What the Giants did this year was extraordinary. Incomprehensible. And it will be forgotten. The had 2 big-bad talented teams projected to dominate their division. A couple of month into the season, they were sure to fall back any day. At the AS break, kudos to them, but they can't possibly keep this up. Even going into September, the metrics had the Dodgers winning the West.
But they kept on winning. And winning. And winning.
Their story is a rag-tag team of whoevers and over-the-hill guys, with some anonymous pitchers, won 107 games!!! And it didn't matter.
I guess I'd like the MLB playoffs to be like the college basketball conference tournament. The real conference champs are the regular season champs....the conf tourney is just for someone to get hot and play their way into March Madness.
I guess I care too much about the champion actually possibly being the best team.
Look at MLB this year:
107 wins - Giants
106 - Dodgers
100 - Rays
95 - Astros, Brewers
93 - White Sox
92 - Red Sox, Yankees
91 - Blue Jays
90 - Mariners, Cardinals
88 - Braves
.
If your sport is going to have a long season, that's good. It's a large sample size. The best team has ample opportunity to show itself as such and let the statistical noise settle down.
Most people would say the Dodgers are the best team. Great, the 106 wins suggest yeah, they're up there. The Giants won 107, so regardless of how they look on paper, they have a great claim. The Rays? Sure. Maybe. The Astros are a known commodity and are great, and the Brewers had a 3-headed monster of starting pitchers. All great teams. Even the White Sox are young up-and-comers. The Red Sox and Yankees battled it out for the East before fading. The Blue Jays probably have the best young talent in their trio of position players.
They're in the conversation.....or maybe the conversation ends after the Rays or the White Sox. It doesn't matter.
But I guess what I'm saying is don't call it a champion when it's shown to be the 12th-best team after 162 games. Sabermatricians know the postseason is a coin flip. That's why Billy Beane's Moneyball teams never won it all and why this year's INCREDIBLE Giants' season didn't, either.
Don't call the 12th-best team champions. Have your playoff. Get your money. But call them something else.
And this isn't anti-Braves, I like the Braves. You can call them Team-A if you want.
Team A won 88 games (12th most) in a shitty division. Look at the list above: only the White Sox had no other strong teams to compete with.
Baseball's postseason started out making sense. But over the years, it's evolved into a convoluted money-grab. You guys are telling me, "yup, deal with it." And I get it, and it is what it is, but it's not what it says it is. The Braves aren't the champions of anything. They're the beneficiaries of a random-chance contest. Their coin came up heads the most often for a 16-game stretch.
Cool.
Let's call them the 2021 MLB Beneficiaries! At least is more honest than champions.
