October 2005

This is why I love baseball: After a grueling 162-game season, just eight of 30 teams are left standing, half the number that get to the postseason in basketball and hockey.

The Indians won 93 games, but because they couldn't muster two more to match the Red Sox, they're left to watch the remaining eight teams slug it out on TV.

Oakland and the Phillies finished with 88 wins and .543 winning percentages, and they're out. The very talented Florida Marlins managed just 83 wins, and they can't even say "wait till next year"; with their financial and managerial problems, they could very well lose two of their stars and end up rebuilding yet again.

Unfortunately, baseball does have one serious flaw in its architecture: Unlike basketball and hockey, it doesn't give the home-field advantage in the World Series to the team with the best regular-season record.

Traditionally, the home field was alternated between the two leagues, which was ridiculous but traditionally so. But then the brainless trust running the national pastime decided to do something even more stupid. It started with a fuck-up -- the 2002 All Star Game ended in a tie because the managers didn't want to strain the pitchers by making them throw extra innings. That drew howls of outrage from the usual nimrods who get paid good money to cry foul at regular intervals. So baseball's management, continuing their quest to prove that the National Hockey League has nothing over them when it comes to diminishing their own product, decided to award the home field in the most important series of the year based on the results of an exhibition game played in July. The outcome of the series everyone cares about is now largely determined by the outcome of a game no one cares about.

According to this, the team with the home-field advantage wins the World Series 58 percent of the time. That's because the home team wins the opening game of the Series about 62 percent of the time.

Baseball pundits like to say you "throw out all the statistics" in a short playoff series, and I'll agree that random chance plays a big part. I don't think anyone guessed the Florida Marlins, a wild-card team, would win the 2003 World Series. The Yankees had the home-field advantage, but the Marlins won games one and six at Yankee Stadium, against all odds. And no one needs to be reminded of the unprecedented run by the Red Sox last season. If civilization collapsed, whatever remained of the human race would still sit around campfires recounting how the Sox were the first team in baseball history to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a seven-game series.

So on that note, I'll move on to my postseason predictions.


It takes crystal balls to try to make sense of these matchups


Last season at this time, I correctly predicted the winners of three of the four division series.

Then I nailed the winners of both league-championship series, and (like everyone else) picked the Red Sox over the Cards in the Fall Classic.

Once again, I'm looking out at the field and not seeing any team with a clear advantage. In the American League:


* The Bronx Billionaries have the most weapons on offense (not to mention the most offensive owner).


* The White Sox have Jose Contreras, the pitcher who, as of today, looks most capable of dominating a postseason series.


* The Angels look solidly balanced, and have Vlad Guerrero, one of the scariest hitters in the playoffs this year.


* And the Red Sox are mostly the same bunch who made the Cardinals bend over and take some pipe up the poop chute last October.


My picks:

The Yankees aren't a particularly good road team -- just 42-39 for the season -- and they won't be able to use Randy Johnson (who threw 123 pitches Saturday) until Game 3 at the earliest. So I'm going to pick the Angels, since they have the home-field advantage in the short series.

The problem with the Boston-Chicago first-round matchup is that it's only five games. I'm going to pick Chicago, just because they get to play the first two at home and Boston isn't a good road team (41-40). Chicago is surprisingly good on the road (52-29, vs. 47-34 at home), so I think they'll have a fighting chance to pick up a win at Fenway. (Boston, as usual, is baseball's best team in its own park, with 54 wins; Atlanta, Houston, and the Yankees all had 53 home wins.)

But let the record show I have no more confidence in these picks than I would in a coin flip. And no one needs to remind me that the media desperately want a Yankees-Boston matchup in the second round of the AL playoffs.


In the NL:


* Despite leading the NL in ERA, my Cardinals seem to have very shaky starting pitching right now. (And the bullpen could be in trouble, as well.) Chris Carpenter, the team's legitimate ace, has looked bad in his last three starts, and there's no predicting whether he can revert to form. My hunch is that he's thrown too many innings this season. If he's bad on Tuesday, he could effectively negate the Cards' home-field advantage over the Padres.


* The Braves are the Braves. As long as they have the Joneses in the lineup and Rockin' Leo Mazzone handling the pitchers, they'll be good enough to make it to the postseason. But I don't see enough here to make them likely to get very far.


* Houston has the pitching -- Roger Clemens, Roy Oswalt, Andy Pettitte -- but not much hitting. Morgan Ensberg has had a great season and Lance Berkman is always dangerous, but with Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio in their dotage, they aren't the same.


* San Diego had the worst regular-season performance of any playoff team in baseball history. Although any team in baseball's postseason has a theoretical chance of winning, the Padres seem to have the slightest chance of the eight teams to advance.


So I'll pick the Cards over the Padres in the first round, and Atlanta over Houston. Part of me wants to go with Houston, because of their late-season momentum. But they've also used closer Brad Lidge five consecutive games, and in a rematch of any two playoff teams, I almost always choose the loser of the previous year's series.

I feel a little more confident about my NL picks than I do about my AL choices. Overall, though, I'll be as surprised as anyone if I match last October's record and get three out of four right.

Tags: sports