Welcome to the home page for my tournament of the greatest baseball teams ever. This year's tournament features the 64 teams that I selected in as the best of the 20th century as shown on my tribute page (click here to return to it). Next year, I will expand the tournament to include teams such as the 2001 Mariners and Diamondbacks.
Groundrules
Unlike March madness where there is a single elimination, I'm taking a different approach. My tournament will begin with a round-robin within each region. This means that each team will play one game against every other team in their region, or 15 games in all. This round-robin will constitute the "regular" season.
After the round-robin, the top eight teams in each region will be re-seeded based on how they did in those 15 games. The bottom eight teams are eliminated. The regional quarterfinals then begin as a best-of-seven tournament with #1 playing #8, #2 taking on #7, etc. Play continues until only one team remains. That team will have survived a 15 game "season" plus five rounds of best-of-seven competition.
The 2002 tournament will be played on the WhatIfSports website.
I will select the starting lineup for each team each game. During the round-robin portion of the tournament, teams will use a pitching rotation similar to what they used during their actual regular season (4 man, 5 man, etc). Platoons (i.e. - righty/lefty) will also be used as appropriate. WhatIfSports takes it from there.
Visitor Feedback
Let me know what you think. Who will win? Who will make the "final four"?
Have you ever done anything similar (Strat-o-matic, computer simulation, DiamondMind, etc.)? How did your tournament work? Who won?
I'm interested in knowing whether you are interested in seeing periodic/weekly updates. If there is a level of interest, I may consider posting the results on a weekly basis (or thereabouts). Otherwise, I may just publish the results of each round as they are completed.
Other
Major League Baseball used the same website to run their own tournament last fall. Here's the link to that tournament
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