Notes on the rules of the game

Since questions have arisen about some of the rules of Premiership Baseball, let me clarify a few things. If you don't care about anything but the standings, skip to the bottom for a piece of news you'll want to know.

First, I reconsidered how many team should be promoted/relegated at each season's conclusion. Five seems a bit too many, so the new rule is that the top 2 finishers in the Championship move up to the Premiership, and the #3 and #4 teams have a one-game playoff for the right to promotion.

Second, Premiership baseball would not practice the DH rule. However, this will not affect the way I calculate the standings right now. That would be a crazy amount of work for something intended to be simple and light-hearted. Still, we've got to have principles in this league.

Third, an explanation of why Run Differential is the yardstick of success in PB. In MLB, win percentage determines who makes the playoffs. The problem with this is that sometimes the statistically best teams are shut out while a team that got hot down the stretch or got lucky makes the grade. PB rewards teams on their merits -- above average hitting, pitching, or both. MLB rewards these as well, but not to the same degree. PB eliminates a lot of the luck factor in the standings without removing it from the actual baseball games. Fallible human umpires are a conrnerstone of the PB system. Sometimes you get the calls, sometimes you don't.

Team strategies for victory wouldn't change either. Look at this year's Red Sox. They upgraded on defense at several positions, which should theoretically cut down on their runs allowed. However, they've still managed to allow the second-most runs in the AL, and their bats have been silent. Their all-around anemia has resulted in poor positioning in the standings in MLB and PB alike.

For another look at RD, let's take the 2005 playoffs, where MLB saw the White Sox vie for the World Series title. The Cleveland Indians scored 51 more runs than the White Sox that year and allowed 2 fewer runs. They were, statistically speaking, the best team in the AL Central, and probably the best in the league. But they didn't even make the playoffs because the White Sox were extremely lucky, and they were a bit unlucky. Or consider the San Diego Padres, who made the playoffs with a negative run differential and (if you're into this sort of thing) a W/L record of 82-80. There were only six teams in the NL with worse RD that season -- luckily for the Pads, four of those teams happened to be in their division.

If you like luck in baseball, then the mid-season tournament mentioned previously should be your cup of tea. Since it's single-elimination, the upsets could pile up quickly and lead to plenty of interesting scenarios that the MLB playoffs could never rival. I believe fans would look forward to this tournament every year as least as much as they anticipate the postseason now, and probably more.

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Who's climbing the promotion stepladder? Who's drifting closer to relegation? Find out Saturdays until the end of the season, as I post the latest league standings and discuss teams' performances.