The Cardinals proved to me last year that the MLB playoffs are a complete crap shoot - each team has a 1-in-8 chance of winning the World Series.
Since the advent of the Wild Card in 1995, there have been 17 teams* win 100 or more games in a season. How many of those teams won the World Series?
*because there were only 144 games played in 1995, I'm excluding it from this study. The Braves (90-54) beat the Indians (100-44).
1997 Braves 101-61 Lost in World Series
1998 Yankees 114-48 Won World Series
1998 Braves 106-56 Lost in NLCS
1998 Astros 102-60 Lost in 1st Round
1999 Braves 103-59 Lost in World Series
1999 D'Backs 100-62 Lost in 1st Round
2001 Mariners 116-46 Lost in ALCS
2001 A's 102-60 Lost in 1st Round
2002 Yankees 103-58 Lost in 1st Round
2002 A's 103-59 Lost in 1st Round
2002 Braves 101-59 Lost in 1st Round
2003 Braves 101-61 Lost in 1st Round
2003 Yankees 101-61 Lost in World Series
2003 Giants 100-61 Lost in 1st Round
2004 Cardinals 105-57 Lost in World Series
2004 Yankees 101-61 Lost in ALCS
2005 Cardinals 100-62 Lost in NLCS
That's right. Only one team out of 17 has won the World Series. That's far worse than 1-in-8 and those are the best teams.
You could flip coins. The 17 teams listed with 100 wins should win more than one World Series shouldn't they?
In fact, if you total up playoff series', those 17 teams have won 15 series and lost 16 series. That's not even .500.
Amazingly, there have been 2 teams with less than 90 wins, win the World Series.
Wins Teams Titles Percent
100-116 17 1 5.9%
95-99 31 4 12.9%
90-94 25 4 16.0%
82-89 15 2 13.3%
The pundits will be quick to say that the "hottest" team won the World Series, yet rarely is this "hottest" team chosen before the playoffs. "Hot" does win, but who knew Jeff Weaver was "hot" last year?
I'm not trying to argue who's hot. Or how to figure out who's hot. It changes every year and someone is right that year and wrong the next.
I'm just realizing that since the odds of winning the World Series is equal for all teams in the playoffs, then the goal of each team should simply be to make the playoffs.
And that's what the Angels' goal is - make the playoffs.
Here's one more breakdown. If you ranked the record of the 8 playoff teams, here is how many series each "seed" has won. i.e. The team with the best record has won 13 series and lost 12 series. There are different numbers of team at each rank due to ties.
Record Teams Wins Losses Pct Titles
Best 13 13 12 .520 1
2nd 11 9 10 .474 1
3rd 12 12 9 .571 3
4th 11 10 9 .526 2
5th 10 4 10 .286 0
6th 12 10 10 .500 2
7th 10 9 10 .474 0
Worst 9 10 7 .588 2
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