Essentially, my goal for this post is to simply weigh in on a few issues that I think are important that are going on in the NFL right now. It’s week 12 and with five weeks remaining in the regular season, there are currently 21 teams within two games of first place in their division and that doesn’t even include the 6-5 Dolphins who are three games behind the Jets and Patriots. Parity is ruling supreme as seven teams are either 9-2 or 8-3 and another four teams are 7-4. I am willing to bet that home field advantage is going to play a much bigger role this postseason than it has in the past few years. Currently, four teams are undefeated at home (the Chiefs, Ravens, and Patriots are 5-0 while the Falcons are 6-0) while only the New York Jets have yet to lose on the road (5-0), although the Steelers aren’t far behind at 5-1.
So what is troubling me this season? Who the MVP will be? Nope, Phillip Rivers has a fantastic inside track at that award given that the Chargers have begun their late season push and he’s putting up phenomenal numbers. Whether or not someone will pass for 5,085 yards? Not really. Rivers and Orton are both on pace to come close but as Rivers has shown in recent weeks, winning and huge passing numbers don’t necessarily go hand in hand. History has shown time and time again that the easiest way to have success in the NFL is with a balanced offense and a strong defense. Balanced usually does not equal record breaking.
VICK
One of the two issues I want to address is Michael Vick. He has been a feel good story for some this year and for others, he is still public enemy number one. Personally, I don’t care about the things that he has done personally to rehabilitate his image and get back in the good graces of the NFL, the numerous sponsors, and most importantly, the American criminal justice system. As the owner of one of the cutest, happiest 30 pound dogs that exists on the face of this earth, I will never forgive Vick for the things that he did and the things that he stood by and watched happen. The details of his case were sickening to me and thinking about those details while my puppy stared into my eyes happily, I was nearly brought to tears.
However, I do not believe that he should be kicked out of the NFL forever. In the eyes of the law, he is back to square one (at least I think he is, I’m not sure if he’s still on probation or anything like that). He has paid his debt to society and he is doing everything he can to become a functioning part of society once again so he can regain the fortune that he lost. My biggest issue anymore is that for the disgusting animal cruelty that he allowed to happen and participated in, I believe his sentence was far too light. This is not Michael Vick’s fault. It is the fault of the lawmakers and as I read somewhere, apparently 30 different laws have been passed making the penalties for dogfighting much more severe and because of the high profile nature of this case, apparently more reports of dogfighting are being received by police. If that’s the case, then maybe there is a silver lining that isn’t stained with the blood of defenseless dogs.
There is a flip side of the coin to all of this and that is Michael Vick the player. At some point in the last several years, something clicked. In his first 6 years in the National Football League, Vick completed just 53.7% of his passes with a quarterback rating of 75.9 and a win-loss record of 38-28-1, a good record by any mark but when you take out his 2004 season that record drops to 27-24-1. Maybe he is more mature now and realizes that in the long run his legs won’t be able to sustain him in this league as long as his arm will. Whatever clicked inside his head, it has made him into the player that defensive coordinators have always feared he would become; he is now a threat to throw as well as run.
Thus far this season, he has completed 63.4% of his passes and while that doesn’t rank amongst the league’s best (12th best in the NFL), it’s a huge step for a guy who has 419 rushing yards and is averaging 6.5 yards per carry. His QB rating of 106.0 is not among the league’s best; it is the league’s best. An even better indication of his maturity as a passer this year is the fact that he has thrown 13 touchdowns and has been intercepted just 1 time.
While I have very little respect for Michael Vick the person, I have gained an immense amount of respect for Michael Vick the player.
BLACK QB’S
On November 23rd, Jemele Hill wrote a nice piece (here is the link, definitely worth a read: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=hill/101123) about the role that race plays when it comes to quarterbacks in the NFL and it was a very well written, thought provoking piece. So much so that I feel the need to weigh in.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am Caucasian, or as Chuck Lorre once wrote on a vanity card, beige. I have tried very hard over the course of my life to be sensitive to issues of race while trying very hard to ignore them. It sounds like an interesting dichotomy but in the immortal words of Dr. King, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
At no point during this article does Hill imply that race had anything to do with fishy decisions to bench black quarterbacks that have all had varying degrees of success in their respective careers. I’m not saying that these benching were or were not racially motivated but I have a hard time believing they are so what I’m going to do is I’m going to put forth my opinions on them and take them with a grain of salt for the only information that I have is what is printed by the media.
#1 – Donovan McNabb
Benching McNabb in the fourth quarter of a game where the Redskins were trailing by less than a touchdown was very odd. Mike Shanahan’s explanations of the benching were even more mystifying. First he said he felt he had a better chance with Rex Grossman because of the better handle on the ‘Skin’s two minute offense (and if he had such a good handle on the two minute offense, wouldn’t he still be a starter in this league?) and then Shanahan called out McNabb’s fitness level. Yes, McNabb has to learn a new system after spending eleven years under Andy Reid and yes, it’s not the first time that his fitness has been called into question (though be careful believing whatever Terrell Owens says). It still seems odd to bench a guy that has a history of leading game-winning drives in the fourth quarter (as Hill points out).
My personal theory is that this league has become the ultimate example of “what have you done for me lately?” and Mike Shanahan took this way too far. In his career before this year, McNabb has a QB rating of 86.5 and he was coming off of a 2009 season where his rating was 92.9, the third highest of his career. So far this season with the Redskins, his rating has been 76.0, which would be the lowest of his career excluding his 216 attempt rookie season. He has posted a rating higher than 80.0 just twice this season while having four games below 70.0 and one below 60.0.
Is it possible that Shanahan is feeling a little frustrated that they brought in a guy they were hoping to be a franchise quarterback and so far, his passer rating is below the league average (83.8)? Is it possible that he is feeling so pressured to win games with “Chainsaw” Dan Snyder signing his paychecks that he’ll do anything to jumpstart his team to a victory? Absolutely. Is it possible that this decision was racially motivated? Of course it is, but while this is the one of these three benchings where that seems to be the most plausible explanation, I just don’t see it.
#2 – Jason Campbell
At first glance, this one makes very little sense. They gave up a draft pick to get Campbell and then they’ve turned to Bruce Gradkowski at a moment’s notice multiple times this year. However, this is the one that seems to me to be the least racially motivated.
Jason Campbell has been a solid starting quarterback in the NFL thus far but this year, he has been a complete Jekyll and Hyde. He’s had three games with a rating over 100.0 and he’s had two games where if he had let every pass fall incomplete, his rating would have been higher than what he actually did. His overall rating (75.8) isn’t too far off of his career mark (82.3) or at least it’s close enough to give him the benefit of the doubt.
However, I think that consistency is an extremely valuable asset in professional life, not just in professional sports. So which would you rather have, a quarterback that has a passer rating of 85.0 every single game or a quarterback who has a passer rating of 65.0 one game and 105.0 the next? Personally, I will always choose the former because that way, you can gameplan around him knowing that his performance will be on a fairly even keel. These have been Campbell’s passer ratings this year in games he’s played in (sorted by rating).
127.9
120.9
117.6
76.5
69.7
42.9
26.2
10.7
Three fantastic games, two below average games, one bad game, and two abysmal games. Is that what the Raiders were hoping for when they traded for him?
Which brings us to the other factor at work with Campbell; the Raiders. Last year, while JaMarcus Russell was having his worst professional season, Tom Cable started inserting Bruce Gradkowski in at quarterback and not only did he play well for a back-up (80.6 QB rating), the offense responded to him and they starting moving the ball down the field. So when Jason Campbell played horrifically against the Steelers (7-19 for 70 yards and two interceptions for a rating of 26.2) and the offense stagnated, was it completely unreasonable for Cable to think that perhaps Gradkowski could jumpstart the offense? Of course not because it had worked before.
While we’re on the subject of the Raiders, it’s also possible that Cable is open to just about anything because he’s not too worried about long term job security with Al Davis as the owner… I’m just saying. Hill also mentions that JaMarcus Russell was a black quarterback and received similar treatment from Cable and she only goes as far as saying that Russell was a “draft bust”.
His quarterback rating in his two full seasons was 66.2 and he went from 77.1 in his first full season to 50.0, a truly atrocious rating for any quarterback, and he wasn’t just any quarterback, he was a former #1 overall pick making millions of dollars. The league average for QB rating in those two years? 81.4.
#3 – Vince Young
This is by far the most intriguing because Young was not struggling as a quarterback this year. On his way to a QB rating of 98.6, he had shown flashes of brilliance with moderate struggles along the way. In other words, he was progressing as a passer, minimizing his mistakes while figuring out how to make plays. How you feel about this particular benching depends on what you think of Vince Young and what you think of Jeff Fisher. Was Vince Young playing well enough to remain the starting quarterback? Presumably, excluding the thumb injury that he suffered that eventually sidelined him for the rest of the season. Was Young mature enough to handle the starting job? That is the real question.
Hill brings up that Fisher has had contentious relationships with quarterbacks in the past and that he perhaps hasn’t shown the faith in Young for him to thrive at this level. Given the type of gameplan that Fisher puts forth, my guess is that he didn’t want a QB in Young’s mold and I don’t think race had anything to do with it. He wanted a game manager and his owner fell in love with the one of a kind playmaker and I think that is where a lot of friction originated. I really hate to say it quite this bluntly, but if that is the case I have only one message for Vince Young; grow up.
How many times has Peyton Manning’s shoulder pads ended up in the stands after being pulled from a game? I don’t think I need to answer that one. How many times has Tom Brady said, in front of teammates, that he was walking out on Bill Belichick, even though it’s no secret that one of Belichick’s trademarks is watching game film and serving out healthy portions of “humble pie” after a game, win or lose?
My point is that it seems to me that Young entered the NFL and expected to be a starting quarterback from the word go and hasn’t been able to adjust to actually having to work for the job. Maybe there is something going on behind the scenes that I don’t know about but maybe there isn’t. Jeff Fisher may be partially to blame but for Vince Young to accept no responsibility for his behavior would be astounding for a guy who has been in the NFL for five years.
It’s not the head coach’s job to stroke the ego of his young star. It’s his job to win games.
COMPARISONS
In her article, Hill compares these quarterbacks to one of the best QB’s of all time in Peyton Manning and I don’t find this to be a fair comparison to either Manning or any of the aforementioned quarterbacks.
Coming into this season, Donovan McNabb, Vince Young, and Jason Campbell had combined for a 138-94-1 record, 50,576 yards, 303 touchdowns, and 177 interceptions as starting quarterbacks in the NFL.
Peyton Manning, by himself, had a 131-61 record, 50,128 yards, 366 touchdowns, and 181 interceptions.
At the point of their benching (or in Manning’s case, right after his last drive and comeback killing interception against the Patriots), this is how these four quarterbacks had done.
Name
Rating
Completions-Attempts-Yards-TD-INT
Vince Young
107.6
12-16-165-0-0
Donovan McNabb
75.7
17-30-210-1-1
Jason Campbell
26.2
7-19-70-0-1
Peyton Manning
96.3
38-52-396-4-3
In other words, one quarterback wasn’t performing too well, one was performing terribly, one was potentially injured and then threw a tantrum, and the last had thrown for nearly 400 yards and four touchdowns and had brought his team to the brink of a victory after trailing 31-14. I just don’t see that comparison. Peyton Manning doesn’t get criticized as much by the media because he isn’t a controversial figure. He doesn’t take his shoulderpads off and throw them in the stands and if anything, he is more critical of the way he plays than anyone else is.
Is the NFL prejudiced against black quarterbacks? Possibly, but before you answer that, answer this. Who are the ten most polished quarterbacks in FBS football right now and how many of them are black? Not all that many, but that still isn’t where it starts. If you are a high school football coach and you have a world class black athlete who can play quarterback, is that necessarily the best use of his talent? Maybe, but if the average high school receivers can’t catch the balls he throws to them, you’re not getting the most of his physical ability. Instead, you have an average kid play quarterback and have your outstanding athlete play running back or wide receiver where he can make plays to compensate for the lack of physical ability in his teammates.
So at the age of 14 or 15, an outstanding athlete gets moved from quarterback to running back to help the team win games and it’s possible he never switches back to QB. Is that the NFL’s fault? Nope, it’s the same thing that keeps cropping up; our obsessive need to win.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
It Was a Bad Day to be a Democrat
The votes are in and counted (for the most part). The question now is; what happened?
If you look at the results of the day and compare them to where we stood as a nation yesterday, an easy conclusion to draw would be that a law was passed banning Democrats from the US House of Representatives. Another (more legal) conclusion to draw would be that the American public got tired of its Democratic leadership.
When the morning broke on this month of November, there were 257 Democratic Representatives and 178 Republicans. As of right now, the numbers in January for the 113th Congress will be 186 Democrats and 239 Republicans.
So what’s the big deal? Americans got fed up with the Democratic Party and after a six year run as a majority, they are back in the minority. Well, the problem lies in how it happened.
INSTANT MEDIA
In the past ten years, it seems that the American public has become in ever increasing need of instant gratification. This applies to their need for almost anything, be it food, entertainment, or most notably in this decade, information and results. Information is available now more than it ever has been quite literally in the history of the planet and all someone has to do is log on to the internet and all the information they could ever desire is just a click away. Unfortunately, this has only enflamed our insatiable need for instant gratification.
Applied to politics, people want what they want and they want it now. Political analysts always talk about FDR in the days leading up to a presidential election. They talk about how in his first 100 days in office, he set the pieces in motion that would help lead us out of the darkest economic times of this country’s history. Now, presidents are measured by what they are able to achieve in those first three months and change in office with absolutely no regard for a few simple facts.
- FDR was one of the best president’s this country has ever had according to any number of rankings.
- Starting in January 1933 (when he took office) he was supported by an overwhelming congressional majority (313-117) in the House of Representatives.
Add those together and you get a formula for getting a lot of things done. In fact, during his first six years in the White House, the Democrat’s margin in the House only grew (from 196 seats in 1932 to 244 seats in 1936).
When a president doesn’t do well in those first three months, citizens already start looking ahead to next time and to be honest, that’s pathetic.
2000-2010
In the year 2000 when George W. Bush was elected, the Republicans had a 9 vote margin in the House, a slim lead they had maintained throughout the Clinton administration. This lead held through Bush’s first term, but in his second term, public opinion started to sway violently. In 2004, when Bush was re-elected, Republicans held a 29 vote margin in the House, the largest majority they had had since 1946 when Truman was in the White House.
Two years later, the Democrats retook the majority with a 37 vote margin.
Two years later, the Democrats retook the White House and extended their margin in the House to 79 votes.
This year, Republicans retook the majority and now have a 53 vote margin.
In six short years, Republicans have gone from 29 votes up to 79 votes down back to 53 votes up. This year alone, the Democrats lost 71 seats. To give you a better idea of what that means, since the House expanded to 435 members, the Democratic party has lost 71 seats just one other time, in 1938, but that year they started with such an enormous majority that they still held a 93 vote margin.
Since the rough beginning of Republican/Democratic politics in Congress, the Democratic party has lost this large a chunk of the House seats only three other times and two of those were in the Civil War when there was a very successful and popular Republican president.
THE SPIN
So now that I’ve thrown a whole bunch of numbers at you, what does all that mean and why am I so riled up about all of this? For that, I have a relatively simple answer. There’s an old saying in baseball for the 162 regular season schedule. No matter what, you’re going to win 54 games and lose 54 games; it’s what you do with those last 54 games that really matters.
If you apply that to politics you can get a rough outline of our country. 33% of the people are hardcore Republicans and 33% are hardcore Democrats. The last third of the country might identify with one party more than another but they can be swayed by cunning campaigning. Indeed, every election is a dogfight for those 33% in the middle of the political spectrum and politicians are so advanced in their practice of persuasion that often it comes down to the middle 5-10% rather than 33%.
Here’s the part that irks me. In the second half of George W. Bush’s presidency, that middle third was flocking towards the left and for a minute, it almost looked like this country was going to undergo honest-to-god social change, perhaps shifting more to the left and away from the right. Now, just a scant few years later, America is shifting wildly back to the right.
In 2008, 62 Congressmen and women were elected for the first time; 24 Republicans and 38 Democrats. Of those 62 elected representatives, 27 of them, or 43.5%, will be looking for a new job come January. For the record, the party breakdown is indicative of what is going on around the country; 22 of 24 Republicans finishing their first term were re-elected while just 13 of 38 Democrats were similarly re-elected. How do we know that it was those 27 first time Representatives and not the 25 Representatives that have served for more than 30 years who are to blame for our current predicament?
In short, we don’t.
SOLUTION?
We, the people, of the United States of America, sent these men and women to Congress to do a job and instead of letting them complete that job, they were there for 6 months working and then 18 months campaigning and now we’re telling them we’re going to try someone else.
Is there a solution? Happier and more prosperous times, perhaps. The American people weren’t reshaping the face of the government every two years in the 90’s when the economy was booming and everyone had too much money to spend. So, true to form, the economy will stabilize once again and the sitting president and Congress will get all the credit despite having relatively little to do with the ultimate results.
Yes, this is a cynical way to view politics but don’t worry, I’ll be less cynical after the face changes itself once again…
730 days and counting…
Leon Kodak: You see, the country has mood swings.
Lewis Rothschild: Mood swings? Nineteen post-graduate degrees in mathematics, and your best explanation for going from a 63 to a 46 percent approval rating in five weeks is mood swings?
Leon Kodak: Well, I could explain it better, but I'd need charts, and graphs, and an easel.
American President (1995)
If you look at the results of the day and compare them to where we stood as a nation yesterday, an easy conclusion to draw would be that a law was passed banning Democrats from the US House of Representatives. Another (more legal) conclusion to draw would be that the American public got tired of its Democratic leadership.
When the morning broke on this month of November, there were 257 Democratic Representatives and 178 Republicans. As of right now, the numbers in January for the 113th Congress will be 186 Democrats and 239 Republicans.
So what’s the big deal? Americans got fed up with the Democratic Party and after a six year run as a majority, they are back in the minority. Well, the problem lies in how it happened.
INSTANT MEDIA
In the past ten years, it seems that the American public has become in ever increasing need of instant gratification. This applies to their need for almost anything, be it food, entertainment, or most notably in this decade, information and results. Information is available now more than it ever has been quite literally in the history of the planet and all someone has to do is log on to the internet and all the information they could ever desire is just a click away. Unfortunately, this has only enflamed our insatiable need for instant gratification.
Applied to politics, people want what they want and they want it now. Political analysts always talk about FDR in the days leading up to a presidential election. They talk about how in his first 100 days in office, he set the pieces in motion that would help lead us out of the darkest economic times of this country’s history. Now, presidents are measured by what they are able to achieve in those first three months and change in office with absolutely no regard for a few simple facts.
- FDR was one of the best president’s this country has ever had according to any number of rankings.
- Starting in January 1933 (when he took office) he was supported by an overwhelming congressional majority (313-117) in the House of Representatives.
Add those together and you get a formula for getting a lot of things done. In fact, during his first six years in the White House, the Democrat’s margin in the House only grew (from 196 seats in 1932 to 244 seats in 1936).
When a president doesn’t do well in those first three months, citizens already start looking ahead to next time and to be honest, that’s pathetic.
2000-2010
In the year 2000 when George W. Bush was elected, the Republicans had a 9 vote margin in the House, a slim lead they had maintained throughout the Clinton administration. This lead held through Bush’s first term, but in his second term, public opinion started to sway violently. In 2004, when Bush was re-elected, Republicans held a 29 vote margin in the House, the largest majority they had had since 1946 when Truman was in the White House.
Two years later, the Democrats retook the majority with a 37 vote margin.
Two years later, the Democrats retook the White House and extended their margin in the House to 79 votes.
This year, Republicans retook the majority and now have a 53 vote margin.
In six short years, Republicans have gone from 29 votes up to 79 votes down back to 53 votes up. This year alone, the Democrats lost 71 seats. To give you a better idea of what that means, since the House expanded to 435 members, the Democratic party has lost 71 seats just one other time, in 1938, but that year they started with such an enormous majority that they still held a 93 vote margin.
Since the rough beginning of Republican/Democratic politics in Congress, the Democratic party has lost this large a chunk of the House seats only three other times and two of those were in the Civil War when there was a very successful and popular Republican president.
THE SPIN
So now that I’ve thrown a whole bunch of numbers at you, what does all that mean and why am I so riled up about all of this? For that, I have a relatively simple answer. There’s an old saying in baseball for the 162 regular season schedule. No matter what, you’re going to win 54 games and lose 54 games; it’s what you do with those last 54 games that really matters.
If you apply that to politics you can get a rough outline of our country. 33% of the people are hardcore Republicans and 33% are hardcore Democrats. The last third of the country might identify with one party more than another but they can be swayed by cunning campaigning. Indeed, every election is a dogfight for those 33% in the middle of the political spectrum and politicians are so advanced in their practice of persuasion that often it comes down to the middle 5-10% rather than 33%.
Here’s the part that irks me. In the second half of George W. Bush’s presidency, that middle third was flocking towards the left and for a minute, it almost looked like this country was going to undergo honest-to-god social change, perhaps shifting more to the left and away from the right. Now, just a scant few years later, America is shifting wildly back to the right.
In 2008, 62 Congressmen and women were elected for the first time; 24 Republicans and 38 Democrats. Of those 62 elected representatives, 27 of them, or 43.5%, will be looking for a new job come January. For the record, the party breakdown is indicative of what is going on around the country; 22 of 24 Republicans finishing their first term were re-elected while just 13 of 38 Democrats were similarly re-elected. How do we know that it was those 27 first time Representatives and not the 25 Representatives that have served for more than 30 years who are to blame for our current predicament?
In short, we don’t.
SOLUTION?
We, the people, of the United States of America, sent these men and women to Congress to do a job and instead of letting them complete that job, they were there for 6 months working and then 18 months campaigning and now we’re telling them we’re going to try someone else.
Is there a solution? Happier and more prosperous times, perhaps. The American people weren’t reshaping the face of the government every two years in the 90’s when the economy was booming and everyone had too much money to spend. So, true to form, the economy will stabilize once again and the sitting president and Congress will get all the credit despite having relatively little to do with the ultimate results.
Yes, this is a cynical way to view politics but don’t worry, I’ll be less cynical after the face changes itself once again…
730 days and counting…
Leon Kodak: You see, the country has mood swings.
Lewis Rothschild: Mood swings? Nineteen post-graduate degrees in mathematics, and your best explanation for going from a 63 to a 46 percent approval rating in five weeks is mood swings?
Leon Kodak: Well, I could explain it better, but I'd need charts, and graphs, and an easel.
American President (1995)
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Giants Pitching Not Quite Historic... But Close
Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, the San Francisco Giants pitched their way through the playoffs, defeating the Atlanta Braves three games to one, the Philadelphia Phillies four games to two, and finally the Texas Rangers four games to one. They won their first World Series since 1954 and their first since moving to the state of California 52 years ago. They won the World Series despite a relatively unimpressive 92-70 regular season record and a lineup that hardly struck fear into opposing pitchers.
Aubrey Huff led the team with 26 home runs and 86 RBI and only one other hitter even managed 20 home runs and 80 RBI (Juan Uribe with 24 and 85). Buster Posey was the only batter who qualified for the batting title to hit better than .300 and even if you included everyone, only two guys hit better than Posey and they combined for 6 at-bats this year.
- As a team, they scored 4.3 runs per game, good for 17th in baseball.
- Their .729 OPS also ranked 17th in the league.
- They hit 162 home runs, tied for 10th in the league.
- They stole 55 bases all season, tied with the Cubs for dead last.
- They grounded into 158 double plays, one behind the Twins for the most in baseball.
All of this adds up to the fact that they were not an offensive juggernaut and from the title of this post, you should have guessed that we weren’t here to talk about hitting.
- Their 3.36 ERA led the league (San Diego was second at 3.41).
- Their 121 ERA+ was five points better than Oakland for the best in the league.
- They allowed the fewest hits in the league (1279) and the fifth fewest home runs (134).
- They did walk the 4th most batters (578) but struck out the most (1331) and posted the 9th best K/BB ratio.
As dominant as they were throughout the regular season, their pitching staff hit an entirely new level in September. Their 19-10 record wasn’t even the best record of any month this season (they went 20-8 in July) but their 1.91 ERA was by far the lowest of any month they had. Their WHIP (0.945) and K/BB ratio (3.70) were also the best of any month the pitching staff had and opponents managed a pathetic .189/.251/.292 batting line against them.
Believe it or not, they weren’t done yet. The quartet of Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Jonathon Sanchez, and Madison Bumgarner combined for a 49-36 record in the regular season but won 8 of the 11 games won by the Giants in the postseason (and Sanchez was 0-2 in the postseason).
The Giants’ pitching staff combined on an ERA of 2.47 while allowing a ridiculous 94 hits in 134.0 innings. They also walked 43 and struck out 133, including 12 by Lincecum and Brian Wilson in the World Series clinching Game 5.
At one point during the World Series broadcast, Tim McCarver commented that the postseason run by the Giants’ pitching staff might just be one of the best in history and it got me wondering where it would rank and so, I decided to check it out. Before I go into the results, however, I have to lay out some ground rules.
THE RULES
First, I only considered the playoff teams of the past 16 years, or the wild card era. The biggest reason for that cutoff is that starting with 1995, all teams had to win 11 games to win the World Series and therefore, their starting pitchers had to undergo more work (also, the smaller sample size made number crunching less time consuming).
Secondly, to judge the pitching of these teams, I turned to my old standby, Game Score. Now, I understand this is used for starting pitchers and not entire teams but it still provides a good indication of how well a team pitched. Teams still got penalized for allowing runs and were credited for recording strikeouts.
That’s about it for the rules…
THE RESULTS
Since 1995 there have been 112 postseason series and 97 of them (86.6%) have been won by the team with the higher GS. This isn’t terribly surprising since this version of the Game Score statistic takes into account all pitchers, not just the starters. To me, it is actually more interesting that 13.4% of teams had better overall pitching and yet failed to win the series.
Three such instances took place in the World Series. They are as follows:
1996
Atlanta Braves – 64.8
New York Yankees – 56.0 (4-2)
1997
Cleveland Indians – 49.6
Florida Marlins – 49.6 (4-2)
2003
New York Yankees – 67.5
Florida Marlins – 60.8 (4-2)
This is easily explained by the fact that they play up to seven games. In the 1996 World Series, Atlanta won their two games by a combined score of 16-1. New York, on the other hand, won their four games by a combined score of 17-10. Hence, the Braves actually pitched significantly better but New York, dragged down largely by a 12-1 Game 1 loss, still won the series.
So where does the 2010 San Francisco Giants’ pitching staff rank? Amongst teams that actually played in the World Series, their 2.47 ERA ranks 6th. The best mark of 1.89 belongs to the 1996 Braves who would have easily won back to back World Series titles if their offense had played better.
In average GS, however, the Giants jump up to second, behind only the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks team. The Giants staff pitched their way to a mark of 70.1, while the D’Backs stand at 71.0. Those are the only two teams to go through an entire postseason, including the World Series, with an average GS over 70. Was the Giants’ run historic? Not quite… but very close.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
This past postseason, the Phillies actually came just as close to making postseason pitching history as the Giants did, posting the second best GS of any team in any individual series. What follow are the best three series (according to GS) this postseason.
Team – GS
(opponent)
IP-H-R-ER-BB-K
Philadelphia Phillies – 81.7
(Cincinnati Reds)
9.0-3.7-1.3-1.0-1.3-8.0
San Francisco Giants – 78.3
(Atlanta Braves)
9.5-6.0-2.3-1.8-1.8-11.5
Atlanta Braves – 71.8
(San Francisco Giants)
9.3-7.0-2.8-2.0-3.3-10.8
And now, the five best series pitching performances of the wildcard era:
1998 ALDS
New York Yankees – 84.7
(Texas Rangers)
9.0-4.3-0.3-0.3-1.3-9.0
2010 NLDS
Philadelphia Phillies – 81.7
(Cincinnati Reds)
9.0-3.7-1.3-1.0-1.3-8.0
1996 NLDS
Atlanta Braves – 80.7
(Los Angeles Dodgers)
9.3-4.7-1.7-1.0-2.3-9.7
1999 ALDS
New York Yankees – 79.0
(Texas Rangers)
9.0-4.7-0.3-0.3-3.0-5.7
2010 NLDS
San Francisco Giants – 78.3
(Atlanta Braves)
9.5-6.0-2.3-1.8-1.8-11.5
The highest ranked LCS performance ranks 9th overall when the 1995 Braves swept the Reds while posting a GS of 75.0. The highest ranked World Series performance ranks 11th overall. The 2001 Diamondbacks had an average GS of 74.6 when they defeated the Yankees in 7 games.
TRIVIALITY
I’ll finish up here with some interesting tidbits regarding team GS marks and the past 16 seasons worth of playoffs.
Worst performance in a World Series?
31.3 by the 2007 Colorado Rockies
Worst performance while winning the World Series?
44.4 by the 2002 Anaheim Angels
Best performance in a World Series?
74.6 by the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks
Best performance while losing a World Series?
67.5 by the 2003 New York Yankees
Worst performance in any series?
27.3 by the 2002 Yankees (ALDS vs. Anaheim Angels)
Worst performance while winning a series?
43.0 by the Anaheim Angels (ALDS vs. New York Yankees)
Best performance in any series?
84.7 by the New York Yankees (1998 ALDS vs. Texas Rangers)
Best performance while losing a series?
71.8 by the Atlanta Braves (2010 NLDS vs. San Francisco Giants)
Highest Combined GS (any series)?
150.0 by San Francisco Giants (78.25) and Atlanta Braves (71.75) in the 2010 NLDS
Lowest Combined GS (any series)?
70.3 by the Anaheim Angels (43.0) and New York Yankees (27.3) in the 2002 ALDS
Largest GS Disparity (any series)?
37.8 by the Boston Red Sox (69.0) and Colorado Rockies (31.3) in the 2007 World Series
Lowest GS Disparity (any series)?
0.8 by the Oakland Athletics (64.8) and the Boston Red Sox (64.0) in the 2003 ALDS
Highest Combined GS (World Series)?
131.6 by the Arizona Diamondbacks (74.6) and New York Yankees (57.0) in 2001
Lowest Combined GS (World Series)?
86.3 by the Anaheim Angels (44.4) and the San Francisco Giants (41.9) in 2002
Largest GS Disparity (World Series)?
37.8 by the Boston Red Sox (69.0) and Colorado Rockies (31.3) in 2007
Lowest GS Disparity (World Series)?
2.6 by the Anaheim Angels (44.4) and the San Francisco Giants (41.9) in 2002
If that isn’t too much information about MLB playoff history and pitching performances, I’m not sure what is!
It’s going to be a long cold winter with no baseball but as sure as the sun retreats to the south every fall, it will come back. The snow and ice will melt and in four short months, pitchers and catchers will report to spring training.
Until next time…
Aubrey Huff led the team with 26 home runs and 86 RBI and only one other hitter even managed 20 home runs and 80 RBI (Juan Uribe with 24 and 85). Buster Posey was the only batter who qualified for the batting title to hit better than .300 and even if you included everyone, only two guys hit better than Posey and they combined for 6 at-bats this year.
- As a team, they scored 4.3 runs per game, good for 17th in baseball.
- Their .729 OPS also ranked 17th in the league.
- They hit 162 home runs, tied for 10th in the league.
- They stole 55 bases all season, tied with the Cubs for dead last.
- They grounded into 158 double plays, one behind the Twins for the most in baseball.
All of this adds up to the fact that they were not an offensive juggernaut and from the title of this post, you should have guessed that we weren’t here to talk about hitting.
- Their 3.36 ERA led the league (San Diego was second at 3.41).
- Their 121 ERA+ was five points better than Oakland for the best in the league.
- They allowed the fewest hits in the league (1279) and the fifth fewest home runs (134).
- They did walk the 4th most batters (578) but struck out the most (1331) and posted the 9th best K/BB ratio.
As dominant as they were throughout the regular season, their pitching staff hit an entirely new level in September. Their 19-10 record wasn’t even the best record of any month this season (they went 20-8 in July) but their 1.91 ERA was by far the lowest of any month they had. Their WHIP (0.945) and K/BB ratio (3.70) were also the best of any month the pitching staff had and opponents managed a pathetic .189/.251/.292 batting line against them.
Believe it or not, they weren’t done yet. The quartet of Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Jonathon Sanchez, and Madison Bumgarner combined for a 49-36 record in the regular season but won 8 of the 11 games won by the Giants in the postseason (and Sanchez was 0-2 in the postseason).
The Giants’ pitching staff combined on an ERA of 2.47 while allowing a ridiculous 94 hits in 134.0 innings. They also walked 43 and struck out 133, including 12 by Lincecum and Brian Wilson in the World Series clinching Game 5.
At one point during the World Series broadcast, Tim McCarver commented that the postseason run by the Giants’ pitching staff might just be one of the best in history and it got me wondering where it would rank and so, I decided to check it out. Before I go into the results, however, I have to lay out some ground rules.
THE RULES
First, I only considered the playoff teams of the past 16 years, or the wild card era. The biggest reason for that cutoff is that starting with 1995, all teams had to win 11 games to win the World Series and therefore, their starting pitchers had to undergo more work (also, the smaller sample size made number crunching less time consuming).
Secondly, to judge the pitching of these teams, I turned to my old standby, Game Score. Now, I understand this is used for starting pitchers and not entire teams but it still provides a good indication of how well a team pitched. Teams still got penalized for allowing runs and were credited for recording strikeouts.
That’s about it for the rules…
THE RESULTS
Since 1995 there have been 112 postseason series and 97 of them (86.6%) have been won by the team with the higher GS. This isn’t terribly surprising since this version of the Game Score statistic takes into account all pitchers, not just the starters. To me, it is actually more interesting that 13.4% of teams had better overall pitching and yet failed to win the series.
Three such instances took place in the World Series. They are as follows:
1996
Atlanta Braves – 64.8
New York Yankees – 56.0 (4-2)
1997
Cleveland Indians – 49.6
Florida Marlins – 49.6 (4-2)
2003
New York Yankees – 67.5
Florida Marlins – 60.8 (4-2)
This is easily explained by the fact that they play up to seven games. In the 1996 World Series, Atlanta won their two games by a combined score of 16-1. New York, on the other hand, won their four games by a combined score of 17-10. Hence, the Braves actually pitched significantly better but New York, dragged down largely by a 12-1 Game 1 loss, still won the series.
So where does the 2010 San Francisco Giants’ pitching staff rank? Amongst teams that actually played in the World Series, their 2.47 ERA ranks 6th. The best mark of 1.89 belongs to the 1996 Braves who would have easily won back to back World Series titles if their offense had played better.
In average GS, however, the Giants jump up to second, behind only the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks team. The Giants staff pitched their way to a mark of 70.1, while the D’Backs stand at 71.0. Those are the only two teams to go through an entire postseason, including the World Series, with an average GS over 70. Was the Giants’ run historic? Not quite… but very close.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
This past postseason, the Phillies actually came just as close to making postseason pitching history as the Giants did, posting the second best GS of any team in any individual series. What follow are the best three series (according to GS) this postseason.
Team – GS
(opponent)
IP-H-R-ER-BB-K
Philadelphia Phillies – 81.7
(Cincinnati Reds)
9.0-3.7-1.3-1.0-1.3-8.0
San Francisco Giants – 78.3
(Atlanta Braves)
9.5-6.0-2.3-1.8-1.8-11.5
Atlanta Braves – 71.8
(San Francisco Giants)
9.3-7.0-2.8-2.0-3.3-10.8
And now, the five best series pitching performances of the wildcard era:
1998 ALDS
New York Yankees – 84.7
(Texas Rangers)
9.0-4.3-0.3-0.3-1.3-9.0
2010 NLDS
Philadelphia Phillies – 81.7
(Cincinnati Reds)
9.0-3.7-1.3-1.0-1.3-8.0
1996 NLDS
Atlanta Braves – 80.7
(Los Angeles Dodgers)
9.3-4.7-1.7-1.0-2.3-9.7
1999 ALDS
New York Yankees – 79.0
(Texas Rangers)
9.0-4.7-0.3-0.3-3.0-5.7
2010 NLDS
San Francisco Giants – 78.3
(Atlanta Braves)
9.5-6.0-2.3-1.8-1.8-11.5
The highest ranked LCS performance ranks 9th overall when the 1995 Braves swept the Reds while posting a GS of 75.0. The highest ranked World Series performance ranks 11th overall. The 2001 Diamondbacks had an average GS of 74.6 when they defeated the Yankees in 7 games.
TRIVIALITY
I’ll finish up here with some interesting tidbits regarding team GS marks and the past 16 seasons worth of playoffs.
Worst performance in a World Series?
31.3 by the 2007 Colorado Rockies
Worst performance while winning the World Series?
44.4 by the 2002 Anaheim Angels
Best performance in a World Series?
74.6 by the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks
Best performance while losing a World Series?
67.5 by the 2003 New York Yankees
Worst performance in any series?
27.3 by the 2002 Yankees (ALDS vs. Anaheim Angels)
Worst performance while winning a series?
43.0 by the Anaheim Angels (ALDS vs. New York Yankees)
Best performance in any series?
84.7 by the New York Yankees (1998 ALDS vs. Texas Rangers)
Best performance while losing a series?
71.8 by the Atlanta Braves (2010 NLDS vs. San Francisco Giants)
Highest Combined GS (any series)?
150.0 by San Francisco Giants (78.25) and Atlanta Braves (71.75) in the 2010 NLDS
Lowest Combined GS (any series)?
70.3 by the Anaheim Angels (43.0) and New York Yankees (27.3) in the 2002 ALDS
Largest GS Disparity (any series)?
37.8 by the Boston Red Sox (69.0) and Colorado Rockies (31.3) in the 2007 World Series
Lowest GS Disparity (any series)?
0.8 by the Oakland Athletics (64.8) and the Boston Red Sox (64.0) in the 2003 ALDS
Highest Combined GS (World Series)?
131.6 by the Arizona Diamondbacks (74.6) and New York Yankees (57.0) in 2001
Lowest Combined GS (World Series)?
86.3 by the Anaheim Angels (44.4) and the San Francisco Giants (41.9) in 2002
Largest GS Disparity (World Series)?
37.8 by the Boston Red Sox (69.0) and Colorado Rockies (31.3) in 2007
Lowest GS Disparity (World Series)?
2.6 by the Anaheim Angels (44.4) and the San Francisco Giants (41.9) in 2002
If that isn’t too much information about MLB playoff history and pitching performances, I’m not sure what is!
It’s going to be a long cold winter with no baseball but as sure as the sun retreats to the south every fall, it will come back. The snow and ice will melt and in four short months, pitchers and catchers will report to spring training.
Until next time…
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Is the Major League Baseball Playoff System Broken?
Before I begin, please forgive me; brevity has never been my strong suit...
Before we delve too deep, let’s get some background. In the NBA and the NHL, 16 of 30 teams make the playoffs every year (53.3%). In the NFL, 12 of 32 teams makes the playoffs (37.5%) and in Major League Baseball, only 8 teams every year get to go to the postseason, or just 26.7% of the teams in the league. For a very long time, only the best team from each league made it to the World Series and in 1908 when the Cubs last won a World Series, choosing one out of eight teams to represent each league didn’t seem too unreasonable. After all, they did play 155-158 games so theoretically the best team would have won the most games.
Over the next 60 years, only four teams were added but the playoff format remained the same with only two of twenty teams playing in the postseason in 1968. Four teams were added for the 1969 season (the Kansas City Royals, Seattle Pilots, Montreal Expos, and the San Diego Padres) and the number of playoff teams doubled with the addition of the League Championship Series.
Continued expansion and division realignment has led us to where we are today with three division champions and one wildcard team from each league. Does it really need to be changed?
All across sports, when it comes to tournaments or playoff systems, they are structured to give the best teams an advantage and to give them the best chance to win the tournament out of all the teams involved. In the case of the NFL, this means giving the top two teams from each conference a week off to rest up while the lower ranked teams duke it out in the first round. In the NBA this means giving the better team more home games since crowd noise in such a small space can cause confusion for the road team.
Is there really that much of a home field advantage in baseball? Well, yes and no. First of all, every baseball field is physically different. Some have acres of foul territory and some have very little; some have a flag pole in the field of play along with a little hill while others have a 37 foot tall fence. These little differences help the home team because their players are more adept at adjusting to those little quirks than the visiting players. However, the vast majority of communication in baseball is nonverbal. Quarterbacks call plays and then call out audibles before the snap and point guards call out plays as they come down the court. Catchers use certain numbers of fingers to indicate pitches. Base coaches use sometimes comical sequences of touching certain body parts or making certain gestures to tell the batter or baserunner to do something in particular. Therefore, crowd noise isn’t nearly as big a factor in baseball as it is in other sports.
For the sake of argument though, when it comes to playoff baseball, the teams that make it to the playoffs are solid teams that aren’t likely to be thrown off by a raucous stadium and this reduces the home field advantage even further.
THE NUMBERS
In the wildcard era, the team with the best overall record entering the playoffs has won the World Series just twice; the 1998 New York Yankees (114-48) and the 2009 New York Yankees (103-59). It should be noted that the 2007 Boston Red Sox are not listed because while they did tie with the Cleveland Indians for the league’s best record at 96-66, the Indians were given home field advantage in that series because due to tiebreakers, they were the top overall seed. Even if we were to expand the sample to the teams with one of the two best records in that particular year, that only adds three more teams (1995 Atlanta Braves, 2005 Chicago White Sox, and the 2007 Boston Red Sox). So in fifteen years, only one third of the championships have been won by a team that was in the top two in the league in wins.
Over the same time period, the top overall seed has won the Super Bowl just three times but when you include the top two, that number jumps to ten teams. Also, the NFL does a much better job of protecting its top seeds; of the thirty teams to play in the Super Bowl in the past fifteen years, 22 of them had a first round bye, meaning they would have to play at very most one road game to get to the Super Bowl.
The same trend can be found in the NBA where one of the top two seeds in each conference has made the finals 24 times in the past 15 years, including more than half (16 out of 30) of the number one seeds.
The dichotomy is obvious but the real question is; is it a problem?
I don’t necessarily think that it’s a problem; I just think that unlike some of the other professional sports, there is relatively little incentive to win your division once you have a playoff berth sewn up. A perfect example of this is how the Yankees stumbled down the stretch this year and appeared to put little stock in winning the AL East and sure enough, the Rays played slightly better at the end of the season and won the division. However, the method to the madness was revealed in a dominant first round sweep of the Twins by the Yankees. Manager Joe Girardi used September to line his team up for the playoffs and though it didn’t work this year, he took similar steps last year and helped bring home the 27th World Series title in Yankees history.
In a nutshell, what I want to see is the all-or-nothing approach that you see week in and week out in the NFL. For instance, in 2004, the Philadelphia Eagles finished the season 13-3 and were the NFC’s top seed in the playoffs. That year, Terrell Owens gave the team a dynamic threat at wide receiver that they had been missing but in the middle of the season he went down with a fractured leg. As it turned out, he didn’t play again until the Super Bowl but let’s play a little what if.
What if he had been injured in November instead of December? Potentially, the Eagles would not have gone 13-3 (maybe 11-5) and then they would have been on the cusp of playing in the wildcard round or getting a bye. There would be extra incentive for them to play hard and win their last game or two to secure that first round bye so when the playoffs do start for them, they are as close to full strength as possible.
Now, admittedly, injuries are a much bigger concern in football than in baseball but the same logic can apply. How much would the Texas Rangers have welcomed a first round bye so MVP candidate Josh Hamilton could rest his ailing ribs? As it turned out, in the first round they won despite his paltry contribution and when he started feeling better, he made the Yankees pitchers cry.
THE SOLUTION
I’m sure that all of you were wondering if I would actually get around to suggesting a different format than what we have currently. There already are reports that the players union is open to expansion of the playoffs but given Commissioner Selig’s pace of doing business if we are to see any expansion, it would most like be shifting the first round from five game series to seven game series. Personally, all I really think about that is that it seems to be a fairly transparent ploy for the owners to sell tickets for two additional playoff games every year.
My suggestion is far bolder.
While the NFL is not my favorite league (far from it given their inactivity on issues such as concussions) and football is not my favorite sport, their playoff format is by far my favorite so, if you’ll indulge me, I will show you what it would look like if baseball adopted the NFL’s playoff format.
Before I get too deep into it, this is what I would suggest. Two teams in each league get a bye in the first round. Teams three through six would play a three game series with the games scheduled for three consecutive days. For all that moaning I hear already, the average baseball season is played in roughly 185 days and they play 162 games; they play three straight days with a plane ride in the middle all the time.
The winners of those series would then enter the final eight teams and from there, it would be the same as what we have with a five game “second round”, a seven game LCS, and a seven game World Series.
Now how much would that actually change? It depends. Would it have altered the 1998 Yankees crash course with history after a 114 win regular season? Probably not. Would it have altered the 2001 Mariners crash course off a cliff after a 116 win regular season? Potentially.
What it would really do is make it hard for a wildcard team to win it all. For the record, a wildcard team has made it to the World Series 9 times and won it all 4 times. They are:
1997 Marlins (Won)
2000 Mets
2002 Giants
2002 Angels (Won)
2003 Marlins (Won)
2004 Red Sox (Won)
2005 Astros
2006 Tigers
2007 Rockies
Would these teams have made it to the World Series with an extra three games on the front end of their postseason schedule? Of those nine teams, only one failed to win 90 games (the 2005 Astros went 89-73) while two of them (2002 Angels with 99 and 2004 Red Sox with 98) nearly won 100 games. So we’re not talking about the weaklings that got into the playoffs by a technicality. For many of these teams, they caught lightning in a bottle and in all likelihood, three extra games wouldn’t have made a difference. The 2007 Rockies won an unbelievable 21 of 22 games to make the playoffs and get to the World Series before being swept by the Red Sox. Could that just as easily have been 24 of 25? Absolutely. More likely is that they get to the World Series while losing a game here or there but it’s far from impossible.
Now, the obvious question is this: why do we need to change the playoff format at all? Well, first answer me this; what do the following teams all have in common?
1997 New York Mets (88-74)
1997 Los Angeles Dodgers (88-74)
2000 Cleveland Indians (90-72)
2003 Seattle Mariners (93-69)
2005 Philadelphia Phillies (88-74)
2005 Florida Marlins (83-79)
2005 New York Mets (83-79)
2006 Philadelphia Phillies (85-77)
2007 San Diego Padres (89-74)
2007 New York Mets (88-74)
2008 New York Mets (89-73)
2008 Houston Astros (86-75)
2008 St. Louis Cardinals (86-76)
2009 Texas Rangers (87-75)
Well, those 14 teams all won between 83 and 93 games (averaging 87.4) but the kicker is that none of those teams made the playoffs. It’s not terrible unusual for a team whose win total is in the 80’s to miss the playoffs but this list is special. They all missed the playoffs while a team in their league made the playoffs with a worse record. Here is a list of the offending teams:
1997 Houston Astros (84-78)
2000 New York Yankees (87-74)
2003 Minnesota Twins (90-72)
2005 San Diego Padres (82-80)
2006 St. Louis Cardinals (83-78)
2007 Chicago Cubs (85-77)
2008 Los Angeles Dodgers (84-78)
2009 Minnesota Twins (87-76 due to the tiebreaker. Their regular season record was 86-76)
In other words, the 14 teams that I mentioned got the short end of the stick because they were in the wrong division. It should also be noted that two of the eight teams above that didn’t have one of the four best records in their league that year went on to win the World Series.
Yes, baseball’s postseason is exclusive and not everybody can come. I don’t, however, see the problem with letting a few more teams in that are deserving. It’s possible that some day a team that has a sub .500 record could get into the playoffs but that’s always a possibility. At the time of the strike in 1994, the Texas Rangers were leading the American League West with a record of 52-62 and would have had to play .604 baseball the rest of the season just to break even (and only two teams played that well during the season, the New York Yankees and the Montreal Expos). So even with the current format it’s always possible for a team to make the playoffs despite a sub-.500 record. In fact, under my system, only one team in the past 15 years (the 1997 Chicago White Sox) would have made it in with a record below .500 (80-81) and the additional teams had an average record of 87.5-74.5, hardly the dregs of the league. 11 of those teams even managed to win 90 games and still didn’t make the playoffs.
My argument is not based on bad teams get into the playoffs while good teams are left home. My argument is much more about protecting the top teams from the regular season. I also understand that there is a big difference between building a team to do well in a 162 game regular season and a team that is built to do well in 5 or 7 game series and while my format may be a little unfair to the latter, it would provide an advantage for the teams that actually played better in the regular season.
MONEY
After all, it really does all come down to this factor. The most potential playoff games under the current format is 41 (if every series were to go the distance although we all know how likely that is). This year so far there have been 29 games with 2-5 more games, depending on how much the Rangers feel like playing in the World Series. Under my format, 8-12 games would be added and only four days would need to be added to the schedule. Those aren’t regular season games either with their $4 nosebleed seats; those are playoff games where many people are so desperate to get their hands on playoff tickets that the cheap seats will sell for many times face value.
CONCLUSION
The only losers in my plan are the purists who don’t want to see playoff baseball to be diluted too much. While I understand their concern (I have long thought that the NBA lets far too many teams into the playoffs) I think the overall excitement outweighs the potential dilution. If my plan had been put into effect in 1995 instead of the current format, 23 different teams would have made the playoffs just through the expanded wildcard format and of the other 7 teams, 5 of them made the playoffs either as the first wildcard or as a division winner. In other words, 28 out of 30 teams would have made the playoffs in the past 14 years (I excluded 1995 due to its shortened nature).
Instead, the Toronto Blue Jays haven’t made the playoffs since 1993 (they would have qualified in 1998, 1999, and 2003 under my system). Instead of making the playoffs in both 1996 and 2002, the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals haven’t been to the postseason since 1981.
All you have to do to see the effect of a playoff run is look at the Montreal Expos. Many experts and former players say that they would have been the favorite to win the 1994 World Series and when the season ended, they had the best record (74-40, or 105-57 prorated to a full season). If they had won the World Series, they would have had the revenue to keep their young core of brilliant players together and could have had a shot at a dynasty. Instead, the team fell apart because they didn’t have the money to keep them all together. After 10 more years and a .458 winning percentage, fans lost enough interest that the team packed up and moved to Washington, D.C. How would things have been different if two of those seasons had been playoff years?
Unfortunately, we’ll never know. Having lived in Washington (state) through the 90’s, I know full well what the city, state, and region did starting in 1995. I challenge you to find a fan base that was more rabid than during the playoff run in 1995. I understand that it was aided by fair weather fans but just look at what had happened when a team with a losing history caught fire and went to the playoffs. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that the 1995 season saved baseball in Seattle.
What other franchises need saving?
Before we delve too deep, let’s get some background. In the NBA and the NHL, 16 of 30 teams make the playoffs every year (53.3%). In the NFL, 12 of 32 teams makes the playoffs (37.5%) and in Major League Baseball, only 8 teams every year get to go to the postseason, or just 26.7% of the teams in the league. For a very long time, only the best team from each league made it to the World Series and in 1908 when the Cubs last won a World Series, choosing one out of eight teams to represent each league didn’t seem too unreasonable. After all, they did play 155-158 games so theoretically the best team would have won the most games.
Over the next 60 years, only four teams were added but the playoff format remained the same with only two of twenty teams playing in the postseason in 1968. Four teams were added for the 1969 season (the Kansas City Royals, Seattle Pilots, Montreal Expos, and the San Diego Padres) and the number of playoff teams doubled with the addition of the League Championship Series.
Continued expansion and division realignment has led us to where we are today with three division champions and one wildcard team from each league. Does it really need to be changed?
All across sports, when it comes to tournaments or playoff systems, they are structured to give the best teams an advantage and to give them the best chance to win the tournament out of all the teams involved. In the case of the NFL, this means giving the top two teams from each conference a week off to rest up while the lower ranked teams duke it out in the first round. In the NBA this means giving the better team more home games since crowd noise in such a small space can cause confusion for the road team.
Is there really that much of a home field advantage in baseball? Well, yes and no. First of all, every baseball field is physically different. Some have acres of foul territory and some have very little; some have a flag pole in the field of play along with a little hill while others have a 37 foot tall fence. These little differences help the home team because their players are more adept at adjusting to those little quirks than the visiting players. However, the vast majority of communication in baseball is nonverbal. Quarterbacks call plays and then call out audibles before the snap and point guards call out plays as they come down the court. Catchers use certain numbers of fingers to indicate pitches. Base coaches use sometimes comical sequences of touching certain body parts or making certain gestures to tell the batter or baserunner to do something in particular. Therefore, crowd noise isn’t nearly as big a factor in baseball as it is in other sports.
For the sake of argument though, when it comes to playoff baseball, the teams that make it to the playoffs are solid teams that aren’t likely to be thrown off by a raucous stadium and this reduces the home field advantage even further.
THE NUMBERS
In the wildcard era, the team with the best overall record entering the playoffs has won the World Series just twice; the 1998 New York Yankees (114-48) and the 2009 New York Yankees (103-59). It should be noted that the 2007 Boston Red Sox are not listed because while they did tie with the Cleveland Indians for the league’s best record at 96-66, the Indians were given home field advantage in that series because due to tiebreakers, they were the top overall seed. Even if we were to expand the sample to the teams with one of the two best records in that particular year, that only adds three more teams (1995 Atlanta Braves, 2005 Chicago White Sox, and the 2007 Boston Red Sox). So in fifteen years, only one third of the championships have been won by a team that was in the top two in the league in wins.
Over the same time period, the top overall seed has won the Super Bowl just three times but when you include the top two, that number jumps to ten teams. Also, the NFL does a much better job of protecting its top seeds; of the thirty teams to play in the Super Bowl in the past fifteen years, 22 of them had a first round bye, meaning they would have to play at very most one road game to get to the Super Bowl.
The same trend can be found in the NBA where one of the top two seeds in each conference has made the finals 24 times in the past 15 years, including more than half (16 out of 30) of the number one seeds.
The dichotomy is obvious but the real question is; is it a problem?
I don’t necessarily think that it’s a problem; I just think that unlike some of the other professional sports, there is relatively little incentive to win your division once you have a playoff berth sewn up. A perfect example of this is how the Yankees stumbled down the stretch this year and appeared to put little stock in winning the AL East and sure enough, the Rays played slightly better at the end of the season and won the division. However, the method to the madness was revealed in a dominant first round sweep of the Twins by the Yankees. Manager Joe Girardi used September to line his team up for the playoffs and though it didn’t work this year, he took similar steps last year and helped bring home the 27th World Series title in Yankees history.
In a nutshell, what I want to see is the all-or-nothing approach that you see week in and week out in the NFL. For instance, in 2004, the Philadelphia Eagles finished the season 13-3 and were the NFC’s top seed in the playoffs. That year, Terrell Owens gave the team a dynamic threat at wide receiver that they had been missing but in the middle of the season he went down with a fractured leg. As it turned out, he didn’t play again until the Super Bowl but let’s play a little what if.
What if he had been injured in November instead of December? Potentially, the Eagles would not have gone 13-3 (maybe 11-5) and then they would have been on the cusp of playing in the wildcard round or getting a bye. There would be extra incentive for them to play hard and win their last game or two to secure that first round bye so when the playoffs do start for them, they are as close to full strength as possible.
Now, admittedly, injuries are a much bigger concern in football than in baseball but the same logic can apply. How much would the Texas Rangers have welcomed a first round bye so MVP candidate Josh Hamilton could rest his ailing ribs? As it turned out, in the first round they won despite his paltry contribution and when he started feeling better, he made the Yankees pitchers cry.
THE SOLUTION
I’m sure that all of you were wondering if I would actually get around to suggesting a different format than what we have currently. There already are reports that the players union is open to expansion of the playoffs but given Commissioner Selig’s pace of doing business if we are to see any expansion, it would most like be shifting the first round from five game series to seven game series. Personally, all I really think about that is that it seems to be a fairly transparent ploy for the owners to sell tickets for two additional playoff games every year.
My suggestion is far bolder.
While the NFL is not my favorite league (far from it given their inactivity on issues such as concussions) and football is not my favorite sport, their playoff format is by far my favorite so, if you’ll indulge me, I will show you what it would look like if baseball adopted the NFL’s playoff format.
Before I get too deep into it, this is what I would suggest. Two teams in each league get a bye in the first round. Teams three through six would play a three game series with the games scheduled for three consecutive days. For all that moaning I hear already, the average baseball season is played in roughly 185 days and they play 162 games; they play three straight days with a plane ride in the middle all the time.
The winners of those series would then enter the final eight teams and from there, it would be the same as what we have with a five game “second round”, a seven game LCS, and a seven game World Series.
Now how much would that actually change? It depends. Would it have altered the 1998 Yankees crash course with history after a 114 win regular season? Probably not. Would it have altered the 2001 Mariners crash course off a cliff after a 116 win regular season? Potentially.
What it would really do is make it hard for a wildcard team to win it all. For the record, a wildcard team has made it to the World Series 9 times and won it all 4 times. They are:
1997 Marlins (Won)
2000 Mets
2002 Giants
2002 Angels (Won)
2003 Marlins (Won)
2004 Red Sox (Won)
2005 Astros
2006 Tigers
2007 Rockies
Would these teams have made it to the World Series with an extra three games on the front end of their postseason schedule? Of those nine teams, only one failed to win 90 games (the 2005 Astros went 89-73) while two of them (2002 Angels with 99 and 2004 Red Sox with 98) nearly won 100 games. So we’re not talking about the weaklings that got into the playoffs by a technicality. For many of these teams, they caught lightning in a bottle and in all likelihood, three extra games wouldn’t have made a difference. The 2007 Rockies won an unbelievable 21 of 22 games to make the playoffs and get to the World Series before being swept by the Red Sox. Could that just as easily have been 24 of 25? Absolutely. More likely is that they get to the World Series while losing a game here or there but it’s far from impossible.
Now, the obvious question is this: why do we need to change the playoff format at all? Well, first answer me this; what do the following teams all have in common?
1997 New York Mets (88-74)
1997 Los Angeles Dodgers (88-74)
2000 Cleveland Indians (90-72)
2003 Seattle Mariners (93-69)
2005 Philadelphia Phillies (88-74)
2005 Florida Marlins (83-79)
2005 New York Mets (83-79)
2006 Philadelphia Phillies (85-77)
2007 San Diego Padres (89-74)
2007 New York Mets (88-74)
2008 New York Mets (89-73)
2008 Houston Astros (86-75)
2008 St. Louis Cardinals (86-76)
2009 Texas Rangers (87-75)
Well, those 14 teams all won between 83 and 93 games (averaging 87.4) but the kicker is that none of those teams made the playoffs. It’s not terrible unusual for a team whose win total is in the 80’s to miss the playoffs but this list is special. They all missed the playoffs while a team in their league made the playoffs with a worse record. Here is a list of the offending teams:
1997 Houston Astros (84-78)
2000 New York Yankees (87-74)
2003 Minnesota Twins (90-72)
2005 San Diego Padres (82-80)
2006 St. Louis Cardinals (83-78)
2007 Chicago Cubs (85-77)
2008 Los Angeles Dodgers (84-78)
2009 Minnesota Twins (87-76 due to the tiebreaker. Their regular season record was 86-76)
In other words, the 14 teams that I mentioned got the short end of the stick because they were in the wrong division. It should also be noted that two of the eight teams above that didn’t have one of the four best records in their league that year went on to win the World Series.
Yes, baseball’s postseason is exclusive and not everybody can come. I don’t, however, see the problem with letting a few more teams in that are deserving. It’s possible that some day a team that has a sub .500 record could get into the playoffs but that’s always a possibility. At the time of the strike in 1994, the Texas Rangers were leading the American League West with a record of 52-62 and would have had to play .604 baseball the rest of the season just to break even (and only two teams played that well during the season, the New York Yankees and the Montreal Expos). So even with the current format it’s always possible for a team to make the playoffs despite a sub-.500 record. In fact, under my system, only one team in the past 15 years (the 1997 Chicago White Sox) would have made it in with a record below .500 (80-81) and the additional teams had an average record of 87.5-74.5, hardly the dregs of the league. 11 of those teams even managed to win 90 games and still didn’t make the playoffs.
My argument is not based on bad teams get into the playoffs while good teams are left home. My argument is much more about protecting the top teams from the regular season. I also understand that there is a big difference between building a team to do well in a 162 game regular season and a team that is built to do well in 5 or 7 game series and while my format may be a little unfair to the latter, it would provide an advantage for the teams that actually played better in the regular season.
MONEY
After all, it really does all come down to this factor. The most potential playoff games under the current format is 41 (if every series were to go the distance although we all know how likely that is). This year so far there have been 29 games with 2-5 more games, depending on how much the Rangers feel like playing in the World Series. Under my format, 8-12 games would be added and only four days would need to be added to the schedule. Those aren’t regular season games either with their $4 nosebleed seats; those are playoff games where many people are so desperate to get their hands on playoff tickets that the cheap seats will sell for many times face value.
CONCLUSION
The only losers in my plan are the purists who don’t want to see playoff baseball to be diluted too much. While I understand their concern (I have long thought that the NBA lets far too many teams into the playoffs) I think the overall excitement outweighs the potential dilution. If my plan had been put into effect in 1995 instead of the current format, 23 different teams would have made the playoffs just through the expanded wildcard format and of the other 7 teams, 5 of them made the playoffs either as the first wildcard or as a division winner. In other words, 28 out of 30 teams would have made the playoffs in the past 14 years (I excluded 1995 due to its shortened nature).
Instead, the Toronto Blue Jays haven’t made the playoffs since 1993 (they would have qualified in 1998, 1999, and 2003 under my system). Instead of making the playoffs in both 1996 and 2002, the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals haven’t been to the postseason since 1981.
All you have to do to see the effect of a playoff run is look at the Montreal Expos. Many experts and former players say that they would have been the favorite to win the 1994 World Series and when the season ended, they had the best record (74-40, or 105-57 prorated to a full season). If they had won the World Series, they would have had the revenue to keep their young core of brilliant players together and could have had a shot at a dynasty. Instead, the team fell apart because they didn’t have the money to keep them all together. After 10 more years and a .458 winning percentage, fans lost enough interest that the team packed up and moved to Washington, D.C. How would things have been different if two of those seasons had been playoff years?
Unfortunately, we’ll never know. Having lived in Washington (state) through the 90’s, I know full well what the city, state, and region did starting in 1995. I challenge you to find a fan base that was more rabid than during the playoff run in 1995. I understand that it was aided by fair weather fans but just look at what had happened when a team with a losing history caught fire and went to the playoffs. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that the 1995 season saved baseball in Seattle.
What other franchises need saving?
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
World Series Preview
Six of the seven series are in the books for the 2010 postseason and through some fluke of luck, I’m still batting .500. The Rays were the only team to defy my predictions in the division series and then both the Yankees and Phillies, looking to provide the first World Series rematch in back-to-back years since 1977 and 1978 when the Yankees beat the Dodgers 4-2 in both years, fell flat in their respective LCS, managing just two wins.
So, it is time to admit that yes, after years of frustrations and records propped up by playing in one of the weakest divisions in baseball, the Rangers are for real. It can all be traced back to July 9th when they were bold and daring and audacious and said that no matter how good they were (50-36, 4.5 games ahead of second place) they could be better. That was the day that they acquired former Cy Young winner Cliff Lee from the last place Seattle Mariners and despite struggling their way to a 90-72 regular season record, they had all the pieces in place for a deep postseason run; I just didn’t believe in them.
On the other side of things, the San Francisco Giants needed all 162 games to secure their playoff spot, beating the Padres on the last day of the regular season to avoid a three way tie between them, the Padres, and the Braves for just two playoff spots. Their starting pitching carried them into the playoffs with an otherworldly September and much like in the American League, I thought their starters would do well but I got blinded by the stars in the LCS.
BY THE NUMBERS
In the division series, Texas hit .253/.286/.437 and outscored the Rays 21-13. In the LCS, those numbers jumped to .304/.378/.512 and 38-19, respectively, outscoring the Yankees by more than any single team has ever outscored them in a single series. How’s that for making playoff history?
While Tommy Hunter and CJ Lewis struggled a bit against the Yankees (0-1 in three games, 11 ER in 15.1 innings), Cliff Lee and Colby Lewis were more than enough to pick up the slack (3-0, 3 ER, 26 K in 21.2 innings) and history has shown time and time again that two reliable starters can certainly be enough to win a 7 game series.
After an abysmal batting line in the DS (.212/.288/.295) the Giants didn’t do much better in the LCS, though there was a definite improvement (.244/.301/.353) and considering they were going against a much more formidable staff in the LCS than the DS, this difference becomes very significant. The oddest thing about the Giants so far this postseason is despite their 7-3 record, they have managed to barely outscore their opponents by a total score of 30-29 (by contrast, the Rangers are 7-4 and have a run differential of 59-32). So the obvious question surrounding the Giants is will they be able to score enough runs and hold the Rangers to few enough runs to get four more wins?
X-FACTOR
For the Giants, I could say their entire offense is the x-factor. Their pitching staff will hold the Rangers to a winnable number of runs in at least four games of this series and then the only question is whether or not their offense can put up more runs.
Since the spotlight is on, I’m going to go with Cody Ross. So far this postseason, he is 11-34 (.324/.395/.794 slash line) but more importantly, he has 4 of San Francisco’s 6 home runs so far this October. Home runs are very valuable in the postseason because it is instant offense and doesn’t require any more than one swing of the bat to put runs on the board. Someone needs to provide a dangerous bat in the lineup for the Giants and so far it’s been Ross.
For the Rangers, they have two x-factors and they are the two biggest names on the team. First of all is Josh Hamilton. He was pretty much invisible in the DS against the Rays and in my mind it was logical to conclude that if he batted similarly against the Yankees, the Rangers had no chance of making it this far. All he did in the LCS was go 7-20 (.350/.536/1.000 slash line) with 4 home runs, 7 RBI, and 8 walks. When he swings the bat, it doesn’t even look like he hits the ball well and the next thing you know, fans are fighting over the souvenir. This lineup is better when he is hitting well and if he hits wells against the Giants, they are in trouble.
The other x-factor for the Rangers is the presence that looms over everything: Cliff Lee. So far this postseason, his numbers have been amazing. In three starts (all wins), he has pitched 24 innings, allowed 2 runs on 13 hits, walked 1 and struck out 34. In his postseason career, he is 7-0 with an ERA of 1.26 (in 64.1 innings) and he’s struck out 64 while walking only 7 and allowing just one home run. In last year’s World Series against a potent Yankees lineup, he was 2-0 with a 2.81 ERA which is the highest ERA he’s ever had in a single postseason series.
Will he pitch three times on short rest? My guess is no. He is, however, lined up to pitch game 1 in San Francisco and then potentially game 5 back in Texas. The good news for Rangers fans is if he does that, he’ll be on three day’s rest for either a start or a relief appearance in game 7 and while the Giants players and coaches will never say that scares them, they can’t be looking forward to facing him that many times. It’s possible that Bochy manages more aggressively in the first few games to try and minimize Lee’s impact similar to last year when Lee pitched game 5 already down 3-1 to the Yankees.
I know that managers don’t like to ever concede games, especially when there are only 7 and it’s the World Series but given the run that Lee is on, I almost wonder if the wisest course of action would be to start someone other than Lincecum against him, thus maximizing the chances that you win the games that Lee is not starting. Probably not the best move for clubhouse morale but interesting food for thought.
THE VERDICT
As far as I can tell, the Rangers have the edge in just about every way except home field advantage. Their offense is more potent, their defense is comparable as is their pitching staff. To me, they have a bigger chip on their shoulder and have more momentum coming into this series. But instead of relying on such vague subjective bits and pieces, I’m going to through this one out there.
In the wildcard era (1995 onward), there has only been one World Series matching teams whose regular season records were within 3 games of each other (the Giants were 92-70 while the Rangers were 90-72). In that series, the Diamondbacks (92-70) beat the Yankees (95-67) in seven games. In fact, in the 15 World Series since the advent of the wildcard, the team with fewer regular season wins has won 9 times and lost just 6.
There you have it. After 47 years of frustration, the Texas Rangers will win the World Series.
RANGERS 4, GIANTS 2
So, it is time to admit that yes, after years of frustrations and records propped up by playing in one of the weakest divisions in baseball, the Rangers are for real. It can all be traced back to July 9th when they were bold and daring and audacious and said that no matter how good they were (50-36, 4.5 games ahead of second place) they could be better. That was the day that they acquired former Cy Young winner Cliff Lee from the last place Seattle Mariners and despite struggling their way to a 90-72 regular season record, they had all the pieces in place for a deep postseason run; I just didn’t believe in them.
On the other side of things, the San Francisco Giants needed all 162 games to secure their playoff spot, beating the Padres on the last day of the regular season to avoid a three way tie between them, the Padres, and the Braves for just two playoff spots. Their starting pitching carried them into the playoffs with an otherworldly September and much like in the American League, I thought their starters would do well but I got blinded by the stars in the LCS.
BY THE NUMBERS
In the division series, Texas hit .253/.286/.437 and outscored the Rays 21-13. In the LCS, those numbers jumped to .304/.378/.512 and 38-19, respectively, outscoring the Yankees by more than any single team has ever outscored them in a single series. How’s that for making playoff history?
While Tommy Hunter and CJ Lewis struggled a bit against the Yankees (0-1 in three games, 11 ER in 15.1 innings), Cliff Lee and Colby Lewis were more than enough to pick up the slack (3-0, 3 ER, 26 K in 21.2 innings) and history has shown time and time again that two reliable starters can certainly be enough to win a 7 game series.
After an abysmal batting line in the DS (.212/.288/.295) the Giants didn’t do much better in the LCS, though there was a definite improvement (.244/.301/.353) and considering they were going against a much more formidable staff in the LCS than the DS, this difference becomes very significant. The oddest thing about the Giants so far this postseason is despite their 7-3 record, they have managed to barely outscore their opponents by a total score of 30-29 (by contrast, the Rangers are 7-4 and have a run differential of 59-32). So the obvious question surrounding the Giants is will they be able to score enough runs and hold the Rangers to few enough runs to get four more wins?
X-FACTOR
For the Giants, I could say their entire offense is the x-factor. Their pitching staff will hold the Rangers to a winnable number of runs in at least four games of this series and then the only question is whether or not their offense can put up more runs.
Since the spotlight is on, I’m going to go with Cody Ross. So far this postseason, he is 11-34 (.324/.395/.794 slash line) but more importantly, he has 4 of San Francisco’s 6 home runs so far this October. Home runs are very valuable in the postseason because it is instant offense and doesn’t require any more than one swing of the bat to put runs on the board. Someone needs to provide a dangerous bat in the lineup for the Giants and so far it’s been Ross.
For the Rangers, they have two x-factors and they are the two biggest names on the team. First of all is Josh Hamilton. He was pretty much invisible in the DS against the Rays and in my mind it was logical to conclude that if he batted similarly against the Yankees, the Rangers had no chance of making it this far. All he did in the LCS was go 7-20 (.350/.536/1.000 slash line) with 4 home runs, 7 RBI, and 8 walks. When he swings the bat, it doesn’t even look like he hits the ball well and the next thing you know, fans are fighting over the souvenir. This lineup is better when he is hitting well and if he hits wells against the Giants, they are in trouble.
The other x-factor for the Rangers is the presence that looms over everything: Cliff Lee. So far this postseason, his numbers have been amazing. In three starts (all wins), he has pitched 24 innings, allowed 2 runs on 13 hits, walked 1 and struck out 34. In his postseason career, he is 7-0 with an ERA of 1.26 (in 64.1 innings) and he’s struck out 64 while walking only 7 and allowing just one home run. In last year’s World Series against a potent Yankees lineup, he was 2-0 with a 2.81 ERA which is the highest ERA he’s ever had in a single postseason series.
Will he pitch three times on short rest? My guess is no. He is, however, lined up to pitch game 1 in San Francisco and then potentially game 5 back in Texas. The good news for Rangers fans is if he does that, he’ll be on three day’s rest for either a start or a relief appearance in game 7 and while the Giants players and coaches will never say that scares them, they can’t be looking forward to facing him that many times. It’s possible that Bochy manages more aggressively in the first few games to try and minimize Lee’s impact similar to last year when Lee pitched game 5 already down 3-1 to the Yankees.
I know that managers don’t like to ever concede games, especially when there are only 7 and it’s the World Series but given the run that Lee is on, I almost wonder if the wisest course of action would be to start someone other than Lincecum against him, thus maximizing the chances that you win the games that Lee is not starting. Probably not the best move for clubhouse morale but interesting food for thought.
THE VERDICT
As far as I can tell, the Rangers have the edge in just about every way except home field advantage. Their offense is more potent, their defense is comparable as is their pitching staff. To me, they have a bigger chip on their shoulder and have more momentum coming into this series. But instead of relying on such vague subjective bits and pieces, I’m going to through this one out there.
In the wildcard era (1995 onward), there has only been one World Series matching teams whose regular season records were within 3 games of each other (the Giants were 92-70 while the Rangers were 90-72). In that series, the Diamondbacks (92-70) beat the Yankees (95-67) in seven games. In fact, in the 15 World Series since the advent of the wildcard, the team with fewer regular season wins has won 9 times and lost just 6.
There you have it. After 47 years of frustration, the Texas Rangers will win the World Series.
RANGERS 4, GIANTS 2
Thursday, October 14, 2010
NLCS Preview
I am happy to report that while the Rays and Twins let me down in the American League, both the Giants and Phillies made my predictions come true in the National League. In fact, the only thing that kept me from nailing this prediction right on the head is that I thought the Reds would scratch out one game and both the Phillies and Giants would win their series by 3-1 margins. Well, we’ll call that a glancing blow.
This series is going to be all about pitching and for people who love a good 1-0 game, this is going to be a dream come true. The NLCS will match up quite possibly two of the hottest rotations entering the playoffs that baseball has seen in a very long time and runs will be at such a premium that in my opinion, the advantage has to slide in favor of the more veteran lineup that might be able to use their experience to scratch out an extra run or two here and there.
BY THE NUMBERS
Both of their offenses were abysmal in the division series with the Giants posting a slash line of .212/.288/.295 while the Phillies managed a line of .212/.301/.273. At first glance, to think that these two teams went a combined 6-1 is almost hard to believe until you look at what their pitchers were able to do:
Giants – .175/.214/.263
Phillies – .124/.160/.213
Offensively, neither team has any single player that is really trending upward except for the rookie sensation Buster Posey, the Giants catcher who did his best Joe Mauer impression this year with a .305/.357/.505 slash line, 18 home runs, and 67 RBI in 108 games. He continued his brilliant year by going 6-16 in the division series against the Braves but was held with just one double and without an RBI.
Other than Posey, the highest batting average for a player that played every game in their respective series was Cody Ross for the Giants (4-14, .286) and Chase Utley for the Phillies (3-11, .273). These offenses are hardly performing at their peak efficiency and again, I have to say that I believe that favors that team that underachieved more relative to the regular season and that would be the Phillies.
Runs will again be at a premium because the pitching in both division series by these two teams was nothing short of superb. The Giants allowed 9 runs in 4 games and had a team ERA of 1.66 (due to two unearned runs). Continuing their September trend, their starters were ridiculous, pitching 29.0 innings and allowing just 3 earned runs (0.93 ERA) while allowing 17 hits with a K:BB ratio of 36:5. In their four games, their starters had the following Game Scores:
Lincecum - 96
Cain – 62
Sanchez – 80
Bumgarner – 56
In short, the Yankees and Rangers would be truly ecstatic to get a GS of 56 from their number four starters.
On the Phillies side of things, believe it or not, the pitching was even better. In three games only one of their pitchers allowed a run and their bullpen only had to throw 4.0 innings and those were all in game 2 as Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels gave the bullpen two nights off in this series. Oswalt did struggle slightly but still only gave up 3 runs in 5 innings and I’m not sure that I really have to expound upon the performances of Halladay or Hamels. The “H2O” trio put forth the following GS’s:
Halladay – 94
Oswalt – 47
Hamels – 86
While Oswalt’s game could hardly be called a gem, he stilled pitched well enough to give the Phillies a chance to win and he picked a day when the Phillies put 7 runs on the board due to various Reds’ miscues.
The team that plays the game more fundamentally sound and minimizes their own mistakes while maximizing on the mistakes of their opponents will play in the World Series.
X-FACTOR
These teams played so evenly that single players don’t really stand out as being x-factors in this series. The key to the series for the Giants is to score runs which they haven’t been terribly good at this year and now they have to go against quite possibly the hottest trio of starting pitchers in the game right now. However, you could also say that their success will largely hinge on whether or not their own brilliant rotation foursome (Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, and Bumgarner) will be able to contain the Phillies trio in the middle of the lineup (Werth, Utley, Howard).
The one area where these teams performed quite differently in the division series was in how well their bullpens pitched. For the Giants, their relievers pitched 9.0 innings, giving up 4 earned runs on 7 hits while striking out 10 and walking 2. This includes blowing a 4-1 lead that Matt Cain handed the bullpen in game 2 and most disturbingly, it was Brian Wilson who finally gave up the lead, the one pitcher in that bullpen that they need to be able to rely on.
On the flip side of the coin, the Phillies’ bullpen didn’t pitch very much (4.0 innings) but when they did, they were good. Ryan Madson allowed one hit and Brad Lidge and Chad Durbin each walked a batter and those were the only three baserunners allowed by the Phillies’ pen. This bullpen isn’t as formidable as it has been in years past but they pitched well during the regular season and very well in the division series and they will be the Phillies key to victory.
THE VERDICT
Offensively, the Phillies have a slight advantage due to their veteran lineup and the potential they have if they really get the bats rolling. The Giants lineup can put a hurting on you but nothing like what the Phillies can do.
To say that either team has an advantage in starting pitching is the definition of splitting hairs but since the Phillies rotation has three potential aces while the Giants have one ace and three potential number two or number three starters, I have to give a sliver of an advantage to the Phillies.
So far this postseason in the bullpen, the Phillies have pitched well and the Giants have not. Advantage: Phillies.
The Phillies were 2-0 at home and 1-0 on the road while the Giants were 2-0 on the road and 1-1 at home. Advantage: ?.
The tentative pitching match-ups that have been announced will be as follows (with the home team in parentheses):
Game 1 (PHI): Lincecum vs. Halladay
Game 2 (PHI): Sanchez vs. Hamels
Game 3 (SF): Oswalt vs. Cain
Picking which team has an advantage in those match-ups seems a little ludicrous but oh well… unfortunately for the Giants, I would actually give the Phillies a slight edge in all three of those games and the reason leads right into my final point.
Intangibles. In 2008, the Giants were 72-90, finishing 4th in the NL West. The Phillies were 92-70, winning the NL East. The Phillies then beat the Brewers (3-1), the Dodgers (4-1), and the Rays (4-1) in impressive fashion to win the World Series.
In 2009, the Giants were 88-74 (a drastic improvement) but still finished in third, seven games behind the Dodgers. The Phillies were 93-69, again winning the NL East. In the playoffs, they defeated the Rockies (3-1) and the Dodgers (4-1) to win the NL pennant before losing to the Yankees juggernaut in 6 games.
The Phillies have been here and done that and despite the fact that Halladay and Oswalt weren’t around for those two playoff runs, Halladay is a seasoned veteran and obviously has no problem with the bright lights of October while Oswalt has been here before with the Astros and pitched very well in his playoff career. All we know about the Giants is what they did against the Braves. This is a young team that has been down for a few years so we really don’t know how they’ll react going up against the two-time defending NL champions. Crunch all the numbers and what you’ll get is an entertaining series and a Phillies victory.
PHILLIES 4, GIANTS 2
This series is going to be all about pitching and for people who love a good 1-0 game, this is going to be a dream come true. The NLCS will match up quite possibly two of the hottest rotations entering the playoffs that baseball has seen in a very long time and runs will be at such a premium that in my opinion, the advantage has to slide in favor of the more veteran lineup that might be able to use their experience to scratch out an extra run or two here and there.
BY THE NUMBERS
Both of their offenses were abysmal in the division series with the Giants posting a slash line of .212/.288/.295 while the Phillies managed a line of .212/.301/.273. At first glance, to think that these two teams went a combined 6-1 is almost hard to believe until you look at what their pitchers were able to do:
Giants – .175/.214/.263
Phillies – .124/.160/.213
Offensively, neither team has any single player that is really trending upward except for the rookie sensation Buster Posey, the Giants catcher who did his best Joe Mauer impression this year with a .305/.357/.505 slash line, 18 home runs, and 67 RBI in 108 games. He continued his brilliant year by going 6-16 in the division series against the Braves but was held with just one double and without an RBI.
Other than Posey, the highest batting average for a player that played every game in their respective series was Cody Ross for the Giants (4-14, .286) and Chase Utley for the Phillies (3-11, .273). These offenses are hardly performing at their peak efficiency and again, I have to say that I believe that favors that team that underachieved more relative to the regular season and that would be the Phillies.
Runs will again be at a premium because the pitching in both division series by these two teams was nothing short of superb. The Giants allowed 9 runs in 4 games and had a team ERA of 1.66 (due to two unearned runs). Continuing their September trend, their starters were ridiculous, pitching 29.0 innings and allowing just 3 earned runs (0.93 ERA) while allowing 17 hits with a K:BB ratio of 36:5. In their four games, their starters had the following Game Scores:
Lincecum - 96
Cain – 62
Sanchez – 80
Bumgarner – 56
In short, the Yankees and Rangers would be truly ecstatic to get a GS of 56 from their number four starters.
On the Phillies side of things, believe it or not, the pitching was even better. In three games only one of their pitchers allowed a run and their bullpen only had to throw 4.0 innings and those were all in game 2 as Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels gave the bullpen two nights off in this series. Oswalt did struggle slightly but still only gave up 3 runs in 5 innings and I’m not sure that I really have to expound upon the performances of Halladay or Hamels. The “H2O” trio put forth the following GS’s:
Halladay – 94
Oswalt – 47
Hamels – 86
While Oswalt’s game could hardly be called a gem, he stilled pitched well enough to give the Phillies a chance to win and he picked a day when the Phillies put 7 runs on the board due to various Reds’ miscues.
The team that plays the game more fundamentally sound and minimizes their own mistakes while maximizing on the mistakes of their opponents will play in the World Series.
X-FACTOR
These teams played so evenly that single players don’t really stand out as being x-factors in this series. The key to the series for the Giants is to score runs which they haven’t been terribly good at this year and now they have to go against quite possibly the hottest trio of starting pitchers in the game right now. However, you could also say that their success will largely hinge on whether or not their own brilliant rotation foursome (Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, and Bumgarner) will be able to contain the Phillies trio in the middle of the lineup (Werth, Utley, Howard).
The one area where these teams performed quite differently in the division series was in how well their bullpens pitched. For the Giants, their relievers pitched 9.0 innings, giving up 4 earned runs on 7 hits while striking out 10 and walking 2. This includes blowing a 4-1 lead that Matt Cain handed the bullpen in game 2 and most disturbingly, it was Brian Wilson who finally gave up the lead, the one pitcher in that bullpen that they need to be able to rely on.
On the flip side of the coin, the Phillies’ bullpen didn’t pitch very much (4.0 innings) but when they did, they were good. Ryan Madson allowed one hit and Brad Lidge and Chad Durbin each walked a batter and those were the only three baserunners allowed by the Phillies’ pen. This bullpen isn’t as formidable as it has been in years past but they pitched well during the regular season and very well in the division series and they will be the Phillies key to victory.
THE VERDICT
Offensively, the Phillies have a slight advantage due to their veteran lineup and the potential they have if they really get the bats rolling. The Giants lineup can put a hurting on you but nothing like what the Phillies can do.
To say that either team has an advantage in starting pitching is the definition of splitting hairs but since the Phillies rotation has three potential aces while the Giants have one ace and three potential number two or number three starters, I have to give a sliver of an advantage to the Phillies.
So far this postseason in the bullpen, the Phillies have pitched well and the Giants have not. Advantage: Phillies.
The Phillies were 2-0 at home and 1-0 on the road while the Giants were 2-0 on the road and 1-1 at home. Advantage: ?.
The tentative pitching match-ups that have been announced will be as follows (with the home team in parentheses):
Game 1 (PHI): Lincecum vs. Halladay
Game 2 (PHI): Sanchez vs. Hamels
Game 3 (SF): Oswalt vs. Cain
Picking which team has an advantage in those match-ups seems a little ludicrous but oh well… unfortunately for the Giants, I would actually give the Phillies a slight edge in all three of those games and the reason leads right into my final point.
Intangibles. In 2008, the Giants were 72-90, finishing 4th in the NL West. The Phillies were 92-70, winning the NL East. The Phillies then beat the Brewers (3-1), the Dodgers (4-1), and the Rays (4-1) in impressive fashion to win the World Series.
In 2009, the Giants were 88-74 (a drastic improvement) but still finished in third, seven games behind the Dodgers. The Phillies were 93-69, again winning the NL East. In the playoffs, they defeated the Rockies (3-1) and the Dodgers (4-1) to win the NL pennant before losing to the Yankees juggernaut in 6 games.
The Phillies have been here and done that and despite the fact that Halladay and Oswalt weren’t around for those two playoff runs, Halladay is a seasoned veteran and obviously has no problem with the bright lights of October while Oswalt has been here before with the Astros and pitched very well in his playoff career. All we know about the Giants is what they did against the Braves. This is a young team that has been down for a few years so we really don’t know how they’ll react going up against the two-time defending NL champions. Crunch all the numbers and what you’ll get is an entertaining series and a Phillies victory.
PHILLIES 4, GIANTS 2
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
ALCS Preview
Eight games are in the books in the American League playoffs for 2010 and two teams have been eliminated. Friday night, the Minnesota Twins will visit the Tampa Bay Rays in the first game of the…
Wait, what?
The Rangers at the Yankees?
Yes, apparently my wonderful predictions could not have been more wrong in the first round of the AL playoffs. Cliff Lee pitched exactly like the Rangers wanted him to when they traded for him a few months ago and sure enough, when the chips were down on the table, the Rangers won just one of three games in which Lee did not start. However, they won both games the left hander started and he is closer and closer to a huge payday this offseason.
In the other series, the Yankees have the Twins number and there is no other way to say it. In the wildcard era (since 1995), the Twins and Yankees have played in the first round of the playoffs four times and have won all four series while posting a 12-2 record.
Now the two face off and at face value, the advantage is firmly in the Yankees corner and the reasons aren’t so much for home/road splits or key players or anything of that sort. Many people hate to talk about “intangibles” but whatever they are, the Yankees have them. They play the game the right way and while they may not do anything great, they do everything well.
BY THE NUMBERS
The Yankees outscored the Twins 17-7 and had a slash line of .314/.351/.865 in the sweep while allowing the Twins a slash line of just .216/.280/.330 and two of those three games were on the road for the Yankees.
CC Sabathia pitched decently in game 1 (6.0-5-4-3-3-5), Andy Pettitte pitched very well in game 2 (7.0-5-2-2-1-4), and Phil Hughes pitched brilliantly in game 3 (7.0-4-0-0-1-6), answering some of the biggest questions about this team coming into the postseason. On top of that, their bullpen pitched 7.0 innings and gave up just 1 run on 7 hits.
On the other side, the Rangers won the first series in the wildcard era where every game was won by the road team (so much for home field advantage). The fact that makes that tidbit so unusual is the fact that the Rangers had the second worst road record (39-42) of any playoff team and all they did was win three games against a team that went 49-32 at home. So are they afraid of the new Yankee Stadium and the Yankees 52-29 home record? I seriously doubt it.
The Rangers had a slash line of .253/.283/.437 while they allowed the Rays a .215/.270/.355 slash line. The number that jumps out at me the most is that they had just a .283 on-base percentage and scored just 21 runs in five games but their starting pitching was superb. CJ Wilson, Colby Lewis, and Tommy Hunter combined to pitch 15.1 innings and allowed just two earned runs on 10 hits while posting a K/BB ratio of 19:7. Then there’s Cliff Lee. So given that their starters posted an ERA of 1.15, how did they not sweep the Rays? Mostly because their bullpen had a 5.27 ERA in 13.2 innings.
X-FACTORS
For the Rangers, their success in this series will be measured not by what Cliff Lee can do but rather by what everyone else can do. He is tentatively scheduled to start game 3 at home in front of what will surely be a rambunctious crowd in Arlington and then potentially game 7 in front of the hostile New York fans. Will CJ Wilson (6.1-2-0-0-2-7) be able to duplicate his success against the Yankees in game 1 of the series in the Bronx? Will Josh Hamilton be able to bounce back from a disappointing division series (.111/.200/.111)? Will Neftali Feliz pitch like he did in the regular season (2.73 ERA, 0.88 WHIP) or like he did in his first two career playoff games (1.1-2-1-1-3-2)?
For the Yankees, Mark Teixeira went 4-13 with a home run, Marcus Thames was 2-7 with a home run, Nick Swisher was 4-12 with a home run, and the trio of Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Jorge Posada hit a pedestrian .278 with no extra base hits. Robinson Cano continued his solid season, going 4-12 in the division series and Lance Berkman provided a spark off the bench, going 2-4 with a home run and a double in the Yankees 5-2 game 2 victory.
The biggest x-factor though is Curtis Granderson. In September and October this season, Granderson had a slash line of .263/.362/.596 and hit 9 home runs in 99 at-bats. In the division series against the Twins, he played very well, hitting .455 (5-11) with a double, a triple, 3 RBI, and more importantly, just one strikeout.
When you add all of that up, it looks like a very deep and dangerous line-up, especially when guys named Rodriguez, Posada, and Jeter haven’t made any serious contributions yet. One of the biggest factors for the Yankees success will be how well their line-up as a whole performs. Last year in the World Series, it was mostly Hideki Matsui’s heroics that made up for a relatively lackluster effort from the rest of batting order.
The other x-factor in my opinion is the AJ Burnett. This season he had five starts with a game score of 70 or better and he had five starts with a GS under 20. In last year’s ALCS and World Series, Burnett was solid to brilliant in two starts on 7 days rest (GS of 61 against the Angels and 72 against the Phillies in the World Series) and downright bad in two starts on short rest (32 against the Angels and 22 against the Phillies). Is some of that due to the fact that it was the second time both teams saw him in a series? Probably, but I think it’s safe to say that on short rest, AJ Burnett is a liability and given how he’s pitched this season, he’s no better than a 4th or 5th starter right now. If they Yankees can steal a win with him on the mound, they will consider themselves lucky.
THE VERDICT
Right now, these are the projected starters for the ALCS (with the home team in parentheses):
Game 1 (NY): CJ Wilson vs. CC Sabathia
Game 2 (NY): Colby Lewis vs. Phil Hughes
Game 3 (TEX): Andy Pettitte vs. Cliff Lee
Game 4 (TEX): AJ Burnett vs. Tommy Hunter
After that, the match-ups for games 1-3 can repeat with all pitchers throwing on regular rest. Based on how they fared this season, the Yankees have an advantage in games 1 and 4 while the Rangers have the advantage in game 3. That leaves a critical game 2 start between Colby Lewis and Phil Hughes. If the Yankees win, they could be looking at a 2-0 advantage going to Texas and potentially have Sabathia back on the mound in Texas with a 3-1 series lead. If the Rangers win that game and steal a game in New York, it will be tied going home for the Rangers and could be tied at 2 going into the final 3 games. If that happens, all signs point to an Andy Pettitte-Cliff Lee showdown in game 7 in Yankee Stadium.
Alas, just 8 of 30 LCS match-ups have gone the distance in the wild card era and this will not be #9.
YANKEES 4, RANGERS 2
Wait, what?
The Rangers at the Yankees?
Yes, apparently my wonderful predictions could not have been more wrong in the first round of the AL playoffs. Cliff Lee pitched exactly like the Rangers wanted him to when they traded for him a few months ago and sure enough, when the chips were down on the table, the Rangers won just one of three games in which Lee did not start. However, they won both games the left hander started and he is closer and closer to a huge payday this offseason.
In the other series, the Yankees have the Twins number and there is no other way to say it. In the wildcard era (since 1995), the Twins and Yankees have played in the first round of the playoffs four times and have won all four series while posting a 12-2 record.
Now the two face off and at face value, the advantage is firmly in the Yankees corner and the reasons aren’t so much for home/road splits or key players or anything of that sort. Many people hate to talk about “intangibles” but whatever they are, the Yankees have them. They play the game the right way and while they may not do anything great, they do everything well.
BY THE NUMBERS
The Yankees outscored the Twins 17-7 and had a slash line of .314/.351/.865 in the sweep while allowing the Twins a slash line of just .216/.280/.330 and two of those three games were on the road for the Yankees.
CC Sabathia pitched decently in game 1 (6.0-5-4-3-3-5), Andy Pettitte pitched very well in game 2 (7.0-5-2-2-1-4), and Phil Hughes pitched brilliantly in game 3 (7.0-4-0-0-1-6), answering some of the biggest questions about this team coming into the postseason. On top of that, their bullpen pitched 7.0 innings and gave up just 1 run on 7 hits.
On the other side, the Rangers won the first series in the wildcard era where every game was won by the road team (so much for home field advantage). The fact that makes that tidbit so unusual is the fact that the Rangers had the second worst road record (39-42) of any playoff team and all they did was win three games against a team that went 49-32 at home. So are they afraid of the new Yankee Stadium and the Yankees 52-29 home record? I seriously doubt it.
The Rangers had a slash line of .253/.283/.437 while they allowed the Rays a .215/.270/.355 slash line. The number that jumps out at me the most is that they had just a .283 on-base percentage and scored just 21 runs in five games but their starting pitching was superb. CJ Wilson, Colby Lewis, and Tommy Hunter combined to pitch 15.1 innings and allowed just two earned runs on 10 hits while posting a K/BB ratio of 19:7. Then there’s Cliff Lee. So given that their starters posted an ERA of 1.15, how did they not sweep the Rays? Mostly because their bullpen had a 5.27 ERA in 13.2 innings.
X-FACTORS
For the Rangers, their success in this series will be measured not by what Cliff Lee can do but rather by what everyone else can do. He is tentatively scheduled to start game 3 at home in front of what will surely be a rambunctious crowd in Arlington and then potentially game 7 in front of the hostile New York fans. Will CJ Wilson (6.1-2-0-0-2-7) be able to duplicate his success against the Yankees in game 1 of the series in the Bronx? Will Josh Hamilton be able to bounce back from a disappointing division series (.111/.200/.111)? Will Neftali Feliz pitch like he did in the regular season (2.73 ERA, 0.88 WHIP) or like he did in his first two career playoff games (1.1-2-1-1-3-2)?
For the Yankees, Mark Teixeira went 4-13 with a home run, Marcus Thames was 2-7 with a home run, Nick Swisher was 4-12 with a home run, and the trio of Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Jorge Posada hit a pedestrian .278 with no extra base hits. Robinson Cano continued his solid season, going 4-12 in the division series and Lance Berkman provided a spark off the bench, going 2-4 with a home run and a double in the Yankees 5-2 game 2 victory.
The biggest x-factor though is Curtis Granderson. In September and October this season, Granderson had a slash line of .263/.362/.596 and hit 9 home runs in 99 at-bats. In the division series against the Twins, he played very well, hitting .455 (5-11) with a double, a triple, 3 RBI, and more importantly, just one strikeout.
When you add all of that up, it looks like a very deep and dangerous line-up, especially when guys named Rodriguez, Posada, and Jeter haven’t made any serious contributions yet. One of the biggest factors for the Yankees success will be how well their line-up as a whole performs. Last year in the World Series, it was mostly Hideki Matsui’s heroics that made up for a relatively lackluster effort from the rest of batting order.
The other x-factor in my opinion is the AJ Burnett. This season he had five starts with a game score of 70 or better and he had five starts with a GS under 20. In last year’s ALCS and World Series, Burnett was solid to brilliant in two starts on 7 days rest (GS of 61 against the Angels and 72 against the Phillies in the World Series) and downright bad in two starts on short rest (32 against the Angels and 22 against the Phillies). Is some of that due to the fact that it was the second time both teams saw him in a series? Probably, but I think it’s safe to say that on short rest, AJ Burnett is a liability and given how he’s pitched this season, he’s no better than a 4th or 5th starter right now. If they Yankees can steal a win with him on the mound, they will consider themselves lucky.
THE VERDICT
Right now, these are the projected starters for the ALCS (with the home team in parentheses):
Game 1 (NY): CJ Wilson vs. CC Sabathia
Game 2 (NY): Colby Lewis vs. Phil Hughes
Game 3 (TEX): Andy Pettitte vs. Cliff Lee
Game 4 (TEX): AJ Burnett vs. Tommy Hunter
After that, the match-ups for games 1-3 can repeat with all pitchers throwing on regular rest. Based on how they fared this season, the Yankees have an advantage in games 1 and 4 while the Rangers have the advantage in game 3. That leaves a critical game 2 start between Colby Lewis and Phil Hughes. If the Yankees win, they could be looking at a 2-0 advantage going to Texas and potentially have Sabathia back on the mound in Texas with a 3-1 series lead. If the Rangers win that game and steal a game in New York, it will be tied going home for the Rangers and could be tied at 2 going into the final 3 games. If that happens, all signs point to an Andy Pettitte-Cliff Lee showdown in game 7 in Yankee Stadium.
Alas, just 8 of 30 LCS match-ups have gone the distance in the wild card era and this will not be #9.
YANKEES 4, RANGERS 2
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