Wednesday, October 24, 2007

2007 World Series Preview

Since Colonel Sanders has already given us most of the pertinent stats, my World Series preview will instead highlight some quirky facts about the 103rd edition of the Fall Classic.

Interesting fact #1: As we all know by now, the Rockies are a perfect 7-0 in the playoffs. They’ve won 10 games in a row (including the regular season), and are on a 21-1 streak since their last loss on September 15th. But did you know that, since the beginning of this 21-1 run, the Rockies have only trailed in 15 of 191 total innings (8%). They’ve only trailed in two innings out of 65 in the playoffs (3%).

Interesting fact #2: Again, we all know that the Rockies have had the longest wait in history – nine days – between clinching the pennant and playing in the World Series. Since the start of divisional play in 1995, only three other teams have had to wait as long as seven days to start the World Series: the 1995 Braves (seven; won), the 1996 Yankees (seven, won), and the 2006 Tigers (seven, lost).

If you shorten the wait to five and six days, you get the following list:

Five days: 1999 Yankees (won), 2000 Mets (lost), 2001 Yankees (lost), 2002 Giants (lost)
Six days: 2001 Diamondbacks (won), 2002 Angels (won), 2005 White Sox (won)

What that tells me is that a five, six, or seven day layoff doesn’t seem to play much of a factor in how a team will fare in the World Series. Teams with exactly five days between the LCS and the World Series are a combined 11-12, teams with exactly six days rest are a combined 12-6, and teams with exactly seven days rest are a combined 9-8. In short, these results yield an inconclusive answer to the question of whether there is such a thing as too long a layoff between the LCS and the World Series.

Perhaps the more appropriate question to ask is what this rest does to teams in Game 1 of their series.

Five days: 2-2
Six days: 2-1
Seven days: 2-1

Again, the long layoff seems to have very little in the way of impact. It seems counterintuitive, given how baseball players are conditioned to play in 162 games in 183 days over a six-month period. And yet, somehow, it hasn’t seemed to have made much of an impact one way or another.

Will the Rockies suffer because they’ve had to wait the longest between post-season games? We’ll find out this week. But, win or lose, I don’t think it’ll be correlated to the fact that they’ve been off for nine days.

You’d think that with those two facts above – that the Rockies have only trailed 8% of the innings played over the past 22 games, and that there’s no reason to believe that an extended layoff should affect the Rockies based on comparable results over the past 12 seasons – that I’d be picking the Rockies...but I’m not.

I think the Red Sox have clear advantages in both starting and relief pitching and I consider the potency of their lineup, as well as their playoff experience, as positive factors in their favor. Colorado has, potentially, a deeper lineup although perhaps not as potent. They certainly play better defense than the Red Sox do. But, as I wrote in my comment to Colonel Sanders’s post:

“[b]y all objective measures, Boston was the best team in baseball from Game 1 to Game 162. Other teams rose up and faded away (the Yanks, who were baseball’s second best team in 2007; the Indians, who were baseball’s third best team) but Boston’s still standing. It’s a testament to their pitching and their potent and concentrated lineup. This Boston team isn’t as good as the 2003 and 2004 editions but I think it is good enough to win the World Series.”

I’m sticking to that. I’m taking the Red Sox in 6.

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