2013 Playoffs and World Series Thread (expansion, stance, ticket, Braves)

[sskink]

Originally Posted by Ridgerunner

Uhhhh....the Cards beat the Yanks in '64.

Maybe he meant 49 years

[Mike from back east]

Well, I was rooting for Cleveland, but after winning ten straight they lost last night without a whimper and their season is over.

Jason Giambi never got to bat last night; he hit .183 this year and probably should hang it up but he says he wants to play next year when he's 43.

The prospect of an all-Ohio World Series is dead; both Cincinnati and Cleveland bowed out in the one-game wild card matchups.

The real playoffs will commence with two games tonight; Dodgers at Braves and Pirates at Cardinals.

[7express]

Originally Posted by sskink

Oakland vs. anyone would be a ratings nightmare. Same with Tampa. It rarely gets discussed as a reason for building a new stadium, but both those parks look awful on TV in addition to just being bad parks in general.

Oakland is probably the least favorite destination for Pittsburgh. A's pretty much had their way with the NL Central in interleague play, including both Pirates and Cards. Although A's haven't played at PNC. I'd like to see Pirates/Tigers. A Braves/Rays Series would probably be the one matchup I wouldn't watch at all.

The A's won 2/3 against the Pirates at PNC back in July.

[jtur88]

I wonder if all the World Series games will be televised. Again this year, there are so many playoff games, that the commercial TV networks don't even want them all, and tomorrow's Cards Pirates game will not be on basic cable, only on a few high-end premium cable lineups that carry the MLB Network. While the Cards Pirates game is going on, TBS would rather carry reruns of old Seinfeld and Family Guy episodes, because that's how much interest there is in the glutted playoff schedule. As if that were not bad enough, MLB.TV is blacking out the game to its paid up subscribers, in order, apparently, to protect MLB Network's so-called coverage of the game. If the game is not going to be televised anyway, why not schedule it for 7 pm, so at least the players don't have to fight sun fields?

MLB can't even find networks willing to bid on carrying the games they've got, but they keep adding more and more playoff games that can't be sold to advertisers and the networks don''t want. The 7-game World Series has exploded to a 43-game postseason. I hate MLB the corporation and everything that it stands for.

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by jtur88

I wonder if all the World Series games will be televised. Again this year, there are so many playoff games, that the commercial TV networks don't even want them all, and tomorrow's Cards Pirates game will not be on basic cable, only on a few high-end premium cable lineups that carry the MLB Network. While the Cards Pirates game is going on, TBS would rather carry reruns of old Seinfeld and Family Guy episodes, because that's how much interest there is in the glutted playoff schedule. As if that were not bad enough, MLB.TV is blacking out the game to its paid up subscribers, in order, apparently, to protect MLB Network's so-called coverage of the game.

MLB can't even find networks willing to bid on carrying the games they've got, but they keep adding more and more playoff games that can't be sold to advertisers and the networks don''t want. The 7-game World Series has exploded to a 43-game postseason. I hate MLB the corporation and everything that it stands for.

You argue that we are suffering from a surfeit of post season games, yet complain bitterly when one of them isn't televised.

I am reminded of Woody Allen's line about life...."It is horrible, and it is over much too quickly."

[ogre]

Originally Posted by jtur88

If the Cardinals get to the WS, it will be their 9th consecutive WS appearance without matching up against the Yankees. Which is pretty amazing when you consider how many times the Yankees have been there. In those 50 years, the Yankees will have been there 11 times and the Cardinals nine, without ever meeting.

Originally Posted by Ridgerunner

Uhhhh....the Cards beat the Yanks in '64.

Originally Posted by sskink

Maybe he meant 49 years

I don't think he meant 49 years. He was right talking about nine World Series. Since the Cardinals/Yankees series in '64, the Cards have been in eight World Series--'67, '68, '82, '85, '87, '04, '06, and 2012. The Yankees did not play in any of those series, so it's correct that if the Cards were to make it in this year, they would not have played the Yankees in any of their past nine WS appearances.

[ogre]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

The prospect of an all-Ohio World Series is dead; both Cincinnati and Cleveland bowed out in the one-game wild card matchups.

Yeah, I thought about that the other night when the Reds lost. No Buckeye Series.

[ogre]

Originally Posted by Grandstander

Good observation. The people who write and talk about sports for a living are obliged to dramatize events because their living depends upon the public being interested. The upshot is that we get all kinds of statements about momentum, wanting it the most, how different the post season is from the regular season, how pitching is more important in the post season, how important it is to stay focused and not have distractions etc. They say all this because either they do not know, or if they do understand they think it best not to say so in public, that the post season is a complete crap shoot and the major factor in determining the winner is random luck.

There seems like there should be a huge difference in talent between a 100 win team and a 90 win team, but there isn't, at least not when applied to who will win a specific five or seven game series. If you review the 100 win team's regular season schedule, breaking it down into seven game segments, you will easily find segments where the team has lost four out of seven games, and sometimes it was to the weakest teams in the league.

The 100 win team (.617 ball) would need to play the 90 win team (.555 ball) 21 times before a full one game expected advantage emerges ( 12,9 wins to 11.7 wins)...and remember, that is a one game advantage, the .617 team would be expected to prevail 11 games to 10.

Nothing brings out the cliches like the post season, the sports reporters all looking for that dramatic angle to play up, the players and managers delivering the regulation pablum about just going out there and playing hard for nine innings and not taking anything away from the opposition and playing it all one game at a time and just trying to stay within themselves while giving 110 % etc.

You may safely ignore all of it..you may as well be watching a dice rolling contest.

There seems to be a lot of truth to this most years. It seems that in most seasons, including this one, several teams are clustered at the top, similar enough to each other in quality that it all has to be sorted out in the playoffs, with a lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) bounce of the ball often determining the outcome of one series or another along the way.

However, occasionally there will be a team which clearly stands alone above the pack for most of the season. I've been following sports since around the late '60's to early '70's, and I've looked up the post-season performances of 13 teams I recall over those 40-plus years as teams everyone, fans and analysts alike, just knew were special, clearly alone ahead of the rest of the pack, even standing without a doubt above the top teams in the rest of the pack. Their collective post-season record is pretty impressive.

It usually takes the first two months or so of the season to sort things out and begin to get some idea of how good, or not, each team really appears to be in a given year. Usually, starting sometime in June or thereabout you'll have a pretty good idea of each team's general level. You'll have some idea which teams are legitimately at least potential contenders, which are solid middle-of-the-pack teams, and which will finish toward the bottom. Since most years there will be several contenders who all seem to have good shots at winning, the more finely tuned sorting out goes on for the rest of the season and all through the playoffs.

Every so often, though, by the middle of June there will be one team everyone just knows is the best team out there, bar none. The analysts will say it--"best team in baseball, no question about it"--and the fans will kind of shake their heads all through the season from mid June on, and say, "No one's going to beat that team." Since circa 1970, the thirteen teams I recall being talked about with this kind of awe were: '69, '70, '71 Orioles (aka The Best Damn Team in Baseball); '76 Reds (The Big Red Machine); '84 Tigers; '86 Mets; '88, '89, '90 A's (The Bash Brothers); '98, '99 Yankees; '07 Red Sox; '09 Yankees.

With those teams, the fans who said "No one's going to beat that team" were right a substantial majority of the time. All of them reached the World Series and nine of them won it. The few times this bunch didn't take the big prize involved two clubs who followed similar patterns. The '69-'71 Orioles won three AL pennants in a row, but ended up being officially crowned The Best Damn Team only in the middle year, 1970. The Bash Brothers A's of '88-'90 also won three pennants in a row but took the Series only in the middle year of the three, the Earthquake Series of '89.

That's it, though. All nine of the others won the Series, and all 13 of them reached the World Series. Their collective record proves especially impressive if you look at how handily these teams won most of their post-season series. The '69-'71 Orioles, '76 Reds, and '84 Tigers played in a total of five best-of-five League Championship Series. After the start of the wild card era and Divisional Series, the '98-'99 Yankees, the '07 Sox, and the '09 Yankees each played a best-of-five DS. Of the total of nine best-of five series these teams played in the post-season, all of them were sweeps. That includes the four teams who went on to lose the World Series.

Move to best-of-seven, and the collective performance of this bunch is not quite that dominant but is still impressive. As a group these teams played in eight League Championship Series that had the best-of-seven format. Only half of those went more than five games. The '07 Red Sox took all seven games to move past Cleveland into the World Series, while the '86 Mets and the '98 and '09 Yankees played six-game LCS's. The other half of the best-of-seven LCS's lasted no more than five games, with the '89 A's and '99 Yankees winning best-of-seven LCS's in five, while the '88 and '90 A's swept their LCS's.

In the World Series, it's interesting that the four of these teams that lost made poor showings for the most part. The '71 Orioles took the World Series to seven games against the Pirates, but the '69 O's and '88 A's lost the Series in five games each, and the '90 A's were swept by the Reds. However, most of the nine world champions in this bunch won the WS handily. The Mets came within a strike of losing the '86 Series in the sixth game, and took seven games to win. The '09 Yankees took the World Series to six games before beating the Phillies. Of the other seven, the '70 Orioles and the '84 Tigers played World Series that went five games, while the '76 Reds, the '89 A's, the '98 and '99 Yankees, and the '07 Red Sox all swept.

This adds up to a total of nine best-of-five series that went: 3-0, 3-0, 3-0, 3-0, 3-0, 3-0, 3-0, 3-0, 3-0, for an aggregate win-loss total in games of 27-0.

These 13 teams played a total of eight best-of-seven League Championship Series, with games won and lost as follows: 4-2, 4-0, 4-1, 4-0, 4-2, 4-1, 4-3, 4-2. The aggregate games won-lost total for these series comes to 32-11.

The World Series games won-lost for all 13 teams goes: 1-4, 4-1, 3-4, 4-0, 4-1, 4-3, 1-4, 4-0, 0-4, 4-0, 4-0, 4-0, 4-2 for an aggregate of 41-23.

The bottom line is that since 1969, teams that have clearly stood apart from the pack for most of the season, and have subjectively been viewed as clearly, hands down the best team in each of their respective years, have all reached the World Series. The lion's share of them have won the Series, and these teams have won handily in a substantial majority of post-season series in which they played, in all rounds of the playoffs.

The idea that the post-season is a crap shoot may partly explain the few times these stand-alone teams failed to win the World Series, but their overall record indicates that it's likely that the occasional team which stands alone as clearly the best team in a given season usually will come out on top simply because they are the best.

In a majority of seasons, though, there is no clear all-by-themselves best team in baseball, and that's where you really never know what to expect. Which makes things both interesting and sometimes frustrating. And that's what we have this year.

[Grandstander]

ogre....

I appreciate your thesis and it might be valid. You have taken a mixed data/anecdotal approach. Data in that you defined your time period and counted the WS winners, anecdotal in that you examined selected rather than all years, and in that you did not provide a precise definition for " by the middle of June there will be one team everyone just knows is the best team out there, bar none."

You would need to come up with a statistically defined middle of June team, postulate some standards for what represents that team of destiny identity....how many wins, how far ahead of the opposition, greatest run differential between scoring and preventing runs, and then count how many qualifiers went on to WS glory. How many '84 Tigers were there compared to '01 Mariners and '93 Giants?

Otherwise we are left with an after the fact prediction...we just knew these teams were special, but we are saying it long after those teams proved that they were special. What is needed is a system for predicting such a team in advance, being able to look at a team in June, check to see if it has met the standards we extracted from examining previous teams of destiny, and be able to state that yes, come October this team will be WS champs.

The difficulty with "just knew" is that it includes things like "just knowing" that Fred Lynn, Dave Parker, Vida Blue and Will Clark would wind up in the Hall of Fame.

[Grandstander]

Including the tie breaker, the wild card games and the first two division series games, we have had scores of:
5-2
6-2
4-0
9-1
6-1

The winners have stomped the losers by a collective 30-6.