So when the playoffs start, would you mind telling us which one is going to win the World Series? I mean, if there’s a difference between just having a team good enough to get there and take a shot at it, and a team that’s going to make the playoffs and is the actual “best team” for winning, you should be able to indentify which one it is.
I’d like to know what it is these special teams do, if for no other reason than I could go place bets in Vegas and make quite a lot of money.
Actually, if what we really want foremost is to determine which is the best team in the purest terms,we’d just get rid of any kind of elimination playoff altogether and make every team play every other team an equal number of times.
Nah, I think he’s saying that there is no metric other than the playoffs that can identify the best team. The best team wins because whoever wins is by definition best.
In the words of Chico Marx, “A whole lot is too much, too much is a whole lot, same thing.”
Listen, I’m well aware that none of us is ever going to get you to concede a point about any of this stuff. I understand that scoffing at nerds and numbers is as much a part of the actual sport for you as box scores and roster moves are for me.
It isn’t worth arguing, and I won’t. But I’m going to keep reading baseball threads, so just privately, in your own mind where nobody has to know about it, I think it would be cool if you would sort of consider that maybe this argument, which is entirely and fairly captured by that quote up there, isn’t a very good one, and that actually the point I was trying to raise, and which if I pursue will become just another in a long line of pointless pissing matches where you tell a group of us what we believe, is just common sense that you wouldn’t even consider denying if one of your drinking-or-whatever buddies raised it in language and terms which comported with your, uh, aesthetic appreciation for the game. You’re saying, effectively, that the best team always wins. God-damn everyone knows the best team doesn’t always win. You know that. You asked why anyone would care about getting more wins out of the same amount of money. God-damn everyone cares about that. You care about that.
I can’t find anything about this, so I’ll ask here: why are the Rays and A’s off today?
Hurricane?
No, there’s not even a game on the schedule. They don’t take them off of a schedule for weather, they just postpone.
The Republicans had scheduled a reception at the stadium today which was cancelled because of the weather.
I don’t. But I do too often see the statement that that’s *all *there is to it, luck. And, the better you are, the luckier you get.
And by anybody’s who plays the game. Losers make explanations. Winners win. Winners also just point to the scoreboard and laugh when the losers try their explanations.
Now, what other definition of “the best team” would you offer to the guys spraying champagne, or for that matter to the guys sitting and staring into space, that does not include applying it to the former?
It’s hardly divinely-inspired (come off it, dude), but it’s how the system is structured. You wanna win, you gotta play that way. Them’s the rules. Is that hard to understand?
So, you *do *have a better approach to determining “the best team” than by having them play each other head to head? What could that be?
Jimmy, do you have an actual argument to make, other than endorsing the concept of loser’s explanations?
RickJay, I don’t really think you’re claiming there’s no way to predict at the start of the season who is likeliest to win the World Series, are you? Are you as binary a thinker on the point as is RTF?
Ah, thanks.
Please give one example of someone who has said this, in the whole history of baseball.
One single example will be sufficient.
It’s been offered in this very forum multiple times, in threads which I know you have actively participated in. So I’m sure you know. Don’t be a jerk about it.
Just a question for anyone who disagrees with “Scoreboard” as a definitive argument: Who *was *the best team in MLB last year, and on what evidence do you base that assessment?
If it were all luck, then we could put together a sandlot team that could win the World Series. Anyone who says that is an ignoramus.
[QUOTE]
This is largely true. But in a 10-team postseason, you’ve got an awful lot of opportunities for luck to play a role. You may be both better and luckier than every other team - but that doesn’t mean you’ll be luckier than all of the others put together.
Cite?
I recall any number of times when the winners acknowledged the role that luck played in winning a game.
Why would I piss on their parade?
But I’ll bet if we talked to any of the players on the world champion 1985 KC Royals, they’d mention the fact that the first-base umpire in game 6 missed a straightforward call on what should have been the last out of the 1985 World Series. It wasn’t a slam-bang call, either; the KC runner was out by a clear step, and if the ump had seen it the way pretty much everybody watching on TV did, the Cardinals would have been spraying champagne that night. Instead, the ump called the runner safe, the Royals went on to win the game and tie up the Series, and win the Series the next night.
So by your metric, they were the better team than the Cardinals because the ump flat-out blew a call in their favor. But if the ump had gotten it right, the Cardinals would have been the better team.
Whatever you say.
And the rules, as presently constructed, introduce a greater element of luck than they need to. Is that hard to understand?
Less head-to-head than there is now. There weren’t always three rounds of head-to-head series (this is only the 18th season where there have been three rounds of playoffs), and there don’t need to be three rounds now.
The question is not, is there a better way to determine a world champion, but which of the alternatives is best? I can think of three or four off the top of my head, and I bet there are some good alternatives that I haven’t thought of.
Going back for a minute to the scheduled day-off for the Rays/A’s, when is the last time there has been a scheduled Sunday off for a couple of teams, not including opening week?
Beckett has alternated good year/bad year his whole career, so the Dodgers are probably hoping the trend continues in 2013.
No, I mean at the beginning of the playoffs. (Or at least after the wild card play-ins.) What you said was:
If in fact it is true that some rosters are better designed to handle postseasons than others, in some way that is not already measured by just how they did in the regular season, you should be able to pick - not perfectly, but with a better-than-you’d-expect rate of success - who’s going to win. So why don’t you let us know once the playoffs are underway what we can expect? After a few years we should see if you do better than the usual methods of just guessing that the team that was better in the regular season has a slightly better chance.
Certainly how they did in the regular season is not a great predictor. The team that wins the most regular season games usually DOESN’T win the World Series; as far as I can recall, it’s only happened three times in the last twenty years. And I’ll be honest, I don’t know any better way to guess. I used to think the team that was hottest at season’s end was a better bet, or whomever had a better second half, but as it turns out that’s pretty much baloney. So if in fact it’s some other tangible thing, can you tell us which team has it, please? Because, seriously, that’s a money-making proposition; we can make an ass-ton of cash on knowing what properties make a good postseason bet. Maybe not all in 2012, but over time an edge will add up. Hell, I’ll give you a percentage.
Never happened. Not once. You are flat-out wrong.
Various people, including me, have argued that luck plays a more significant part in the playoffs due to the nature of the format. While lucky breaks (broken-bat singles, bloop hits, swinging bunt hits, close umpiring calls, etc., etc.) generally even out over a long season, in a short series having two or three lucky (or unlucky) breaks can turn the whole thing.
I have never, not on a single occasion, claimed that “that’s all there is to it, luck.” And neither has anyone else. Your hostility to statistics, and your tendency to misconstrue or misread the arguments of people who disagree with you on this issue, mean that you might believe that people have made such an argument, but it’s never happened. It’s in your head only.
But that’s the thing: no-one has ever said it, at least not around here, nor among the various sabermetrically-inclined writers whose work i have read.
Best team? In the AL the Yankees (best record and run differential). In the NL the Phillies (best record and run differential).
I can’t make a definite statement between the teams because of the severely divergent schedules they played.
Trust me, as a devout Cardinals fan who watched nearly every game of their 2011 campaign, you will never convince me that they were the best MLB team in 2011. They just happened to be the best team over the final two months.
:shrug: Scoreboard.
I was assuming he was talking about, say, people he got into debates with on other websites, e.g. comment threads of newspaper and TV network sports articles.
I agree about here, though: once in a blue moon, someone might sneak into this board who was dumb enough to say something like that, but certainly no regular here would make such an absurd statement.