That’s just the way the math works. If you assume a team has 2/3 chance of winning each series (against a bunch of 95- to 105-win teams), that still only comes to 8/27 chance of winning the whole thing.
Looking way too far ahead, does anyone know what the tie-breaker is if the Dodgers and Astros have the same record and play each other in the World Series? I know the first tiebreaker is head-to-head but they didn’t play each other this year.
9 to 4 is frigging amazing. If the playoffs are only random you’re 7 to 1 if you win a division, 15 to 1 if you win a wild card. I cna see 9 to 4, though. The Astros are loaded and their four best starting pitchers are awesome, and in the postseason you can ride four starters harder than you can in the regular season.
I too am damn impressed by the Astros, who are utterly loaded. Comparing them to the 1998 Yankees, though, is a tough one. Which is better? Let’s assume the Astros plow everyone in the playoffs like the Yankees did.
The Astros aren’t going to win 114 games, so that goes to the '98 Yankees. The Astros are 104-54 so far.
The 1998 Yankees scored 965 runs and allowed 656; they had the league’s best offense (by a small margin) AND allowed the fewest runs (by a wide margin.) Their Pythagorean is 108-54 so they were a bit lucky to win 114 games.
The Astros have scored 899 runs, which in third in the AL and they’re not going to catch up unless the weekend is really crazy. they have allowed 628 runs, which is second, just a hair behind Cleveland. Houston’s Pythagorean exactly matches their record.
So far the Yankees are more statistically dominant.
I admit this kind of surprises me because if you LOOK at the Astros’ stats there’s something about them that looks better. The 1998 Yankees has no pitcher as dominant as Justin Verlander or Gerrit Cole, and they had lots of offensive stars but no one of them had as good a year as Alex Bregman has had. It seems like Houston has more award winners.
If you go by WAR Houston’s very best players are a bit better than New York’s. This slightly undervalues the Yankees, of course, because BBRef assigns WAR based on runs scored and allowed, not how many games you actually win, and as noted the Yankees were six games better than Pythagorean. That might even it up a bit but not entirely. The Astros are more top heavy. (It adds to the impression that the Astros hit WAY more home runs, which looks impressive, but in context, the 1998 Yankees were just as good at hitting homers.)
Still, it remains the fact the Yankees were more dominant. they won more games and were more definitively the better team in the league - best offense, best pitching/defense, and no team was remotely close. The 1998 Yankees finished twelve games ahead of the second best team in the AL, the Red Sox, which is a remarkable achievement. The 2019 Astros are only two and a half games ahead of the 2019 Yankees.
I gotta pick the 1998 Yankees.
I had forgotten that Cincinnati won 96 games in 1999 and missed the playoffs (unless you count a one-game playoff at the end of the regular season), which is the record for the wild-card era. So that record is still up in the air.
The second tiebreaker is record against division opponents. The third tiebreaker is record against league opponents (e.g. you exclude interleague play.) The fourth tiebreaker is a coin flip.
So far LA is 47-27 against their division, Houston is 53-19, so Houston would host if they end up tied.
You can thank Seattle for that. They are 1-18 (!!!) against Houston.
I agree about the 98 Yankees, but one point in the Astros’ favor is that they are a better team at the end of the season than they were at the beginning, thanks to adding Greinke and Yordan Alvarez mid-season. I don’t remember if the Yankees added any major pieces during the season - from their stats it looks like they added Orlando Hernandez mid-year, which is not nothing but not as impactful.
Actually El Duke was a big help down the stretch as there were injuries to the starting staff that left the Yanks with only 4 starters, additionally in his first playoffs he started 2 games, got 2 wins, pitching 7 innings in each and giving up only 1 run in the 14 innings.
His 21 starts in the regular season was for 141 innings and a 12-4 record. He was pretty damn impactful. If you want to use WAR, more then Greinke and about equal to Alvarez.
By promoting El Duke it moved Ramiro Mendoza back to the bullpen where he was brilliant and solidified on of the best bullpens I’ve ever seen. Rivera, Stanton, Nelson, Mendosa & Graeme Lloyd were an incredible unit.
Regarding post season Yankees and Astros, who will host the opening game?
How is it decided?
As of today, the Astros have home field advantage. So they would. Best record gets home field.
… and the head-to-head tiebreaker favors the Astros, so they also get home field if they tie. So unless the Yankees win all 3 and the Astros lose all 4, the Astros have home field in the AL playoffs.
Just saw the Nats win against the Phillies for the fifth consecutive game. I was not one of the Nats fans booing Bryce Harper. I cheered when he struck out three times and hit into a double play, but I was cheering my team’s pitcher. I don’t see them having much success in the post season with this bullpen, but I wouldn’t have expected them to go 71-38 since starting out the season 19-31 either.
R.I.P. Cleveland.
They had a nice run going for awhile.
Mike Stanton had some good years but 1998 was not one of them.
Anyway, the Indians seem to have bombed out of the postseason. They aren’t dead yet, but they need a hell of a lot of help, and Tampa Bay is playing the Blue Jays this weekend, who are bad, while the A’s are playing Seattle, who are horrible.
It’s easy to miss how bad Seattle has been because the awfulness of Detroit and Baltimore is so distracting, and Seattle is still ahead of Toronto and Kansas City, but remember the Mariners started out great. They were 18-11 in late April. Since then they’re 48-81.
Yeah, they were 2 outs away from making history yesterday, they would have been the first team to allow 3 no-hitters in one season. That’s pretty bad.
ok someone was close to getting 200 strikeoutsin a year as a team record and since it was close to the end of a game and a teammate helped him by “dropping” a pop fly so he could face a couple more guys to get it
Storys here : MSN
I say since neither horrible team was in a important game I say ehh why not
What yall think ?
The full situation:
Minor was at 199 strikeouts for the season. He was up by 2 runs in the top of the ninth and was sitting at 124 pitches - the manager had wanted him out at 100 and was already getting antsy. This was the last batter he was going to face.
1 out, nobody on, count 1-1. The batter hit a bloop into very short foul territory. The first baseman ran towards it and then watched it drop to the field (he never touched it). So now it’s 1-2 and the batter gets another chance. Minor struck him out for 200 season strikeouts and was promptly yanked.
So, how do I feel? I could give a rat’s ass. Unless there are some really obscure home-field advantage tie-breakers that could have been influenced by the outcome between two non-playoff teams, this game was about as close to meaningless as an MLB game ever gets. The Sox will finish above .500 and in 3rd in the AL East. The Rangers will finish below .500 and in 3rd in the AL West. This game wasn’t going to change any of that. It wasn’t even an MLB record, just a Rangers team record - something only Rangers fans care about and probably not most of them. Quick can anybody here (except RickJay :)) name their team’s single season strike out record and who holds it? No looking it up.
In much more important news, the Brewers won while the Cards were off. Only 1 game back now. The Brewers are at Colorado for 3 to finish, the Cards are hosting my suddenly hapless Cubs. As a Cubs fan, I would love to see us take at least 2 games and bump the Cards to the Wild Card game. 
For the Dodgers its relatively easy to know the holder of the single season strikeout record since its Sandy Kofax. If we’re talking about a dodger pitching record there is like a 75% chance Sandy holds it.
It’s easy for the Yankees too. Ron Guidry’s 1978, 25-3, 1.74 ERA, 248 K, 9.6 WAR season has been regularly celebrated over the years. His strikeout mark only stands because starters throw fewer innings these days, though. In 2017, Luis Severino had 230 Ks but only pitched 193 innings.
Rangers intentionally let a foul ball drop to give pitcher a chance for 200th strikeout. I think this is offensive and disrespectful to the game. The team gives you a chance to make an out, you have to take it.
For the Royals, I know it’s Dennis Leonard, 244 Ks though I don’t remember the year without looking it up. I’m sure I know more Royals trivia than your average Royals fan, though.
Okay, I’ll take a guess and then go check. Is it
Bobby Witt?