THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

It’s much easier to answer this question when your favorite team has won recently (2006) but the 2004/2005 seasons for the Cardinals were hands down my favorite years to be a fan of that team.  I’ll take 100+ wins and not winning the World Series every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

As a Cubs fan, 2008 was a lot more fun than 2003.  Unfortunately 2003 is the year that the Cubs have gone the furthest in my life.  I’d rather have the 2008 team than the 2003 one.

Yeah, I’m not sure that a Cubs fan is a good person for this thread.  I’m not asking if you want to win one more series at the expense of losing 9 more regular season games, where in either case, you lose the final game of your playoffs.

You have to win the final game of the playoffs.  That’s the precondition.  How many more regular season wins do you need in order for you to accept LOSING that last playoff game?

*cough* Mariners lost in the ALCS (second) round *cough*

This is a difficult question.  I’m a Yankees fan (baseball), a Giants fan (football), and I really don’t particularly care about other professional sports, though I used follow basketball and hockey.

Though the Giants had a good regular season record during their last superbowl season, I’ll admit I expected them to lose to the Patriots, with the perfect regular season record, until literally the last minute of the superbowl.  I don’t know how satisfying the surprise superbowl victory was.  But I don’t think I would have wanted to trade places with a Patriots fan that year.  Then there is the question of how I would have reacted to a Giants loss to the Bills in 1991.  They had an excellent regular season record that season and a memorable NFC championship victory over the 49ers.

And a Yankees fan is probably as badly placed to answer this question as a Cubs fan, though for different reasons.

Right, right, same deal with the Penguins (2nd round) and Redwings (3rd round) who did not lose in the final round.

I’m trying to find out how many wins you guys are willing to give up for more wins in the playoffs.  Are you willing to be the 16th place Knicks, and make it to the final round (and win)?  Final round (and lose)?

How much emotion is tied to each win?

"But I don’t think I would have wanted to trade places with a Patriots fan that year.  “

Good example.  The Patriots fan had ALOT of fun the whole season.  A ton.  How much of that emotion is wiped away because of that final play?

Is it enough that they actually would have wanted to trade places with the Giants fans?

To some fans, that final win has enough emotional impact to completely wipe out all the struggles through the season.

To other fans, they prefer the May-December romance of 5-6 months of a great time, even if it means losing that last game.

Is it better to have the romance and the relationship end, or is it better to have that comfortable relationship, with one euphoric honeymoon night?

I remember watching the Ms lose in 2001 and thinking it made the regular season irrelevant, and especially given the unceremonious 4-1 way they got walloped by New York, it all seemed like a joke. I don’t feel that way now, didn’t feel that way a couple of seasons later- 116 games is a great memory- but at the time, it didn’t really matter. You play to win the World Series, and anything less is certainly some kind of failure. I feel like the Patriots failing to win the Super Bowl puts a mark on their 16-0 regular season (not a Pats fan)- they failed to achieve the ultimate goal.

If the Mariners pulled a 2006 St Louis, winning 83 games but taking the Series, I think it’s clearly more of a success than the 2001 season. American sports aren’t European football. You play the season to make the dance. Win the dance.

As a Penguins fan, I wouldn’t trade the ‘93 team for a hundred Cups.  Highest level of hockey I’ve ever seen, by both a team and player.

I think it really depends on how good the regular season is. A historic season like the Mariners 2001 would be something people could look back on for years. That being said I live in Seattle and the most lovable team by most is still the 1995 team, even though they won far fewer games and made it to the same spot in the playoffs.

Personally I can’t answer the question as I’m a Cubs fan. 2008 was pretty fun though mostly because there really wasn’t anything I would change about that team. But if the 2003 team had won the world series I would rather have that team.

I think Braves fans like me would gladly trade a 100-win season for another WS title, but that may have something to do with the relative scarcity of each.

That said, my favorite memories are of the 1991-1993 seasons, when the Braves went worst-to-first, Sid slid, and the Braves won the last great pennant race. 

A dominant regular season is boring, and that may be more true in baseball than in football (or maybe hockey).  That may be due to the number of games, or the fact that I can’t seem to work up as much animus for baseball “villains” as football villains.  I mean, I don’t like the Mets and enjoy seeing their payroll lose, but it’s not like they take cheap shots on a quarterback or do obnoxious end zone celebrations.  So I do not enjoy each game while steamrolling through the division quite as much as I would in a close race.

In the end, I want my team to win games that matter.  In a pennant race, I can derive a lot of utility from watching my team keep it close in September.  Same for any playoff series.  But not as much from games in a 10-game division lead in September.

Yankees fan, so you probably know how this is going to go…

I’d rather win the WS (say, 2000 Yankees) than win every single regular season game and lose in the playoffs (closest thing being the aforementioned 2001 Mariners). 

Expectations matter a lot.  If my team limps in, having won ~90 games, my expectations are likely tempered.  I know they’re not that great a team.  I don’t expect them to win it all (likely there are several other playoff teams that are clearly better), so I’m set up to be pretty happy if they do.  But when my team wins 100+ regular season games, my expectations are higher.

Thus, the more regular season games my team wins, the more important it is for them to “close the deal.”

I’m a Patriots fan.  I definitely preferred the ‘01, ‘03, and ‘04 SB wins to the ‘07 16-0 season.  I enjoyed the ‘96 SB loss to ‘07 as well. 

‘07 was fun for awhile, but by midseason it had gotten boring.  I turned off or stopped paying attention to more games in ‘07 than any other season. 

I agree with Rob, the expectations are higher with an exceptional regular season, and it makes losing out on the championship more painful.  Losing in ‘96 was disapointing.  Losing in ‘07 was infuriating.  (I’m too young to compare ‘85).

From my perspective as an Indian fan, I would take a 83 win regular season that results in a World Series win (like that of the ‘06 Cards) over a 116 win regular season.

However, that is only because the Indians have never won the WS during my lifetime.  However, they have had the best record in MLB 2.5 times (’95, ‘96, ‘07, and in ‘95 they had an incredible record, nearly .700).  I suspect that once I experience a WS victory, my answer would change, as intellectually I do find a great regular season more satisfying than a lucky playoff run.  But until I experience my team being hailed as world champions, there’s no acceptable tradeoff.

As a Red Wings fan, if they can sneak in the playoffs in 8th spot and win it all this season, it would bring me much more joy than last season, when they were in the hunt for president’s trophy the whole season, but lost game 7 of the Stanley Cup. But, part of the reason is that I know that Red Wings have lots of injuries and, if they all come back as expected, have one of the best teams, and can challenge for the Cup this year and in the following seasons. I don’t think I would feel the same if their true talent level was that of the 8th seed and I knew that in the future the best I could hope for would be fighting for the 8th spot.
Also, I never considered STL in 2006 as the worst team ever in WS, I thought they were at least 90-win team, suffering some bad luck during the season. And SEA in 2001 seemed to me as 100+ win team that lucked into 116 wins - really good team but not historically dominant (and I thought they were about equal against Yankees in playoffs, certainly not huge favourites). For me, the greatest difference between Mariners in 2001 and Yankees in 1998 and 1999, and even in 2000-2001, was that those Yankee teams were focused on WS, even at the cost of losing some games late in the season, while Mariners seemed to play the season to the end at their maximum.
Now, I became more interested in sabermetrics couple of years later, so those were my feelings at the time, and not something backed up by numbers.

Or, to answer your question another way: I would rather have 1995 - 2005 ATL run, with 1 WS and total season dominance (chance for WS every year), than 1995 - 2005 FLA run, 2 playoff appearances, both WS wins. It’s more enjoyable to know that your team is continually good, but you have to get 1 WS win during that run.

Davor: ooooh, excellent analogy.

I agree that your “first” will skew you.  Just getting one, any one, will give you a different perspective.

So, presume you are not a World Series virgin, then what’s the tradeoff.  And the Davor question is the far more interesting one.  How much are you willing to pay for that SECOND championship?

Great comment by Davor.  A’s fans would rather have eight reasonably good years with five bad post-seasons than what Marlins fans got.

Hawerchuk, are you presuming this is an A’s fan that got his World Series against the Giants already?

If not, then that’s an even more bold question. 

I like Davor’s question because it puts everything in real-life terms.

As a Pirates fan, if I imagine, as a thought experiment, that all the Pirates’ young players play way over their heads and they perform well as a team this year, I’d say 83 wins + WS victory = 88 wins + WS loss = 92 wins + NLCS loss = 95 wins + NLDS loss. Any situation in which they win 95 or more will probably be more enjoyable than any situation in which they win 85 or fewer. That’s the math, roughly, although there’s no way to know for sure and the idea that I’d know a 95-win team from an 85-win team in real-time is kind of absurd.

As an actual championship virgin, I wouldn’t pay a premium for even the first one. As Hawerchuk suggested, I’d rather have the A’s 1999-2009 than the Marlins’ 1995-2005. What would be most enjoyable, as a fan, is following a good team year in and year out, or even a mediocre team that is rebuilding smartly, moreso than an up-and-down franchise that stumbles onto a championship or two. I would probably trade the Marlins’ ‘03 for the A’s ‘02 in a vacuum, but in the context of the respective franchises’ recent histories, I’d take the A’s.

I wouldn’t care an ounce about regular season wins if my team won the championship, in any sport.

Regular season losses are easy to shrug off (if you end up making the playoffs), whereas postseason losses hurt like hell.

I’m a Suns fan and if you follow basketball, you know what I’m saying. All those 55-60 win seasons mean nothing in the end, if you end up being bounced by the hated Spurs.

From my perspective, the 83-win 2006 season by the champion Cardinals by far trumps the 100+win 2004 season by the Cardinals which suffered the World Series sweep. By far. And by the same token, the St. Louis NFL Rams (with Super Bowl berths sandwiched by absolute awfulness) by far trump the St. Louis NFL Cardinals (never the worst team in the NFL, but never within sniffing distance of the Super Bowl). The regular season is just a means to an end.

To my mind, just scraping in is more fun to watch than 116 wins and if you add in a WS championship on top of just scraping in then it’s no contest.

That said, I’d definitely take the Braves making the playoffs every year over the Marlins WS/fire sale model.  I think the fire sale has to be especially devastating. 

One other preference.  As a Mets fan I imagine that it has to be nice to see a team built from within with young players developing into stars rather than a team of free agents.  Reyes is the guy I enjoy the most b/c I remember when he sucked.

Basketball is weird though, easily the worst setup of the regular season / playoff around.

The NBA would need to cut its season to 32 games, or cut the length of each game, or a combination thereof, to have the same level of uncertainty in the talent v standings that NHL and MLB has.  The NBA further compounds it by having 16 teams in the playoffs.  If they keep the current setup (48 minutes, 82? 84? games), probably 4 team playoffs is what they need.

You’re right about basketball. Why bother with such a long season if the 16th best team gets a similar chance to win in the playoffs.

How similar? That’s up for debate, but there has to be a better way to reward 82 games of performance than simply home court advantage.

But my point is that, regardless of sports, a fan like me would like to win titles, regardless of regular season performance.

Another example, this time from football - I would much rather be a sixth seed 8-8 team who wins the Superbowl than go 18-1 like the Pats. It’s like losing most of the battles but winning the war.

As a Cards fan, I ditto Azru in number 1.  A legitimate dynasty is way more fun than a championship.

#15 - people forget that the Cardinals were 15 games over .500 in June.  Unfortunately, from about 2 weeks earlier through the end of the year, they: lost Pujols for a month, Molina for a month, Edmonds for a month, Eckstien for a month, their #2 pitcher(Mulder) for the season and their closer (Izzy) for the season. Both Rolen and Encarnacion were very banged up and may had gone on the DL if they disclosed their pain.  What you clearly had was a very talented team (same core that won 205 games the previous 2 years with a W.S. trip and a NLCS trip to boot) who were on pace for over 90 wins in June, when they got hit by a 2009 Mets-scale epic rash of injuries the rest of the way.  Suddenly, they get healthy come playoff time and roll.  Everybody acts shocked to this day that an 83-win team won the series.  Another example of people looking at W-L record with no context whatsoever.

Not even close to the least talented team to ever win the W.S.  I will admit, however, that Weaver was pretty darn fluky!

This whole things makes me want to ask- has anyone done, or does anyone want to do, some kind of number-crazy analysis of who was the weakest team to win the WS?

Honestly, after 2002 and the end of the Bonds era a few years later, all my rooting interests are for the Giants to win a World Series. I’d honestly take a flukey WS victory over a string of highly-successful but championship-less teams.

Is there some species of survivor bias in the question?

In other words, a great team year-in, year-out, that somehow never grabs the brass ring, has to taint the memories of those seasons; but at the time, the fans enjoyed knowing their team had a chance every year at the title.  Even breaking through once preserves those memories.  (Davor’s right.  If the Colts has somehow lost to the Bears, their fans would have a much worse feeling about this decade than they do… and maybe, they blow the Jets and Bills away and shoot for the moon.) In the same way, fans of a team mired in a long muddle that shocks the world a couple of times might look back more fondly because of the rings, while at the time it must have been less satisfying because the team lost more often, and entered the playoffs as underdogs on the rare chances they even got there.  Those fans get the joy of the huge upset win, almost as a payoff for their suffering through the losing.  (At least, we Isles fans hope so.  I mean, we’re so far removed from the dynasty that 2002 is a fond memory - and they lost in the first round, primarily because Toronto crippled their best defender and best defensive forward with dirty hits, got comically-short one-game suspensions, and then went to the conference finals… but I’m not bitter or nuthin’.)

I mean, the only 18-1 football team NOT to win the Super Bowl was the 2007 Pats.  That ruins whatever good feelings the fans had building to 18-0, right? - at least short-term.  It was crushing, but what an incredible payoff to actually witness 19-0.  Capping a seven-year run of four titles with the greatest single-year in pro football history would have put the Pats among the greatest dynasties in the NFL, if not first.  I think it was worth taking the shot.  And, in the long run, Pats fans can always say that their team took their shot, and didn’t pass it up… so it could go from good times to bad times back to good memories… or at least proud memories.

I’ve been a Penguin fan since 1980 and I can honestly say that I still have not recovered from David Volek’s slapshot. ‘Tis MUCH MUCH MUCH better to squeak into the playoffs and win the championship (2005 Steelers) than to dominate the regular season and lose in the playoffs. It’s not even close.

Francisco Cabrera and David Volek...what a horrible Freshman year of college that was sports-wise.

The Steelers may have technically “snuck” into the playoffs in 2005 based on seed, but they had a 11-5 record in a crazy-loaded AFC.  Not only that, but two of the Steeler’s losses that year came with Batch as main QB instead of Roth.  In fact, they were favored in every game they played in the playoffs, minus the Colts game.  That includes vs. the Seahawks, who were either the #1 or #2 seed from the NFC.  That was a great team that proved it in the playoffs.  16 games isn’t enough sample size to determine if a 13-3 team is really “better” than a 10-6 team anyway.

Agree about the Steelers. I remember remarking at the start of the playoffs that the Steelers were surely the best #6 seed ever.

Maybe the best example from my past would be the 90-91 Pens who languished while Lemieux was out and needed a late push to get into the playoffs. The Francis trade didn’t hurt of course. Great memories from that season even though most of the regular season was quite frustrating.

Just look at the Eagles this year.  One extra-loss difference changed them from a #2 seed to a #6 seed.  That could have been the difference of one fluky catch, a single bad bounce, or an isolated blown ref call.  Yet if they beat the #1 seed as a #6, people who don’t get it will say “what a huge upset, blah, blah, blah.” When before the Dallas loss everybody was picking them as an NFC favorite.

Somewhat related, I’d love to see NFL-like playoff scenarios/brackets of every MLB season the past 10 years or so after 16 games played.  I wonder how many times the Royals or Reds or Pirates would have made the playoffs?

As a fan of both the 95 and 2001 M’s teams, I’d say I can’t answer that.  2001 was crazy fun to follow all year.  That said, I didn’t mind losing, but I did mind going out with a whimper, that did deflate the season a lot.  It helps that the season took the pain out of losing Griffey, Randy, and ARod.