When we look at minor league standings and records, we tend to look at them with major-league eyes. Your season record is what it is, and the top clubs by winning percentage at the end of the year battle it out in the playoffs.

But one of the wrinkles in minor league baseball’s history is how leagues have decided to hold (or not hold) playoffs for their seasons. Some playoffs have been a little more complicated than just records at the end of the year, and have led to some wacky or truly subpar teams getting hot at just the right time to win a minor league title.

Such was life in the Pacific Coast League when the Hawaii Islanders were the Triple-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

For over two decades, the PCL took the division winner from North and South each year and had the two face off in the league finals. Starting in 1979, however, the PCL expanded the playoffs from two teams to four and embraced a split-season model.

Under this new system, the season would split into two halves, with the first act ending on June 21st and the second one ending on September 2nd. Each year’s semifinal would consist of the division winners of each of the two halves in the regular season. If one team won both the first and second half, they would earn an automatic trip to the finals.

The winners of each semifinal would then play against each other for the PCL crown.

This new system really changed the way to look at baseball standings in the league, and gave many teams a new lease on life midway through the year.

A horrid start to the season no longer doomed a PCL club just a month or two into the year, nor did a late-season collapse drag a team out of the playoff race. In theory, a team could lose every single game in the first half of the season, rally to win the division in the second half, make the playoffs, and win the title.

And this is what made PCL baseball very interesting and, at times, seem a little unfair. But it’s all about perspective.

This system is still in place in the minor leagues today. Leagues of all levels, from Low-A all the way up to Triple-A, operate in the split-season format, with winners of the first and second half meeting together in the postseason. That system will help decide who will represent the Pacific Coast League and its Triple-A counterpart, the International League, in the one-game Triple-A championship, set for September 27th.