There seems to be a prevailing prediction among baseball fans, particularly those of American League teams that the representative of the National League in the World Series will be “nothing more than a sacrificial lamb.” I am here to tell you that while the American League Champion may very well end up winning the World Series this season, it is waaaayyy to early to be making that type of prediction.
First of all, we don’t even know who will be playing in the World Series. Once the LCS’ are over, and we see who the 2 teams are, then I might be willing to make a prediction. But seeing that right now only 2 (Mets and Tigers) of the 20+ teams in contention for the playoffs can start printing playoff tickets, we don’t even know who the final 8 will be, let alone the final 2. I will admit that if the Tigers or Yankees end up playing against the Padres in the World Series, it would seem that the AL would probably get their 3rd straight sweep in the Fall Classic. But if the Mets match up against the A’s, advantage NL.
Second, the AL may be better on the whole this season, as evidenced by their dominance of interleague games. However, the entire AL will not be playing in the World Series, only one of their teams. Every team has weaknesses and their opponent will be able to exploit those weaknesses. I don’t think anybody would disagree that the Red Sox are a vastly superior team over the Devil Rays, however their season series (Boston leads 9-7) would suggest the gap is not that wide. I am certainly not making the argument that the Devil Rays are better then the Red Sox, but saying that some teams match up better against others on the field than they do on paper.
Third, in a short series anything can happen and the team who is hot at the time usually wins, not necessarily the “better” team. Just ask the 1988 and 1990 Oakland A’s or the 2003 Yankees.
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While I have said early and often that the AL is better than the NL, young Mr. Greenberg has a defensible point here. According to “The Wages of Wins,” a new book by David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt, Stacey L. Brook that tries to apply Freakonomics techniques to sports, playoffs are crap-shoot. While the season produces the best teams, it’s not possible to predict the outcome of a playoff series because it’s such small sample of games. So even though the NL — what’s the word? oh yeah — sucks, they could still pull one out.
No one is saying the Mets, or another lamb from the NL, has no chance of winning the World Series, but given the pitching matchups 1-2-3, the NL looks to be much weaker than most of the probable AL opponents.
Stranger things have happened in a short series. However, but the money right now has to be on one of teams from the AL winning it all.
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