Ya think **etv **picked these teams at random? I’m expecting someone will eventually provide years that EVERY one of these teams have met in the post-season.
Jeez, I don’t know, it’s not my list, but I find it at least mildly interesting. For example, take the first item on the list. The Red Sox and Braves both originally played in Boston. Even if the Braves still played there, they would never have had a Subway Series. And you can see that Tigers v. Giants would be a new matchup, which is kind of surprising since those were pretty good teams in the old days.
Why? There are 14 original teams - that’s a total possible matchup list of 49 games (barring any teams switching leagues). There have been 110 World Series (modern era), and with each expansion, the odds of any unplayed game of those 49 matchups are dramatically lowered (with 30 teams, there are 225 possible matchups (176 of which are undesirable outcomes for this) clogging up the process). The math just gets worse and worse each time a dominant team arises. It’s entirely unsurprising.
It’s unsurprising that many matchups haven’t taken place, given that a significant number of the charter teams have had fewer than 8 Series appearances.
AL: Browns/Orioles 6, Senators/Twins 6, White Sox 5, Indians 5
NL: Phillies 7, Pirates 7
The fact that a few teams have been dominant in each league over extended periods also limits the number of match-ups. The Yankees have played in 36% of all World Series, and the Giants, Dodgers and Cardinals combined in 50%. A disproportionate number of matchups have been between these teams.
The most surprising thing to me on the list is the discrepancy between how many NL teams the Red Sox have missed playing (1, out of 11 Series appearances) vs the Tigers (4, out of 10 appearances). The Tigers have played the Cubs 4 times, and the Cardinals 3 times.
As someone who transcribed all post-season results from the paper version of the Baseball Encyclopedia and entered it into an Access database just so I can run queries like this…
But you didn’t post it here. This is a discussion board. It’s fair to ask an OP what exactly they find interesting about information they post and why they posted it.