The Art Of The Tournament

One way to clear your backlog

The Art Of The Tournament

I’ve got a problem — and it’s a problem I’m guessing most of you also have.

I’ve got too many card sets, and too many games.

I’m not quite sure how I got back to this point. It seems to have happened naturally. A good deal here, an eBay purchase there, a new and untried game combined with must-have copies of some of the earliest and rarest games — and, suddenly, we’ve got a spare room in the basement filled with cards again.

I scarcely have the time for the projects I’ve already started, let alone time to start a ton of new replays.

However, it would really be a shame to just sell all the cards right away without doing something with them.

And so I’m moving towards the world of short tournaments.

Most of you who remember the card and dice era (or those of you still in that era) know what I’m talking about. You can’t play every game in a massive season replay, but you want to experience every team to at least some extent — and so you settle on a tournament structure.

The one that comes most naturally to mind is a single elimination tournament, played in best-of-7 series. It’s like a collection of World Series, one after another, designed to turn into the ultimate tabletop postseason.

I sketched together some basic plans for this yesterday, and realize that there really aren’t a lot of articles on the subject out there. Most computer-only replayers don’t feel the urgency of the cards scattered in the guest room.

And so, for the rest of us, here are a few things to keep in mind for your baseball sim tournament.

Seeding

To seed or not to seed?

You can always simply arrange teams completely at random. But you lose some of the beauty and majesty of the tournament if you do so.

I mean — if you’re playing a 1978 tournament, you want to set it up so that the American League final round will likely be the Red Sox against the Yankees, right? If you’re doing 1951, you want to make it so that the Dodgers and Giants won’t be able to face each other until the last possible moment. Nobody wants to see the Red Sox and Yankees play in a wild card playoff round. We want to hold the biggest rivalries for the last possible moment, in hopes of creating the most drama and importance for every single game.

And so, if you use a template from a website like Print Your Brackets (like I did), you want to go for a seeded template that is something like this:

Of course, you probably want the American League on one side and the National League on the other. You’ll need to modify those numbers just a little bit to make sure you keep the championship series an actual “World Series.”

Here’s an example I came up with for my 1950 single column APBA set:

Naturally, there’s nothing wrong with simply organizing the teams by won-loss record regardless of league. Still — it feels better for me to have the Yankees and Phillies potentially face each other at the end of the project rather than during one of the earlier rounds. And, of course, we really want to get to that Phillies - Dodgers 7 game series, if we can.

Odd Team Numbers

Most baseball seasons consist of odd numbers of teams, of course.

We’ve never had a 32 team season, and the old days of 16 teams are long behind us.

Fortunately, there are ways to handle this situation. And it’s pretty easy to do the math.

Every single team you have above 16 (but below 32) will require another series to be played. If you’ve got 17 teams, for example, you’ll need a single “play in” series between the 16th place and 17th place team. If you’ve got 20 teams, you’ll need 4 of those “play in” series.

So, for a 26 team league, it will look something like this:

You’ve got 6 teams with first round byes in this case. If we were doing, say, 1986, the Mets, Astros, and Phillies would probably be your bye teams in the National League. Meanwhile, the Red Sox, Angels, and Yankees would earn the American League byes.

If you really want to be technical about it, you could have the 86-75 Phillies play against the 86-76 Reds in a one game playoff, since they’re only half a game apart. You could also figure out some way to compare the 739 runs the Phillies scored and 713 runs they allowed with the 732 runs scored and 717 allowed for the Reds.

Every other team would play the preliminary rounds, and you’d be down to 16 teams total when those 6 would become involved.

As you can see, this is a pretty easy model to follow even if one league has 16 teams and the other has 14. Create a 14 team bracket for one league and a 16 team bracket for the other, and then worry about combining them when you get one champion for each league.

Rules

Of course, you’ve got to have playing rules as well.

You’re probably not going to want long term injuries, of course. Short term injuries might be okay. See if the 1927 Yankees can deal without Babe Ruth for 2 or 3 games, for example.

The nice thing about the 7 game format is that it’s not too hard to figure out pitching rotations. The traditional World Series rotations often relied on a stellar starter to pitch games 1, 4, and 7, of course. You could consider forcing teams to use a 4 man rotation to avoid giving teams with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale an unrealistic advantage. Or, if you’re feeling particularly creative and energetic, you could come up with a full schedule including days off, giving a bonus to teams that manage to sweep their opposition.

Stats

Stats are always the problem — and, in this case, you might not really need to compile them.

In a 16 team tournament of 7 game series, no team will play more than 28 games. Batting average, on base percentage, and other statistics really aren’t all that interesting after such a short period of time. In fact, baseball history tells us that it’s pretty common for players to go on streaks of productivity (or slumps) that last a month or so.

And that’s part of the fun, right? One of those players you never really paid attention to might get hot, and an underdog team might surprise you.

What do you think?