Parsing the postseason

In the wake of today's column about the baseball playoffs, I decided to make my postseason predictions based on something other than gut instinct.

The result surprised even me, and I created the whole operation.

I picked three statistics that I thought might offer some insight: record in one-run games, expected win-loss (based on runs scored and allowed, a k a Pythagorean win-loss) and defensive efficiency (from Baseball Prospectus).

Why? I believe one-run games are a measure of clutch hitting and bullpen strength; teams that fare well in those games are likely to fare well in playoff games. I prefer expected win-loss to actual win-loss because it measures overall team strength. And in the small sample of games that makes up a playoff series, defensive mistakes are magnified far beyond what they mean in the regular season. I believe defensive efficiency (balls put into play turned into outs) is a decent measure of that.

Then I subjected each matchup to a best-of-three comparison in those categories.

Full disclaimer: I haven't subjected this methodology to any kind of rigorous statistical analysis. Some sabremetrician may like to, and may find out I'm well off base. If that's the case, then it will be fully in line with my annual hockey playoff predictions.

Anyway, here we go:

BOS (.488, 95, .699) def. LAA (.596, 88, .692)
TBR (.617, 91, .710) def. CHW (.564, 89, .695)
CHC (.521, 98, .705) def. LAD (.441, 87, .691)
MIL (.622, 87, .698) def. PHL (.540, 93, .698)

TBR def. BOS
CHC def. MIL

TBR def. CHC

Now, let me state unequivocally for the record that nothing in my heart suggests the Rays will win the World Series or that the Cubs (as regular readers of this blog would guess) will even make it there (although I certainly hope so). But I picked this methodology before knowing who would win, and this is what popped out. It's only fitting that the Cubs, having been deprived of their rightful World Series spot in 2003 by the Florida Marlins, would be deprived of a title by another Florida expansion team that wasn't even a glimmer in the back of Bud Selig's grandfather's mind in 1908.

My heart predicts a Boston-Chicago matchup in the World Series, but then the universe would collapse and reality as we know it would come to an end, so that can't happen.