It looks like we are headed to a Philadelphia/Houston World Series. I don't mind that the Phillies have won, with the Astros very likely to, as I always enjoy seeing the Yankees lose and quite dislike the Padres best player, Manny Machado.
In the case of the American League, the best regular season team, the Astros, is now almost certain to make the World Series, while the Yankees had the second-best record in the league. It's a different story in the National League where the 5th and 6th best teams ended up playing for the league championship - and it wasn't close - they were 22 and 24 games behind the team with the best record (the Dodgers) and 12 and 14 behind the teams tied for second (Mets, Braves). The regular season record of the Padres against the other playoff team in their division (Dodgers) and of the Phillies against the Mets and Braves in their division was a combined 17 wins and 39 losses. And it wasn't like either team was particularly hot in the second half of the season. The Padres played below .500 ball after June 16, while the Phillies closed the season by losing 20 of their last 35 games.
Upsets have always occurred in baseball, going back to the 1906 series when the 93 win White Sox beat the record setting 116 win Cubs team, but as playoffs get more extended it becomes more and more likely we will not see the "best" regular season teams in the World Series. Baseball playoffs present a different picture than football or basketball. The baseball season is 10X as long as football and 2X longer than basketball allowing for a better sorting of true skill level. And performance distribution in baseball is more evenly distributed. It's rare to have a baseball team win 2/3 of its games, while this routinely occurs in the other two sports. Another way to look at distribution is to examine the last two full regular seasons for each sport.
Baseball had 60 team seasons (30 teams x 2 seasons), of which 8 teams won at least 60% of their games and 8 teams won less than 40% of games. Basketball also had 60 team seasons, with 15 teams winning more than 60% and 14 winning less than 40%. Football had 64 teams seasons, in which almost a 1/3 (21), saw teams winning more than 60% of the time and 19 seasons of winning fewer than 40%.
It will be interesting to see what the expanded baseball playoffs bring us in future seasons.
While looking at this data, I got interested in the longer-terms aspects of baseball competitiveness during the regular season, and looked at the data for the last three seasons before the 1994 strike. In those three years, there were 78 team seasons, with 4 teams winning at least 60% of games and 6 teams winning fewer than 40% or 13% representing 60+ or 40- seasons, compared to 27% in 2021-22. We've had periods in the past with competitive inbalance like the National League in the first two decades of the 20th century, perhaps we are in another such era. If I get around to it, I'll take a more comprehensive look at the historical data.
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