Baseball's best record rarely worth a ring anymore

02.10.2007 03:00 Sport and Travel - Source: USA Today

Which naturally means the odds are stacked against them.

The reality of postseason baseball since the wild-card format was introduced in 1995 is the hottest team, not the one with the top regular-season mark, typically wins the World Series.

At 96-66, Boston and the Cleveland Indians concluded with identical records, but the Red Sox won the tiebreaker by virtue of claiming the season series 5-2. Boston will send 20-game winner Josh Beckett to the mound in Wednesday's opener of the American League Division Series against the Los Angeles Angels and right-hander John Lackey.

As Beckett knows, getting on a roll in October beats excelling in the previous six months.

He was the World Series MVP in 2003, when the Florida Marlins snuck in as the wild card, benefited from the overzealousness of Chicago Cubs fan Steve Bartman and toppled the 101-win New York Yankees to claim the crown.

That was part of a three-year stretch, 2002-2004, when wild cards raised the Commissioner's Trophy. In fact, since 2000 the team with the best record in its league has advanced to the World Series three times. And the last team to win the Fall Classic with the majors' best record was the 1998 Yankees, the longest such stretch in baseball history.

"Timing's everything. A lot of times you see the wild-card teams doing very, very well because they're always fighting to the finish," says Arizona Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin, whose club hosts the Chicago Cubs in the NLDS starting Wednesday. "The teams that are playing well don't necessarily have the best records."

San Diego Padres outfielder Mike Cameron, a member of the 2001 Seattle Mariners — who won an AL-record 116 games but failed to reach the World Series — subscribes to the same theory.

"I think it's the best team that is playing well. That sums it up," Cameron says. "It's the team that gets hot and maybe has three or four guys who are hot at the same time."

A hot team can take on many forms. Sometimes the pitching staff becomes virtually unhittable, as was the case with last year's St. Louis Cardinals, whose 83-78 record was the worst ever for a World Series winner.

St. Louis, which squeaked into the playoffs despite losing nine of its last 12 games, got outstanding starts from Chris Carpenter, Jeff Weaver and Jeff Suppan in the first two rounds, then held the Detroit Tigers to a collective .199 average to win the World Series in five games.

"Record-wise, staff-wise, even offensively, Detroit (was) a much better team than St. Louis," Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins says. "St. Louis played better baseball. It didn't matter how good Detroit was at that moment."

Sometimes a club gathers inspiration from a momentous comeback, as the 2004 Red Sox did in defeating the Yankees in the ALCS after falling behind 3-0. They went on to sweep the Cardinals and outscore them 24-12 in the World Series.

And often, unexpected events turn a series in favor of one club, and it takes off after that. One recent example: A.J. Pierzynski reaching first base after a disputed dropped third strike in the 2005 ALCS against the Angels, propelling the eventual World Series champion White Sox.

"I just feel like every year something bizarre seems to happen to put some club in position to win a world championship," Colorado Rockies general manager Dan O'Dowd says.

The momentum question

Will the late rush carry into the playoffs, or does the surge in confidence that comes with an extended hot spell vanish once October comes around? After all, neither of last year's World Series participants entered the postseason with much momentum.

The Tigers lost their last five games in 2006, letting the AL Central title slip from their grasp, yet bounced right back in the ALDS against the Yankees before sweeping the Oakland Athletics in the ALCS.

"I think you start over from scratch," says the Padres' Greg Maddux, who has pitched in 32 postseason games. "Last year with the Dodgers, we went in winning seven in a row. We were that hot team going into the postseason, and St. Louis didn't beat anybody in September. (The Dodgers were swept by the New York Mets in the NLDS). You throw that out the window once Game 1 starts."

Maddux says the formula for winning the World Series might have been altered by the 2001 Diamondbacks, who rode stellar performances by Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling to a riveting seven-game triumph against the Yankees. Johnson and Schilling shared the Series MVP award.

Because of the off-days built into the postseason schedule — even more so now, when an extra day has been added between Games 4 and 5 of the Division Series — teams can rely mostly on their top two starters. The wealth of starting pitching that carries some teams through the regular season has less value in the postseason.

The pitching-rich Atlanta Braves, for example, won 14 consecutive division crowns but only one World Series between 1991-2005.

"October is not about having a deep pitching staff," Schilling told MLB.com. "October is about having three of the best starters out of the teams you're going to compete against, and your bullpen being better than everybody else's. You win in October with about six or seven pitchers, not 11 or 12."

When hot teams collide

That's why the Indians, who won 26 of their last 35 and feature two Cy Young Award candidates in C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona, have become a trendy pick to go all the way. Of course, they're facing the Yankees, who swept them 6-0 during the season, so one of the hot clubs has to cool down.

Which one does probably won't have much to do with where they play. For all players prefer sleeping in their own beds and getting the support of their local fans, the so-called home-field advantage hasn't provided a statistical edge in the wild-card era.

In all the postseason series played since 1995, the club that played the first two games at home has gone 41-43, even though in all but the first three years of the Division Series, the format called for that team to play a possible last game at its ballpark.

Those numbers confirm the notion espoused by Bill Stoneman, GM of the Angels when they won their only world title as a wild card in 2002 and still now.

"Momentum in postseason play is maybe the greatest determining factor in terms of who ends up winning the World Series," Stoneman says. "Getting to the playoffs, that's what you shoot for. Once you're through the door, anything can happen. And if you don't get through the door, nothing can happen."

Contributing: Seth Livingstone

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