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msgkings322
I'm just here to troll everyone
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Starts out about super rotations but then has a good bit about how most 'conventional wisdom' about the playoffs is wrong. It's really a pure crapshoot, although the better teams coming in tend to do better than the teams with worse records.
The Super-Rotation Rivalry «
Excerpt:
Because October baseball subjects fans to a disquieting combination of disproportionate importance and exceptional unpredictability, it’s a fertile breeding ground for suspect narratives that attempt to explain small-sample postseason success or failure. Over the next few months, you might hear, for instance, that teams that “back into the playoffs” after a September slump are at a disadvantage against teams that end the regular season on a high note. Not so. You might be told that teams that rely on the home run can’t score in the playoffs, when small ball rules. In fact, the opposite is the case. Surely momentum matters? Uh-uh. And we all know that there’s no substitute for postseason experience — except for a lack of postseason experience, which works just as well. Even skilled prognosticators have failed to crack the postseason code: In 2006, Nate Silver introduced the concept of a Secret Sauce that could sense latent postseason potential, but BP retired it four years later, after it failed to prove predictive. Compared to predicting the playoffs, predicting presidential elections is a piece of cake.
The Super-Rotation Rivalry «
Excerpt:
Because October baseball subjects fans to a disquieting combination of disproportionate importance and exceptional unpredictability, it’s a fertile breeding ground for suspect narratives that attempt to explain small-sample postseason success or failure. Over the next few months, you might hear, for instance, that teams that “back into the playoffs” after a September slump are at a disadvantage against teams that end the regular season on a high note. Not so. You might be told that teams that rely on the home run can’t score in the playoffs, when small ball rules. In fact, the opposite is the case. Surely momentum matters? Uh-uh. And we all know that there’s no substitute for postseason experience — except for a lack of postseason experience, which works just as well. Even skilled prognosticators have failed to crack the postseason code: In 2006, Nate Silver introduced the concept of a Secret Sauce that could sense latent postseason potential, but BP retired it four years later, after it failed to prove predictive. Compared to predicting the playoffs, predicting presidential elections is a piece of cake.
