Here’s what we know about the MLB playoffs: The Braves will be in them. Here’s what we don’t know: Nearly everything else.
There are those who moan that baseball has been overrun by numbers, that the joy of the game has been lost amid FIPs and BABIPs. And it’s true that everything that can be assessed has come to be measured out in Angstrom units. (Five years ago, who’d heard of Launch Angle?) But even the sabermetricians concede that, as the cutting-edge general manager Billy Beane moaned in “Moneyball” more than a decade ago, their stuff doesn’t translate to the postseason. It cannot be measured. It cannot be predicted.
As baseball folks took to saying after seeing four teams that couldn't win their division become world champs from 1997 through 2004: The advent of the wild card rendered the playoffs a crap shoot. This week the esteemed Russell Carleton, who lives in Atlanta, wrote in Baseball Prospectus: "Craps relies on rolls of the dice that are totally random. Someone's a favorite in each playoff series, so it's not a 50/50 shot, but it's a lot closer to 50/50 than most people want to believe … 'Anything can happen' is more or less true. But people don't like uncertainty, and to cope with what is existential randomness, we begin seeing patterns where none exist."
There have been times when we believed regular-season momentum matters (the 2007 Rockies won 13 of their final 14 games, then a playoff for the wild card, then swept the NLDS and NLCS). We also believed it doesn’t (the 2005 White Sox lost 11 of 15 in September and blew 8-1/2 games of a 9-1/2 game lead; they went 11-1 in postseason). We believed it was better to be a wild card (six of which won it all over 17 years) than the team with the best record (which, from 1990 through 2006, prevailed only once.) But the 103-win Cubs were champs in 2016, and last year’s World Series was the first since 1968 to pair 100-win clubs.
We believed that the team hitting most home runs will triumph. Sure enough, the Astros last year hit 27 in 18 playoff games, shading the Dodgers, who hit 23 in 15. Yet the Royals, who finished the 2015 season next-to-last in homers but also last in strikeouts, among American League clubs, took that year’s title. We’ve seen teams win it all with essentially two starting pitchers (the 1987 Twins, the 2001 Diamondbacks). We saw the 2006 Cardinals, who won only 83 regular-season games, prevail by getting one relief win and four saves from Adam Wainwright, who hasn’t had an MLB save since.
We believed that the postseason is a daily battle of bullpens, but sometimes the relievers aren’t who you’d imagine. John Smoltz’s first relief appearance came in Game 2 of the 1999 NLCS. Greg Maddux’s only career save came in Game 5 of the 1998 NLCS on a night when Trevor Hoffman, the Hall of Fame closer, wasn’t used in relief – but Padres starter Kevin Brown was. Orel Hershiser started Games 1, 3 and 7 of the NLCS – and saved Game 4. Randy Johnson won Games 2 and 6 of the 2001 World Series – and won Game 7 in relief.
We saw the Red Sox end nearly 86 years of suffering by falling behind the Yankees 3-0 in the 2004 ALCS and standing three outs from elimination against the greatest closer ever in Game 4; Boston prevailed that night and wouldn’t lose again. Some blueprint, huh? We’ve seen the Braves – this according to Bobby Cox, who managed them – lose three World Series (1991, 1992 and 1996) in which they played better than in the one they won (1995).
From Carleton: “Of the eight teams that make the Division Series, they all pretty much have a 10-15 percent chance of emerging as the champion. Maybe one’s got a 20 percent chance. It means that they’ve got an 80 percent chance of going home sad.”
As for the local club: Does it have enough starting pitching? On paper, yes, although the variance of October shreds paper. (Clayton Kershaw’s career regular-season ERA – 2.38; his postseason ERA – 4.35.) Do they have enough good relievers? The return to health of Arodys Vizcaino puts a happier face on what was otherwise a frown of an issue. Is this young team seasoned enough to win three playoff series, or even one?
The latter bit is one of those unknowables, though the sabermetric set has gone to great lengths to prove that “playoff experience” doesn’t much matter. And it’s instructive that the past two champs – the 2016 Cubs and the 2017 Astros – were coming off rebuilds comparable with the one the Braves just underwent. If there’s a difference, it’s this: Those teams had a previous playoff run (both in 2015) before they went the distance. I have no idea if that means anything.
I’m tempted to say that I know the Braves will play hard in the postseason, but that’s the equivalent of proclaiming that water is wet. These are the playoffs. Everybody plays hard. I’m tempted to say they’ll play well, given that they’ve played well for six months, but I note that the team that clinched its division with eight days to spare lost a June series to the Orioles, who arrived at SunTrust Park 22-52.
What William Goldman wrote of Hollywood – “Nobody knows anything” – applies doubly and trebly to postseason baseball. Why did Lonnie Smith stop at second base? Why did Mark Wohlers throw his third-best pitch to Jim Leyritz? Why did Eric Gregg develop a double-wide strike zone? Why was a ball lofted to left field at Turner Field adjudged an infield fly? Why did Fredi Gonzalez leave Craig Kimbrel in the bullpen?
Those are but a few of the October indignities suffered by the Braves since 1991. The optimist in me – I tend to keep it hidden – has a feeling this team will do itself proud in the month ahead, but I’m basing that on nothing much. We’re about to enter the realm, to borrow Carleton’s phrase, of “existential randomness.” Kierkegaard’s pitching, and Nietzsche’s warming in the ’pen.
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