I stand by my Cardinals now and forever.
We have a tendency to choke but I will still be cheering them on.
Funny how nobody talks about the Cards losing Mark Mulder and Jason Isringhausen.
GO CARDS
I’m sure you’re right, and that’s what he meant.
I guess that i credit people with sufficient comprehension to realize that, when we’re talking about the postseason, we are, by definition, talking about the teams that actually make it, and not the also-rans.
My comments about “crappy redbirds” was, therefore, in the context of a discussion about the postseason teams. The Cardinals just happened to be the best team in the worst (or close to it) division in baseball, and had the worst record of any division winner, and a worse record than either wild card team.
Nor did my comment arise out of some juvenile pissing contest or sports enmity. I reserve that for the Yankees. I have no particular dislike for the Cardinals or their fans. I just happen to think that a Tigers-Mets WS would have been much more interesting.
If that honest opinion induces a comment along the lines of “Oh yeah, what about the Orioles. They really suck,” i’m afraid all it’s going to get from me is a nod of agreement, and a question about its relevance to a discussion of the 2006 postseason.
While your comment did come across (at least to me) as at least ill-intentioned, it was probably the imperfect medium of written communication that was to blame. Your subsequent response was well-reasoned and polite. And I, for one, appreciate it.
On a personal note, my mother commented after the game was over that neither the Cards nor the Mets really deserve to go the the Series. I’m not that knowlegeable about the Mets’ season, but the Cards’ trip to the dance is surprising to say the least. Not that we won’t be rooting for the Cards at my house, we’re just happy to have made it this far.
In summary, Go Cards. 
Mulder had a terrible year anyway. Not that Pedro Martinez was great either.
Part of me is convinced that losing Isringhausen is the only reason we’re still alive.
Oh great, now there’s another NY team to finish ahead of the Orioles? 
Well, as long as there’s a Tampa Bay…
I was thinking the same thing you were, so I actually ran the stats. I calculated winning percentage for all playoff teams in April and September from 2000 through 2005. I calculated winning percentage in the playoffs for the same teams. The result:
Correlation between Apr win% and Oct win% = 0.04 +/- 0.28 (95% confidence interval)
Correlation between Sep win% and Oct win% = 0.08 +/- 0.28
In words, not only is there no difference in the predictive power of April performance vs. September performance, there does not appear to be any predictive power at all!
Which seems obvious to me, since to clinch early, a team’s generally going to win more games than one that clinches later.
Interestingly, I just happened to get around to reading “Baseball Between The Numbers” today, and whaddya know; they happened to determine that September records, as opposed to season records, mean nothing at all in predicting playoff winners.
2006 proves it once again.
They also figured that teams with better bullpens, especially the better relief ace, have a larger advantage than you would expect. That makes sense, really - as they point out, our relief ace can be used to pitch way more of your innings in a short series than you could ever use him in the regular season. And when I think about it, it does seem to be anecdotally true. That would seem, on the surface, to be another data point in favour of the Tigers.
Thanks for running the stats. When i saw your post, i was in the middle of compiling the numbers myself.
The difference is that i’m a historian, so i was just going to present the raw data (April wins, September wins, Playoff record). Could you explain, for the nonstatistical, what your figures mean?
Correlation measures the strength of the relationship between two quantities. It can be anything between -1 and 1. A negative correlation means the two quantities are inversely related, i.e. when one is high the other is low and vice versa. A positive correlation means that when one is high, the other is high. A correlation of 0 means that there is no consistent relationship between the two quantities.
If September performance is a better indicator of October performance than April performance, we would expect that the correlation between Sept and Oct would be stronger than the correlation between Apr and Oct. It is very slightly higher (0.08 compared to 0.04), but since the confidence interval is so wide (+/- 0.28), the difference is meaningless.
Furthermore, since both correlations are essentially zero, there is no consistent relationship between performance in either month and performance in October.
The reason (I conjecture) is that baseball teams are not very consistent from month-to-month. It’s common for a team to go .500 one month, .700 the next month, .400 the month after that, and .600 the next month. They’re especially inconsistent in October, since during the playoffs they’re only playing good teams, instead of playing a mix of good and bad like they do during the regular season.
Thanks for the explanation.
There is also a more arbitrary question of what actually constitutes a good post-season performance, and whether it can even be properly measured simply by wins and losses.
For exmaple, in 2005 the postseason record of the Cardinals was 5-4 (.556), and the postseason record of the Astros was 7-7 (.500). Obviously, in terms of percentages, St. Louis has a better record. But Houston beat the Cardinals in the NLCS, and then went on to lose 4-0 to the White Sox in the World Series. One could argue that winning the pennant made Houston a more successful postseason team last year, despite the fact that St. Louis had a better win-loss record.
It was an exciting season and, at least in the NL, exciting playoffs. But you’re right, momentum means squat. The Yanks, BoSox, and Mets are all proof of that.
Well, good luck to both the Cards and the BigCats
That’s a good point. Any measure of “performance” is going to be subject to various caveats, of course.
Here are some more stats:
correlation between Apr win% and Oct win total: 0.08 +/- 0.28
correlation between Sep win% and Oct win total: 0.02 +/- 0.28
correlation between Apr win% and number of postseason series won: 0.12 +/- 0.26
correlation between Sep win% and number of postseason series won: -0.14 +/- 0.26
By those two measures, April is a better predictor of postseason performance, though the confidence interval is still so large that we can’t definitively conclude anything. Maybe the next step is to get more data (I could get data back to 1995, when the Division Series playoffs were introduced).
I should also point out that correlation in this case should be taken with a grain of salt, since one of the variables is a count (0, 1, 2, or 3). But that’s a technical point.
Obviously, the momentum cliche is dead, but how about the postseason experience cliche?
Number of starting players with World Series experience:
Cardinals - 7 (Eckstein, Pujols, Encarnacion, Edmonds, Rolen, Molina, any starting pitcher)
Tigers - 1
The Cardinals “just know how to win.”
That was dumped long ago, though, wasn’t it? Last year’s White Sox didn’t have much WS experience and they absolutely plowed through. Neither did the '03 Marlins.
Besides, most of the Cardinals’ World Series experience was the experience of getting swept in 2004.
I am drunk, and so , apparently, are my boys. 7-2. YES YES YES YES YES YES YES.
[sub]::hangs head in shame::[/sub]