The biggest myths of October baseball -- debunked!
People say a lot of things about the postseason. Here's one thing that I completely agree with: Anything can happen.
Everyone has tried to find a Holy Grail for predicting the playoffs. In recent years, popular explanations have focused on contact rate for offense and bullpen dominance on defense. If those are trends that continue to translate, then it's worth noting the San Francisco Giants and Boston Red Sox are the two playoff teams with strikeout rates below 20 percent. As for bullpens, of the eight teams with the lowest bullpen ERAs, seven made the playoffs, all with ERAs between 3.35 and 3.56. Only the Baltimore Orioles, however, have a closer who went 47-for-47 in save opportunities.
Meanwhile, Texas Rangers fans are convinced that the team's 36-11 record in one-run games speaks to some kind of chemistry or clutch factor that bodes well for the postseason. Well, I can tell you that none of the teams that had the best record in one-run games in the past 10 seasons won the World Series.
In this record-setting year for home runs (second-most ever hit in one season), maybe the long ball will decide the postseason. The Orioles led the majors in home runs, and the New York Mets have the most among the NL playoff teams. You probably know where I'm going: Not a good predictor for postseason success (although a couple of years ago Ben Lindbergh of Grantland examined playoff teams from 1995 to 2013 and found teams that were more reliant on the home run lost a lower percentage of their regular-season scoring than teams less reliant on the home run).
Let's examine a few other things people like to say:
How you play heading into the postseason matters
When the Red Sox won 11 games in a row from Sept. 15-25, I heard one analyst proclaim, "This is exactly how you want to be playing heading into October." Of course, the Red Sox ended up losing five of their final six games, which is presumably how you don't want to play heading into the postseason.
As it turns out, our past 10 World Series champs played about the same in September and in the final two weeks as they did throughout the season.
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/page/playoffs16_myths/the-biggest-myths-october-baseball-debunked
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