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Regular season means little come playoff time
Back on May 28, when Jim Tracy replaced Clint Hurdle as manager, the Rockies were 14 games back. Now, three more victories will give them the divisional championship. What's more, a Colorado sweep would cap a memorable collapse by Joe Torre's Dodgers, who held baseball's best record though most of the summer, and have been in first place since April 15, the day your 2008 taxes were due. Yes, this series feels like one hell of a story.
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| Joe Torre's teams have been both favorites and surprises in the recent past. (Christian Petersen / Getty Images) |
But what does it mean? What does it portend for the postseason?
Probably nothing.
Torre has long called the playoffs "a crapshoot." The analogy was useful in tamping down expectations during his tenure as skipper of the best and most expensive team not to win this century, the New York Yankees. But the fact is, a drunken tourist in Vegas has a better chance of winning at dice than baseball's best regular-season team has of winning the World Series.
Crapshoot? More like a cosmic joke. Pitchers and catchers convene in early February. The season ends around Halloween. Before the playoffs even start, a major-league team has played close to 200 games, 162 that are actually supposed to count for something. But it turns out the longest regular season in sports is also the most meaningless.
Check these numbers, from Jacob Vigil and Matt Jenkins of STATS LLC:
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| Rockies fans were accessorized Thursday. (Doug Pensinger / Getty Images) |
In other sports, the surprise teams are less surprising. The 2005-06 Detroit Pistons won a title with the sixth-best record in the league. But they also had a regular-season winning percentage of .659. The 2007 Giants, who scored a huge upset over the Patriots in the Super Bowl, had the seventh-best regular-season record. Still, with 10 victories, they went into the postseason with a .625 winning percentage.
Baseball is different, more poetic, or perverse, depending on your sympathies. The other major sports (no, I'm not including hockey) have no equivalent to the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals — a championship team that won 83 regular season games — or the '87 Twins, with 85 wins. Only in baseball could teams like the '90 Reds and the '03 Marlins — each with a .562 winning percentage — beat powerhouses like the A's (103 wins in '90) and the Yankees (101 in '03).
The reasons are varied. Unless you have Jeffrey Maier, home field doesn't confer as much of an advantage in baseball as it does in the other sports. Anything can happen in a best-of-5 series — ask last year's Cubs or the best-record Yankees who went down twice in the ALDS (to the Angels in '02 and the Tigers in '06). A mediocre team can ride a great pitcher. Sometimes, a mediocre team can ride a mediocre pitcher. In '97, Livan Hernandez memorably outpitched the Braves' Greg Maddux, striking out 15 and throwing a complete game in the NLCS. Hernandez turned out to be the World Series MVP, one of several improbables to earn the distinction — David Eckstein, Scott Brosius, Pat Borders, Rick Dempsey. (This would be like Rick Fox being voted most valuable for the NBA Finals).
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| Livan Hernandez was an unexpected hero. (Robert Schmidt AFP / Getty Images) |
But, again, what does it all mean? Very little if you're playing the odds. There is a sense, especially in and around New York, that the natural order of things has been restored, what with the Yankees again posting the best record. Then again, the designation might be a greater source of comfort to Yankee haters than their fans, who, like Torre's erstwhile employers, consider defeat as anything less than winning the Fall Classic.
For every team like the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals there's one like the 1906 Chicago Cubs, who managed to lose the World Series, four games to two, despite a best-ever regular-season winning percentage of .763. For those who prefer more contemporary examples, try the 2001 Seattle Mariners, winners of 116 regular-season games.
Those Mariners were beaten by the Yankees, four games to one in the ALCS. It was the second consecutive year that Seattle was eliminated by a Yankee team with fewer wins. In fact, New York's victory in 2000 seems even less probable, as the Yankees limped into the postseason by losing seven in a row and 13 of their last 15.
Joe Torre's Yankees were a .540 club that year, ostensibly mediocre in every category but salary. Still, they won the World Series quite easily. I don't remember anyone calling it a crapshoot. Rather, their victory was attributed to clutch play and managerial acumen.
Which brings us back to Torre's Dodgers. The purple brooms are a nice touch, signifying nothing.
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