Are We Having Fun Yet?

I actually prefer being the wild card. My small-ball teams fare pretty well on the road in the playoffs, and I feel the 2-3-2 seven game playoff format favors the visiting team. For some reason, it's easier for the lower seeded team to go 2-2 on the road and 2-1 at home, than it is for the higher seed to go 3-1 at home and 1-2 on the road. The key for the #3 or #4 seed seems to be gaining at least a split in the first two games.

I actually prefer being the wild card. My small-ball teams fare pretty well on the road in the playoffs, and I feel the 2-3-2 seven game playoff format favors the visiting team. For some reason, it's easier for the lower seeded team to go 2-2 on the road and 2-1 at home, than it is for the higher seed to go 3-1 at home and 1-2 on the road. The key for the #3 or #4 seed seems to be gaining at least a split in the first two games.

I fell off my chair when I read this. But if the team with HFA has a 60% chance of winning each of its home games, it will win 3 or 4 only 47.52% of the time. And the underdog team will win 2 of 3 at home that often if it has only a 48.35% chance of winning each individual game!

Where this argument falls down is that, when the HFA team wins

all 4 it wins the series (12.96%)
3 of 4, (34.56%) it wins the series whenever it wins at least one road game (88.7%) - wins series this way 30.65% of the time, total series wins so far 43.61%
2 of 4 (also 34.56%), wins with at least 2 road wins (52.47%) for 18.14% series wins this way and a total of 61.75% so far.
1 of 4 (15.36%) wins with a road sweep (I just won a playoff series this way!) a 2.12% chance, for a total of 63.87% series wins.

The break-even point for the 3 home games team when the HFA team has a 60% chance of winning each game at home is an expected winning percentage of 63.36% at its own park. However, that's more than possible for a small-ball team.

My new plan should be to sneak 85 win teams into the playoffs and get Nev or PJMB in the finals

Many/most of you have been doing this a lot longer than I have, so I say this assuming you all would agree for the most part. Regardless of W-L records (and stats) heading into the post season, it boils down to card match ups (and ballparks), end of story right?

Those reg season W-L totals can often be the result of a crappy division, or you being the head & shoulders best manager in your division, if not a ballpark advantage over your division etc, only to run into a solid manager/different ballpark in the post season.