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While looking toward the future with our comprehensive slate of current content, we'd also like to recognize our rich past by drawing upon our extensive (and mostly free) online archive of work dating back to 1997. In an effort to highlight the best of what's gone before, we'll be bringing you a weekly blast from BP's past, introducing or re-introducing you to some of the most informative and entertaining authors who have passed through our virtual halls. If you have fond recollections of a BP piece that you'd like to nominate for re-exposure to a wider audiencesend us your suggestion.

If the playoffs are a crapshoot, should we crown the real best team at the end of the regular season? Check out Joe Sheehan's take, which originally ran as a "Daily Prospectus" column on October 24, 2000.

As I've often mentioned, Baseball Prospectus is very lucky to have a readership that, on a daily basis, makes us smarter.

One of our readers dropped a note to me last week in the wake of some recent pieces he'd seen here and on the Web:

I'm excited about the Series and a little concerned about analyst views of the Series and the postseason in general. Rob Neyer's columns of the past two days, along withmuch of the writing in BP speak to the randomness of the 'short series'. The main points are that the results are mostly based on chance and it's important to not put too much stock into the player performances in the postseason. The truly great teams and players are the ones who do it consistently over the course of a season or 10.

However, the true goal of the great player is a championship. That's what management is trying to do, that's what the players want (at least they pay lip service to it) and that's what fans want. Now I know that to maximize your chances for a championship, you need to put the most consistently good players on the field. What I'm discouraged with is how the 'random' attitude demeans the accomplishments of teams and individuals. Perhaps it would be fairer to simply award the championship to the team with the best record. But, as long as the championships are decided on the field, the performances in these playoffs DO matter. Each time you dismiss the postseason performance of Barry Bonds, by definition you dismiss the postseason performances of Reggie Jackson and Babe Ruth. If my Rockies ever win a championship (stop laughing), I'd like to think they deserve credit for that, rather than just getting credit for playing well enough to reach the 'Final 8,' and then drawing the lucky numbers from that point to win.

That's Chris Muntean from Denver. Chris, thanks for your well thought out note. You're not alone in wondering about this; you are the person whose letter set out the position best.

To me, the best illustration I can provide of the idea that postseason success is heavily influenced by luck, or "random", is Todd Zeile. Todd Zeile is approximately ten inches from having Queens Boulevard renamed in his honor. His blast in the sixth inning of Game One came as close to being a home run as it could without being one, while his ninth-inning fly ball in Game Two needed about eight inches to get over Clay Bellinger's glove for another home run.

That's the difference between being up two games to nothing and down two games to nothing. Ten inches. And those ten inches have nothing to do with Todd Zeile's talent or his character or his performance on those pitches. Ten inches is luck. It's a gust of wind, a millimeter on the bat, a mile per hour on a fastball.

That's the difference in the World Series right now. (OK, it's a difference, but let's leave Timoniel Perez alone for now.)

One of the reasons people like Dave and Rob and myself emphasize the unpredictibility of a best-of-seven series is to counteract the way the games are written and talked about elsewhere. The coverage of these games lionizes the winners and blames the losers, assigning positive character traits to the team that comes out on top while picking apart the flaws of the defeated. Players get labels such as "clutch" and entire teams are branded "chokers".

Players, as well as large segments of the media and fans, want to believe that teams win and lose because of things like heart and character and moxie or the lack of those qualities. For players, it's a validation, while for fans and media it's a better story. "The Yankees have heart" plays better than "The Yankees are built well for short series and have gotten some breaks". "Jeff Bagwell choked" sells more papers than "Jeff Bagwell has faced some incredible right-handed pitching in the Division Series".

The fact is that major-league baseball players are all great. Take someone we all dump on, Dante Bichette or Rey Ordonez or Jaime Navarro. Those guys are awesome baseball players, relative to the pool of human beings who play baseball or even the pool of those who get paid to do so. We are watching the extreme right edge of the bell curve, this minuscule slice of talent.

Over the course of a week, some players are going to play worse than others, because the matchups don't work or they're fighting a cold or they spent the week hitting lasers right at people. It's the same thing that could happen, and does, on a road trip to Montreal and Chicago in May. It's a tiny slice of performance that doesn't say anything about the player in question. But it can, and will, determine who gets to or even wins the World Series.

The idea that regular-season performance can, and even should, be dismissed because of what happens in October is personally offensive to me. The Braves are a dynasty. Barry Bonds is an all-time great; Mark Lemke isn't. Performances in one month shouldn't change those things, but to some eyes, they do.

Recognizing that short series aren't the last word in team quality, and that they don't tell you anything about players, doesn't make watching them less enjoyable. I'm a Yankee fan, and knowing that short series may not always go to the better team didn't make 1996, 1998 or 1999 any less enjoyable, nor did it erase the pain of 1995 and 1997. Best-of series are how baseball determines its champion, and the team that wins its last game is the champion.

But the champion isn't always the best team. There's no disconnect there: a champion is the team standing at the end. The best team? Well, I'm more inclined to believe that's proven over a season.

It's the same with players. The best players are the ones who play the best over a season or seasons. That doesn't mean Joe Carter isn't a hero, or that Mark Lemke or Brian Doyle didn't have a great week at the right time. It just means that those performances don't make them better baseball players than they were, nor better human beings than their peers.

Saying that the outcome of a short series is essentially unpredictable is just a recognition of all that. Recognizing that whose fly balls carry and whose don't isn't a function of character or even ability, but, well, random.

Thank you for reading

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Scartore
10/14
I'd like to think we've made a little progress in this area in the decade since it was written, I mean some crank who writes a TV show did get Joe Morgan fired eventually (I kid I kid...)

But I really think MLB needs to do more to recognize the regular season records. Maybe a postseason award like the MVP or Cy Young that goes to the team with the best record. Hockey used to do something like that didn't they? Our laser focus on October (and now November) baseball has led to some great teams being forgotten, especially in the wild card era. Like the 2001 Mariners, who own the best 162 game record with 116 victories but I bet you could win some bar bets with folks who think that record belongs to the 98 Yankees because they won the last game of the season.
SaberTJ
10/14
I miss FJM.

Valid points.
JoeSky60
10/14
Hockey still does that, the "President's Trophy" is annually given to the team with the most points in the NHL. And, like any "short, or long, series", it often means nothing in the playoffs. Again, that randomness comes in to play. Last year, for the first time in several years, the Vancouver Canucks(President's Trophy winner, therefore holding home-ice advantage), actually made it to the Finals, only to be beaten by the Bruins.

I think the reason the playoffs, particularly in the NHL, and NBA, generate a lot of excitement, and money, particularly in the lower-seeded teams fans. The chance that, even though your team may have backed into the playoffs, MIGHT actually make some noise, gets fans pumped up, loosening purse strings along the way. This is the reason Bud Selig, in his infinite wisdom, is pushing for more wild-card teams in MLB. It's been successful(read: profitable) so far, and we can never have enough profit, right?
SaberTJ
10/14
The Baron Davis led GS Warriors are a good example of your 2nd paragraph.
Scartore
10/15
My best friend has decided that watching the NBA playoffs is his preferred way to consume the product. There are enough games to feel like a whole season almost, he never has to see players mail one in, and he never has to watch the Clippers, at least not for long. I don't think this is ideal btw.
ScottBehson
10/14
In my little league, Babe Ruth, and high school playing days, they awarded a "regular season champion" trophy (which was often perceived as a hollow virtory) and a separate "playoff champion" trophy (which was twice a big, and the trophy everyone wanted). I guess we could do the same in MLB. But could you imagine Nolan Ryan or George Steinbrenner or Jimmy Rollins accpeting the regular season trophy with anything less than disdain?
Scartore
10/15
That's just it, those people should know better! They should know that winning 100 games is a massive accomplishment on it's own