http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/w ... ?eref=sihp

The playoffs really are a crapshoot

What are the chances that Fox gets its dream World Series matchup of Dodgers-Yankees, the teams that today have the two best records in baseball? The way this decade has gone, not very good at all.

The teams with the two best records haven't met in the Fall Classic this decade, and not since the strike-shortened 1995 season. In fact, this decade really has offered proof to Billy Beane's famous theorem that the playoffs are "a crapshoot." Regular-season success has almost nothing to do with how the postseason plays out.

Consider this: Suppose you "seeded" the playoff teams based on regular-season wins. (Unscientific, of course, because teams don't play the same schedules. But play along at home, folks, and try to have some fun here.) The team with the most wins would be the No. 1 seed, the team with the second most the No. 2 seed, and so on. Now let's look at a distribution pattern for this decade of which "seeds" won a pennant or the World Series:



It doesn't get much more random than that. You might as well roll an eight-sided die (or, in the case of the 2006 Cardinals, who had the 13th best record, a 13-sided one). I doubt you would find such randomness in the NFL or NBA. This decade, more teams with the worst record among playoff teams have won the World Series (2000 Yankees and 2006 Cardinals) than teams with the best record (2007 Red Sox).

So the next time an expert tells you that they know who is going to win the World Series because a certain team is "built for the postseason" or because of how well that team played in the regular season, don't believe it. As the chart shows, the postseason is incredibly random, partly because all the off days make for very different circumstances than teams find all year, but mostly because it's such a small sample. The best team doesn't always win the World Series -- or even anything close to most of the time. The hottest team wins it.

Sabermetrics.

What the fuck is "baseball"?

ceebs don't you mean CLUTCH?

Clearly, this must mean that a playoff system is inherently flawed, as luck interferes with the hard work of a 162 game regular season. They should just go straight to a one game showdown between the two teams with the best record.

Spoiler: show

Did Nick just become a BCS employee?

That doesn't mean a team "built for the playoffs" isn't more likely to win. How do we know the most clutch team hasn't been evenly distributed throughout the seeds over the past decade?

Arrow'd!

Clutch'd!

But...there is only one October!!!!!!!

This time it counts

This reminds me, don't know if anyone saw but earlier this week Peter Gammons had an article up on ESPN.com about the possible virtues of adding 2 more WC teams to each league, expanding the playoffs.

I'm not sure if that's a good idea, but I certainly agreed with their point (even though I'm not much of a fan of these two sports) that the playoff structure of both the NBA and NHL is kinda ridiculous, where it seems like virtually half the teams in existence wind up getting in.

Except 7/8 seeds have actually made it to the SCF in the past decade or so.

Unlike the NBA, which should only be a 4 team postseason.

I think the NFL has it right. 12 teams in a 30-32 team league is the right proportion.

FTFY