We are the champions, my friend
First, congrats go out to the 2012 World Series champion San Francisco Giants. Yankee fans are currently lamenting the fact that they didn’t advance to the Fall Classic. So now that the series is completed, we have a blueprint Brian Cashman can use to ensure he fulfills the Yankees mission statement of World Series success in 2013.
If you want to get to the World Series (Tigers)
-Win 88 games during the regular season
-Be 6 games under .500 midseason
-Be a truly awful road team (.469)
-Spend most of the season in 3rd place and don’t even lead your division for good until September 25, when the team in front of you loses 10 of 12
-Give up significantly more runs than the team you play in the ALDS (in the regular season) and score far fewer than the team you play in the ALCS
-Make sure that 4 of your starting 9 are awful hitters
-Field one of the worst defensive teams in all of baseball
-Have one of the worst bullpens in your league
If you want to win the World Series (Giants)
-Have a middling pitching staff
-Make sure that 4 of your starting 9 are awful hitters
-Have an everyday RF with a .287 OBP
-Forget about 1st ballot Hall of Famers, get a journeyman shortstop mid season
-Lose your best offensive player to a PED violation
-Have the ace of your staff post his worst season, and the worst ERA in the sport in the past 3 years
-Cap off your new found success with a good, old fashioned riot.
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7 Responses to Ladies and Gents, we now have a formula for winning in October
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TIQ IQ
The season was full of ironies. I’m not sure of the 4 awful hitters from each team but I do know 2 hitters that are ranked very low sabermetrically that did well in the post season. Marco Scutero is ranked 14th of 2nd basemen and I refused to count his rank among “all” hitters but it is on page 4 of 5 at fangraphs. Never would predict he’d be the guy to carry the Giants through the playoffs. But rather, maybe a great hitter like Nick Swisher, (did you know he was the 2nd best hitter on the NY Yankees???) Number crunchers say Nick is the better hitter. Scutero hit .300, rarely walked or struck out…scored a bunch of runs and knocked in a few. Not bad for a guy the saberstatic guys would bat 8th or 9th or not even want on the team. Yet he was brilliant with that short little swing, being MVP of 1 of the playoff series and knocking in the winning run in game 4. Not to mention some late game heroics against Mo. But in “hindsight” who who you have rather had, Scutero? Or anyone else in baseball. And who would have been better than say, Swisher in the last 4 post seasons? Any AAA hitter….isn’t that the way WAR works? (small sample size to the rescue).
The other is Delmon Young. I looked up his WAR but fan-graphs doesn’t have him in the top 16 leftfielders and I’m too lazy to search further. He also does not walk. But he seems to hit the ball every year when playoff time comes. He hit homers to both left and right field…clutch, game winning or tying type hits.
So yes, the 2 teams that made the WS were not the greatest examples of powerhouse, dominant, 162 game monsters, were they? They don’t have the best players. Neither did the Cardinals last year. (They were probably the 8th best team) But this is why baseball is such a great sport, you never know what will happen.
Here are 2 quotes I just found from Brian Sabean, Giants GM 1st…then Peter Gammons, 2nd
(Sabean)The game isn’t as complicated as some people think it is,” Sabean said. “It’s about doing things to win. Pitching. Do little things. Hit. Situational hitting. Defense.”
(Gammons)WAR and VORP and OPS+ are useful, and legitimate, but there is a difference between statistical science and playing the game, the difference between two-dimensional analytics and three-dimensional humans. For 11 games in October, no one played the three-dimensional game better than the Giants, and now that it’s been two times in three years, they should be admired, respected and lauded for doing what they do and doing it right.
(Hawaii Dave) I love Gammons take on Sabersonix…I agree, these stats are certainly useful and legitimate. But the game is played 3 dimensionally.
Everyone is missing the obvious: Beards, man. You have to have beards to win. If two teams have beards, the team with the longer beards win. Time and again. Look it up.
Yankee policy of “clean-shaven” is our main problem.
Bravo, and don’t forget the GM. Anytime a bearded GM goes up against a non-bearded GM, the hairy guy always wins.
100% agree
Good point. The Yankees should be focusing on ‘Big hairy managers’ instead of big hairy monsters!
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