Baseball by the crunchy numbers
First off, a happy, happy and slightly belated birthday to eibii! (She is exempt from reading the griping below, and gets only sweetness and light and stuff.) Would have wished it earlier, but it's also my mother's birthday.
Secondly, in the words of crazieabby, "Congratulations to the 1986 Boston Red Sox!"
It really was, and is, a generally sad state of affairs. The Rockies are a moon-gravity freak show from a flyover territory football city, where any backup second baseman can jack it out of straightaway center like he was Willie Mays; they're owned by a far-right-wing brewer of dreadful bheer and managed like a Christian fundamentalist madrassa; and they generally had no business being in the post-season at all. The Red Sox, taking a page from the "ya can't beat 'em, join 'em" book, are now just the Yankees North, soaking up high-priced marquee free agents (Matsuzaka) and running up huge payrolls, as they're more corporate commodity than baseball team. Watching the former being belt-fed to the latter was both comical and wrong.
Oh, and the Orioles fired Andy Etchebarren as manager of the Aberdeen Ironbirds, our New York-Penn League affiliate. Because, you know, that's the real problem with the team, right?
Incidentally, I thought I'd put to the test some of my earlier ranting. If you recall, I strongly disliked the wildcard in baseball and kvetched about it a great deal, believing that it ruined the quality of post-season play. Well, baseball is a game of numbers, so I crunched the numbers appropriately.
The wildcard came in as of 1995, giving us, with the just-completed Series, 13 post-seasons to examine - a pretty good statistical body. For comparison's sake, I took the years 1980-1993, tossing out the strike year of 1981, which resulted in a truly screwed-up post-season, and leaving off 1994, the year the gutter slime in charge of baseball took our Series from us. Some adjustments were also made to 1995 due to a strike. The questions were, is the quality of post-season teams now worse than before? Do the wrong teams get in, or go further? A quick run of the data shows the following:
1980-19931995-2007
Avg. no. wins for a playoff team95.0694.62
Avg. no. wins for a World Series team95.8595.29
Avg. no. wins for the World Series winner95.3194.69
No. of times the team with less regular
season wins won the World Series88
Pct. of teams in the post-season
with 100 wins or more15%17%
Pct. of teams in the post-season
with 89 wins or less12%20%
While one could make an argument for some of the stats there, it really appears that there's not a significant difference in the overall quality between before and after.*
This may or may not mean that I'm talking through my hat. The last stat is the most significant statistically: there does appear to be an increase in some "duff" teams who haven't reached ninety wins (and therefore weren't really that good in the regular season) making the playoffs. The overall stats would indicate they aren't making a real dent; the Texas Rangers of the world are bowing out in the first round as they should. Or are they? Here are the teams which have made the World Series while winning less than 90 games, minus a few outliers**:
1919 White Sox88-52lost***
1926 Cardinals89-65won
1938 Cubs89-63lost
1944 Browns89-65lost
1945 Tigers88-65won
1959 Dodgers88-68won
1973 Mets82-79lost
1987 Twins85-77won
1997 Indians86-75lost
2000 Yankees87-74won
2005 Astros89-73lost
2006 Cardinals83-78won
So in the years of baseball history prior to 1994, eight teams which won less than 90 regular season games made the World Series. Tossing out the few noted below, and counting two teams per year that make it, that's 8 out of 178, or about 4.5%. Since then, we've had four teams out of 26, or 15.4%...and the 2007 Rockies got their 90th win only by virtue of an extra playoff game with the Padres that got tacked onto the end of the season. Once those teams get there, they're a steady fifty-fifty to win, but the question is, should they be there? Also, several significant examples have happened in the last few years. Is this part of an emerging trend? No way yet of knowing for sure.
There's another interesting trend I noted, which may or may not be significant and may or may not be caused by the wildcard. Through most of the first period I studied, there were 26 teams in the Major Leagues - the NL expanded to 14 in the last year, 1993, giving an average of 26.15 over the period. During that time, 22 teams made the post-season at least once; the odd ones out were Cleveland, Seattle, Texas, and Montréal. That's 84%. In the wildcard period, the NL expanded again in 1998, bringing the Majors from 28 to 30; the average during this period was 29.54. The playoffs were expanded, taking eight teams a year instead of four...and yet now, six teams have never been to the playoffs during this period (Toronto, Tampa Bay, Kansas City, Montréal/Washington, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee), only one of which (the Rays) was introduced during this period. That would mean that with twice as many slots open in the post-season, the percentage of teams who participate actually went down by 3% (and would've been 6% had the Phillies not made their come-from-behind run this season). Again, you're welcome to draw of that what you may.
* One interesting bit to note is that both before and after, it's better to have won less games in the regular season than your opponent in the World Series - eight out of thirteen times. The effect is notable enough that the average number of wins for World Series winners is slightly less than those for World Series participants.
** The season was shortened in 1918 due to the war, and 1981 due to a strike; a few games were lost to strikes in 1972 and 1995, but no teams with less than 90 wins went in those years. There was no post-season play in 1904 or 1994.
*** More accurately, "threw".
Secondly, in the words of crazieabby, "Congratulations to the 1986 Boston Red Sox!"
It really was, and is, a generally sad state of affairs. The Rockies are a moon-gravity freak show from a flyover territory football city, where any backup second baseman can jack it out of straightaway center like he was Willie Mays; they're owned by a far-right-wing brewer of dreadful bheer and managed like a Christian fundamentalist madrassa; and they generally had no business being in the post-season at all. The Red Sox, taking a page from the "ya can't beat 'em, join 'em" book, are now just the Yankees North, soaking up high-priced marquee free agents (Matsuzaka) and running up huge payrolls, as they're more corporate commodity than baseball team. Watching the former being belt-fed to the latter was both comical and wrong.
Oh, and the Orioles fired Andy Etchebarren as manager of the Aberdeen Ironbirds, our New York-Penn League affiliate. Because, you know, that's the real problem with the team, right?
Incidentally, I thought I'd put to the test some of my earlier ranting. If you recall, I strongly disliked the wildcard in baseball and kvetched about it a great deal, believing that it ruined the quality of post-season play. Well, baseball is a game of numbers, so I crunched the numbers appropriately.
The wildcard came in as of 1995, giving us, with the just-completed Series, 13 post-seasons to examine - a pretty good statistical body. For comparison's sake, I took the years 1980-1993, tossing out the strike year of 1981, which resulted in a truly screwed-up post-season, and leaving off 1994, the year the gutter slime in charge of baseball took our Series from us. Some adjustments were also made to 1995 due to a strike. The questions were, is the quality of post-season teams now worse than before? Do the wrong teams get in, or go further? A quick run of the data shows the following:
1980-19931995-2007
Avg. no. wins for a playoff team95.0694.62
Avg. no. wins for a World Series team95.8595.29
Avg. no. wins for the World Series winner95.3194.69
No. of times the team with less regular
season wins won the World Series88
Pct. of teams in the post-season
with 100 wins or more15%17%
Pct. of teams in the post-season
with 89 wins or less12%20%
While one could make an argument for some of the stats there, it really appears that there's not a significant difference in the overall quality between before and after.*
This may or may not mean that I'm talking through my hat. The last stat is the most significant statistically: there does appear to be an increase in some "duff" teams who haven't reached ninety wins (and therefore weren't really that good in the regular season) making the playoffs. The overall stats would indicate they aren't making a real dent; the Texas Rangers of the world are bowing out in the first round as they should. Or are they? Here are the teams which have made the World Series while winning less than 90 games, minus a few outliers**:
1919 White Sox88-52lost***
1926 Cardinals89-65won
1938 Cubs89-63lost
1944 Browns89-65lost
1945 Tigers88-65won
1959 Dodgers88-68won
1973 Mets82-79lost
1987 Twins85-77won
1997 Indians86-75lost
2000 Yankees87-74won
2005 Astros89-73lost
2006 Cardinals83-78won
So in the years of baseball history prior to 1994, eight teams which won less than 90 regular season games made the World Series. Tossing out the few noted below, and counting two teams per year that make it, that's 8 out of 178, or about 4.5%. Since then, we've had four teams out of 26, or 15.4%...and the 2007 Rockies got their 90th win only by virtue of an extra playoff game with the Padres that got tacked onto the end of the season. Once those teams get there, they're a steady fifty-fifty to win, but the question is, should they be there? Also, several significant examples have happened in the last few years. Is this part of an emerging trend? No way yet of knowing for sure.
There's another interesting trend I noted, which may or may not be significant and may or may not be caused by the wildcard. Through most of the first period I studied, there were 26 teams in the Major Leagues - the NL expanded to 14 in the last year, 1993, giving an average of 26.15 over the period. During that time, 22 teams made the post-season at least once; the odd ones out were Cleveland, Seattle, Texas, and Montréal. That's 84%. In the wildcard period, the NL expanded again in 1998, bringing the Majors from 28 to 30; the average during this period was 29.54. The playoffs were expanded, taking eight teams a year instead of four...and yet now, six teams have never been to the playoffs during this period (Toronto, Tampa Bay, Kansas City, Montréal/Washington, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee), only one of which (the Rays) was introduced during this period. That would mean that with twice as many slots open in the post-season, the percentage of teams who participate actually went down by 3% (and would've been 6% had the Phillies not made their come-from-behind run this season). Again, you're welcome to draw of that what you may.
* One interesting bit to note is that both before and after, it's better to have won less games in the regular season than your opponent in the World Series - eight out of thirteen times. The effect is notable enough that the average number of wins for World Series winners is slightly less than those for World Series participants.
** The season was shortened in 1918 due to the war, and 1981 due to a strike; a few games were lost to strikes in 1972 and 1995, but no teams with less than 90 wins went in those years. There was no post-season play in 1904 or 1994.
*** More accurately, "threw".