'Tis Better to Have Played and Lost

Once the New York Yankees were eliminated in the American League wild card game, it was clear that the theme of this postseason was going to be one of redemption. Of the eight teams in the Division Series (other than the St. Louis Cardinals), the Toronto Blue Jays were the team that had most recently won the World Series, and that was back in 1993. Last night, the Kansas City Royals ended their 30-year World Series drought by extending the New York Mets' streak of not winning the Series to 29 years.

Even so, the reaction from a number of teams is legitimately, "cry me a river." Here are a list of the teams that have gone the longest without a World Championship:

ORIGINAL 16 MAJOR LEAGUE FRANCHISES

• Chicago Cubs: Last won in 1908. Last appeared in 1945. You may have heard about this.
• Cleveland Indians: Last won in 1948. Last appeared in 1997.
• Pittsburgh Pirates: Last won in 1979. Last appeared in 1979.
• Baltimore Orioles: Last won in 1983. Last appeared in 1983.
• Detroit Tigers: Last won in 1984. Last appeared in 2012.
• Los Angeles Dodgers: Last won in 1988. Last appeared in 1988.
• Oakland Athletics: Last won in 1989. Last appeared in 1990.
• Cincinnati Reds: Last won in 1990. Last appeared in 1990.
• Minnesota Twins: Last won in 1991. Last appeared in 1991.
• Atlanta Braves: Last won in 1995. Last appeared in 1999.
• Chicago White Sox: Last won in 2005. Last appeared in 2005.
• Philadelphia Phillies: Last won in 2008. Last appeared in 2009.
• New York Yankees: Last won in 2009. Last appeared in 2009.
• St. Louis Cardinals: Last won in 2011. Last appeared in 2013.
• Boston Red Sox: Last won in 2013. Last appeared in 2013.
• San Francisco Giants: Last won in 2014. Last appeared in 2014.

EXPANSION FRANCHISES

• Texas Rangers: Never won (franchise established in 1961 as the Washington Senators). Last appeared in 2011.
• Houston Astros: Never won (franchise established in 1962). Last appeared in 2005.
• Milwaukee Brewers: Never won (franchise established in 1969 as the Seattle Pilots). Last appeared in 1982.
• San Diego Padres: Never won (franchise established in 1969). Last appeared in 1988.
• Washington Nationals: Never won (franchise established in 1969 as the Montreal Expos). Never appeared.
• Seattle Mariners: Never won (franchise established in 1977). Never appeared.
• New York Mets: Last won in 1986 (franchise established in 1962). Last appeared in 2015.
• Toronto Blue Jays: Last won in 1993 (franchise established in 1977). Last appeared in 1993.
• Colorado Rockies: Never won (franchise established in 1993). Last appeared in 2007.
• Tampa Bay Rays: Never won (franchise established in 1998). Last appeared in 2008.
• Arizona Diamondbacks: Last won in 2001 (franchise established in 1998). Last appeared in 2001.
• Los Angeles Angels: Last won in 2002 (franchise established in 1961). Last appeared in 2002.
• Miami Marlins: Last won in 2003 (franchise established in 1993). Last appeared in 2003.
• Kansas City Royals: Last won in 2015 (franchise established in 1969). Last appeared in 2015.

So yeah, it's a bummer being a Mets fan today. But 11 of the 30 teams in the majors have been waiting longer for a World Series championship team, including three (the Cubs, Indians, and Senators/Rangers) who've been waiting longer than the Mets have existed.

Going For The Hat Trick

My latest Banished to the Pen article is here. In it, I talk about fastballs. If you've been watching the postseason at all, you know that the Mets have pitchers who throw the ball really, really hard. If you've been paying a lot of attention, you may have read that the Royals were arguably the most successful team in the majors this season at hitting the fastest pitches. As I point out, both those are true. However:

1. The Royals were very successful at hitting pitches thrown 95+ mph, but less so with really, really fast pitches, based on work by mlb.com's Mike Petriello.
2. The Royals pitching staff throws very hard as well, and the Mets hitters struggled against very fast pitches.

I conclude that while people may be overestimating the ability of the Royals to hit the pitches the Mets are likely to throw at them, they may also be underestimating the problems Mets hitters may have with Royals pitchers.

On that note, I'd like to point out my record for predicting this year's postseason series. Let's ignore the wild card games, because they were just one game each. (I got the Cubs right and the Astros wrong). Among the four Division Series games, I was 3-0 (correctly predicting Cubs over Cardinals, Royals over Astros, and Blue Jays over Rangers) if you exclude the Mets (whom I thought would fall to the Dodgers). In the Championship Series, I was 0-1 (play along with me here - I thought the Blue Jays would beat the Royals) if you exclude the Mets (whom I thought would lose to the Cubs). In other words, I was 3-1 if you exclude the Mets. That's not bad! But I got the Mets wrong twice, making me as good as a coin flip at 3-3. 

The point is, I'm going to try to keep the streak going. I'm going to pick the Royals in the World Series. I think their hitters will have more success against the Mets pitchers than people may think, and I think their pitchers will have more success against the Mets hitters than people may think. Specifically, as I pointed out in the article linked above, the Mets were one of the worst teams in baseball at hitting very fast fastballs, which the Royals throw a lot. Further, the Mets' hitters' tendency to hit fly balls (fifth most frequently in the majors) plays into the Royals' pitchers' tendency to yield fly balls third most frequently in the majors). Fly ball/ground ball tendencies are similar to rightly/lefty match-ups: Hitters tend to do better against the opposite type of pitchers. So the fly ball-hitting Mets should do better against a ground ball-yielding team (like, e.g, the Dodgers, who were second in the majors at yielding ground balls) than against the fly ball-yielding Royals, and the fly-ball yielding Royals should do better against the fly ball-hitting Mets than against a ground ball-hitting team (like, e.g., the Pirates, who were sixth in the majors at hitting ground calls). (Neither the Mets pitchers nor the Royals hitters had a pronounced fly ball/ground ball tendency, so there isn't a notable match-up when the Mets are pitching.)

That being said, my choice of Kansas City probably means that New York will win. You're welcome, Mets fans.

The Big Game vs. The Big Games

A brilliant comparison of the Super Bowl and the World Series by Grant Brisbee.

The San Francisco Giants Dynasty (?)

Teams that have won three World Series within five years:

• Philadelphia Athletics, 1910-11-13
• Boston Red Sox, 1912-15-16 and 1915-16-18
• St. Louis Cardinals, 1942-44-46
• Oakland Athletics, 1972-73-74
• Several iterations of the New York Yankees, dating from 1936-37-38-39 to 1996-98-99
• San Francisco Giants, 2010-12-14

So where does San Francisco rate among those dynastic teams?

Well, let's pare down that list first. The wartime Cardinals don't really count, given that many baseball players were in the service, so the talent pool was idiosyncratic. And the Giants...well, let's look at the Giants.

I'm going to compare the Giants to a couple teams of relatively recent vintage that didn't make the list and generally aren't thought of as dynasties: the 2003-07 Boston Red Sox (from Aaron Boone's walkoff in the 2003 ALCS to the 2007 sweep of the Rockies) and the 1984-88 New York Mets (Davey Johnson, manager). Here's a summary:

That kind of puts the Giants into perspective. Yes, they're only the second National League team to win three World Series in five years, and that's quite an accomplishment. But dynasties aren't just a function of the postseason. The Giants won, on average, seven fewer games per year than the non-dynasty Red Sox and nine fewer than the non-dynasty Mets. Their run differential (runs scored vs. runs allowed) was nowhere near as good as the Mets and Red Sox. The Mets and Red Sox scored runs in droves, while the Giants were below the National League average. (Technical note: I excluded the Astros in all the Giants' years, since they migrated out of the National League after 2012.) While the Giants were good at pitching and defense, ranking second to the Braves in runs allowed over the past five years, they didn't dominate the league the way the Mets did. And when you consider that Boston's Fenway Park boosted offense by about 5% in 2003-07 while San Francisco's AT&T Park suppressed it by about the same amount 2010-2014, the Giants' advantage in runs allowed narrows considerably.

And it's also worth noting that the Wild Card didn't exist until 1995 and the second wild card until 2012. The 2014 San Francisco Giants were the National League's second wild card, so would not have made the postseason during the Mets' or Red Sox' eras. By contrast, the 1984, 1985, and 1987 Mets, none of which made the postseason, would have won the Eastern Division under the current three-division configuration (they finished behind the Cubs in 1984 and Cardinals in 1985 and 1987). Any one of those teams, victors of 90, 98, and 92 games, respectively, might have added to the Metropolitans' postseason success.

This takes nothing away from the Giants' success this year, and in 2012, and in 2010. Certainly, they earned each of those championships. But let's hold off on calling them one of the greatest teams of all time, OK? 

The Last Strike Zone of the Year

Last night's Game Seven was taut, with the outcome in doubt until literally the last at-bat (the Royals had the tying run at third with two outs in the ninth) and will be remembered for yet another amazing performance by Giants pitcher and Series MVP Madison Bumgarner. 

Fortunately, it won't be remembered for the umpires, other than the (correctly) overturned call on the acrobatic double play Joe Panik started in the third inning (aided by Eric Hosmer's dumb slide into first base - do sprinters slide headfirst across the finish line?)


Specifically, home plate umpire Jeff Nelson had a pretty good game. Here's a map of his ball-strike calls with a right-handed batter at the plate:


That's from the umpire's point of view, so the batter's on the left side. Called strikes are in red, called balls are in green. The solid line is the rulebook strike zone, while the dashed line is the strike zone as typically called by major league umpires. (They expand the strike zone a bit). There were a three calls that Nelson missed, calling a strike on the Royals that should have been a ball and a couple strikes on the Giants that were balls (one away, one down), but that's OK.

Here's his strike zone for left-handed batters, whom you should imagine standing on the right side of this diagram:



Lefties get sort of hosed by major league umpires, as their strike zone is a good bit wider than it should be, and Nelson called a lot of strikes on pitches that were outside the rulebook zone, though they were inside the zone lefty swingers usually see. So, all in all, a nice job.

Reality Check: Game Seven

Tonight's the last game of the 2014 season. Does history tell us who's going to win?

Yesterday (I'm sorry I didn't read it until today), ESPN's Jayson Stark had a piece about how the Royals, as the home team for the last two games of the Series, have an advantage. Specifically, here are two of his datapoints:

Starting in 1982, the home team has gone 22-3 in Games 6 and 7. And yes, you read that right. We said 22-and-3. That's an .880 winning percentage. Which makes no mathematical sense at all. If you subtract those 25 games, the winning percentage of home teams in all other World Series games, including this year, is just .540. Amazing.No home team has lost a Game 7 in 35 years, since the Pirates won their last title in Baltimore. Since then, road teams have lost eight straight Game 7s.

Now, my purpose here isn't to call out Jayson Stark. He's a great journalist. His coverage of the game is passionate and humorous, and he's an old-school print journalist who's not afraid to bring on new concepts. His latest book is on my reading list. And the statistics he cited have the virtue of being, you know, correct.

However, they're also selective. True, the home team, since 1982, is 14-3 (after last night, 15-3) in World Series Game Six and 8-0 in Game Seven. But that's only since 1982. What happened before then?

• From 1905 (when the World Series became a best-of-seven tournament, excluding 1919-21, when it was best of nine) to 1982, the home team was 27-18 in Game Six.
• From 1905 to 1982, the home team was 10-18 in Game Seven. Won ten, lost eighteen.
• So from 1905 to 1982, the home team was an unimpressive 37-36 in Games Six and Seven.
• Adding that to the Stark's figures, the home team, in all of baseball history, is now 60-39 (.606 winning percentage) in Games Six and Seven, comprised of a 42-21 (.667) record in Game Six and just 18-18 (.500) in Game Seven.  

Did something significant happen in 1982 that changed the way the game's played, making the post-1982 record more relevant to today's game? We'd already gone to the modern bullpen: In 1982, reliever Bruce Sutter got a win and two saves for the champion Cardinals, while Brewers reliever Bob McClure had two losses and two saves. It was the tenth year of the designated hitter, so that wasn't a new thing, though the practice at the time was that the DH used was used throughout the Series in even-numbered years and not at all in odd-numbered years. (The current rule of using the DH only at the American League park began in 1986). It's hard to see that minor DH change making the home team suddenly invincible. Stadiums have gotten a little smaller (shorter fences) and the fields slower (grass replacing artificial turf), but that shouldn't change the home-field advantage. In short, the game didn't really change. So neither should the outcome of the last two games of the Series.

So in looking at tonight's game, I don't think it's any less accurate, nor less predictive, to say "the home team is 18-18 in Game Sevens" than it is that the home team's 9-0 in the past 35 years (8-0 since 1982, and a winner in 1982 as well), the last home team Game Seven loss being the Orioles to the Pirates in 1979.

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On another Game Seven topic, a friend asked me, "Rob, I'm looking game 7 starters and thinking to myself 'whatever happened to aces that pitched games 1,4,7?'" My quick answer was, "That went the way of the four-man rotation." Turns out there's more to it than that.

There have been, including this one, 37 World Series that went seven games. That means there have been 74 opportunities for a pitcher to start games 1, 4, and 7. That happened only 14 times, just 19% of the time: Boston's Smoky Joe Wood and the Giants' Jeff Tesreau in 1912 (the Giants' Christy Mathewson started games 2, 5, and 8--the second game was an 11-inning tie); Washington's Walter Johnson in 1925; Brooklyn's Joe Black in 1952; Pittsburgh's Vern Law in 1960; St. Louis's Bob Gibson in 1967 and 1968; the Mets' Jon Matlack and Oakland's Ken Holtzman in 1973; St. Louis's John Tudor in 1985; the Mets' Ron Darling in 1986; Minnesota's Frank Viola in 1987 and Jack Morris in 1991, and Arizona's Curt Schilling in 2001. The golden era was 1967-2001, when there were 13 Series that went seven games, and eight of them had a pitcher go in the first, fourth, and last games, but that's still only 35% of the total (nine pitchers, including two in 1973, divided by 26 teams).

Part of the reason for the infrequency is that the current pattern of two games, off day, three games, off day, two games didn't emerge until 1957. Still, there have been 23 seven-game series since then, and pitchers started 1-4-7 only ten times (22% of possible). Prior to 1957, there were seven pitchers who got three starts in a seven-game series, but they weren't in games 1, 4, and 7. Since then, there have been 18 such pitchers, including three pitchers in each of the 1962 and 1965 World Series and the Cardinals' Chris Carpenter in 2011.

But I was wrong about the four-man rotation. The only pitchers among those to have started at least 39 games in a 162-game season or 37 in a 154-game season--reasonable indicators of a four-man rotation--were Wood and Holtzman. (Black was a reliever who'd started only two games in the regular season when he was called upon to start three games in the 1952 Series.)

So I suppose the answer to the question is that aces pitching games 1, 4, and 7 was never really all that common in the first place.

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And one other Game Seven note: Yesterday on SiriusXM, Steve Sax was speculating on whether Madison Bumgarner might pitch in Games Six or Seven after throwing 117 pitches in a complete game shutout on Sunday. Sax said that Bumgarner could, or even start one of the games. After all, said Sax, Babe Ruth, when a pitcher, would sometimes start both games of a doubleheader. 

Babe Ruth started 147 games in his career. On Tuesday, July 11, 1916, he started the first game of a doubleheader against the White Sox. The box score shows that he pitched to one batter and didn't record an out. I assume he was pulled after just a pitch or two. (The story is that the Red Sox starter that day, Rube Foster, wasn't ready for the start of the game, so Ruth threw some pitches while Foster completed his warmup.) Anyway, he started the second game as well, pitching a complete game in a 3-1 Red victory. That's the only game in which he started both games of a doubleheader, and it really doesn't count. 

What's Bugging the Statheads About This World Series

Every postseason, it seems, engenders a de rigueur response from someone in the media about how one team or the other or the style of play or something infuriates the stats guys, sabermetricians, Moneyball crowd (my favorite term of disrespect, because it misses the point of the book, which is exploiting market inefficiencies, not statistical analysis), whatever. This year's Series brought out a larger-than-usual number of such columns, given that both teams don't hit a lot of home runs, strike out much, or draw a bunch of walks. The Giants were 17th, 17th, and 21st in the majors in home runs, strikeouts, and walks, respectively, while the Royals were famously last in all three categories, the first such team to make it to the Series. Add the Royals' penchant for stolen bases (153, first in the majors, 11% more than the second-ranked team) and sacrifice bunts to extend the narrative.

Not that any of this is really all that true. I mean, yes, the Royals were last in those categories during the regular season, but, as I pointed out after Kansas City won the ALCS, they made it to Series by hitting an above-average number of homers, walking at a much higher-than-average rate, and striking out about as frequently as everyone else. As for the speed, well, the Royals have attempted only five stolen bases in the ALCS and World Series, and were successful only twice, so the stolen base has been more a detriment than a weapon for them.

But there's one thing that both managers have done that's fair game for criticism from he analytic community: Sticking with their starters too long. The times through the order penalty (TTO) refers to what happens to starting pitchers each successive time they face the opposing team's lineup. The longer a pitcher goes, not only does he get tired, but the hitters get used to his delivery and timing, making it easier to make contact.

In 2014, for example, in batters' first plate appearance against a starting pitcher, they batted .246 with a .304 on base percentage and a .377 slugging percentage. They hit home runs in 2.3% of plate appearances, walked in 7.1%, and struck out in 21.1%.

In the second plate appearance, batters' slash line improved to .256/.313/.395. They homered in 2.3% of plate appearances, walked in 7.0%, struck out in 19.1%.

In the third plate appearance, the slash line was .268/.327/.421. Per plate appearance, batters homered 2.7% of the time, walked 7.4%, and struck out 17.7%.

The pattern is pretty clear: The more times a pitcher faces a batter, the more hits, home runs, and walks he gives up, and the fewer strikeouts he gets. 

This has played out in the Series:

• In Game Two, the teams were tied at two runs apiece after five. The managers kept their pitchers in, even though both were facing batters for the third time. In the top of the sixth, Royals starter Yordano Ventura allowed two singles and was lifted. Reliever Kelvin Herrera put out the fire. In the bottom of the sixth, Giants starter Jake Peavy allowed a walk and single, was pulled, but both runners scored, and by the time the inning ended, the Giants were losing 7-2. Both starters ran into problems the third time through the order, though only the Giants were burned.
• In Game Three, the Royals were up 1-0 after five. In the top of the sixth, Royals manager Ned Yost let starting Jeremy Guthrie bat, and he grounded out. Giants starter Tim Hudson then faced Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar for the third time. He singled, left fielder Alex Gordon doubled him home, and a groundout and a pitching change later, first baseman Eric Hosmer drove in Gordon. In the bottom of the inning, Yost's decision to let Guthrie bat came back to bite him, as Guthrie allowed a single and a double and then, facing center fielder Gregor Blanco for the third time, a walk. Again, the Royals bullpen put out the fire, as the Royals won 3-2. Again, both starters ran into problems the third time through the order.
• Game Four was a blowout, with the Giants winning 11-4, but the Royals had a 4-2 lead going into the fifth inning. Starting the bottom of the fifth, facing Giants second baseman Joe Panik for the third time, Royals starter Jason Vargas gave up a double. Yost relieved him, so there wasn't much damage, though Panik came around to score in an inning which the Giants tied the game. Vargas gave up a third-time-through-the-order hit that at the time was costly.

I'm not including Games 1 and 5, because the Giants jumped to a first-inning 3-0 lead in the first game, and besides, Madison Bumgarner, who started both games for the Giants, has been invincible in the postseason (six starts, 1.13 ERA, 0.67 WHIP). He also has had a minimal TTO penalty this year, with batters compiling a .706 OPS against him in their first plate appearance, .603 in the second, .675 in the third. (The league average OPS in 2014 was .694.)

Tonight, the starters are Jake Peavy for the Giants and Yordano Ventura for the Royals. Here's how batters did against them in their starts this year:

Jake Peavy	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	HR%	SO%	BB%
First plate appearance	258	20	59	12	2	7	23	63	.229	.290	.372	.662	2.4%	24.4%	8.0%
Second plate appearance	263	28	59	13	1	8	17	54	.224	.276	.373	.648	2.8%	18.9%	5.9%
Third plate appearance	220	34	71	17	4	8	22	40	.323	.387	.545	.933	3.1%	15.7%	8.6%

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 10/28/2014.

Yordano Ventura	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	HR%	SO%	BB%
First plate appearance	245	11	52	10	3	1	20	54	.212	.276	.290	.566	0.4%	20.1%	7.4%
Second plate appearance	241	33	60	13	1	8	26	57	.249	.326	.411	.737	3.0%	21.1%	9.6%
Third plate appearance	181	18	48	5	1	4	20	42	.265	.340	.370	.710	2.0%	20.5%	9.8%

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Generated 10/28/2014.

Peavy has been pretty good through the first couple times through the order but he's collapsed the the third time through. That .933 OPS that he's allowed--well, Mike Trout, who will be the AL MVP, had a .939 OPS this year. Giants manager Bruce Bochy really shouldn't let him pitch after he's gone through the Royals lineup twice.

As for Ventura, he's been nails the first time through the order, but below average thereafter: the .725 OPS he's allowed the second and third time through the order compares to an AL average of .706.

Presumably, both pitchers will be on short leashes tonight, with the Giants one win from the championship and the Royals one loss from elimination. But if we see, say, Peavy come out in the sixth to face the Royals lineup a third time, clinging to a one- or two-run lead, we could see more sixth-inning fireworks (12 of the 42 runs scored this Series, nearly 30%, have come in the sixth inning, during which starters are typically facing the opponents' batters a third time), courtesy of a failure to understand the times through the order penalty.

Sweet Play of the Day - October 21

Yeah, I know, it was three days ago, but I didn't see it until today.

Craig Calcaterra at Hardball Talk: "That was the best play by anyone from Kansas City in Game 1, to be honest."

The World Series: Something's Gotta--Well, Probably's Gonna--Break

Well, it's the first all-Wild Card World Series since 2002, when the Giants fell to the Angels in seven games, in a series that features four one-run games (Games One, Two, Four, and Six), two blowouts (Angels 10, Giants 4 in Game Three; Giants 16, Angels 4 in Game Five), and the emergence of a bullpen star, Anaheim's Francisco Rodriguez, who racked up 13 strikeouts in 8.2 innings, which is three more innings than he pitched in the regular season. 

One of the reasons I've been wrong in almost all of my postseason predictions (I did guess that the Orioles would beat the Tigers) is that neither of this team's finalists, the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants, have played true to form:

• The Royals scored 4.02 runs per game in the regular season, below the AL average of 4.18. The league leader was the Angels, with 4.77. In the postseason, when the quality of pitching is above-average, the Royals have scored 5.75 runs per game, about a run per game more than the best-scoring team in the league during the regular season. And, as I've pointed out, they've done it not with speed, but with the homers, walks, and strikeouts that they avoided during the regular season.
• San Francisco's best starter, Madison Bumgarner, is unimpeachable. But the No. 2 starter, Jake Peavy, had a 4.72 ERA with Boston before joining the Giants via a trade in late July. He had a 2.17 regular season ERA with the Giants and a 1.86 postseason ERA. The No. 3 starter, Tim Hudson, had an 8.72 ERA over five starts in September and a 3.29 ERA in the postseason. The No. 4 starter, Ryan Vogelsong, was almost as bad as Hudson in September (5.53 ERA) and had a strong start against the Nationals (5.2 innings, four baserunners, one run) before a weak one (four runs allowed in three innings) in a game the Giants won anyway. That four-man rotation has put Yusmeiro Petit in the bullpen, where he's allowed two hits and no runs over nine innings. He had a 4.40 ERA in September.

One of these trends will break down. Either the Royals will stop hitting so well, or the Giants starters after Bumgarner will stop pitching so well. They can't both continue like this.

Both teams have strong bullpens. The Royals, as I noted in my Championship Series preview, had the best record in the American League in games they led after six innings, 65-4. That, of course, is attributable to Kelvin Herrera (usually their seventh inning reliever, 1.41 ERA), Wade Davis (eighth inning, 1.00 ERA), and Greg Holland (ninth inning, 1.44 ERA). But the Giants weren't slouches either, going 62-6 in games they led after six, fourth-best in the National League and sixth-best in the majors.* But these teams were also among the most successful at coming back from deficits after six innings: the Giants were fifth-best in the majors (13-60) and the Royals seventh-best (11-58) in games they trailed going into the seventh inning.** Still, the Royals' trio has combined for a 1.05 ERA in the postseason, giving the Royals, in my mind, an edge in games that they lead.

The question is whether they'll get there. Given my initial premise--that the clock's going to strike midnight for either the Royals' offense or the Giants' rotation--I'm more skeptical of Kansas City, which ranked last in the majors in walks and homers in the regular season. I've made it clear that I'm biased in favor of small-market low-payroll teams, and the Royals' $89.3 million payroll (17th in the majors) is almost 40% lower than the Giants' $145.1 million (sixth). But if I had to make a guess, I'd expect the Royals to wind up on the short end of a low-scoring World Series. 

*Top six won-lost records in games leading after six innings: Padres (!) 60-1 (!!), Royals 65-4, Nationals 72-6, Dodgers 81-7, Twins 52-5, Giants 62-6.

**The Nationals were 14-54 in games they trailed after six innings, the only team to win over 20% of such games. But the bottom of the list is more interesting. The Braves were trailing 63 games after six innings, and came back to win only three--a winning percentage of less than 5%. And the Dodgers were even worse, going 2-54 in games they trailed after six. Dodgers fans have a reputation for leaving games early to beat the traffic, and in 2014, it seems, they were justified, as the team went on the win 92% of the games they led after six while losing 96% of games they trailed after six. 

On The Horror of a Wild Card World Series

Look, I'm not wild about it either. For the second time in baseball history (2002, Angels-Giants), we will have two wild card teams--i.e., teams that couldn't even win their own division--meet in the World Series. That's a far cry from the years though 1968, when a team had to be the best in and eight- or ten-team league in order to make the Fall Classic. Now, you don't have to even win a five-team division.

Except. There is an element of variability in most everything in life, including baseball, that is almost always ignored. Say there's a game, tied 3-3 in the eighth inning. The pitcher throws a ball on the border of the strike zone. The batter doesn't swing. Is it a ball or a strike? 

Well, the average major league hitter had a .251 batting average, .314 on base percentage, and .386 slugging percentage in 2014. After a 1-0 count, that rose to .267/.373/.420. After 0-1, it became .221/.261/.331. 

That difference, in the late innings of a close game, is enough to sway a ballgame. The batter who gets a strike call is far less likely to get on base and score a run than the batter who doesn't. How many times do fluctuations like that occur over the course of a season? Take the Royals. They finished with 89 wins. If you were to replay 2014, over and over again, using the exact same players, same lineups, same injuries--do you think they'd win exactly 89 games every time? I don't. Maybe they'd win 88 or 86 or 92--it all depends on little things like ball/strike calls, a tiny movement in a batter's swing, the precise timing of a fielder's leap. How random are things like that? Maybe, say, 3%? Then over a 162-game season, we'd expect variance of 162 x 3% = 5 games. So the Royals may have won 89 games this year, but it's just as likely that they're an 84-win team that got a little lucky, to the tune of five wins, or a 94-win team that got a little unlucky, to the tune of five losses. Yes, the 89-win Royals knocked off the 98-win Angels and 96-win Orioles, but you can easily build a case that the Royals, if we were to replay the season over and over, might have, in the long run, a better record than the other two. Maybe the Angels and O's are really, in the long run, 93-win teams that got a little lucky this year while the Royals are really, in the long run, a 94-win team that got a little unlucky this year. 

Same in the National League. The Giants won 88 games, and they knocked off the 96-win Nationals and the 90-win Cardinals. But were they an inferior team? Those differences are both within our 3% margin of error. 

I've quoted baseball analyst Joe Sheehan before, but his observation from his newsletter bears repeating: Variance swamps everything. The fact that we're seeing two wild card teams in the Series doesn't mean we're seeing two inferior teams. We're just seeing two teams that didn't compile as good a record over a six-month, 162-game season as the teams they defeated. Maybe they picked the right time to get hot, or maybe they took advantage of their opponents' injuries (the Royals faced an Angels team without its No. 1 starter and an Orioles squad without its starting third baseman, first baseman, or catcher), or maybe some pitchers were more worn down in October than they were in April, or any of many other factors. The point is: If the goal were to insure that the teams with the best record meet in the World Series, then we should return to the pre-1969, pre-divisional play baseball world in which there were two leagues and one champion per league, period. As FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron said in his chat last week, "If you crown your champion with a postseason tournament, you’re asking for randomness."

And that's what you get: Randomness. There are two things I hate hearing, incessantly, during the postseason. One is all the myths I addressed last month: that prior postseason experience is important, that having veteran players provides an edge, that momentum matters, that good pitching stops good hitting, that reliance on home runs is bad, that ace starters confer an advantage. All of those, I explained, are dubious. 

But the other thing that I hear a lot, and which is probably more offensive, is that the postseason is a test of character. It's a short series of baseball games, not a morality play, for crying out loud. The Royals and Giants didn't advance because they're better people than the players on the Angels, Nationals, Orioles, and Cardinals. They didn't win because they were able to "put it together," "draw on their inner strength," "function better as a team," "will themselves to win," execute under pressure," "perform when they had to," and whatever other crap you read and hear, while their vanquished opponents didn't. They're each here because they won eight baseball games, spread over a one-game play-in and two short series. And, to the delight of baseball fans, most of those games were tight and exciting. Isn't that enough?