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[Oz27]

The run differential in the series was 15-6, in what universe do you consider that lucky?  Or unexplainable as you put it.  You could make the same excuses in every sport.  What if the Giants never got that circus Tyree catch in the super bowl vs the Patriots?  The Lakers beat the Celtics by 4 points in game 7, what if the Celtics get a couple more bounces their way?  What if Robert Horry never gets the tip out for the game winning shot against the Kings?  Having the ball roll your way is just a part of sports.  But the better team will still find a way to win, without making excuses about it.  Ive heard Scioscia say it all the time in postgame conferences, that "we shouldnt have been in that position to begin with."

The same would apply for Games 1 and 2 against the Royals.  Yeah the Royals made some nice catches, but we should not have been in that position to rely on them dropping the ball in order for us to win.  If we truly were the better team, we would have proved it by not going 2-26 with RISP, while the Royals went something like 6-10 or whatever it was.  Why couldnt we get the walk off hit or homer in at least one of those games?  Instead, the Moustakas and Hosmer got them.  The reason this happened, our pen wasnt deep enough to compete with theirs.  And the Royals approach this series was infinitely better than ours.

 

But we only needed 100 more tries to prove we were the better team right?  Maybe MLB can expand these games to 100 game series for the Angels.

Team A wins game one 2-0, game two 1-0 and game four 2-1. Team B wins game three 10-0. Run differential for the series is 11-5 in favor of the losing team. Does it mean they were far better in the series?

 

Run differential has serious flaws in small sample sizes because one blowout will screw up everything.

[Troll Daddy]

The World Series and postseason isn’t necessarily the best way to determine who the “best” team is. You have to look at the postseason as a tournament. When you think about it – it’s more about entertainment and it’s the perfect stage for great theater. Games in the post season are played differently, managed differently and all the things that make a team successful in the course of 162 games doesn’t necessarily translate into a series.

Some players who played a key role in the 162 game season – get left out… like a 4^th or 5^th starter. You might add a speed guy to your roster just for the postseason, or have a pitcher go on three day’s rest, etc.

I'm not trying to take anything away from a WS champion... I would love for the Angels to do that again. The Angels were still a great team even though they fell short in the "tournament."

I don't buy it ... sorry.

Championships are what you play for in sports.

Gold Medals

Super Bowl rings

WS Trophy

Golf majors

Stanley Cup

Etc.,

I'm reminded of a photo with Michael Jordan clutching a gold basketball in tears.

If you get to the end of the rainbow (tournament)

you're are the best!

Edited October 9, 2014 by Troll Daddy

[AngelsLakersFan]

I wouldn't necessarily object to making the division series best of 7, but I'm not sure it would make much difference. All the favorites who just lost would now be down 3-1 or 3-0 in a best of 7, so they'll probably still lose.

 

And  you can't make the WC a best of 3. You need to have the Monday off for possible tie-breaker games. The leagues need to be staggered so you minimize the chance of days with no games or days with multiple game 7s. That's how you maximize the TV exposure. (And TV, whether we choose to admit it, pays the bills.) So if you're staggering the series then you're pushing one team back 6 days to start its division series. No way is that fair. That's a penalty to the team that won the division. It's probably too long of a gap now.

 

I like that the WC team gets kinda screwed. They should be. They get screwed for not winning the division and we get rewarded by seeing two all-or-nothing games. Everyone wins.

 

They should move the start of the division series up a day. There is no reason to give the WC winner a day off for traveling. They are supposed to be at a disadvantage, instead they are playing must win games every day while the teams with the best records are sitting around waiting. 

 

Both the Angels and the Nationals just looked flat in the division series and I can't help but think it had a lot to do with time off.

[AngelsLakersFan]

 

But if they played again, with the exact same rosters, it might be the opposite. If they played each other a million times, it would probably be pretty close to 50-50.

 

 

If they played a million times you'd expect the Angels to probably win closer to 55% of the time. To say 50-50 is to imply that the Royals DO have some strange "playoff" skill set that the Angels don't.