Does the Wild Card Team Have an Advantage?
By Mike Silva ~ September 26th, 2009. Filed under: Mike Silva.
Al Leiter was on YES last night talking about his perceived advantage a Wild Card team may have coming into the playoffs. He would know having played for the 97′ Marlins and 2000 Mets, two teams that went to the World Series after winning the Wild Card.
The premise of Leiter’s point is that a Wild Card team sometimes has to play “playoff type baseball” from the All Star break to the end of the season. You may have multiple teams chasing you until the very last day of the regular season. On the flip side, teams that win the division handily can take the month of September to rest, putting a lot of that intensity away till the ALDS. For some teams September becomes another version of spring training. Obviously rest is important, but athletes are creatures of habit and rest doesn’t always mean a good thing.
Since the inception of the Wild Card nine teams have gone on to play in the World Series and 4 have won. Three of those teams (Anaheim, Boston, Florida) won in consecutive seasons. In 2002 we saw the only all “Wild Card Series” to date when San Francisco played Anaheim.
I think Leiter may be on to something regarding teams that play meaningful games to the end. I always felt the 2006 Mets got on a roll, clinched the division, and then never regained their dominance. They had about 3 weeks to sit around and relax before the playoffs. Teams don’t have to be in the Wild Card to fight for their playoff lives. You saw the 2006 Cardinals and 2001 Diamondbacks have to win their division to make the playoffs. Both when on to win championships.
Nothing is absolute, and because of the randomness of matchups I didn’t see trends developing when I was crunching some won/loss numbers of Wild Card teams. Many will argue the “dominant starter theory”, which is true, but Anaheim won the World Series more on their offense and bullpen than hot starting pitching. Even the 2000 Mets and 2002 Giants didn’t have a Randy Johnson, Josh Beckett, or Curt Schilling type pitcher. However Mike Hampton did play that part and step up in the 2000 NLCS for the Mets throwing a couple of gems. Leiter very well may be on to something about the value of playing meaningful regular season games until the very end.
September 26th, 2009 at 10:18 am
I dunno. I don’t agree with much of Francessa’s rant on this the other day either. A great team will rebound to win regardless. Why should a team that’s dominant the first half and not the second be favored over a team that was so-so the first and dominant the second? I think this merely points to there not being a huge difference between division winners and wild card winners in terms of quality of team.
There is another side to it too. Look at those 2000 Mets. Sure, Wild Card winners into the World Series. But they didn’t beat teams that won 15 more games than they did. The Giants were 2 games better, the Cardinals 1. They were pretty even. The team they lost to? 5th best in the American League, and would’ve finished 7 games behind if they were in the same division. They struggled to beat both Oakland and Seattle.
I do agree that it’s too easy to coast and accept the Wild Card. But the playoffs work out who’s best, and handicapping one team further is not going to change that. If the team they couldn’t beat out for the division is really better than them, the Wild Card would never make it past the second round.