People often don’t want to admit the role of luck or randomness in MLB—or in any sport. The “scoreboard” argument becomes the be-all, end-all; when a team wins, it automatically—and always—means that team is better. Also, people often look to intangible things to fill in for luck, because we like to think that we understand sports. We want to be so absolute with the “who’s better” debates that luck or randomness often gets miscast as team chemistry, managerial ability, and/or some sort of preordained fate (i.e. the “team of destiny”). Being a tournament of luck doesn’t make the baseball playoffs any less relevant, it actually adds to it. Baseball in October means Embracing Randomness in MLB; October baseball means taking a seat in small sample-size theater.
During the NBA playoffs last season, I wrote that the NBA playoffs offers the best barometer for determining the best team out of all American sports postseasons. By contrast, the MLB playoffs may be the most random. This might also mean it’s the worst at crowning the best team, but that stance is probably overly skeptical. The NCAA basketball tournament is widely regarded as the best postseason, largely because of the upsets and unpredictability. In actuality, college basketball in March and MLB baseball in October have a lot in common, and that should encourage people to tune into in the MLB playoffs.
In baseball, you never know when the game-changing moment will come, or who it will come from. The randomness of the baseball playoffs is what ultimately gives us the payoff.
Last season, the San Francisco Giants may have not made it even to the World Series had it not been for a walk-off home run from first basemen Travis Ishikawa. Prior to the season, Ishikawa contemplated retirement. This season, he played all of six games for the Giants before being placed on waivers, and subsequently claimed by the Pirates. Postseason baseball: Where the hero one year gets told by his team “thanks, but no thanks” the next. To date, Ishikawa has accumulated over 1,000 plate appearances and has hit 28 career home runs during the regular season. In postseason games, he has 56 plate appearances, and has hit … (wait for it) … one home run – the home run that put the Giants into the World Series. The only predictable thing about playoff baseball is that it’s thoroughly unpredictable.
While journeymen can etch their name in baseball lore, the flip side is that the opposite can also be true. Players who are otherwise superstars become completely unremarkable in the playoffs. Greg Maddux, widely regarded as one of the greatest pitchers of all-time, finished his career with a record of 11-14 in postseason starts. Similarly, Clayton Kershaw has received a good amount of criticism for being a lesser pitcher in the postseason (although he’s fresh off a fantastic start in Game 4 against the Mets).
The randomness of individual players leads to randomness among teams. This season in the National League, the three best teams – by record and by run differential – were all in the Central division. Thus, the Cubs and Pirates played in the one-game playoff for the right to advance. Doesn’t it seem a bit trivial that after such a long season, one of the three best NL teams must be eliminated after nine innings? Plus, by run differential, the Pirates were twenty runs better than the Cubs over the course of the regular season. But that was rendered meaningless by Jake Arrieta and the Cubs. While the Cubs were the team to advance, one could still make a convincing case the Pirates were the better team over the course of the year. Such is the reality of postseason baseball: Things get reduced down to the least common denominator. It’s really the equivalent of a marathon race ending after 26 miles, all runners outside the top-10 being eliminated, and the top-10 pulled back to (about) even, no matter the distance of lead, and left to sprint the last fifth of a mile against one another.
The end result is that building a successful regular season baseball team and a successful playoff baseball team are almost two different things. But one cannot have the latter without the former; the two models must meld into one, which makes the job of any baseball GM a unique position in the sports landscape.
When it comes to playoff baseball, throwing your arms in the air (like you just don’t care) and admitting to yourself that all the analysis and so-called “knowledge” is useless since playoff baseball is random can be a tough pill to swallow, because we want so badly to understand what we’re watching, and give “winner” qualities to the players and teams that advance. The truth, however, is that we don’t know anything, and the hero could be any player who dons a uniform, and it could happen at any point during the game, and the superstar who led his team so far into October could look completely ordinary for nine innings, and nine innings is all it takes.
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