There were two big news items in yesterday's announcement:
No More Tiebreakers!
This bit of news has gotten a bit less play, but I think it's probably the most exciting thing in the announcement: at least in the first round, teams will use a double-elimination format to determine who advances similar to that used in the NCAA baseball tournament. This format should also allow clear and simple seeding moving into the next round.This new format, of course, occurs instead of the round-robin with tiebreaker format of the last Classic. The tiebreaker was something of a pet peeve of mine, and switching to a double-elimination format is something I advocated back in '06. The problem was that the tiebreaker, which was stupidly just runs scored (not even run differential), determined who advanced in 33% of the pools in the last Classic. Ridiculous.
A double-elimination format is a much better fit for a baseball tournament because it puts the emphasis on winning games, not scoring runs. A team will always be alive in the tournament until the final play of that last game. That's what baseball is all about, baby!
Round 1 locations and brackets announced
Here's the first round:
- Playing in Tokyo: China, Chinese Taipei, Japan, South Korea
- Playing in Mexico City: Australia, Cuba, Mexico, South Africa
- Playing in Toronto: Canada, Italy, USA, and Venezuela
- Playing in San Juan: D.R., Netherlands, Panama, and Puerto Rico
Japan and Cuba seem to have the easiest path through the first round, which is appropriate given that they played in the final game of the last Classic. Japan will probably always play the other three Asian countries in the first round, so that's no surprise. Cuba, on the other hand, does have to deal with the decent Mexican team, but they also get to play against two lower-tier teams in Australia and especially South Africa.
In contrast, the Toronto and San Juan brackets are a bit more challenging. Both feature two top-tier teams (USA and Venezuela, and Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico), a legitimate second-tier team (Canada and Panama), and a lower-teir team to beat up on (Italy and the Netherlands). I think that's a nice balance across the four brackets.Also, there are some good, historically-meaningful match ups in the first round. South Korea gave Japan a run for their money last time, so that should be a fun way to start the tournament. And the battles between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico is always fairly heated. And Canada beat the USA team in the first round last time, so I would hope that the lackadaisical US team might have something to prove this go around.
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Anyway, looks like a great start to the next tournament. Let's hope that they get some decent television coverage this year, both in terms of budgeted time as well as announcer preparation. If they do that, we should be in for exciting times next spring.
Hat tip to David Pinto.
How is the double elimination going to work in the first round. Are they going to keep on playing until three of the four teams have two losses? That could mean a lot of games for a team coming out of the losers bracket who wins it all. A team could lose it's first game (G1), then drop to the losers bracket and beat the other first round loser (G2). Then beat the loser of the two teams that won first round games (G3). Then beat the undefeated team (G4). Each of the final two teams would then have one loss, then the next game would be G5 (Game #5).
ReplyDeleteIf two of the better teams face each other in the first game, this could easily happen.
vr, Xeifrank
Well, for the first round, I'd expect that they'd only play until two teams were eliminated, as two teams will advance to the next round (at least, that's what happened last time).
ReplyDeleteSo, game 1 is the initial seeded matchup (hopefully based on the respective finishes in the last tournament).
Game 2 pits the winners of game 1 vs. each other, and the losers of game 1 against each other. Winner of the "winners" game is a lock to advance, and would get top seed in the next round.
Game 3 pits the winner of the losers game vs. the loser of the winners' game. Winner advances to next round as the second-seed team.
So yeah, the undefeated team only has to play two games instead of three. But I don't really see this as a problem--the "loser bracket" team just has a harder time of advancing because they have to resort to using their #3 starter.
It works well in college, so I think it'll work well in this setting as well. Heck of a lot better than using runs scored as a tiebreaker...
-Justin
I went to the semis and finals at Petco in '06. That was absolutely one of the best baseball experiences I've ever been associated with.
ReplyDeleteI'm not even sure it would've been more fun if Team USA had been there -- I think I'm glad I got to hear the full international baseball symphony (from Cuban horn section to Japanese chants), rather than obnoxious "U-S-A! U-S-A! chants. If only the Cuban manager wasn't such a human rain delay.
My biggest complaint would be that the #2 team in the group is not gauranteed a game against the #1 team. Both get to advance, but the seeding could be messed up. I guess compared to the tie-breaker of the previous system it's the lesser of two evils. I could live with either system.
ReplyDeletevr, Xeifrank
Chris, I'm with you--I was almost happy when Canada beat the USA team, especially given how poorly-run the USA team was. It was pretty irritating to see them play it as an all-star game rather than a real baseball game, especially when the other teams were giving it their all.
ReplyDeleteYou'll note that the pictures on this post were all of Mexican fans...that's because they were going absolutely crazy for their team. I loved seeing all the flags and nationalism...even if the USA people (myself included) didn't really reciprocate.
The Cuba, Japanese, and Korean teams played the games right and really gave it their all. It was a lot of fun to watch on TV, and I would have loved to be present in those final games.
@Xei, at the very least the team out of the losing bracket would have lost to one of the teams that the team from the winning bracket had defeated. So there's still justification for the winning team being where they are. Furthermore, if the seeding is done properly, the initial seeds will be done based on the previous WBC's performances, so there will be justification for them placing as they are.
In the Toronto bracket, I'd expect to see Venezuela and USA take on one of the lesser teams (Italy and Canada) in the first pair of games. And then Venezuela vs. USA in the second pair of games, assuming they aren't upset. I really hope that USA has to play Canada in the first game, as it'd be a shame not to see that match-up again after the upset last time around.
-j
Justin, I know there is no "perfect" system for advancing two teams from a four team group when time is of the essence, but I think the winning teams should face the same or similar strength of schedule. Being the 2nd place team, without having had a chance to play the first place team seems odd. You're right, it might not be likely to happen, but people thought having three 2-1 teams and one 0-3 team after the round robin was done was unlikely too. The World Cup of soccer plays round robin and has a similar tie-breaker. Double elimination is better, but it should include the winner of the losers bracket playing the winner of the winners bracket atleast once. The round robin method plays 6 games no matter what, the double elimination would play 5 games as described by you, and could play 6 or 7 if played to it's entirety. I could see them stopping at 6 if the losers bracket winner beat the winners bracket winner, then have a tie-breaker between those two teams as to who gets the higher seed, if they don't want to play the 7th game. Just my $0.02, thanks for posting this info. :)
ReplyDeletevr, Xei
I'm not arguing that the loser not getting a chance to play the winner is unlikely to happen. I think it probably will happen. But at least the loser must have lost to someone that the winner beat. That alone, to me, makes it justifiable.
ReplyDeleteAs for not having to play as many games...I just don't see the issue there. A team that doesn't lose "earns" the right to not be as stressed. A team the loses the first game will have to fight harder to advance.
In the end, teams will have to eliminate everyone else in order to win. And you're never out of it until you lose that second game. That's the beauty of this format, so I'm really happy with this change. :)
-j