Confession

[757690]

Originally Posted by mdccclxix

Even by this metric would I say the Cardinals were a great team this year.

Great hitters. Decent pitching. Bad defense. The definition of mediocre. Also, a lot of players producing well above their career numbers and projections.

[Tony Cloninger]

Originally Posted by 757690

Great hitters. Decent pitching. Bad defense. The definition of mediocre. Also, a lot of players producing well above their career numbers and projections.

We said this last year, almost all of this year.....but here they are again. And they keep getting reloaded from no name prospects like no problem at all.

[Tony Cloninger]

Originally Posted by RedsBaron

Yes, and home field was huge in the 1973 NLCS, with Met "fans" throwing everything except hand grenades at Reds players.

The Pirates had a better winning pct in 1972....by a game really but still better....and they had to play 3 in a row in Cincy.

How lucky were the Reds in 1975 not to lose the 1st two games? NOT to have the DH be in play and not have to face Jim Rice?

There was some luck in the BRM, even in their excellence.

[mdccclxix]

I'd call them the definition of "good", not great or anything. But I don't think mediocre would describe them. If so, the name certainly wouldn't escape teams like Detroit or Texas, either.

[mth123]

Originally Posted by 757690

Pythag is way overrated. A good run differential doesn't mean a team was good. A bad run differential doesn't mean a team was bad. It's a very blunt tool that kinda works in broad generalizations, but doesn't mean much in individual instances.

This year, Dave Cameron, the founder of Fangraphs, said this:



And this question and response in a chat:



I personally think the best way to judge a team's quality is to look at their won lost record. The goal of baseball is to win games, not to accumulate stats.

I've never been completely sold on pythag either, but its far from meaningless and does suggest that the Reds aren't clearly better as the standings and the general stance in this thread suggest.

[westofyou]

Originally Posted by Tony Cloninger

We said this last year, almost all of this year.....but here they are again. And they keep getting reloaded from no name prospects like no problem at all.

They score runs they have pitching that doesn't suck.

The later is something Reds fans have seen little of in the past

[mth123]

Originally Posted by Tony Cloninger

The Pirates had a better winning pct in 1972....by a game really but still better....and they had to play 3 in a row in Cincy.

How lucky were the Reds in 1975 not to lose the 1st two games? NOT to have the DH be in play and not have to face Jim Rice?

There was some luck in the BRM, even in their excellence.

Yep, and don't forget a very favorable call, from the Reds perspective, on the Armbrister play that tipped the scales in game 3.

[757690]

Originally Posted by mdccclxix

I'd call them the definition of "good", not great or anything. But I don't think mediocre would describe them. If so, the name certainly wouldn't escape teams like Detroit or Texas, either.

You're right, Cardinals are a good team, I was wrong to use the term mediocre, but definitely not a great team. Not one that deserves to be in the playoffs. I also think that the Rangers aren't much better. The Tigers have a great offense, better than the Cardinals, the best starting pitcher in baseball, and one of the best managers ever. Hard to say they're a great team, but hard to say that they don't deserve to be in the playoffs.

[Matt700wlw]

The Reds are closer to being the Cardinals than you think.

How long did it take the Tony LaRussa Cardinals to get to this point?

[Tom Servo]

Cardinals are a good team, 5th best in the NL means you're good. But it doesn't mean you should be in the playoffs.

[vic715]

Originally Posted by Tony Cloninger

The Pirates had a better winning pct in 1972....by a game really but still better....and they had to play 3 in a row in Cincy.

How lucky were the Reds in 1975 not to lose the 1st two games? NOT to have the DH be in play and not have to face Jim Rice?

There was some luck in the BRM, even in their excellence.

Thats because the Pirates played one more game than the Reds did that year due to the strike.

[AtomicDumpling]

Originally Posted by Roy Tucker

I guess I'm just feeling contrary today.

Sure I''d like both. But I'll take a wild card 88 wins and a World Championship trophy over a Division win and a playoff loss every day and twice on Sunday. People remember 1975, 1976, and 1990. Divisions wins are great, but they fade. Who won the WS the last 5 years and who had the best record the last 5 years? I can tell you the former but not at all the latter.

And I don't view the past in such sepia-colored glasses. I think its harder to win the World Series now than it ever has before and means more.

So you would be prouder of an "accomplishment" that has more to do with outright luck than with skill and talent. I see.

It's kind of like being proud of a coin-flipping championship. It has nothing to do with skill. Just pure luck.

The playoffs are based on luck. That is why the best team rarely wins the World Series and the wild card 2nd-place teams have won it regularly lately. The team with the best record has only a 50-50 chance of winning each series in the playoffs. The talent and skill of a team does not have time to manifest and assert itself in a 5 or 7 game series. All of us have known since childhood that it takes a large number of baseball games to figure out which team is better. Even the best teams in baseball only win 65% of their games over the course of a full season. A series is just a crapshoot. Even the best teams lose many series over the course of a season. It is not like football where the best team can go without losing a single game in an entire season. That is why baseball has a 162 game season -- because 16 or 30 games (like in other sports) is simply not enough to determine the best team.

[AtomicDumpling]

Originally Posted by Matt700wlw

The Reds are closer to being the Cardinals than you think.

How long did it take the Tony LaRussa Cardinals to get to this point?

Tony LaRussa's Cardinals weren't really all that good. They won a championship in a season where they were two losses from a losing record -- they had the worst record for a World Series team ever.

The Reds are better than the Cardinals already.

[AtomicDumpling]

Originally Posted by Tony Cloninger

The Pirates had a better winning pct in 1972....by a game really but still better....and they had to play 3 in a row in Cincy.

How lucky were the Reds in 1975 not to lose the 1st two games? NOT to have the DH be in play and not have to face Jim Rice?

There was some luck in the BRM, even in their excellence.

Just goes to show you how even one of the best teams in the history of the game still needs to have luck on their side to win a short playoff series.

[AtomicDumpling]

Originally Posted by mth123

This won't be popular.

The Cardinals run differential of 117 was second best in the NL. It was better than the Braves (100), the Reds (81) or the Giants (69). Only the Nationals, with a Run Differential of 137, was better than the Cardinals in the 2012 NL season and the Cards did beat them head to head in a fair series.

Maybe the Wild Card and the Cards' post season run is righting an injustice that was reflected in the regular season standings. Being 36 net runs better than the Reds suggests that they were a better team by about 3 to 4 games which is a far cry from finishing 9 games back.

In general, I've been in the camp of trying to maintain the sanctity of the 162 game regular season, but this Cards' team is hardly the best example of why the wild card is such an injus,tice. I somehow think if it were any other team, and if the Reds had not just laid an egg in their post-season appearance, that this topic would be getting barely a wimper.

The Cards would have lost to the Nationals in Game 5 if that pitch that David Freese looked at in the bottom of the 9th had been called strike 3 like PitchFx said it should have been. Just another lucky break for the Cardinals that allowed them to advance over a better team.

I agree the 2012 Cardinals are not the best example of a bad team doing well in the playoffs, but just look at the last 15 years and you can find a whole bunch of mediocre teams winning championships. Has any team ever gotten beaten so badly in their own division and gone on to win the World Series as the 2012 Cardinals?

Run differential is a very rough and crude indication of how good a team could be, not a metric of how good they really are or how well they actually played on the field during all the unique scenarios and challenges that presented themselves over a six-month season. There is a lot of strategy, skill, talent, craft and experience that goes into winning 95+ baseball games.

The ultimate measure of how good a team played is how many games they won over a meaningful sample size. 5-7 games is not a meaningful sample size in the sport of baseball. 162 games is certainly much more indicative of a team's true talent level.

And let's not pretend that this issue just arose this week. This debate over the luck-based postseason has been going on for 15 years, ever since the first 2nd-place team won a World Series. Writing it off simply as Reds fans having sour grapes this year is way off base. Heck, we had a big thread about it right here on Redszone last year when the Reds didn't even come close to making the playoffs.