Thursday, April 02, 2009

When I Went to School in Olympia...

Sports Illustrated has 13 regular baseball writers. Those writers have made their picks for the dvision winners and wild cards in the AL and NL. Every writer save one picked the Mets and Phillies to both make the playoffs. There's apparently a total consensus that these two teams are better than any other potential runner-up in baseball. This raises a few possibilities that are not mutually exclusive of one another:

1. Sports Illustrated writers are all conformists.

2. Sports Illustrated writers are all a product of their location and assume that the teams in the Northeast are better than they are.

3. The line about baseball having achieved parity is wrong because major market teams are still overwhelming favorites in five of the six divisions. (The corollary is that the only factor creating parity in baseball is the post-season lottery that seemingly penalizes the teams with the best records.)

4. The Garret Anderson-Jordan Schafer-Jeff Francoeur outfield isn't strking fear into the hearts of people who watch baseball for a living.

4 comments:

JR Suicide said...

all of the above? that Braves outfield is pretty sad.

i think even worse is the assumption that the Yankees and RedSox are both gonna make the playoffs when it seems painfully obvious that the Yankees are setting themselves up for a big time implosion when Jeter, Posoda, and Rivera all break down this year. ARod struggles under the preasure all season after he comes back. CC stinks up the joint. and Joba The Hutt gets exposed as totally overrated....and yet the Yankees will still be talked about 80% than anyone else not named Boston.

it always takes baseball season to remind me how much i hate ESPN and SI.

Anonymous said...

How does the post season lottery penalize the teams with the better record?

Michael said...

Because the team with the best record hasn't won in over a decade, whereas the wild card teams have won repeatedly. This is either:

1. Evidence that the playoffs are a coin flip and we've just seen tails come up over and over; or

2. Lower seeded teams have an advantage, possibly because they play pressure games in September, whereas the top seed usually coasts into October.

AuditDawg said...

Let's take #4 one step further. Does the Phillies starting rotation beyond Cole Hamels strike fear in the hearts of anyone? What about the Mets beyond Johan Santana? I stopped reading preseason prognostications for all sports a long time ago. Tell me, did any of these "experts" pick a Phillies/Rays World Series last year?