Saturday, October 23, 2010

$206 MILLION JUST DOESN'T BUY WHAT IT USED TO: Congratulations to the New York Yankees, whose historic titanicism epicly clutchstoried their legendy meaningfulness all over the hapless Texas Rangers who won the right to dam up a river of money for Cliff Lee to swim in once he hits free agency in two weeks. Seriously, if one's own team can't win the World Series, is there any better consolation prize than the Red Sox missing the playoffs and the Yankees getting eliminated in a mismatch against a team that a month or two ago was sold in a contested bankruptcy auction? The Yankees should have just bought the Rangers in the auction.

18 comments:

  1. Meh. Baseball playoffs are a coin-flip, and the wildcard cost us what would have been an all-time great pennant race between NY and Tampa Bay.  Baseball is dead to me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joseph Finn8:04 AM

    Even better? The final out being that cheater Rodriguez.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ramar8:48 AM

    <span>Baseball playoffs are a coin-flip</span>

    Perhaps, but this series certainly didn't feel like one.  (As opposed to TEX-TB, SF-ATL or SF-PHI.)  Texas chewed up the overpaid Yankee pitching staff in all six games, and the Yankee lineup looked closer to their HOF enshrinement than their prime.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Meghan9:25 AM

    Funny, I said the exact same thing last night.  Guess last year was the anomaly, not a precedent.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'd prefer it if the WC team and #3 Div Team were punished more -- I'd be happy with giving them just one home game in the round of five, or by just awarding the better seed the first win and making it a four game series in which the lesser seed has to win 3/4 to advance.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I 100% disagree.  Given my druthers, there would be no three-division + WC, but once you have that structure, you have to permit those teams some chance of winning.  If the top two division winners can't get it done in a structure where they get the majority of home games in a given playoff series, 

    ReplyDelete
  7. [cont.] too damn bad.

    ReplyDelete
  8. heathalouise12:29 PM

    It's so sad and illustrates what a bitter person I am, but sometimes I think my hatred of Alex Rodriguez may be stronger than my love for the Red Sox.

    ReplyDelete
  9. That's OK, heathalouise, sometimes I think my hatred of Alex Rodriguez may be stronger than my love for the Yankees. 

    ReplyDelete
  10. Adam C.1:40 PM

    I would very much like to see Cliff Lee sign with any team that does not call New York its home.  So I'd support the Rangers getting to play all three AL-team home dates in the WS (as long as the Phils, should they get there, still win in 6).

    ReplyDelete
  11. Ramar1:52 PM

    <span>It'll be funny if notorious cheater Rodriguez gets excused from the playoffs to make room for a World Series between the Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants.</span>

    ReplyDelete
  12. gretchen2:19 PM

    Why are baseball playoffs a coin-flip?  Seems to me that baseball playoffs, more than any other sport, have a genuine chance of getting to the right outcome (that is, where the better team wins.)  If baseball playoffs (especially the 7-game series) are coin flips, what are football one-game playoffs? 

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ramar2:31 PM

    <span><span><span>Why are baseball playoffs a coin-flip? </span></span></span>

    Posnanski:

    http://joeposnanski.si.com/2010/10/13/the-baseball-playoffs/

    .534 isn't quite a coin-flip, but it's awfully close.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Adam C.4:58 PM

    Further to Adam's and Jenn's comments above, I'm not sure the suggestion of docking a home game from the WC team would even be all that effective, nor that having the majority of home games is that big a true advantage for the higher seed.  I believe there've been some recent articles (but I'm too lazy to search at the moment, so feel free to hit me for being anecdotal) that did the research to show that home field advantage is, of all the major sports, least meaningful in MLB.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Meghan6:24 PM

    I try to remind myself not to fall into that trap, but it rarely works. I really hate ARod and really, really hate the Yankees.

    ReplyDelete
  16. isaac_spaceman7:14 PM

    Posnanski is awesome, but that is some pretty simplistic math.  Better record vs. worst record doesn't tell you how much better.  If two teams are only a few games apart in the standings, they may have different records but you shouldn't be able to tell whether one of those teams is actually better than the other.  The margin of error for randomness in-season is too high.  Most teams that make the postseason are actually pretty good and probably are too close in actual quality to say that one is clearly better than the other.  If you look hard enough, you'd probably have to throw out a huge portion of Posnanski's sample just to get examples where one team is clearly better than the other.  And to do that, you'd probably want to look at quality of competition, not just record.  If you really wanted to do this right, you'd also disregard record and try to blend quality of opposition and run expectancy to normalize in-game luck. 

    Even with that sample size, you couldn't just use winning percentage to prove randomness.  Playoff baseball favors teams with good starting pitching relative to the season.  A team with two dominant starters and three terrible starters might just squeak into the playoffs but not be a worse playoff team than an opponent with a better record but five slightly above-average starters.  And for the WS itself, there's an adjustment for the DH that I don't completely understand. 

    And even if there is a random element to postseason results, that's not the same as a coin flip.  A coin flip is completely unrelated to how people actually play.  A bit player coming up with a huge two-homer game or pitching a surprising shutout is unexpected heroism.  There is randomness, to be sure, but the win still always goes to the team that scores more runs. 

    ReplyDelete
  17. Charles Carmicheal10:24 PM

    Texas Rangers, a wholly owned subsidary of The New York YankeesCorp. 

    Oops against the rules of baseball but buying the best players from all the other teams is not.

    NYY No Limit and All In.

    ReplyDelete
  18. ChrisL12:36 AM

    Since 1969, when one of the teams won at least 5 more games in the regular season than their playoff opponent, they went 212-141 and won 51 series, losing 27. The best teams dominate the good teams in the playoffs as much as they dominate the ordinary teams in the regular season

    ReplyDelete