To provide something substantive to your points rather than anecdotes, gonzo, you might peruse this.
It is true that it is highly unusual to win a championship with below-league-average pitching. It is entirely possible to do so with below-league-average hitting - you just need to get hot/lucky at the right time.
Of course, the best course of action is to be above average in both regards, as both the Tigers (110/102 hitting/pitching) and Rangers (108/118) are. For that matter, so are the Brewers (102/108).
The Cardinals are the outlier - having plus hitting (118 OPS+) with below-average pitching (ERA+ or 97). One might argue that this is a bit anomalous because their only SP with a below-average ERA+ is Jake Westbrook (who isn’t starting in the post-season) and their bullpen has only one hold-over from the beginning of the season (Jason Motte).
For one final reference point, the Phillies were at 95 OPS+ and 128 ERA+, by far the best pitching group in the playoffs. Once again showing that while it may be a good idea to have at least above-average pitching, in a short series Lady Luck has a lot to say.
ETA: Oh, and those hitting Yankees? Their OPS+ was 106 and their ERA+ was 119.
I could if you had some. The problem is that the team with the best pitching in the league* lost in the first round this year, and they lost to a team whose pitching was not as good as their hitting. The Phillies’ offense was not that good, particularly not compared to St. Louis and Milwaukee. Another problem is that the Tigers, for example, are winning even though their best pitcher hasn’t been that good in the playoffs - I’m not picking on the guy because it’s been a long season and he was insanely good for a lot of it, but his ERA is 5.33 in the playoffs, his strikeout-to-walk ratio has gone from something 10-to-1 to 2.5-to-1, I think his WHIP is up by about 50 percent. You need some pitching and some hitting, but you can’t look at the ALCS and conclude the teams are winning with pitching, because they aren’t. If offense wins games, offense can win a series. You win a series by winning games.
By the way, if you look at the pitching staffs in the NL by WHIP, you get this:
Phillies (lost in the first round)
Giants (missed the playoffs)
Padres (missed the playoffs and had the second worst record in the league)
Braves (shouldn’t have missed the playoffs, but did)
Dodgers (missed the playoffs)
Nationals (missed the playoffs)
Brewers (playoffs)
The AL was more balanced, but the best team by WHIP was the Angels and they didn’t make the playoffs either. And the Rays and Yankees had the second- and fourth-best pitching by WHIP, and they lost to Texas (fifth) and Detroit (seventh).
Ridiculously early hook by LaRussa. Garcia was pitching well enough, and had two outs. Whichever one of these teams makes it to the series won’t have anybody in the bullpen that’s not worn out.
I’ll note here that both television and internet access are nost likely going to be iffy for me for a few days after Sunday. I know that my trenchant analysis and on-point comments regarding the World Series will be missed, but, so it goes . . .
If you’re defining “got outpitched” as “gave up less runs,” then yes, the winning team outpitches the losing team 100% of the time in baseball. Of course I could say just as easily that the losing teams were outhit because they scored fewer runs than the teams that won. Runs scored by winning team in the NLCS through five games: 9, 12, 4, 4, 7. That’s 7.2 runs a game on average. The ALCS is less extreme and they’ve had a couple of extra-inning games, but the winning team is averaging 5.8 runs a game and the winning team has scored 7 runs in three of the five games. The Giants won last year with a lot of pitching and just enough hitting from an anemic offense, but it’s not happening this year.
Did not have to, They kept the foes down to such a low level of runs, that it would have been easy to outscore the opponent . Sorry such a simple thing escapes you.
Interesting, but I’d rather see how the graph looks with RS and RA (or RS+ and RA+) since while OPS tracks pretty closely with run scoring it’s not as closely as ERA tracks run prevention; also if you check the comments, someone makes the case that the vertical zero axis should be located at about 95 OPS+ due to the influence of pitchers’ batting, which considerably reduces the number of teams in the below-average hitting/better-than-average pitching quadrant.
And the point is?
They scored a 10 to 1 victory. All they needed was 2 to win because they held the loser to 1. They scored more, but it was window dressing due to the pitching holding them to 1 run.
You could just as easily say that holding them to 1 run was just window dressing, because they scored so many runs that the other team could have scored 8 or 9 and still lost the game.
If the losing teams scored more runs than the winning teams, it contradicts the claim that the winning teams pitched better. And there’s no such thing as a meaningless run. Scoring runs increases your chances at winning. If you’re up 10 to 1, you have a better chance of winning than if you’re up 2 to 1.
After all this time in St. Louis, I’m still not a Cards fan, and after all this time in National League cities, nor am I a NL fan, but if they make it to the Series this year, I’m going to have a very difficult time convincing myself I shouldn’t root for them. It’s one hell of a drive.