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February 06, 2012

Super at the right time

The message may be: Never give up.

Or perhaps it's: We live in an age where mediocrity is good enough.

Over the past year in sports:
{exp:list_maker}The New York Giants won the Super Bowl after barely making the playoffs with a 9-7 regular-season record.
Alabama won the college football championship, such as it is, after not even qualifying for the Southeastern Conference championship game.
The Dallas Mavericks won the NBA championship after finishing second in their division.
Connecticut won the NCAA basketball tournament after going 9-9 in the Big East.
And finally, getting to our sport, the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series after barely making the postseason, not winning their division and having only the eighth-best regular season record in the majors. {/exp:list_maker}You want purity or parity? You decide.
Posted by: Joe Distelheim

October 31, 2011

Postseason predictions wrap-up

Twenty Hardball Times staffers made their predictions of how the 2011 postseason would play itself out. Some proved prescient, a few less so. Let's take a look at the rankings to see whose guesses came closest to, and shortest of, perfection.

Scoring was based on a 5-3-1 system similar to regular-season awards: If someone picked a Division Series correctly, that person received one point, choosing an LCS winner garnered three points, while being a fortune teller and predicting the World Series winner earned five points. (Nobody got those five points.)

Here are everyone's picks and the results, ranked by total points.
Click for more...

Posted by: Greg Simons

October 28, 2011

Comparing Game Sixes: 1975 vs. 2011

How great was last night’s Game Six of the World Series?

Well, let’s look at it for a second. On Monday, I debuted a system for trying to rank the overall quality and excitement of a World Series based on several factors that generally help make a postseason series memorable. Let’s apply that system to Game Six of last night and see how many points it accrues. And for perspective, we’ll compare it to Game Six of 1975—the gold standards of World Series Game Sixes.

Key note: This system isn’t intended to be any final word on any matter. It’s more a starting point than a finishing point. It isn’t perfect by any means, but it does work pretty dang well.

If you’re curious, you can find the full methodology in the references and resources section at the end of my column from Monday. Okay, now on to the comparison.

Let’s start with 1975’s Game Six.

It forced an extra potential elimination game, which is worth five points. It also ensured the Series would go the full seven games, which is worth 10 points (a postseason series gets five points for going six games, and 15 for going seven). So that’s a total of 15 points so far.

The Red Sox won by one run; so that’s worth three points. 18 points in all.

They won on a walk-off home run by Carlton Fisk—that’s 15 more points. 33 points in all.

The game went extra innings. Any game gets three points for going into extra frames. On top of that, it gets four points for each individual extra inning. Since Game Six went 12 innings, that’s three extra frames so 12 more points, for a total 15 points caused by extra innings. That’s an overall total of 48 points so far.
Earlier on, the Red Sox tied the game in the eighth inning. That’s three points. 51 points total.

Lastly, there are comebacks. There are two kinds of comebacks, ones that just tie the score and ones that cause the lead to change hands. The latter are worth twice as much as the former. There were two comebacks in Game Six of the 1975 World Series; each of which caused the lead to change hands. Both were also comebacks from three-run deficits. In all, that’s eight points for comebacks

Add it all up, and Game Six of the 1975 World Series is worth 59 points.

Now for the new contender. Again, five points for forcing an extra game that could result in an elimination, and on top of that 10 points for making the World Series go a full seven games. That's 15 points to start.

Also similar: three points for being a one-run win; this time 10-9 for St. Louis. So far, that’s 18 points.

Again, 15 points for a walk-off homer, this one by David Freese. We're at 33 points and counting.

Then there’s extra innings. It also gets three points for going into extras. Since it went 11, that’s eight points for its two extra innings. St. Louis trailed entering the bottom of the 10th but came back to tie it. That’s worth five points. All extra inning stuff is worth 16 points. That gives this game a tally of 49 points, and we’re still not done.

However, instead of an eighth inning tie a la 1975, last night’s Game Six featured a ninth inning tie. That’s worth six points. So far, 55 points. Almost to 1975’s score.

Finally, comebacks. This game featured six of them, four of them from one-run deficits and the others from a two and three-run gap. Only three resulted in the leads changing hands—a pair of one-runners, and the two-run gap. In all, that’s worth six points. (Yes, there were more comebacks than in 1975, but most were from just one-run deficits and only half the time resulted in a lead change, so it doesn’t score as high).

Add it all together, and it adds up to 61 points, which tops 1975’s 59 points.

Does that mean this game was definitively better. No, of course not. That’s part of the beauty of baseball—there is no such thing as definitively better. But it does tell us this: Anyone who argues that this game was the best Game Six in World Series history has a legitimate point. He’s not just engaging in the all-too-commonly expressed historical amnesia that pronounced the most recent great event the greatest event ever. This one might have been.

Personally, I’d pick 1975’s Game Six over this one because the items not captured in the raw number favor 1975. While last night was very exciting, there was a lot of sloppy and frankly abysmal play. The teams committed five errors—and they were really ugly errors.

Alternately, 1975 had two fantastic moments not captured above. In the bottom of the ninth with the score 6-6, Boston loaded the bases with no outs, only to hit into a double play with a fly out and runner gunned down at the plate. Then a routine out ended the rally. In the 11th, Dwight Evans made an incredible catch on a Joe Morgan shot to right that resulted in a double play—the runner on first never though Evans could get to it.

Last night had Mike Napoli’s awesome pickoff play at third, and some interesting managerial gamesmanship, but in all I’d give a slight edge to 1975. But if someone wanted to argue for 2011—yeah, I could see that.

Oh, if you're curious, Game Six of the 1986 World Series comes in at 51.3 points.

How do they all compare to the best Game Sevens? It's an uneven playing field because I'm giving all the Game Sixes some points that are really more series-dependent; namely the 10 points for forcing a Game Seven and five points for ensuring there will be an extra elimination game. I'd want to remove those points before comparing them to a Game Seven. Or, to flip it around, a good argument can be made that I should assign the 10 points for causing Game Seven to a Game Seven. (After all, in the official methodology, a Series gets the extra points for going the distance, and a Game Six isn't the distance).

Anyhow, let's look at Game Seven of 1960, AKA the Mazeroski game. That's worth 49.7 points—and that's not including any additional 10 points for a World Series going seven games or any five points as an additional elimination game. Without those additional points, last night would come in at 46 points.

Again, the key point is that they're all pretty similar. A case can be made one way or the other for what's the greatest game of all-time. But when you get down to it -- I don' t see how you go against the Game Seven when it's at all close.
Posted by: Chris Jaffe

October 27, 2011

How good has Mike Napoli’s World Series been?

With the World Series having shifted to St. Louis for good, we won't be able to hear the catchy "Na-Po-Li!" chant echo throughout Arlington anymore. However, Texas' catcher will still be heard and felt in a big way for the rest of the series and will likely be named series MVP if the Rangers close out their first world championship.

Mike Napoli has been so strong offensively in the eighth spot in the Rangers lineup that he's outperformed every player in this series except, perhaps, Cardinals hitter Albert Pujols. Even Pujols' batting average, RBI and slugging percentage don't match up to Napoli's production over the first five World Series games. In fact, if we look back at the cleanup hitters in the past five Fall Classics, it seems like Napoli has out-produced them all.

	             Slash Line	HR	RBI	R	XBH
Napoli 2011	.308/.389/.846	2	9	2	3
C. Ross  2010	.235/.381/.471	1	2	5	2
Guerrero 2010	.071/.125/.071	0	2	0	0
A-Rod 2009	.250/.423/.550	1	6	5	4
Howard 2009	.174/.240/.391	1	3	3	3
Howard 2008	.286/.375/.762	3	6	3	4
C. Pena 2008	.118/.250/.176	0	2	1	1
M. Ramirez 2007	.250/.333/.313	0	2	3	1
M. Holliday 2007.294/.294/.471	1	3	1	1

Posted by: Shlomo Sprung

October 24, 2011

Struggling Wilson faces Game Five pressure

With the World Series now tied at two games apiece after Derek Holland's near-complete game gem, the Series shifts to a crucial Game Five between the two teams' nominal aces. While Chris Carpenter has lived up to that name so far in the postseason, especially in his complete game shutout of Philadelphia in the deciding Game Five of the NLDS, Texas' C.J. Wilson has struggled, to say the least.

Wilson issued six walks in 5.2 innings in the Rangers' 3-2 Game One loss to St. Louis, which spoiled an otherwise decent start. He has actually thrown a higher percentage of strikes than Carpenter, but Wilson's alarming walk rate (14 in 21.1 postseason innings) and his six home runs allowed have doomed his ERA and WHIP in the playoffs.

	         IP	Record  ERA	WHIP	Home runs	Strike %
C. Carpenter      23	3-0   3.52	1.13	2	        57.4
C.J. Wilson	  21.1	0-3   7.17	1.82	6	        60.1

In a ballpark like Texas', the most hitter- and home run-friendly park this season by a sizeable margin according to ESPN's Park Factor, Wilson's inability to keep balls in the yard against a powerful Cardinals offense could doom the Rangers to a second consecutive World Series defeat. With potentially two games coming from Busch Stadium on Wednesday and Thursday, Wilson could be facing the most pressure-packed start of any pitcher this season. His postseason record to date does not look good for Texas' chances.
Posted by: Shlomo Sprung


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