My Latest Comment on Success in the Playoffs

I commented on in a comment at another site, and I thought I would share it here, as it encapsulates a lot of thoughts and ideas that I've been squirreling away and represents my latest thoughts about winning championships.

Discussion of Giants Success Show Lack of Knowledge of Latest Playoff Research Studies

The discussion here reflects how most people don't understand the peculiarities of the playoffs, and really, ultimately, of baseball.  This is something I've been slowly realizing over time and it appears to be coming to a head now.  Studies by both Baseball Prospectus and The Hardball Times investigated the connection between success in the playoffs and offense and defense.  What both, using much different methodologies, found is that it is defense (pitching and fielding) that matters significantly in the playoffs.  Offense - whether via BA, HR, walks, even SB - did not significantly affect a team's likelihood to go deep into the playoffs.

To Win In Playoffs, Teams Need Quality Starts and to Avoid Disaster Starts

What my research into the playoffs and the success rate of pitchers and therefore their teams, when they throw a quality start (as defined by Shandler's PQS methodology, which is a saber version of QS) showed is that when a team gets a better PQS rating (DOM, DIS, other) from their starter than the other team, they won a vast majority of the time, 82% of the starts in the 2008-2011 playoffs.  And obviously, having a quality start was a good way of increasing the probability of having a better PQS, and teams getting a high PQS (DOM start in Shandler's nomenclature or dominating) won 69% of the time, 82% of the time if you took out all the matchups where both pitchers had a DOM start.

Clearly, it behooves teams to get a quality start in the playoffs and avoid DIS (for disaster) starts, where teams won only 30% of the time, 20% of the time when you take out the games where both starters had disaster starts.  Thus, to maximize your team's chances of winning in the playoffs, you want to have a rotation of starters who consistently have high DOM percentages and low DIS percentages (as percentage of total starts).

Teams Can Build a Staff of Pitchers Who Throw a Lot of QS and avoid DIS

And as we know pitchers can be relatively consistent in throwing quality starts, so ideally you want a staff of pitchers who consistently throw quality starts.  The Giants have that with Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, and Vogelsong.  As poorly as Lincecum appeared to pitch, he still had 55% of his starts be DOM starts.  Cain, Bumgarner, and Vogelsong were all over 60%, in 2012.  Similarly in 2010, the trio of Lincecum, Cain, and Bumgarner were all above 60%, and Sanchez was high too.

And as average as Zito is - and he is average, people keep on treating him as if he is a poor pitcher, he is not, he is just not equal to his contract, but he has been good for the Giants - when he is on, he is capable of having a number of quality starts (see his great start against Colorado in his first start of 2012; see his start to the 2010 season, ironic since he didn't make the playoff rosters, as when he is lost, he is lost).

Keys to Playoff Success that BP Study Found and Giants

BP's study went deeper than just identifying defense as the key to winning in the playoffs.  They came up with three metrics by which teams doing well in them tended to do better in the playoffs.  First off was having a pitching staff that overall has a high K/9.  The Giants have had that in recent seasons, not so much in the years listed as "better" in the lists above.  That is why they decided to study this, to find out why Beane's "stuff" didn't work in the playoffs, and one was that his staffs did not strike out that much.  Second off was having a high WRXL closer (Wilson was that; Romo was pitching like one).  Beane was lacking there as well, he thought relievers were easily replaceable.  Lastly was having a top fielding teams (2010 was that; not sure about 2012).  BP looked at all the A's playoff teams and none met the criteria until their last team.

Pitching Controls Action in Baseball

This makes a lot of sense if you think hard about it.  Pitching really does control the action.  If it didn't, pitchers like Barry Zito or Bobby Jones or Jeff Weaver have no chance to be a playoff hero.  Yet they were.  We talk all the time about how the good hitters take advantage of pitchers' mistakes.  Clearly, the best pitchers make fewer mistakes.  And a great defense helps out when the pitcher makes a mistake and the ball is blasted (like all those balls that Blanco caught in the playoffs, or especially that one he caught in Cain's Perfect Game).

That's How Giants Won Two in Three

These explain why the Giants of 2010 and 2012 were able to do what the Giants teams in the past were not able to do.  They had good pitching then that did not rely on strikeouts, but have great pitching now that is reliant on strikeouts.  They also had good closers, able to shut down the other team cold.  Couple all that with good overall defense.

Offense Only Need to be Good Enough, Not Great As Most Think

And their offense was good enough.  Clearly not as great as the offenses the Giants had previously, but as noted by two different studies by two noted baseball analytics organizations, offense don't really matter in the playoffs.  Contrary to what most fans, including me, have thought for all of our lives, it is not offense that we should revere, it is pitching, particularly the strikeout pitchers (though I would note my opinion that if BP redid their study to include K/BB, that ratio might make their cut of metrics that matter in going deep).

Giants Pitchers Better Than Sabers Say

I would also note that sabermetrics is failing to account for two traits that strongly define the Giants pitching staff.  One is that both Cain and Zito are among the very rare pitchers who are capable of controlling their BABIP and keeping it much below the mean of .300.  That skill is not captured in any of the advanced saber metrics out there in common use, in fact, they are penalized in these metrics as the assumption is that they are being lucky.  The other is that the Giants pitching staff, however they do it, are capable of maintaining a low HR/FB ratio.  Fangraphs first studied Cain, then the entire staff, and found that somehow - they speculated that Righetti has some secret sauce - the Giants as a team are able to prevent homeruns.  However, again, they are penalized in any metric that assume a regression in their HR/FB ratio.

Giants Better Than Most People Think

Thus, overall, these are the reasons explaining much of the confusion I have seen in the comment thread here.  People, particularly sabermetrics, view offense as more important than pitching, when it should be the other way around, by a lot.  Particularly as it relates to the playoffs.

People consider it a total fluke that the Giants had that long string of good starts to end these playoffs, but they forget that basically the same group of starters (including Zito but Sanchez instead of Vogelsong) in 2010 had the longest streak of starts where the opposition was kept to 3 runs or less (can't remember the exact number, something like 20+ games) since the 1910's when the deadball era was still alive.  The Giants have great pitching and fielding, and that shone again in these playoffs.  And, again, it is defense - pitching and fielding - that helps a team go deep into the playoffs, not offense, great, good, or otherwise.

And for all the wisecracks about the Giants offense, the playoff lineup was the basic lineup since Scutaro and Pence joined the team and with them in there, the Giants led all NL teams in average run scored on the road (or was second, don't remember exactly) and, home or road, averaged 5.2 runs per game in August to the end of the season.

So the Giants winning in 2012 was no fluke.  The pitching is capable of such streaks and is composed of pitchers who do quality starts regularly.  Quality starts are the keys to winning in the playoffs.  Still, the offense has been very good since the Giants added Pence to the lineup, and continued to be good enough during the playoffs, where they averaged 4.3 runs per game while allowing 2.9 runs per game.  That Pythagorean works out to 11 wins in 16 games, which is exactly what they won.  The Giants earned their World Championship, with pitching and fielding, and good enough offense to justify the number of games that they won.