet…
They wouldn’t, would they? Two great running games, plus Colin Kaepernick… plus it looks like Jim Harbaugh is willing to take this kind of risk…
Oh, this is just icky… I’m putting 20 simoleons on No but this really doesn’t feel safe.
WILL THERE BE A DEFENSIVE OR SPECIAL TEAMS TOUCHDOWN?
NO (-200)
I’m just not feeling this one. I feel like the two quarterbacks are playing well enough right now to avoid a pick-6 (this is the point where I remember Kaepernick throwing one against Green Bay) and I don’t feel like either team has a particularly dynamic special teams to be able to bring one back.
I know that Baltimore gave up not one but two special teams TD’s against the Broncos but I saw a very different team in the second half against the Broncos and against the Patriots than I did in the first half in Denver. They’re playing very well and I just don’t see them giving up another one. Sometimes it feels like defensive and special teams TD’s come in bunches and I can’t help but think that for the 2012/13 playoffs, we’ve already seen the bunches.
On top of all that, -200 seems like a pretty favorable line. This seems like a fairly high reward for an outcome with a fairly high probability. Twenty simoleons on No.
WILL THERE BE A SUCCESSFUL 4TH DOWN CONVERSION?
YES (-250)
Between Jim Harbaugh’s aggressiveness (and his new QB) and the Ravens’ win-it-all-for-Ray mentality, I can’t imagine there not being at least one successful 4th down conversion. I know these are stout defenses but if one team gets down early, it would make this even more of a lock to come true. If there’s only one attempt the whole game, then I could see it going over to the “No” side, but if one team finds themselves in a situation where they need two scores in the final five minutes of regulation, there will definitely be a 4th down conversion. Fifteen simoleons on Yes.
THE UNDERDOGS
WILL THERE BE A SAFETY?
YES (+900)
I was looking up data on two point conversions and noticed there were quite a few safeties. In 46 Super Bowls, there have been 7, or one in 15.2% of the games. This line implies a 10% chance of something happening so I’ll be getting some pretty good value here.
I know that Barnwell points out that the two pass rushes are struggling coming into this game but their special teams are well coached (enough to pin the other team deep) and there are other ways to get a safety, such as in Super Bowl XLIII when the Steelers were called for holding in the endzone. It also happened last year when Tom Brady was called for intentional grounding in the endzone.
Crazy things can happen when a football bounces… five simoleons on Yes.
WHO WILL THE MVP BE?
COLIN KAEPERNICK (+175)
JOE FLACCO (+225)
I’m lumping these together for obvious reasons. In my opinion, these two have been the MVP’s of their teams’ respective Super Bowl runs and I see no reason why that should stop now. Many players will be important on both sides of the ball for both teams but nobody is more important than these two guys.
Let me put it another way; when I ponder all the ways in which both teams can win this game, there are few instances where I think a team can win with their quarterback playing poorly. Five simoleons on each.
WHAT COLOR WILL THE GATORADE (OR LIQUID) DUMPED ON THE WINNING COACH BE?
RED (+750)
This is an example of how ridiculous prop bets can be. Having said that, considering that just about every beverage maker (and especially those that specialize in sports drinks) have a flavor that is colored red, this feels like a steal to me. When you add in the fact that the 49ers primary color is red, it just reinforces the feeling to me that this is way too high of a line. Five simoleons on red.
THERE WILL BE NO TOUCHDOWNS
YES (+20,000)
This is the longshot of all longshots and it becomes even more so when you consider that these two teams have combined for 22 touchdowns in their combined 5 games. However, a bet offering a 200:1 payout when you have two very good defenses feels like a good longshot on which to put a little bit of action. To me, this is the equivalent of having a lucky number at the roulette table where you always put a penny at the table’s with a dollar minimum bet.
Working against me in this bet is the fact that the game is in the Superdome and, in case you haven’t seen him play, Colin Kaepernick is fast. Considering that next year’s Super Bowl is in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and the forecast for Sunday calls for highs of 37 degrees, 13 mph winds, and a few snow showers, this bet will look quite a bit better next year. However, there’s no way you’ll get a line of +20,000 next year in the Meadowlands. Five simoleons on nobody reaching the endzone.
SUMMARY
There you have it, I’m placed 100 simoleons on prop bets on the Super Bowl. Of my nine bets, only two are mutually exclusive (MVP race) so I could potentially go 8-9. If I were to do that with Flacco winning the MVP trophy, I’ll turn my 100 simoleons into 1,226.93 simoleons (1,224.43 if Kaepernick wins MVP).
Disregarding the fact that two of them are mutually exclusive, based solely on the lines, I have a 0.00014% chance of running the table. Of course, with my luck, Kaepernick will get hurt on the first series of the game and Alex Smith will come in and lead the 49ers to a thrilling victory, winning the MVP trophy by throwing four touchdowns (including the game winning two point conversion) after throwing a pick 6 to Ray Lewis to start his day. Jim Harbaugh will be doused in water (it’s better for you anyways) at the end of the game where the announcers forget to mention even once that Jim and John Harbaugh are related.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don’t gamble.
As for who wins the game, the last I heard is that the 49ers are 4.5 point favorites. Part of me says that line is too generous and another part of me says it's not generous enough. My prediction is that it comes down to the kickers. David Akers (29-42 in the regular season) will miss his only attempt in the first quarter while rookie Justin Tucker (30-33 this year) while make three field goals, including one early in the fourth quarter, setting up Ray Lewis to make a huge tackle on fourth down inside of two minutes. Ravens 30-28.
Enjoy the Super Bowl everyone and I’ll be back next week to look at how well (or depressingly) these (fake) bets turned out.
Gambling is dangerous. As radio host Colin Cowherd repeatedly says on his show on ESPN Radio, you should never gamble more than you can afford to lose. The fear of becoming addicting to gambling is one of the biggest reasons that I’ve only set foot in a casino a handful of times since turning 21. It’s fun to win and the hope that the next hand will turn around a spell of bad luck can be the easiest lie we ever tell ourselves.
Please think long and hard before placing any money on any sporting event. If you have second thoughts about the wisdom of making that bet, you probably shouldn’t be placing it. On that note, I consider myself more than a casual NFL fan but far less than an expert. I’m looking to have some fun with a few of the many available prop bets associated with the Super Bowl; I’m not looking to make money. If you use my suggestions to make bets, you are assuming all of the risk as I am not claiming to know anything more than your typical NFL fan. To reinforce the fact that this is completely a thought exercise, I will be placing bets in simoleons, the currency of Sim City.
PROP BETS
The Super Bowl very clearly shows that the United States is simply obsessed with two things; the Super Bowl itself and gambling. Before going any further, I’d suggest reading the following piece by Bill Barnwell on Grantland.com about a few various prop bets associated with this Super Bowl.
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8889349/bill-barnwell-prop-bets
There is one section that is especially important in this piece that I’m just going to quote here because before reading Barnwell’s piece, I had no idea what a line of +700 meant.
This is Barnwell’s explanation of what it means when the line of there being overtime is +700 and the line on there not being overtime is -1000:
“The "+700" figure next to "Yes" means that a bettor would receive $700 back in profit if they bet $100 on the event occurring before it actually happened. If you held this winning ticket with $100 and brought it to the counter, you would be handed back $800 (the $700 profit plus your initial $100 bet). The "-1000" figure next to "No" replaces the positive sign at the beginning with a negative sign; it indicates that you have to bet the dollar amount in question to win $100. In this case, if you wanted to win $100 betting against the possibility that there would be overtime, you would need to bet $1000. If there's no overtime, you would win $1100 (the $100 profit plus your initial $1000 bet).”
In other words, if you’re betting on a line with a negative number, you’re betting on an outcome that has a better than 50/50 chance of happening. In this context, it makes complete sense. NFL games rarely go to overtime so betting on there NOT being overtime and being correct only yields 10% on your bet.
MY BETS
In a lot of ways, I view the thought of determining which bets to make a lot like I would view a roulette table before the ball is rolled. It seems logical to me to bet smaller amounts on some longshot outcomes while betting larger amounts on more predictable outcomes to hopefully balance out the missed longshots and keep me above even. My goal is making these picks is not to maximize my potential outcome; it’s to maximize my outcome while minimizing my exposure to long odds bets.
Obviously, the list of bets that Barnwell puts forth isn’t comprehensive but I’m going to pick from that list and the list at one other website I found. First, the favorites:
MENTIONS OF THE “HARBAUGH BOWL, “HARBOWL”, OR “SUPERBAUGH”
OVER 2.5 (-110)
This seems like a complete no-brainer to me. Somehow there are people out there that think the broadcasters are going to resist using one of these catchy terms once or twice at most? While it might not be Phil Simms or Jim Nantz that goes here, you have to remember that the broadcast team includes the sideline reporters and the crew doing the halftime show. My bet is 20 simoleons on the over.
WILL THERE BE A SUCCESSFUL 2 POINT CONVERSION?
NO (-500)
In the first 46 Super Bowls, teams are 6-13 when going for two and those attempts have come in 8 different Super Bowls. However, for these purposes it must be considered that the San Diego Chargers were 2-2 in Super Bowl XXIX. Therefore, there has only been five Super Bowls with a successful two point conversion, or 10.9%.
A line of -500 implies that something has only an 83.3% chance of happening when, according to Super Bowl history, it actually has an 89.1% chance of happening. Statistically speaking, this bet feels like a very safe one. NFL coaches don’t like going for two unless they’re completely desperate and the game is basically over but the Super Bowl is the one venue where some coaches might be willing to put it on the line.
The only reason this bet doesn’t feel terribly secure is that all of the two point conversion attempts have occurred in the past 18 Super Bowls. If you use that as your sample size instead of all 46 Super Bowls, then the “yes” bet looks like a steal. This can be considered the “entertainment” portion of the post when you read along and watch me talk myself out of a particular bet…
They wouldn’t, would they? Two great running games, plus Colin Kaepernick… plus it looks like Jim Harbaugh is willing to take this kind of risk…
Oh, this is just icky… I’m putting 20 simoleons on No but this really doesn’t feel safe.
WILL THERE BE A DEFENSIVE OR SPECIAL TEAMS TOUCHDOWN?
NO (-200)
I’m just not feeling this one. I feel like the two quarterbacks are playing well enough right now to avoid a pick-6 (this is the point where I remember Kaepernick throwing one against Green Bay) and I don’t feel like either team has a particularly dynamic special teams to be able to bring one back.
I know that Baltimore gave up not one but two special teams TD’s against the Broncos but I saw a very different team in the second half against the Broncos and against the Patriots than I did in the first half in Denver. They’re playing very well and I just don’t see them giving up another one. Sometimes it feels like defensive and special teams TD’s come in bunches and I can’t help but think that for the 2012/13 playoffs, we’ve already seen the bunches.
On top of all that, -200 seems like a pretty favorable line. This seems like a fairly high reward for an outcome with a fairly high probability. Twenty simoleons on No.
WILL THERE BE A SUCCESSFUL 4TH DOWN CONVERSION?
YES (-250)
Between Jim Harbaugh’s aggressiveness (and his new QB) and the Ravens’ win-it-all-for-Ray mentality, I can’t imagine there not being at least one successful 4th down conversion. I know these are stout defenses but if one team gets down early, it would make this even more of a lock to come true. If there’s only one attempt the whole game, then I could see it going over to the “No” side, but if one team finds themselves in a situation where they need two scores in the final five minutes of regulation, there will definitely be a 4th down conversion. Fifteen simoleons on Yes.
THE UNDERDOGS
WILL THERE BE A SAFETY?
YES (+900)
I was looking up data on two point conversions and noticed there were quite a few safeties. In 46 Super Bowls, there have been 7, or one in 15.2% of the games. This line implies a 10% chance of something happening so I’ll be getting some pretty good value here.
I know that Barnwell points out that the two pass rushes are struggling coming into this game but their special teams are well coached (enough to pin the other team deep) and there are other ways to get a safety, such as in Super Bowl XLIII when the Steelers were called for holding in the endzone. It also happened last year when Tom Brady was called for intentional grounding in the endzone.
Crazy things can happen when a football bounces… five simoleons on Yes.
WHO WILL THE MVP BE?
COLIN KAEPERNICK (+175)
JOE FLACCO (+225)
I’m lumping these together for obvious reasons. In my opinion, these two have been the MVP’s of their teams’ respective Super Bowl runs and I see no reason why that should stop now. Many players will be important on both sides of the ball for both teams but nobody is more important than these two guys.
Let me put it another way; when I ponder all the ways in which both teams can win this game, there are few instances where I think a team can win with their quarterback playing poorly. Five simoleons on each.
WHAT COLOR WILL THE GATORADE (OR LIQUID) DUMPED ON THE WINNING COACH BE?
RED (+750)
This is an example of how ridiculous prop bets can be. Having said that, considering that just about every beverage maker (and especially those that specialize in sports drinks) have a flavor that is colored red, this feels like a steal to me. When you add in the fact that the 49ers primary color is red, it just reinforces the feeling to me that this is way too high of a line. Five simoleons on red.
THERE WILL BE NO TOUCHDOWNS
YES (+20,000)
This is the longshot of all longshots and it becomes even more so when you consider that these two teams have combined for 22 touchdowns in their combined 5 games. However, a bet offering a 200:1 payout when you have two very good defenses feels like a good longshot on which to put a little bit of action. To me, this is the equivalent of having a lucky number at the roulette table where you always put a penny at the table’s with a dollar minimum bet.
Working against me in this bet is the fact that the game is in the Superdome and, in case you haven’t seen him play, Colin Kaepernick is fast. Considering that next year’s Super Bowl is in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and the forecast for Sunday calls for highs of 37 degrees, 13 mph winds, and a few snow showers, this bet will look quite a bit better next year. However, there’s no way you’ll get a line of +20,000 next year in the Meadowlands. Five simoleons on nobody reaching the endzone.
SUMMARY
There you have it, I’m placed 100 simoleons on prop bets on the Super Bowl. Of my nine bets, only two are mutually exclusive (MVP race) so I could potentially go 8-9. If I were to do that with Flacco winning the MVP trophy, I’ll turn my 100 simoleons into 1,226.93 simoleons (1,224.43 if Kaepernick wins MVP).
Disregarding the fact that two of them are mutually exclusive, based solely on the lines, I have a 0.00014% chance of running the table. Of course, with my luck, Kaepernick will get hurt on the first series of the game and Alex Smith will come in and lead the 49ers to a thrilling victory, winning the MVP trophy by throwing four touchdowns (including the game winning two point conversion) after throwing a pick 6 to Ray Lewis to start his day. Jim Harbaugh will be doused in water (it’s better for you anyways) at the end of the game where the announcers forget to mention even once that Jim and John Harbaugh are related.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don’t gamble.
As for who wins the game, the last I heard is that the 49ers are 4.5 point favorites. Part of me says that line is too generous and another part of me says it's not generous enough. My prediction is that it comes down to the kickers. David Akers (29-42 in the regular season) will miss his only attempt in the first quarter while rookie Justin Tucker (30-33 this year) while make three field goals, including one early in the fourth quarter, setting up Ray Lewis to make a huge tackle on fourth down inside of two minutes. Ravens 30-28.
Enjoy the Super Bowl everyone and I’ll be back next week to look at how well (or depressingly) these (fake) bets turned out.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Is the Major League Baseball Playoff System Broken?
Before I begin, please forgive me; brevity has never been my strong suit...
Before we delve too deep, let’s get some background. In the NBA and the NHL, 16 of 30 teams make the playoffs every year (53.3%). In the NFL, 12 of 32 teams makes the playoffs (37.5%) and in Major League Baseball, only 8 teams every year get to go to the postseason, or just 26.7% of the teams in the league. For a very long time, only the best team from each league made it to the World Series and in 1908 when the Cubs last won a World Series, choosing one out of eight teams to represent each league didn’t seem too unreasonable. After all, they did play 155-158 games so theoretically the best team would have won the most games.
Over the next 60 years, only four teams were added but the playoff format remained the same with only two of twenty teams playing in the postseason in 1968. Four teams were added for the 1969 season (the Kansas City Royals, Seattle Pilots, Montreal Expos, and the San Diego Padres) and the number of playoff teams doubled with the addition of the League Championship Series.
Continued expansion and division realignment has led us to where we are today with three division champions and one wildcard team from each league. Does it really need to be changed?
All across sports, when it comes to tournaments or playoff systems, they are structured to give the best teams an advantage and to give them the best chance to win the tournament out of all the teams involved. In the case of the NFL, this means giving the top two teams from each conference a week off to rest up while the lower ranked teams duke it out in the first round. In the NBA this means giving the better team more home games since crowd noise in such a small space can cause confusion for the road team.
Is there really that much of a home field advantage in baseball? Well, yes and no. First of all, every baseball field is physically different. Some have acres of foul territory and some have very little; some have a flag pole in the field of play along with a little hill while others have a 37 foot tall fence. These little differences help the home team because their players are more adept at adjusting to those little quirks than the visiting players. However, the vast majority of communication in baseball is nonverbal. Quarterbacks call plays and then call out audibles before the snap and point guards call out plays as they come down the court. Catchers use certain numbers of fingers to indicate pitches. Base coaches use sometimes comical sequences of touching certain body parts or making certain gestures to tell the batter or baserunner to do something in particular. Therefore, crowd noise isn’t nearly as big a factor in baseball as it is in other sports.
For the sake of argument though, when it comes to playoff baseball, the teams that make it to the playoffs are solid teams that aren’t likely to be thrown off by a raucous stadium and this reduces the home field advantage even further.
THE NUMBERS
In the wildcard era, the team with the best overall record entering the playoffs has won the World Series just twice; the 1998 New York Yankees (114-48) and the 2009 New York Yankees (103-59). It should be noted that the 2007 Boston Red Sox are not listed because while they did tie with the Cleveland Indians for the league’s best record at 96-66, the Indians were given home field advantage in that series because due to tiebreakers, they were the top overall seed. Even if we were to expand the sample to the teams with one of the two best records in that particular year, that only adds three more teams (1995 Atlanta Braves, 2005 Chicago White Sox, and the 2007 Boston Red Sox). So in fifteen years, only one third of the championships have been won by a team that was in the top two in the league in wins.
Over the same time period, the top overall seed has won the Super Bowl just three times but when you include the top two, that number jumps to ten teams. Also, the NFL does a much better job of protecting its top seeds; of the thirty teams to play in the Super Bowl in the past fifteen years, 22 of them had a first round bye, meaning they would have to play at very most one road game to get to the Super Bowl.
The same trend can be found in the NBA where one of the top two seeds in each conference has made the finals 24 times in the past 15 years, including more than half (16 out of 30) of the number one seeds.
The dichotomy is obvious but the real question is; is it a problem?
I don’t necessarily think that it’s a problem; I just think that unlike some of the other professional sports, there is relatively little incentive to win your division once you have a playoff berth sewn up. A perfect example of this is how the Yankees stumbled down the stretch this year and appeared to put little stock in winning the AL East and sure enough, the Rays played slightly better at the end of the season and won the division. However, the method to the madness was revealed in a dominant first round sweep of the Twins by the Yankees. Manager Joe Girardi used September to line his team up for the playoffs and though it didn’t work this year, he took similar steps last year and helped bring home the 27th World Series title in Yankees history.
In a nutshell, what I want to see is the all-or-nothing approach that you see week in and week out in the NFL. For instance, in 2004, the Philadelphia Eagles finished the season 13-3 and were the NFC’s top seed in the playoffs. That year, Terrell Owens gave the team a dynamic threat at wide receiver that they had been missing but in the middle of the season he went down with a fractured leg. As it turned out, he didn’t play again until the Super Bowl but let’s play a little what if.
What if he had been injured in November instead of December? Potentially, the Eagles would not have gone 13-3 (maybe 11-5) and then they would have been on the cusp of playing in the wildcard round or getting a bye. There would be extra incentive for them to play hard and win their last game or two to secure that first round bye so when the playoffs do start for them, they are as close to full strength as possible.
Now, admittedly, injuries are a much bigger concern in football than in baseball but the same logic can apply. How much would the Texas Rangers have welcomed a first round bye so MVP candidate Josh Hamilton could rest his ailing ribs? As it turned out, in the first round they won despite his paltry contribution and when he started feeling better, he made the Yankees pitchers cry.
THE SOLUTION
I’m sure that all of you were wondering if I would actually get around to suggesting a different format than what we have currently. There already are reports that the players union is open to expansion of the playoffs but given Commissioner Selig’s pace of doing business if we are to see any expansion, it would most like be shifting the first round from five game series to seven game series. Personally, all I really think about that is that it seems to be a fairly transparent ploy for the owners to sell tickets for two additional playoff games every year.
My suggestion is far bolder.
While the NFL is not my favorite league (far from it given their inactivity on issues such as concussions) and football is not my favorite sport, their playoff format is by far my favorite so, if you’ll indulge me, I will show you what it would look like if baseball adopted the NFL’s playoff format.
Before I get too deep into it, this is what I would suggest. Two teams in each league get a bye in the first round. Teams three through six would play a three game series with the games scheduled for three consecutive days. For all that moaning I hear already, the average baseball season is played in roughly 185 days and they play 162 games; they play three straight days with a plane ride in the middle all the time.
The winners of those series would then enter the final eight teams and from there, it would be the same as what we have with a five game “second round”, a seven game LCS, and a seven game World Series.
Now how much would that actually change? It depends. Would it have altered the 1998 Yankees crash course with history after a 114 win regular season? Probably not. Would it have altered the 2001 Mariners crash course off a cliff after a 116 win regular season? Potentially.
What it would really do is make it hard for a wildcard team to win it all. For the record, a wildcard team has made it to the World Series 9 times and won it all 4 times. They are:
1997 Marlins (Won)
2000 Mets
2002 Giants
2002 Angels (Won)
2003 Marlins (Won)
2004 Red Sox (Won)
2005 Astros
2006 Tigers
2007 Rockies
Would these teams have made it to the World Series with an extra three games on the front end of their postseason schedule? Of those nine teams, only one failed to win 90 games (the 2005 Astros went 89-73) while two of them (2002 Angels with 99 and 2004 Red Sox with 98) nearly won 100 games. So we’re not talking about the weaklings that got into the playoffs by a technicality. For many of these teams, they caught lightning in a bottle and in all likelihood, three extra games wouldn’t have made a difference. The 2007 Rockies won an unbelievable 21 of 22 games to make the playoffs and get to the World Series before being swept by the Red Sox. Could that just as easily have been 24 of 25? Absolutely. More likely is that they get to the World Series while losing a game here or there but it’s far from impossible.
Now, the obvious question is this: why do we need to change the playoff format at all? Well, first answer me this; what do the following teams all have in common?
1997 New York Mets (88-74)
1997 Los Angeles Dodgers (88-74)
2000 Cleveland Indians (90-72)
2003 Seattle Mariners (93-69)
2005 Philadelphia Phillies (88-74)
2005 Florida Marlins (83-79)
2005 New York Mets (83-79)
2006 Philadelphia Phillies (85-77)
2007 San Diego Padres (89-74)
2007 New York Mets (88-74)
2008 New York Mets (89-73)
2008 Houston Astros (86-75)
2008 St. Louis Cardinals (86-76)
2009 Texas Rangers (87-75)
Well, those 14 teams all won between 83 and 93 games (averaging 87.4) but the kicker is that none of those teams made the playoffs. It’s not terrible unusual for a team whose win total is in the 80’s to miss the playoffs but this list is special. They all missed the playoffs while a team in their league made the playoffs with a worse record. Here is a list of the offending teams:
1997 Houston Astros (84-78)
2000 New York Yankees (87-74)
2003 Minnesota Twins (90-72)
2005 San Diego Padres (82-80)
2006 St. Louis Cardinals (83-78)
2007 Chicago Cubs (85-77)
2008 Los Angeles Dodgers (84-78)
2009 Minnesota Twins (87-76 due to the tiebreaker. Their regular season record was 86-76)
In other words, the 14 teams that I mentioned got the short end of the stick because they were in the wrong division. It should also be noted that two of the eight teams above that didn’t have one of the four best records in their league that year went on to win the World Series.
Yes, baseball’s postseason is exclusive and not everybody can come. I don’t, however, see the problem with letting a few more teams in that are deserving. It’s possible that some day a team that has a sub .500 record could get into the playoffs but that’s always a possibility. At the time of the strike in 1994, the Texas Rangers were leading the American League West with a record of 52-62 and would have had to play .604 baseball the rest of the season just to break even (and only two teams played that well during the season, the New York Yankees and the Montreal Expos). So even with the current format it’s always possible for a team to make the playoffs despite a sub-.500 record. In fact, under my system, only one team in the past 15 years (the 1997 Chicago White Sox) would have made it in with a record below .500 (80-81) and the additional teams had an average record of 87.5-74.5, hardly the dregs of the league. 11 of those teams even managed to win 90 games and still didn’t make the playoffs.
My argument is not based on bad teams get into the playoffs while good teams are left home. My argument is much more about protecting the top teams from the regular season. I also understand that there is a big difference between building a team to do well in a 162 game regular season and a team that is built to do well in 5 or 7 game series and while my format may be a little unfair to the latter, it would provide an advantage for the teams that actually played better in the regular season.
MONEY
After all, it really does all come down to this factor. The most potential playoff games under the current format is 41 (if every series were to go the distance although we all know how likely that is). This year so far there have been 29 games with 2-5 more games, depending on how much the Rangers feel like playing in the World Series. Under my format, 8-12 games would be added and only four days would need to be added to the schedule. Those aren’t regular season games either with their $4 nosebleed seats; those are playoff games where many people are so desperate to get their hands on playoff tickets that the cheap seats will sell for many times face value.
CONCLUSION
The only losers in my plan are the purists who don’t want to see playoff baseball to be diluted too much. While I understand their concern (I have long thought that the NBA lets far too many teams into the playoffs) I think the overall excitement outweighs the potential dilution. If my plan had been put into effect in 1995 instead of the current format, 23 different teams would have made the playoffs just through the expanded wildcard format and of the other 7 teams, 5 of them made the playoffs either as the first wildcard or as a division winner. In other words, 28 out of 30 teams would have made the playoffs in the past 14 years (I excluded 1995 due to its shortened nature).
Instead, the Toronto Blue Jays haven’t made the playoffs since 1993 (they would have qualified in 1998, 1999, and 2003 under my system). Instead of making the playoffs in both 1996 and 2002, the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals haven’t been to the postseason since 1981.
All you have to do to see the effect of a playoff run is look at the Montreal Expos. Many experts and former players say that they would have been the favorite to win the 1994 World Series and when the season ended, they had the best record (74-40, or 105-57 prorated to a full season). If they had won the World Series, they would have had the revenue to keep their young core of brilliant players together and could have had a shot at a dynasty. Instead, the team fell apart because they didn’t have the money to keep them all together. After 10 more years and a .458 winning percentage, fans lost enough interest that the team packed up and moved to Washington, D.C. How would things have been different if two of those seasons had been playoff years?
Unfortunately, we’ll never know. Having lived in Washington (state) through the 90’s, I know full well what the city, state, and region did starting in 1995. I challenge you to find a fan base that was more rabid than during the playoff run in 1995. I understand that it was aided by fair weather fans but just look at what had happened when a team with a losing history caught fire and went to the playoffs. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that the 1995 season saved baseball in Seattle.
What other franchises need saving?
Before we delve too deep, let’s get some background. In the NBA and the NHL, 16 of 30 teams make the playoffs every year (53.3%). In the NFL, 12 of 32 teams makes the playoffs (37.5%) and in Major League Baseball, only 8 teams every year get to go to the postseason, or just 26.7% of the teams in the league. For a very long time, only the best team from each league made it to the World Series and in 1908 when the Cubs last won a World Series, choosing one out of eight teams to represent each league didn’t seem too unreasonable. After all, they did play 155-158 games so theoretically the best team would have won the most games.
Over the next 60 years, only four teams were added but the playoff format remained the same with only two of twenty teams playing in the postseason in 1968. Four teams were added for the 1969 season (the Kansas City Royals, Seattle Pilots, Montreal Expos, and the San Diego Padres) and the number of playoff teams doubled with the addition of the League Championship Series.
Continued expansion and division realignment has led us to where we are today with three division champions and one wildcard team from each league. Does it really need to be changed?
All across sports, when it comes to tournaments or playoff systems, they are structured to give the best teams an advantage and to give them the best chance to win the tournament out of all the teams involved. In the case of the NFL, this means giving the top two teams from each conference a week off to rest up while the lower ranked teams duke it out in the first round. In the NBA this means giving the better team more home games since crowd noise in such a small space can cause confusion for the road team.
Is there really that much of a home field advantage in baseball? Well, yes and no. First of all, every baseball field is physically different. Some have acres of foul territory and some have very little; some have a flag pole in the field of play along with a little hill while others have a 37 foot tall fence. These little differences help the home team because their players are more adept at adjusting to those little quirks than the visiting players. However, the vast majority of communication in baseball is nonverbal. Quarterbacks call plays and then call out audibles before the snap and point guards call out plays as they come down the court. Catchers use certain numbers of fingers to indicate pitches. Base coaches use sometimes comical sequences of touching certain body parts or making certain gestures to tell the batter or baserunner to do something in particular. Therefore, crowd noise isn’t nearly as big a factor in baseball as it is in other sports.
For the sake of argument though, when it comes to playoff baseball, the teams that make it to the playoffs are solid teams that aren’t likely to be thrown off by a raucous stadium and this reduces the home field advantage even further.
THE NUMBERS
In the wildcard era, the team with the best overall record entering the playoffs has won the World Series just twice; the 1998 New York Yankees (114-48) and the 2009 New York Yankees (103-59). It should be noted that the 2007 Boston Red Sox are not listed because while they did tie with the Cleveland Indians for the league’s best record at 96-66, the Indians were given home field advantage in that series because due to tiebreakers, they were the top overall seed. Even if we were to expand the sample to the teams with one of the two best records in that particular year, that only adds three more teams (1995 Atlanta Braves, 2005 Chicago White Sox, and the 2007 Boston Red Sox). So in fifteen years, only one third of the championships have been won by a team that was in the top two in the league in wins.
Over the same time period, the top overall seed has won the Super Bowl just three times but when you include the top two, that number jumps to ten teams. Also, the NFL does a much better job of protecting its top seeds; of the thirty teams to play in the Super Bowl in the past fifteen years, 22 of them had a first round bye, meaning they would have to play at very most one road game to get to the Super Bowl.
The same trend can be found in the NBA where one of the top two seeds in each conference has made the finals 24 times in the past 15 years, including more than half (16 out of 30) of the number one seeds.
The dichotomy is obvious but the real question is; is it a problem?
I don’t necessarily think that it’s a problem; I just think that unlike some of the other professional sports, there is relatively little incentive to win your division once you have a playoff berth sewn up. A perfect example of this is how the Yankees stumbled down the stretch this year and appeared to put little stock in winning the AL East and sure enough, the Rays played slightly better at the end of the season and won the division. However, the method to the madness was revealed in a dominant first round sweep of the Twins by the Yankees. Manager Joe Girardi used September to line his team up for the playoffs and though it didn’t work this year, he took similar steps last year and helped bring home the 27th World Series title in Yankees history.
In a nutshell, what I want to see is the all-or-nothing approach that you see week in and week out in the NFL. For instance, in 2004, the Philadelphia Eagles finished the season 13-3 and were the NFC’s top seed in the playoffs. That year, Terrell Owens gave the team a dynamic threat at wide receiver that they had been missing but in the middle of the season he went down with a fractured leg. As it turned out, he didn’t play again until the Super Bowl but let’s play a little what if.
What if he had been injured in November instead of December? Potentially, the Eagles would not have gone 13-3 (maybe 11-5) and then they would have been on the cusp of playing in the wildcard round or getting a bye. There would be extra incentive for them to play hard and win their last game or two to secure that first round bye so when the playoffs do start for them, they are as close to full strength as possible.
Now, admittedly, injuries are a much bigger concern in football than in baseball but the same logic can apply. How much would the Texas Rangers have welcomed a first round bye so MVP candidate Josh Hamilton could rest his ailing ribs? As it turned out, in the first round they won despite his paltry contribution and when he started feeling better, he made the Yankees pitchers cry.
THE SOLUTION
I’m sure that all of you were wondering if I would actually get around to suggesting a different format than what we have currently. There already are reports that the players union is open to expansion of the playoffs but given Commissioner Selig’s pace of doing business if we are to see any expansion, it would most like be shifting the first round from five game series to seven game series. Personally, all I really think about that is that it seems to be a fairly transparent ploy for the owners to sell tickets for two additional playoff games every year.
My suggestion is far bolder.
While the NFL is not my favorite league (far from it given their inactivity on issues such as concussions) and football is not my favorite sport, their playoff format is by far my favorite so, if you’ll indulge me, I will show you what it would look like if baseball adopted the NFL’s playoff format.
Before I get too deep into it, this is what I would suggest. Two teams in each league get a bye in the first round. Teams three through six would play a three game series with the games scheduled for three consecutive days. For all that moaning I hear already, the average baseball season is played in roughly 185 days and they play 162 games; they play three straight days with a plane ride in the middle all the time.
The winners of those series would then enter the final eight teams and from there, it would be the same as what we have with a five game “second round”, a seven game LCS, and a seven game World Series.
Now how much would that actually change? It depends. Would it have altered the 1998 Yankees crash course with history after a 114 win regular season? Probably not. Would it have altered the 2001 Mariners crash course off a cliff after a 116 win regular season? Potentially.
What it would really do is make it hard for a wildcard team to win it all. For the record, a wildcard team has made it to the World Series 9 times and won it all 4 times. They are:
1997 Marlins (Won)
2000 Mets
2002 Giants
2002 Angels (Won)
2003 Marlins (Won)
2004 Red Sox (Won)
2005 Astros
2006 Tigers
2007 Rockies
Would these teams have made it to the World Series with an extra three games on the front end of their postseason schedule? Of those nine teams, only one failed to win 90 games (the 2005 Astros went 89-73) while two of them (2002 Angels with 99 and 2004 Red Sox with 98) nearly won 100 games. So we’re not talking about the weaklings that got into the playoffs by a technicality. For many of these teams, they caught lightning in a bottle and in all likelihood, three extra games wouldn’t have made a difference. The 2007 Rockies won an unbelievable 21 of 22 games to make the playoffs and get to the World Series before being swept by the Red Sox. Could that just as easily have been 24 of 25? Absolutely. More likely is that they get to the World Series while losing a game here or there but it’s far from impossible.
Now, the obvious question is this: why do we need to change the playoff format at all? Well, first answer me this; what do the following teams all have in common?
1997 New York Mets (88-74)
1997 Los Angeles Dodgers (88-74)
2000 Cleveland Indians (90-72)
2003 Seattle Mariners (93-69)
2005 Philadelphia Phillies (88-74)
2005 Florida Marlins (83-79)
2005 New York Mets (83-79)
2006 Philadelphia Phillies (85-77)
2007 San Diego Padres (89-74)
2007 New York Mets (88-74)
2008 New York Mets (89-73)
2008 Houston Astros (86-75)
2008 St. Louis Cardinals (86-76)
2009 Texas Rangers (87-75)
Well, those 14 teams all won between 83 and 93 games (averaging 87.4) but the kicker is that none of those teams made the playoffs. It’s not terrible unusual for a team whose win total is in the 80’s to miss the playoffs but this list is special. They all missed the playoffs while a team in their league made the playoffs with a worse record. Here is a list of the offending teams:
1997 Houston Astros (84-78)
2000 New York Yankees (87-74)
2003 Minnesota Twins (90-72)
2005 San Diego Padres (82-80)
2006 St. Louis Cardinals (83-78)
2007 Chicago Cubs (85-77)
2008 Los Angeles Dodgers (84-78)
2009 Minnesota Twins (87-76 due to the tiebreaker. Their regular season record was 86-76)
In other words, the 14 teams that I mentioned got the short end of the stick because they were in the wrong division. It should also be noted that two of the eight teams above that didn’t have one of the four best records in their league that year went on to win the World Series.
Yes, baseball’s postseason is exclusive and not everybody can come. I don’t, however, see the problem with letting a few more teams in that are deserving. It’s possible that some day a team that has a sub .500 record could get into the playoffs but that’s always a possibility. At the time of the strike in 1994, the Texas Rangers were leading the American League West with a record of 52-62 and would have had to play .604 baseball the rest of the season just to break even (and only two teams played that well during the season, the New York Yankees and the Montreal Expos). So even with the current format it’s always possible for a team to make the playoffs despite a sub-.500 record. In fact, under my system, only one team in the past 15 years (the 1997 Chicago White Sox) would have made it in with a record below .500 (80-81) and the additional teams had an average record of 87.5-74.5, hardly the dregs of the league. 11 of those teams even managed to win 90 games and still didn’t make the playoffs.
My argument is not based on bad teams get into the playoffs while good teams are left home. My argument is much more about protecting the top teams from the regular season. I also understand that there is a big difference between building a team to do well in a 162 game regular season and a team that is built to do well in 5 or 7 game series and while my format may be a little unfair to the latter, it would provide an advantage for the teams that actually played better in the regular season.
MONEY
After all, it really does all come down to this factor. The most potential playoff games under the current format is 41 (if every series were to go the distance although we all know how likely that is). This year so far there have been 29 games with 2-5 more games, depending on how much the Rangers feel like playing in the World Series. Under my format, 8-12 games would be added and only four days would need to be added to the schedule. Those aren’t regular season games either with their $4 nosebleed seats; those are playoff games where many people are so desperate to get their hands on playoff tickets that the cheap seats will sell for many times face value.
CONCLUSION
The only losers in my plan are the purists who don’t want to see playoff baseball to be diluted too much. While I understand their concern (I have long thought that the NBA lets far too many teams into the playoffs) I think the overall excitement outweighs the potential dilution. If my plan had been put into effect in 1995 instead of the current format, 23 different teams would have made the playoffs just through the expanded wildcard format and of the other 7 teams, 5 of them made the playoffs either as the first wildcard or as a division winner. In other words, 28 out of 30 teams would have made the playoffs in the past 14 years (I excluded 1995 due to its shortened nature).
Instead, the Toronto Blue Jays haven’t made the playoffs since 1993 (they would have qualified in 1998, 1999, and 2003 under my system). Instead of making the playoffs in both 1996 and 2002, the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals haven’t been to the postseason since 1981.
All you have to do to see the effect of a playoff run is look at the Montreal Expos. Many experts and former players say that they would have been the favorite to win the 1994 World Series and when the season ended, they had the best record (74-40, or 105-57 prorated to a full season). If they had won the World Series, they would have had the revenue to keep their young core of brilliant players together and could have had a shot at a dynasty. Instead, the team fell apart because they didn’t have the money to keep them all together. After 10 more years and a .458 winning percentage, fans lost enough interest that the team packed up and moved to Washington, D.C. How would things have been different if two of those seasons had been playoff years?
Unfortunately, we’ll never know. Having lived in Washington (state) through the 90’s, I know full well what the city, state, and region did starting in 1995. I challenge you to find a fan base that was more rabid than during the playoff run in 1995. I understand that it was aided by fair weather fans but just look at what had happened when a team with a losing history caught fire and went to the playoffs. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that the 1995 season saved baseball in Seattle.
What other franchises need saving?
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