“My sh*t doesn’t work in the playoffs,”
Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane once exasperatedly declared.
Since 1998, when Beane became GM of the A’s, the A’s have made the playoffs 8
times. After Tuesday’s loss to the Royals, the A’s have made it out of the
first round of the playoffs just once, despite the fact that those eight ball
clubs averaged more than 95 wins, which is hardly the mark of a team does not
deserve to be in the playoffs. The A’s
have lost in the AL Divisional Series 6 times over the past 15 years; in each
series they lost 2 games to 3.
There has been much speculation on
why the A’s have not experienced much postseason success with teams that were
considered superb by nearly any metric. While falling to the Tigers in the ALDS
in both 2012 and 2013, many people speculated that it was a result of their
lack of elite pitching, as the Tigers had the best pitching starting pitching
in baseball over those two seasons with the best marks in ERA-, FIP, and K/9
from 2012 to 20131 The A’s have been regarded to have one of the
deepest teams in baseball, but in those two seasons the Tigers had two aces,
while the A’s had none.
In July the
A’s responded to the accusations of lack of elite pitching by trading one of
the best prospects in baseball, Addison Russell, for a very good starter, Jeff
Samardzija. Later that month, the A’s traded outfielder Yoenis Cespedes to the
Red Sox for one of the best pitchers in baseball, Jon Lester, who was set to
become a free agent at the conclusion of the season. With the emergence of 2nd
year starter Sonny Gray, the A’s now had one of the best starting rotations in
baseball. The A’s eventually faltered down the stretch with a record of 22-33
in August and September, yet still finished with 88 wins.
Many baseball pundits claimed that
the A’s would not have success in the playoffs because of their late season
struggles. At the heart of the A’s collapse was Brandon Moss. From the
beginning of the season until July 24,Moss had 23 HRs; According to the stat
wRC+, Moss created runs 46% runs above league average.2 Over those
392 plate appearances, Moss was having an excellent season. In fact, through
the first half of the season, Moss provided the sixteenth most value of any
batter in baseball. However, in the second half of the season, Moss was the representative
of the A’s collapse. From July 25 to the
end of the season, Moss only hit 2 HRs and was 32% below league average in
terms of runs added as a batter. At the end of the season the A’s still
finished with the best run differential of any team in baseball, which is more
reflective on the quality of a team than wins and losses.
When the A’s played the Royals on
Tuesday in the Wild Card game, Moss who had hit 2 HRs in his final 188 plate
appearances of the season, hit 2 home runs in the eventual defeat. The A’s over
the past 15 years, and Moss this season epitomize the randomness of baseball’s
postseason. The length of a baseball’s
postseason is the smallest percentage of games compared to the regular season
in any of the four biggest professional sports leagues in the United States:
the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL. The playoffs have consisted of 4 teams from each
league since the 1995 playoffs’ I am neglecting to account for the change in
playoff format with the Wild Card game, due to the fact that the Wild Card game
affects only teams that get must play in it, as the division champions still
must only win the same amount of games to win the World Series. Since 2005 only 4 teams that have finished
with the best regular season record have managed to win the World Series, the
1998 and 2009 Yankees, as well as the 2007 and 2013 Red Sox. It’s not just
exclusive to the team with the best record, over the past 5 years only In fact,
if we look at World Series champions over the past 19 years, the only other teams
to win it with 95 or more wins are the 2005 White Sox, 2004 Sox, 2002 Angels,
1999 Yankees. In the past 19 seasons, there have been 75 teams with at least 95
wins, all but one made the playoffs, while there were 152 playoff berths. O 8
of the 19 (42.1%) World Series Champions with the current divisional format had
at least 95 wins, while teams with 95 wins accounted for 74 of the 152 (48.2%)
playoff teams. Although the sample size is too small to draw any significant
conclusions, it is surprising, as teams with at least 95 wins over the course
of an 162 games would be of a higher caliber.
It would not be unreasonable to
suspect that it’s not simply that Billy Beane’s sh*t doesn’t work in the
playoffs, but that the World Series Champion is determined by chance once the
postseason starts, which begs the question, who will win the lottery this year?
1ERA- is ballpark and league adjusted ERA. FIP is
fielding independent pitching, based on aspects pitchers can control: walks,
strikeouts and homeruns. K/9 is strikeouts per 9 innings
2wRC+ is weighted runs above average, adjusted
for ballparks and league
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