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Next fall, baseball will feature a World Series in which the home-field advantage will be earned because a team had a better record than its opponent. It isnt a novel concept. The only really crazy thing about it is that it will be the first time its ever happened.Until 2003, the leagues alternated the advantage, which is fair enough if you believe random is a marker of best practice. Then came the infamous 2002 All-Star Game tie and, in what may been a teensy-weensy bit of overreaction, baseball decided to give the home-field edge in the Series to the league that won the All-Star Game. That edict was miraculously followed all the way through the 2016 season and postseason, though the All-Star Game itself continued to be run as if it were actually what it is: an exhibition.Finally, that era is done. One of the less controversial aspects of the new collective bargaining agreement is the one that detached World Series home-field advantage from the All-Star Game. A few people grumbled over the return of sanity, but only a few. Home field matters, though it may not be for precisely the reasons you might think, and it shouldnt be determined by an everybody-gets-to-play game featuring 196 or so of the biggest stars in baseball.Going to overall record was a logical next step, one that on the surface few will argue over. Its an incremental, easy step to take, one that youd expect after something as extreme as the All-Star Game tie-in. But its not completely a problem solver, and chances are well have a few chances to rue the occasional unfairness inherent in the new rule over the next five years.Last season, by won-loss record, the Chicago Cubs were 8 1/2 games better than every other team in the majors. By Pythagorean record -- the projected won-loss record based on run differential -- the Cubs were 9 1/2 games ahead of the field, suggesting their mark was no fluke. Chicago was like Secretariat in 1973 or Usain Bolt any number of times. No matter what adjustments you want to make for context, the Cubs lapped the field. That sort of clarity is unusual.If the Cubs had been a bit less dominant, their best-in-the-majors record would have been a less convincing argument for World Series home field. Take a look at this table of 2016 relative power rankings sorted by strength of schedule. Notice how almost all the American League teams are at the top and all the National League teams at the bottom.In interleague play last season, AL teams whomped their NL brethren to the tune of 165 to 135, a 55 percent clip. That almost entirely explains the spread in strength of schedule. Now, lets look at the composite records by division, with the records of the first-place teams and all interleague games removed:AL East -- .502AL West -- .481NL Central -- .480NL West -- .477NL East -- .473AL Central -- .466Thats a really big spread. In a season with the sort of disparity between the leagues that weve had in recent years, you may get a league champion with an artificially exaggerated record, which may or may not be exacerbated by the interleague disparity between divisions. Is it really fair to declare that one team has the best record when its only a handful of games ahead of another team that played a mostly different, and possible superior, group of opponents?The new rule for awarding World Series home field is an improvement, but its not ideal. In five years, when the CBA is next up for renegotiation, we can do better. What are our options?1. Team interleague record: Probably not. For one thing, its a small sample size -- teams play just 20 interleague games apiece. And many years, the World Series combatants wont have played any common interleague opponents.2. League interleague record: Theres more competitive integrity to this idea than using the All-Star game. At least within each interleague matchup, you know both teams are actually playing to win. But how much impact should a Rays-Marlins regular-season series have on a Cubs-Indians World Series? Its awkward. And, besides, its also a reaction to a trend. There is no obvious structural reason why the AL should be better than the NL, or vice versa. Theoretically, they should be well-balanced.3. League interleague adjustment: This is a more sophisticated approach. You use the teams overall record, but you adjust it for how the leagues fare against each other in interleague play. In a season like 2016, when the results so heavily leaned toward the AL, the adjustment would be quite large. Not enough to make up the Cubs 8 1/2 game edge on the Rangers, but enough to flip things in other years. This adjustment should be simple enough to be displayed on the daily standings just to keep things as transparent as possible.4. Record against other playoff teams: Maybe we want to award home field on the basis of performance against playoff-worthy teams. Two problems make this a likely nonstarter: small sample sizes and timing. We dont know the playoff teams until the end of the season, and that makes it hard to track this race in the daily standings. At the same time, it might add some luster to a late-season matchup between likely playoff teams when one of them has already clinched a seed, but not World Series home field.5. Colley Matrix method:?Youre judged by how your opponents did against their opponents. Or something like that. Simple in theory, but really complicated in execution. Alas, that latter point is probably the deal killer. Again, we want this to be something people can follow and comprehend from basic standings.6. Record against .500 teams: In terms of clarity and large-enough-sample size, this is a good option. There are a lot of years when teams rack up lofty records by beating up on bottom-feeders. An example: The 2015 Mets went to the World Series despite going 28-38 against teams over .500. Of the 40 teams to play in the World Series over the last 20 years, 13 have finished under .500 against winning teams. Theoretically, this occurs because of randomness and the strength of schedule factors we want to iron out.Most years, the teams with the best records against .500 teams are not coincidentally the teams with the best records overall, but not always. Last season, the Cubs had a robust .586 winning percentage against other winning teams, but that was just the second-best mark in baseball. Texas was .648 against .500 teams last season. We didnt say this was a metric that predicted postseason success. But it does eliminate team performance against the chattel that occupies teams schedules to disparate degrees.If you used this last option as the home-field decider, here is how the last 20 years would have looked:First, you can see that using the All-Star winner awarded the home field to the wrong team too often, but it could have been worse. Also, most seasons, you get the same answer whether youre looking at overall record or just record versus .500 teams. But when there is a difference, the middle column seems to be an improvement. You smooth out some of the scheduling disparities without using something as cumbersome as a strength-of-schedule adjustment, or some other formula that would confuse a lot of people when they stare at the standings on their tablets or in their newspapers.In any event, baseball deserves credit for making progress on this issue, which may seem minor until Game 1 of the last series of the season, when all of a sudden it seems really important. Weve got five years to toss around ideas, because while progress is good, more progress is even better.Air Max 90 Canada . Breaking three of his own world records on his way to winning in Paris, Chan silenced the critics and left the audiences standing in appreciation and awe. Air Max 270 Mens Canada . Aaron Harrison scored a 22 points for Kentucky (6-1), which has won four in a row following a Nov. 12 loss to current No. 1 Michigan State. Julius Randle overcame a scoreless first half and added his sixth double-double in as many games with 14 points and 10 rebounds. http://www.clearanceairmaxcanada.com/air-max-270-bowfin-canada-sale.html . Hazard cut in from the left and scored with a swerving right-footed shot for ninth goal of the season, which proved to be enough for the victory despite Chelseas forwards again lacking a cutting edge up front. Air Max 95 Sale Canada . Vokoun departed practice on Saturday morning after discovering swelling in his thigh. He was taken to a local hospital where the clot was revealed. The club announced the surgery following a 5-3 exhibition loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets. Air Max2 Light Canada . Haas said he "felt a lot of pain" in his right shoulder when he slammed his racket to the ground in frustration after losing his serve at 3-3 in the first set.The Minnesota Timberwolves reportedly have new uniforms in the works. No launch date has been announced, although the earliest and most logical time frame would be for the new look to be ready for the start of the 2017-18 season.But why should we wait that long? We recently challenged Uni Watch readers to redesign the Timberwolves threads. Here are some of the best and most interesting submissions we received. In each case, you can click on the image to see a larger version of it.Best overall concept: Paul Crary and Ian BabineauThis entry is, admittedly, a bit of a ringer. Paul Crary and Ian Babineau originally came up with their concept last fall -- not for a contest, but just because theyre passionate Timberwolves fans who thought the team could benefit from a new look. They created their own website and Twitter feed and generated a bit of buzz among the teams fan community. So they had plenty of time to refine their idea and didnt have to work under the same time constraints as our other entrants.But this concept is too good to ignore. For starters, in an era filled with snarling mascot logos, Crary and Babineau dared to put as much emphasis on timber as on wolves, with really strong results. The repeated use of stacked triangles -- sometimes to create trees, sometimes to create a wolfs face, sometimes to create a snowflake pattern -- is ingeniously simple, and the designs are embedded with additional symbolism, as illustrated in this animation:Its a really clever concept, especially compared to the default wolfs head approach. You can see more on Crary and Babineaus website.Best Golden State-style design: Brian CarlsonThe Warriors have one of the NBAs most interesting uniform designs, and Brian Carlson was clearly drawing upon that for his Timberwolves submission. It may be derivative (and he would have been better off putting the team name on top and the state name on the bottom, instead of the other way around), but it works!Carlsons road design is pretty sharp as well. If a wolf is going to be howling, hes going to be doing it at night, right? So heres a rare case in which a black uniform feels like a logical design choice instead of a lazy cliché.Best NBA-ready logos: Jesse NunezThe NBA has gone bonkers for roundel-based logos in recent years, so Jesse Nunezs proposed logos would fit right in. Some people may like this approach more than others, but you have to admit that these designs feel very much in tune with the leagues current design sensibility, and look very official as a result.Best no-frills design: Matt HarveyStraightforward, traditional designs are often overlooked in uniform competitions, and you could even argue that a rrelatively young franchise like the Timberwolves shouldnt go with a classic-style uniform.dddddddddddd But if they wanted to go that route, they could do a lot worse than to use Matt Harveys design, which feels like a more mature, grown-up distillation of the teams previous looks. His green and black alternate uni concepts are handsome as well, although it might have been nice if he had cut loose with a more adventurous concept for one of them.Best use of W and M: Dom Veurink The letters W and M are essentially inverted versions of each other, and they can also stand for Wolves and Minnesota. So Dom Veurink came up with a nifty stylized W logo for his home jersey and then flipped it upside-down for his road jersey. Not bad! (And while were at it, Sandro Tagliavini devised an MW mark that doubles as a wolfs head.)Honorable mention: Wolves howl at the moon and NBA team logos almost always include a basketball, so Daniel Richardson came up with a logo concept that combines the moon and the ball. Needs a bit of work, but its a good concept. ... Most of the logo concepts we received showed a wolfs head either snarling directly at the viewer or pointing upward, in full howl. Joel Jenson got his logo to stand out from the pack simply by showing the wolfs head in profile, pointing forward. He then included an upward-howl pose for one of his secondary logos -- a smart approach. ... Neon, volt, electricity -- by any name, fluorescent green and yellow tones are all the rage these days. They usually look pretty awful, but Greg Koch managed to harness them to surprisingly good effect in his logo package and his home and road uniforms. The only problem is that the combination of navy and neon feels too Seattle Seahawks-ish. ... As usual, Tom Bierbaum submitted drawings that included great designs for opposing teams. Check out his concepts for the Washington Wizards and Oklahoma City Thunder (who would change their name to the Bolts in Bierbaums alternate universe). ... John Richardsons uniform concepts look like theyd be right at home in the old ABA. ... Tom Kyles black alternate uniform is suitably spooky.Want to see more? You can check out all of the submissions we received here.Paul Lukas will have more team-redesign contests soon. If you liked this column, youll probably like his Uni Watch Blog, plus you can follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Want to learn about his Uni Watch Membership Program, be added to his mailing list so youll always know when a new column has been posted or just ask him a question? Contact him here. ' ' '