March 14, 2010
The "World Champ of Baseball Annuals"  
Pat Andriola
Rich Barbieri John Barten Brian Borawski Craig Brown Evan Brunell Chuck Brownson Kevin Dame Joshua Fisher David Gassko Jeremy Greenhouse Brandon Isleib Chris Jaffe Max Marchi Bruce Markusen Dan Novick Harry Pavlidis Alex Pedicini Jeff Sackmann Nick Steiner Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! Geoff Young John Brattain And here's the full roster.
Or you can search by:
Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. Find premium Chicago Cubs tickets and other Chicago tickets at JustGreatTickets.com. Chicago Cubs Tickets Chicago Tickets  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
When down 3 games to 2 in the World Series . . .by Chris JaffeNovember 03, 2009 Well, the Phillies staved off elimination, giving us our first World Series to reach Game Six in a half-dozen years. The question now is: what does history tell us of teams in this situation? Well, there have been 57 previous best-of-seven World Series that reached a Game Six. In the sixth contest*, the trailing has amassed an impressive record of 35-22. Not too shabby. Actually, it was achieved in a very odd manner. The first two dozen such games were split evenly 12-12 between leaders and trailers. The most recent 18 games have been likewise split down the middle, 50% each. However, from 1955 to 1975, 15 World Series reached Game Six - and the trailing team went 14-1 in those games. Only in 1959 did the Series end in the sixth contest. Weird. Anyhow, that's only half the battle. After going 35-22 in Game Six, the survivors went 17-18 in Game Seven. Overall then, teams trailing 3 games to 2 in a best of seven World Series go 17-40 in their quest for the World Championship, so odds are a bit over one-third. Since I have the list with me, here's the roll call of the comebackers (grouped into fives for readability): 1924 WAS 1925 PIT 1926 STL 1934 STL 1940 CIN 1946 STL 1952 NYY 1958 NYY 1968 DET 1973 OAK 1979 PIT 1985 KCR 1986 NYM 1997 MIN 1991 MIN 2001 ARI 2001 ANA Only the 1926 Cards and 2001 D-backs did it against the Yanks. There's a wrinkle, though. Philly has to go on the road. Of the above 17 teams, only six did it on the road. They are: the 1979 Pirates, 1968 Tigers, 1958 Yankees, 1952 Yankees, 1934 Cardinals, and 1926 Cardinals. Interestingly, half of those teams came back from 3-to-1 deficits. * Note: for purposes of this research, the tie in the 1912 World Series never happened. Thus Game Eight is considered Game Seven, and so on down the line). History instructor by day, statnerd by night, Chris Jaffe leads one of the most exciting double lives imaginable; with the exception of every other double life possible to imagine. Despite his lack of comic-book-hero-worthiness, Chris enjoys farting around with this stuff. His new book, Evaluating Baseball's Managers is available for order. Chris welcomes responses to his articles via e-mail.
Jakeem said...
I believe he meant the 1987 World Series. The home team won every game, so the last two games were in Minnesota. Posted 11/03 at 07:37 AM
bob said...
What are the home/road splits for the teams down 3-2 that came back to take the Series and those that didn’t? Posted 11/03 at 07:05 PM
Dan said...
Philadelphia is the best road team in baseball, so if there was one team to do it… Posted 11/03 at 07:07 PM
Chris J. said...
Bob - good question, but I’m not sure. I didn’t think to look at H/R until I’d looked through I’d pretty much finished it off. Looking above, 6 of the success did it on the road, and 11 at home—my hunch is that roughly gives us an idea what the importance of home field advantage. I really don’t know, though.
Posted 11/03 at 09:44 PM
James said...
*2002 ANA Posted 11/04 at 06:08 PM
Ted said...
I was always upset that the Cardinals lost a 3-2 lead in the World Series in 1968, 1985, and 1987. But I didn’t realize they won after being down 3-2 3 other times. Posted 11/04 at 06:26 PM
Nick said...
The 1982 Cardinals should also be on this list. Posted 11/09 at 10:30 PM
Page 1 of 1
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. Do you have a general question or comment for one of THT's writers? Send it in to our weekly mailbag We also welcome unsolicited op-ed pieces of approximately 500 words for consideration. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and consistency of style. Please include your whole name and location to be considered. If you have a comment about this specific article, please email the writer. | ||||
Did the Marlins come back from down 3-1 in ‘97? Minnesota certainly didn’t…