I'm not trying to figure out anything. A good portion of this board thinks the playoffs are pretty much just luck to being completely meaningless. It leads to things like celebrating regular season success over playoff performance as long as you don't work for a big market team.

But, Andy Reid undoubtedly is better than Barry Switzer.


That's a bad metric though since it may mean they just weren't that good anyways and it also does factor in the manager matchup. What does it say if you dominate in the regular season so often and yet you are never favored in the playoffs?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Regular season is important. And yes, teams with huge payrolls have higher expectations. Not that crazy.



That's a bad metric though since it may mean they just weren't that good anyways and it also does factor in the manager matchup. What does it say if you dominate in the regular season so often and yet you are never favored in the playoffs?[/quote]
No, he didnt dominate. I didnt look up the actual gambling numbers. He only had one series in TB where he was the higher seed and lost.

6 playoff appearances. 4 times a wild card.

Lol Zobrist

LaStella, who also plays 2b, is 5 for 10 off of Scherzer with a double, triple, and a homerun.

Zobrist over LaStella?? Mild surprise.

What are Zo's stats vs Scherzer?

Hasnt Zo hit him pretty well too?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

5-25. .333 OBP 3 Home Runs.

Not awful, but twas a much different Zo compiling those numbers anyway


http://www.espn.com/mlb/player/batvspit ... x-scherzer

Jay over Happ also a mild surprise.

Maddon is an absolute clown.

We're gonna get destroyed

I was waiting for you to throw in some unrelated reason that Kyle Schwarber also lost power this year.

To your first paragraph, you're crazy if you think a manager matters that much. You know how managers win World Series? They have great teams with great starting pitching.

To your second paragraph, here we go again. Just because the statistical reality that a team who wins a World Series has to have a lot of luck offends you doesn't make it any less true. You're free to judge GM's as you see fit, but if you were the owner of a team, you would have bad teams. If you have a GM who consistently gets your team to the playoffs but hasn't won a World Series, you'd be crazy to fire them in lieu of someone who can "get you over the top." Winning the World Series isn't complete luck, but to deny that there exists a lot of randomness and luck in such a small sample is to deny a fact.

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Told you he holds grudges.

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LaStella is lucky to be on the team. Seriously, that surprised me that they took him back.



Zobrist actually has done most of his damage against Scherzer in the last 3 years, so maybe he'll run into one.

Why does it get you so riled up? I'm just saying the same things you guys do.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Yea, but Jay has played well


Also, I value the Batter vs Pitcher stats but the stat nerds will give you a whole powerpoint presentation on how it doesn't matter.

But when a guy is 5-10 with power (LaStella) and he's just flat out a good hitter anyway....curious.


Maddon values LaStella off the bench too much.

I understand that, but if we are truly just concerned with who gives us the best chance to win, La Stella should be on the team despite a dumb mistake he made (which I agree was dumb).

To me, it's not really a matter of some punitive-type punishment. I truly believe La Stella would be a very good starter on most other teams at 2B. I realize not everyone feels that way, and I realize that his career stats don't back that up. I've just watched him bat enough to think that he should get every chance to make an impact. He's one of the best on the team (in a limited sample) at getting good AB's against even elite pitchers. He is disciplined and gets the job done. JD needs a cigarette after every one of his at-bats.

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... and there's no way he's not currently a better left-handed bat than Zobrist... but so is Happ.

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How are you saying the same things "you guys" (whoever that is) do? You refuse to believe a statistical fact - that a team who has the best record over a 162-game sample is probably a better "complete" team than a team who wins the World Series. And even if you don't want to believe that, you can at least acknowledge the fact that the short series in baseball playoffs allow for a whole lot of luck to be important. You can literally look at the odds (whether it's from statisticians or Vegas) of teams to win the WS to see this. The Indians were the favorite, and they were given a 26% chance. That means that, despite being regarded as the best team in baseball, there is a 74% chance they don't win the World Series. You can come back and say "well, that's just one site's opinion," but there are dozens of others who give roughly the same odds.

It doesn't get me "riled up"; it's just crazy how when something offends your sensibilities, you refuse to believe it. I believe that you just don't want to believe that the baseball playoffs have a lot of luck involved, and you are therefore never going to. I mean, I do think you've made a little progress. Three years ago, you wouldn't admit there was any luck involved.

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the problem with even determining a winner over 162 is the divisional and league element of baseball. The only way to determine a true baseball champion would be to have everyone play everyone equal numbers of games and equal home/away.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Of course; there is no "perfect" system. There's no such thing. But the argument you make about the regular season also holds true to the playoffs. If the Cubs had had to match up against, say, the Red Sox or Nationals last year, maybe they don't even make it to the WS just based on matchups.

The overall point is that the game of baseball lends itself to a lot of luck, and that luck tends to even itself out over a larger sample size.

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Outside of basketball, that is pretty common in all sports.

That's either a gross mischaracterization or an outright lie. Luck exists in just about everything in sports to some degree. It is my belief that most of the time, one of the best teams is the World Series champ, if not the best team, and that difference between the best and the second or third best isn't that far that it is shocking that the slightly "better" team loses. Often, it is the best team and they prove it by winning the playoffs that every team sets out at the start of the year to do.

Take the Astros for example. They won less games than the Indians. If they beat the Indians is it "luck" or is it that they proved they were a better team? What about when the Cubs beat the Nationals? Should we still think the Nationals were better?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Zobrist better do something, today.


Hope we dont need any double plays.

There are many more problems than that.

Trades, injuries, roster construction, and call ups all are reasons why a team may be worse in May but better in October. The Cubs are clearly one of the best teams in baseball and yet they had a worse record than every other division winner and one Wild Card team. Does that mean the Cubs aren't all that good?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

It's not true in all sports except basketball. In most sports, there is a very good likelihood that one of the best teams in the regular season will win the title. Football has such great parity that there usually isn't a single team who stands out, but there are really only 3 or 4 teams in the playoffs who genuinely have a shot. In baseball, they all have a shot. A team could sneak in a wild card and go on a run to win it all.

To your second paragraph, you are getting hung up on the word "best." I've said 1,000 times that the team who wins the World Series is the World Series champion and the champion of baseball for that year. Whether they were the "best" team or not could very easily be debated. There is no objective "correct" answer, but it could easily be argued.

I have a few questions I'd appreciate if you'd answer:

- If the 2017 White Sox played the 2005 White Sox 100 times, how many of those games do you think they'd win?

- Why do you think that the moneyline bets for individual games of baseball are always much less extreme than in other sports?

- Why has a Wild Card team won the World Series six times since 1994? Were they just not trying in the regular season?

- Do you believe that baseball has more "randomness" in its playoffs than other sports at all or are you arguing that they're all the same?

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2005.

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You used playoff odds.
http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/news/2017-world-series-playoffs-updated-odds-predictions-picks-winner/cdk2otl4wdm1dghain3o82ia
Here are the playoff odds at the start of the playoffs. The Indians were 9-4 to win it all. The Dodgers were 5-2. What kind of odds do you think the NHL and NFL playoffs will have? Both those teams are around 2 to 1 to win it all.
I don't know. 20?

Are they?

I don't think a wild card team is by itself worse than another team that won it's division. There is a wild card team that won more games than the Cubs this year.

It probably has some more than others and certainly more than basketball but not to the point where you can just put most of the results on "luck".

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

this year, no. They're not that good.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

I'm not sure how many articles I've posted by actual statisticians over the years, but here are a few:

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/09/harvard ... tly-random

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/is-base ... dom-sport/

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/maj ... et-random/

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit ... all-100714

Question 1: They will be more top-heavy. I don't know what the individual odds will be, but there's no way in football or hockey that the worst team in the playoffs has any decent odds to win it all. In baseball, they're a smart play if their odds are low.

Question 2: Okay, you think the 2017 Sox would beat the 2005 Sox 20 times out of 100. It would very likely be higher than that, but we can go with 20. What if 4 of those 20 wins happen to fall within a 7-game series? Would you be willing to say that the 2017 Sox are the better team?

Question 3: The problem with your wild card answer is that, by definition, there was a team in its own division who had a better record.

Question 4: Yes, moneyline bets are much less in baseball. You know why? Because the worst team in baseball has a MUCH better chance of beating the best team in baseball on a given day than the Bulls have of beating the Warriors on a given day. That's because in baseball, a borderline major league player pinch hitter could run into a Chris Sale fastball and knock in four runs in one swing, which is likely to win you most games.

Question 5: Straw man. No one is saying it's completely luck. But you shouldn't use the word "probably." It is a fact that baseball playoffs have more randomness... but it's not just the playoffs. Individual baseball games in general have more randomness than other sports. Please see the links posted above.

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