We could not be more thrilled with our big experiment for this year's Statis-Pro season. You can play for free here.
Our Montana commissioner could not play off one league for the first time in years, and my schedule was very difficult this year as well. I didn't want to just play one league, but I also didn't want to simply play a single-game elimination tournament, since pitching rotation is everything in baseball.
Since the 1970s, I have always used a four-man rotation for each team and two-game home-and-home series. That way, each team can either throw its ace and fourth-best starter or its second- and third-best starters. Each reliever can pitch in only one of the two games in a home-and-home.
Everything symmetrical. Everything fair.
Now I just had to decide how much of an abbreviated season I had time for and how to organize it.
The Nine-Pool Experiment
The brainstorm reflected in the image could not have worked any better.
To let every team go through its four-man rotation in pool play and have a fair chance, I looked at power ratings and tried to balance nine pools to make them all about equally difficult.
The math worked perfectly. With one winner from each of nine three-team pools, nine of the 27 teams would advance. Those nine teams could then be divided into three new pools of three teams each. Once again, every team would go through its four-man rotation, this time in the semifinals.
Finally, the three semifinal pool winners would advance to a three-team championship pool, where all three would go through their four-man rotations one more time to determine the champion.
I went with run differential as the tiebreaker, and the format could not have been more fun or played out better.
Seven Pools Worked Almost Perfectly
As I wrapped up pool play after several months, I looked at ESPN's new Week 20 MLB Power Rankings and was thrilled to see how well the original pools had held up.
Seven of the nine pools ended up being very fair. The average power ranking of the three teams in those pools ranged from 13.0 to 16.7 in actual MLB play. In other words, teams in those seven pools advanced with about the same degree of difficulty.
No changes needed. We have seven of the nine champions in place with no exceptions needed to our four-game, three-team pools.
| Pool | Avg. Power Rank | Champion | Original Favorite |
|---|
| A | 16.0 | LAD | LAD |
| B | 8.7 | BOS | ATL |
| C | 14.7 | NYM | NYY |
| D | 13.0 | TBR | TBR |
| E | 16.7 | MIL | MIL |
| F | 16.3 | CHC | CHC |
| G | 13.0 | ARI | ARI |
| H | 13.3 | PHI | PHI |
| I | 20.0 | TBD | MIN |
Only two pools turned out not to be fair because of surprises in actual MLB play. One was unfairly difficult. The other was unfairly easy.
Boston Survives the "Group of Death"
The Boston Red Sox were not supposed to be this good, but they are now ranked No. 7 out of 30 teams. That meant Pool B turned out to be WAY too tough.
With the Rangers also in the top half of MLB and the Braves ranked No. 4 in ESPN's Power Rankings, the average team in Pool B ranked 8.7—more than four spots better than any other pool.
The Red Sox went on to win this incredibly difficult pool, going 2-2 just like the Braves and Rangers but winning the run-differential tiebreaker to advance.
They earned their semifinal spot more than any other team in the tournament.
The team that got the raw deal was Atlanta. In essence, two No. 1 seeds ended up stuck in the same pool, so it seemed fair to consider some kind of "wild card" opportunity for the Braves.
Then it became clear that another team deserved an opportunity as well.
The White Sox Deserve Their First Chance
Because the format required exactly 27 teams, I left out what I believed would be the three worst teams in baseball. We often leave a few teams out of our seasons simply for time management.
I got two of them right. The Los Angeles Angels and Colorado Rockies turned out to be the bottom two teams in ESPN's rankings at No. 29 and No. 30.
But I sure missed on the Chicago White Sox.
The White Sox have been shockingly good. Even after fading a little, they are still ranked No. 11 out of 30 teams. Clearly, if the Braves deserve a second chance, the White Sox deserve a first chance.
Besides, I just want to see these Statis-Pro cards that have turned out to be so much better than we all thought!
And Then There Was Pool I...
On the flip side, one of the nine pools turned out to be MUCH weaker than the others.
Pool I has Seattle, Pittsburgh and Minnesota. Seattle has badly underperformed expectations, and the average ESPN ranking of the three teams is now No. 20—more than three spots worse than any other pool.
That means a team could win Pool I without beating any of the top 18 teams in Major League Baseball.
The Minnesota Twins have the edge going into a game tonight, but all three teams are still alive.
So here is the solution.
The winner of Seattle-Pittsburgh-Minnesota will still advance. But instead of automatically receiving the final semifinal spot, that team will enter a whole new three-team pool with the White Sox and Braves.
That lets the Pool I winner keep playing, but makes them prove themselves against two tougher teams—including Atlanta, which would essentially have been a No. 1 seed if we had somehow managed to put the nine eventual top teams into nine different original pools.
So we'll leave that last spot open to see who joins Arizona and Philadelphia in that semifinal pool.
The Other Semifinals
Another semifinal pool was chalk: the Rays, Brewers and Cubs were favored and all won their pools.
But only Tampa Bay had it easy.
The Brewers survived a three-way tie, while the Cubs were actually in last place at 0-2 before pulling off a miracle late rally to advance.
The third semifinal pool has two more expected winners in the Dodgers, who dominated, and the aforementioned Red Sox, who fought their way through the toughest pool of all.
But that pool also features the one BIG surprise of the season.
The No. 6 New York Yankees suffered the ultimate humiliation: losing not only to a solid Marlins team, but also to their crosstown rival New York Mets.
The Mets stunned everyone by reaching the semifinal pool despite sitting at just No. 25 in ESPN's Power Rankings.
That's Baseball
Baseball is very unpredictable, so perhaps the biggest surprise is that we really had only one BIG upset among the eight teams that have advanced so far.
The Yankees are the big disappointment.
The Mets are the big surprise.
And now we settle the final spot among the Mariners, Pirates, Twins, White Sox and Braves.
This has been a great experiment that worked better than I could have hoped and puts another Statis-Pro season in the books—a game my friend and fellow commissioner and I started playing 45 years ago.
Sale, 2nd Chance Braves Beat Castillo 9-2
And the new pool starts with a bang as the Braves greet Castillo with 3 first inning runs and won 9-2. Chris Sale allowed only 5 baserunners in 7 innings, though two were solo homers.
Either the Twins, Pirates or Mariners will join the ChiSox and Braves as the 3rd team in the pool trying to grab the 9th and final spot in the semifinals.
We also update the runners advancing on hits chart in the game based on modern percentages.
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