Boilermaker Rick wrote:
leashyourkids wrote:
You honestly think there are matchups between World Series winners in which one team would have a very low chance of winning? Every World Series champion has good starting pitching and at least a competent offense. Because of that, any team would have a shot against any other team. The highest I'd go in terms of odds would be 65/35. The point is that we have no idea who would beat who, and it would vary. If the '98 Yanks played even a relatively "weak" WS champ, anything could happen. You really don't believe that? You think the "best" team would automatically win?
Yes, I believe there are World Series winners that are significantly better than others. That's an incredibly low margin you have between the best of all time and the worst of all time there.
But, even if I accept what you say as true, it means that it is more than fair for any of us to think the White Sox had a good chance to beat any team in history. The 2005 White Sox are undoubtedly one of the best teams in recent history. That means that even against the top teams ever it would be very close to 50/50.
leashyourkids wrote:
To your second point, I didn't say they would. I said they could, as could any other team, so it's a meaningless statement.
A hypothetical head-to-head matchup is not only 100% subjective; in baseball, they could play 100 times and split 50/50, which would not happen in other sports.
That's why regular season record matters. It's objective. It certainly has flaws, but it's as close to objective as we'll get when debating this topic that would really have no consensus, anyway.
So now it is "No one knows anything about this".
I'll stick with the historical dominance of the 2005 White Sox and think it gives them a good chance to beat any other team in history and you can stick with "any team could beat any team so it is all meaningless".
You say you believe there are "World Series winners that are significantly better than others." But that's not what you're arguing. You're arguing who would win in a head-to-head matchup, and the reality is that no one has no idea and that even if one team was significantly better than another, in baseball, the better team doesn't always win. In fact, they probably win at less than a 60% clip. This is a mathematical fact. You keep conflating "beating in a series" and "being better." Those two things are not synonymous. We have no idea who would win in a head to head matchup because a 7-game series is a small enough sample that anything can happen. It doesn't mean it's 50/50, but if you think there are two WS champs where the true odds would be any more than 65/35, you're wrong.
You also keep using the word "good chance," which is vague at best. Neither I nor anyone here ever said the Sox couldn't beat any team in history in a 7-game set. As I said earlier, I certainly wouldn't put them at less than a 35% chance. With their starting pitching, I probably wouldn't put them at any less than a 40% chance. Again, it's basically a meaningless statement.
To your statement that I think "we don't know anything," it's untrue. But we know very little within a single series in baseball. Baseball is simply a game where there is a lot of randomness, and this is why it requires large sample sizes. I get the impression sometimes that you think I say this only in defense of Cub arguments or against Sox arguments, but you're wrong. It's just a true thing. That doesn't take anything away from a World Series winner, nor does it mean that the playoffs are COMPLETELY random (i.e. "We don't know anything"). JORR's entire W-L argument hinges on the concept of sample size. Do you ever disagree with it?
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