Remember me
Forgot your username/password?
 
Print
Home>Articles

Re-Considering the Playoffs

By Bill James
October 9, 2007

When I started doing sabermetrics in the mid-1970s, it was an easy decision to essentially ignore post-season play.   We ignored post-season play for two reasons:

            1)  It was very small.   I think that all of post-season history, at that time, was about 500 games, and only a handful of players had played in as many as 25 of them.   If you had five homers in post-season play, you were among the all-time leaders.

            2)  There was a lack of equal access.   To the extent that sabermetrics is about comparing players one to another, it is problematic to base the evalution on areas of performance that are only available to some of the players.

            This has become, I think, more or less the standard practice—to evaluate player careers as if the post-season didn’t exist.

            The world has changed, and we need got to seriously review this policy.   The number of post-season games has changed so dramatically that the role of post-season games in the making of a great career is just not the same as it was in 1975.   John Smoltz is who he is in substantial part because of his post-season success.   So is Derek Jeter, and Mariano Rivera, and Curt Schilling.

            There are players now who have played 100+ post-season games.  It is a matter of time until the post-season totals of some players start to pass the markers that identify outstanding seasons. . ..100 RBI, 200 hits, 100 runs scored, 20 wins.   In a few years, people are going to start hitting those numbers for post-season play.   We’re now ignoring an entire season of a player’s career—and not just any season, but the most important games of his career.   

            I know that the equal-access problem is still with us, and I don’t really have a solution for that.   But I don’t think we can go on discussing who should be in the Hall of Fame, or how the top 100 shortstops of all time rate, without reference or with minimal reference to post-season play.  

            While we’re sort-of on the subject.  .why do the leagues exclude the division series and the league championship series from Cy Young and MVP voting?   Does that really make sense?

            I understand why the World Series is excluded, and I agree that it should be.   But it seems to me that the logic of the honoring groups, in 1969, was simply “If the World Series doesn’t count, these games shouldn’t count, either.”   Should that really be the controlling logic?

            The League Championship Series is a part of the league.   I agree that there might be a problem with some people over-valuing or over-weighting the post-season games, but I still don’t really get the logic of excluding the league’s most critical games from the consideration of who is the league’s Most Valuable Player or the league’s Best Pitcher. 

 
 

COMMENTS (9 Comments, most recent shown first)

rangerforlife
Why do the leagues exclude the division series and the LCS from Cy Young and MVP voting? Well, when those awards were first handed out, there were no league playoffs - the World Series was the postseason. I guess that when the postseason expanded, no one ever suggested that those games should count towards what were deemed regular season awards.

Does it make sense? It does if we are separating regular season from postseason games, but not if we are separating intraleague games from interleague games.
2:39 AM Jun 11th
 
DiamondDog
It's definitely a situation that merits scrutiny and consideration. They are games that, for both the reality of the consequence they carry as a playoff game and the gravity they are purported to carry by the media, are the highest profile of a player's career, yet they essentially count for nothing except anecdotal evidence of a player's success. There must be a happy balance between segregation as "post-season play" and over-valuing them to the point people seriously consider Jack Morris a Hall of Famer because of one (admittedly spectacular) playoff start. I don't see any problem with adding those statistics to a player's seasonal batting production; it's the reward for team success to continue your season. This would include single-season records. People would be uptight about that, and toss around rhetoric of about the integrity of the records and other such rubbish when what we want to celebrate is achievement, not the acquisition of a given integer. There is no significance to "73," there is significance to the relationship 73 has with the standard of home run hitting by major league players. Everyone has the same opportunity for post-season play and the data exists to retroactively adjust previous performances. I would have no problem with these performances affecting the arbitrary awards such as MVP and Cy Young, as they typically go to playoff teams anyway, so it gives candidates a chance to prove how valuable they are in a small sample size. :)
1:02 PM Apr 17th
 
Brian
What I have never understood is why postseason is not included in manager/coach of the year voting, ESPECIALLY IN THE NBA
1:52 PM Mar 21st
 
jollydodger
I just look at the word: post-season, as in AFTER the season. 162 games played cannot be negated by 19 games AFTER the season. Players like Smoltz, Jeter, etc. are credited with post-season success, but because of their regular season production is great, too. For every one of them, there is a Mark Lemke, Adam Kennedy, or Billy Hatcher who did their best work on the biggest stage, yet did little else. We cannot relegate baseball's post-season to that of old-time college football bowl games (which truly were exhibitions, as the national champion was crowned before the bowls were played), but we should not over-emphasize the 19 games (or less) as popular culture does. Yes, it should be considered and important, but I believe in 162 games. I value 500 ABs to give me a more accurate indication of talent, ability, and production. The post-season should not be ignored, nor should it be held in higher esteem than the regular season (in terms of an individual's production).
4:44 AM Mar 15th
 
oldehippy
I agree that all games before the World Series should be included in consideration for all Post Season Awards. Sure, Tommy Bumplayer might have an incredible series, be MVP and have it be the highlight reel of his lifetime. The point is not to have total consideration applied post season games. They should be considered and given as much weight or slightly more weight than any other Championship Season game played. To exclude these games from consideration is to penalize a player for being on a winning team. Penalizing a player for winning should not happen. And maybe a player that is on a team that did not win, should be penalized. The point of these games is to win!
9:28 AM Mar 13th
 
scball21
Cy Young and MVP shouldn't include postseason because not everyone partakes. In a sport like baseball, despite how well A-rod played while he was in Texas, he's not going to elevate his otherwise lacking team to make the playoffs, and thus he shouldn't get penalized for his lackluster teammates.
9:49 PM Mar 7th
 
MarisFan61
Enjoyed and appreciated the column.....
This makes so much sense that I have to believe it WILL be adopted in due course. Let me be optimistic and say that all it needs is SOME INTELLIGENT AND ACTIVE DEBATE, plus some time, which admittedly might be 20 years.
Yes, the lack of "equal access," as Bill put it, would be an issue. But I don't think we have to doubt that the voters would take it all into account fine. Some voters would count the post-season more than others, and every year there would be lively debate about how much it should count.....

P.S. In reply to the first post (by ibrosey): The FIRST post-season round DOESN'T have MVP's.
2:42 AM Feb 24th
 
chasfh
Just to zero in on a specific (and almost beside the) point: yes, I do believe that the LDS and LCS should continue to be excluded from consideration for Cy Young and MVP, because the accomplishments of marginal players in these short series might completely overshadow the efforts of the great players over the course of the season that got the teams there in the first place.
7:27 PM Feb 21st
 
ibrosey
All stages of the postseason series have MVPs awarded. Don't they? I think the regular season awards are supposed to acknowledge supremacy over the long haul, and the argument of whether the honoree need be on a contending team continues to this day. Adding the post-season would put players on non-playoff teams at a distinct disadvantage, and they are already at a perceptual disadvantage. Including post-season performance when assessing players' careers, absolutely. Turning the bloated baseball playoffs into something even more akin to the NHL or NBA, not so much.
3:57 PM Feb 21st
 
 
©2024 Be Jolly, Inc. All Rights Reserved.|Powered by Sports Info Solutions|Terms & Conditions|Privacy Policy