The NBA has had three Tournaments of Champions, including one that incorporated the ABA champions, the NFL just picked up its second, and while the NHL hasn't had any, I don't know that I totally trust my simulator on this one. That leaves Major League Baseball to do its second.
My first foray into the baseball simulator was back in 2017, when I did things the simple way and simply picked one representative from each of the 30 Major League Baseball franchises in the last 50 or so years (just to keep things relatively modern while still giving a couple of old legends opportunities to make a showcase). That tournament brought me joy as the 2016 Chicago Cubs overcame yet another 3-1 deficit in a championship round to win the title. This project is a lot more ambitious.
Limiting the first Tournament of Champions to just 30 teams made some logistical baseball sense in that I wasn't going to extend the tournament out too far, but it also left some of the most legendary teams off the table with my self-imposed timeline. This tournament will correct that. Thanks to my simulator going a long way back, I'm going back to the advent of the World Series and the very first playing of it back in 1903 and working our way forward. Factoring in owner disputes and a players' strike, that gives us 114 entrants including the newly minted champs in the 2018 Boston Red Sox.
But 114 is not the most pretty number, and I wanted to make sure that every franchise was represented at least once. Seven franchises have yet to win a world championship, five of whom have at least made it to that round: the San Diego Padres, Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies, Tampa Bay Rays, and Milwaukee Brewers. The first two of that group have made two trips to the Fall Classic, and normally I would make those two squads play each other. But in 2017, the 1998 Padres and 2011 Rangers made the postseason portion of the Tournament of Champions, and that gives both of them a pass to the field. The other three teams have had one squad make the Fall Classic, and those three teams are also in the field. The remaining two franchises that have yet to make a World Series in the Seattle Mariners and Washington Nationals will also get one team in apiece. Seattle's 2001 squad, by virtue of its insane regular season combined with making the postseason of the 2017 Tournament of Champions, is automatically in. The Nationals have had four division champions since their move from Montreal, and those four teams will battle it out for the berth.
That's 121 teams, and if it were one fewer I'd call it a day. But it's not, and I don't want to exclude anyone, so I need seven more to get to a nice even number. So to start finishing the field off, I went to the two seasons without a World Series. Fortunately, the 1994 question was answered on an episode of Geoffrey Clark's podcast 90's Youth Life last summer, and thus the 1994 Atlanta Braves get a seat at the table. A similar argument will be made for the 1904 World Series as that will finally get played: whoever wins between the 1904 New York Giants and Boston Americans in the old best-of-nine format will get a bid. While the Nationals have a bid, their prior iteration in the Montreal Expos is not represented, and I want to make sure they get a team in. They had two playoff squads: one in 1981, and were on track for another in 1994, and those teams will square off in a best-of-seven to determine another bid. From there, I looked at old locations of franchises who played for titles and found the 1944 St. Louis Browns, who would go on to become the Baltimore Orioles. The Browns lost to their then-crosstown rivals in the St. Louis Cardinals in that World Series, but get a shot at redemption here. Next, by virtue of the same consideration that got the 1998 Padres and 2011 Rangers in automatically, the 1995 Indians, who won the AL Central in the 2017 Tournament of Champions, get a bid as well.
That brings our total to 126. At this point I'm out of old locales without titles (at least of those with reasonable chances) or hypotheticals, as well as tiebreakers. So the remaining teams involved: whoever loses the New York Giants/Boston Americans series, the losing Expos team, and the three fallen Washington Nationals squads, will join squads bounced by other franchise years that got auto bids: the 1984 Padres, 2010 Rangers, and 1995 and 1997 Mariners, in a single round robin (due to time) to be played during Spring Training, with the top two teams joining the field as Wild Cards.
These 128 teams will be broken up into eight groups of 16, who will then embark on a double round robin within those groups, with each round being a three game series. That gives each team 90 games to prove their worth; the top four teams from each group will advance to the elimination round and best-of-seven series to determine our Champion of Champions.
This will easily blow away the mark for number of games I've done in prior Tournaments of Champions with over 5,000, but as I'm not keeping stats and am really just recording scores, the amount of time involved should be relatively minimal. Making these all three-game sets will also ensure that, unlike the 2017 Tournament, teams will get one off day a week and will play on no more than nine consecutive days (since with the simulator, rainouts are a non-factor).
Over the next couple weeks, I will simulate out the series that will determine who the missing seeds are, and right before the tournament is scheduled to start on April 1st, I will reveal the groups who will be playing to determine our Champion of Champions. Good luck to all of our teams, and I hope you all enjoy the ride!
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