Thoughts on Championships and Dynasties

Saw a column on Fox Sports, about how the season teaches us nothing, about how the season don't matter much anymore, how the best team no longer wins the World Series championship, about how there's no dynasties anymore, and I just couldn't let it go without comment.  My comment is below, unchanged, other than that size limits forced me to break it up into, like, five comments, plus I put in what seems to be the right breakpoint for a header.
ogc thoughts

Speaking as a saber and as someone who loves baseball history, maybe the season is speaking but people aren't listening.

"That Oakland team the Royals beat in that first game outscored Kansas City by 78 runs and allowed 52 fewer runs during the regular season, but the playoffs didn'€™t care about that." This was as true now as it was 100 years ago. Except 100 years ago, you just have the one playoff series, the World Series. And I'm sure if you go through them all, you will find similar "anomalies".

Playoff Team Is Not the Team Who Won in the Season

It is not just different schedules and injuries, it is the composition of the team when the two teams finally meet in the playoffs: the composite team represented by the season is much different from the one playing in the playoffs. For example, in 2012, analysts raved about how much better the Reds bullpen was than the Giants. Because, duh, the bullpen stats for the Giants were worse the Reds by a lot, the Reds were superlative. Only, the Giants didn't, couldn't bring every reliever they had that season, they brought the ones who were the best that they had when the playoffs began, and guess what? Their collective ERA was basically the same as the Reds. Or if a team loses someone right at the last moment, like the A’s did when Reggie Jackson scored the winning run but injuring himself in the process, taking him out of the World Series.

So there are a lot of reasons why the regular season results do not match up with the playoffs. The fact is, as much as it annoys people, it has been agreed upon since the World Series began that the best team is the one who wins the World Series. Sure, maybe the better team on paper lost, but as any of us who have played the game, even just in elementary school, we know that some people rise to the occasion more than other people. The best team by stats has not always won (heck, I’ll bet that often enough, the best team by run differential isn’t even in the playoffs prior to divisional playoffs) so why that’s a problem today when it has been true for all our lives is beyond me.

Maybe Billy Beane is Doing the Wrong Things

And I find that too many sabers are under the thrall of Billy Beane. His "stuff" don't work in the playoffs, but has anyone ever looked into why? Actually, some have, both BP and Fangraphs.

Both did studies, taking different angles at how teams win in today’s playoffs. Using different methodologies, they came to the same conclusion: pitching and defense matters, hitting does not, even HR hitting strikes out as a significant factor. In 18 seasons as GM, only selected SP with 5 of his first picks, in the first round. Counting all actual first round picks (does not include supplemental, which is not really similar enough to be lumped together), he selected SP with 8 out of 22 picks (and thus 14 position players).

BP went even further with their study. They found what they considered to be key metrics to capture regarding successful teams: K/9 for pitching staff (i.e. SP and RP), strong closer (their metric is WXRL), and strong fielding (FRAA or Fielding Runs Above Average). When they compiled and ranked all the playoff teams, the teams strong across the board relative to history not only did well, but 9 of the top 10 made the World Series, and 8 of 10 won (the ninth lost to one of the Top 10’s).

Secret Sauce Does Work

And even BP (heck the author of the study himself!) did not understand how to apply their findings. They started a column called “Secret Sauce” comparing the teams by their K/9, WXRL, and FRAA. Unfortunately for them, it just didn’t work for them, and they had egg on their face, and wrote it off as saying that the playoffs have changed.

What they forgot is that the secret sauce works against where the teams ranked in history, not how they compare to each other. Team A might have better numbers across the three categories than Team B, only to lose to Team B. However, what they forgot to look at is if Team A ranks 80th out of 150 and Team B ranks 100th out of 150, they probably have roughly equal odds of going deeper in the playoffs. They should have broken up the historic record of playoffs teams, using these metrics and how they ranked, and grouped them together based on how the teams did in the playoffs. Clearly, if you are a Top 10 ranked team in the history of divisional playoffs, you mostly like not only make the playoffs, but you win it (as the Giants did in 2010). But maybe the next grouping down only makes the World Series, but only wins about half the time. Then the next group gets to the World Series, but rarely wins. Then those who only make it to the Championship Series, and mostly lose there. And so on.

Quality Starts is a Key Metric for Differentiation

My study of Baseball Forecaster’s version of Quality Starts (which they named Pure Quality Starts, as it uses saber rules for rating each start as a dominant, or good (DOM), start vs. disaster, or bad (DIS), start) has led me to conclude that there is a way to maximize your chances in the playoffs: get SP who can throw QS most of the time. They also forgot to name the in-between starts (which I’ve been calling MID for middle starts), as it turns out that those starts still keeps your team in the game. Ideally, you want a SP who can avoid the Disaster starts while throwing Dominant (or quality) starts.

I know that this is so obvious that if you have a very good pitcher, you are more likely to win a game than if you don’t. What most people don’t realize is that if your pitcher throws a quality start while the other pitcher doesn’t, your team wins around 70-80% of the time. Not a slam dunk, but as close as you can get in the majors.

The next step in realization that most people don’t get is that a team could then strive to compile a staff that can deliver quality starts in the playoffs. The Giants did that with Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner in 2010, the Phillies did that via trades in 2011, and we know that the Giants did win, while the Phillies did lose.

There are tricky parts to the equation of success. One is getting your SP to be comfortable enough to perform in the playoffs as well as he did during the regular season. The Giants were able to do that with their trio for the most part, but some players just falter in the playoffs, for whatever reasons.

Here are some examples I’m familiar with. Peavy has great QS stats in the season (75% QS/DOM in recent years), but he has yet to throw one DOM start in the playoffs after 9 career starts, 7.98 ERA. Hudson has been great during the regular season as well, but had only 38% QS/DOM in 13 starts and a high 23% DIS (elite under 10%, good under 20%). But because he was pulled fast out of the bad starts, he has a 3.69 ERA in the playoffs. Kershaw might be the best pitcher of this generation, but after 8 career playoff starts, he has a 4.98 ERA, 4 out of 8 DOM/QS or 50% (he is at 80%+ during the season), with 2 DIS starts or 25%, which is far too much for a pitcher of his ilk (he’s been consistently under 10% during regular season). But some of it is the small sample size, as Kershaw has DOM starts in 4 of his last 6, which is roughly what one would expect out of a perennial Cy Young contender.

Why Phillies Failed in 2011 In Spite of Quality Rotation

The Phillies did get quality starts from their starters in 2011, but, unfortunately, they were unable to win. As I noted above, quality usually wins, but if the other team is matching quality for quality, and get a little luck where they beat the Phillies in spite of a poorer start, then the Phillies will lose. A quality start is no guarantee, it just greatly improves your odds.

It didn’t help that the Phillies didn’t have a great defense. They had 6 players with -7 DRS or worse (5 were -9 or worse), which suggests a pretty poor defensive team (-59 in total). That’s 6 losses bad! But per UZR, while not as bad as painted by DRS, per UZR, their defense cost the team roughly half a win.

And Madson, while a good closer and reliever, his WAR was only 10th in the majors. Plus, he was somewhat lucky that season, for while his ERA was a sterling 2.37, his xFIP was 2.94, so while he was good, he was also lucky with the homers that should have been given up. And by WPA, he was 17th in the majors. And it was a career year for him, he never had any season close to as good as he was that season.

Beane Disdain for Secret Sauce is His Weakness

Beane, even though he seems to be king of the Sabers, does not believe in strikeouts. His teams are consistently in the middle of the AL in K/9. He also has never believed in closers, he believes that relievers can be easily replaced (fungible), which is a saber rule that I think will disappear over time, because that’s just not true.

For, if they can be easily replaced, then why don’t every team have a super great bullpen? That’s what that rule implies, ultimately. I think confirmation bias affects the thinking behind this rule, people see teams bring up a new closer who succeeds, and think that it is easy to replace relievers, even closers, but they forget about all the failures along the way before your team finds that good reliever, for by then, their window to win that season is over.

The only thing Beane has picked up on is putting together strong fielding teams. I see the A’s regularly now in recent seasons among the leaders in fieldings, using the advanced metrics available. Though his team this year has returned to being bad, they have a -32 UZR, which means that their defense cost them 3 wins. Still, recent years have been good. But defense can’t save you from a well struck ball going into the field of play as well as a strikeout or a really good closer that you can rely on.

Maybe It's Simply The Best Team for the Moment

So, like it or not, the team ending up winning it all is the best for that moment of time, as that team might be better than their seasonal team, or the other team is worse than their seasonal team, or both. It's fine if you think that the winner is not the best team, and I'm sure people can find all sorts of statistics to back that up. But nobody has come up with THE formula yet that encapsulates everything that baseball is, so as far as I'm concerned, this is the 6 blind men describing the elephant parable.

Championships is Not Luck

And I think it's pretty sad if anyone thinks that winning a championship is just a matter of luck, with no skill involved. Because, ultimately, that means you think that winning any particular game is simply luck. Is it luck when Kershaw or Bumgarner throws a great game? Or Posey drives in some runs? Is that just luck?

Then why watch games? Why invest anything into following your team? Just go to your bedroom and play Yahtzee, that's basically the same thing, luck happening over and over, if that's what you really believe.

The Giants Are a Dynasty

And people keep on saying that there is no dynasties anymore. The Giants have won 3 in 5 seasons, something that hasn’t been done in 60 years. They might have gotten three in the row in 2011, except that Posey was took out by a hit that is outlawed by the NFL, for, in spite of losing him, they were still battling for the playoffs into August even with two catchers who couldn’t hit as well. And the Giants were 34-17 with Pence starting this season, so I'm sure had he not had his arm broken by a nothing prospect in a nothing spring game, the Giants would still be battling right now, close to LA.

Furthermore, they had 8 key contributors who were the same on the 2010 and 2014 Championships. The Yankees, who won 4 in 5 seasons, also repeated 8 key contributors between 1996 and 2000. So how is the Giants not a dynasty?