MLB October Madness

Like millions of others I've been watching Championship Week in college basketball, and reading articles about who will make the NCAA Tournament... as well as seedings. So I was wondering what a bracket involving MLB teams would look like.

I decided to pick the top 8 teams in each league, and seed them according to their regular season records. Then I'd pit them against each other based on how the NCAA Tournament works, meaning 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, 3 vs. 6, and 4 vs. 5. I decided who won each match-up based on their head-to-head record during the 2011 regular season. Due to some teams being .500 against each other I had to go with a tie-breaker, and decided to simply go by best regular season record.

American League Tournament

I'm sure Yankee fans are really happy about how this turned out. Not only did the Yankees win the tournament, but the Red Sox were knocked out by the Rays in the 1st round. On top of that the Tigers were ousted in the 1st round by the Angels. Another AL East victory, and the biggest upset in the tournament, was the Blue Jays beating the Rangers.

How about the National League?

National League Tournament

The first thing that really surprised me was the Nationals knocking out the team with the best record in MLB right away. But that's what makes tournaments exciting... upsets. Washington went on to upset the Cardinals in the 2nd round as well. Another upset, although not quite as big, was the D-Backs beating the Brewers to advance. Finally the #3 seed, the Diamondbacks, took the NL Championship.

I decided before even doing this not to do a World Series. The fact is not all AL teams play all NL teams during the regular season, so it didn't sit right with me to do that. And it worked out anyway as the Yankees and Diamondbacks never played each other during the 2011 season. But all of this did result in an intriguing match-up, as the Yankees look to avenge their loss to the Diamondbacks in the 2001 World Series.