Just something I was wondering about .. what if baseball were like survivor, meaning each week a team is eliminated to keep up interest during the long season? I came up with a method to see what it might look like, but with chances for redemption so teams would have a chance to earn their way back into the competition but nearly every game and run would have more impact then today.
Summary of the method:
1) A team is either in contention or on probation. Every team starts week 1 in contention.
2) Each week, the 2 teams in contention who play the worse that week are placed on probation.
3) Each week, the team on probation who plays the best earns their way back into contention.
4) The first week or two, extra teams are placed on probation to make the numbers work (usually a season is 26 weeks and 29 teams need to be eliminated).
I did not use won-loss records directly since in a week there could (would) be many ties. I decided to use a combination of won-loss record and run differential which worked as follows:
* A total of 14 points are allocated in each game.
* The winning team receives 9 points plus 1 point for each run of run differential up to 5
* The losing team gets the balance of the points.
Example 1: Team A wins 6-3. Team A gets 9+ (6-3) or 12 points. Team B gets 2 points.
Example 2: Team A wins 10-1. Team A gets 9 points for the win plus 5 (the max) for run differential or 14 total points. Team B gets 0 points.
The survivors:
2018 New York Mets
2017 Cleveland Indians
2016 Boston Red Sox
It was interesting that most teams had switches from in contention to probation and back during the year. In 2016, the Dodgers were in contention, with no weeks on probation, through the last week but lost to the Red Sox by 6 points in the last week.
I thought this would be an interesting side competition to the regular season (the survivor champion) that would not require any additional games, keep every team in contention until the last week (literally, every team has a chance heading into the next to last week), and nearly every game (and run) would matter. In many weeks, the team getting off probation did so by a point or two. Getting on probation was often a case of a few points.
If something like this were every implemented (which it wouldn’t be) there might be need for adjustments (e.g. long road trips, All-Star break week). Also, my method had just 2 teams left for the last week. It might be better if that were 3 or 4.
Anyway, wanted to share a another way to look at the season that I thought was interesting and fun. Maybe others will too.