Kepner (NY Times): Ryan Looks to recapture past success

You have to qualify for the Playoffs first... That's Obvious...

Once in the playoffs anything can happen but I don't know if Random is the right word. It's a fresh start and you gotta play ball. Season Records going into the playoffs only matter for seeding purposes but they don't carry over to the playoffs.


In 2001... The Seattle Mariners finished 116-46... Led By Freddie Garcia... Jamie Moyer and Aaron Sele on the Mound. It's the best baseball season (record wise) in the somewhat modern day.

During the course of that incredible Mariners 116-46 Season:

From April 29th to May 8th... The Mariners went 3-5
From May 18th to May 22nd... The Mariners went 1-3
From June 17th to June 28th... The Mariners went 4-7
From July 4th to July 7th... The Mariners went 1-3
From August 16th to August 20th... The Mariners went 2-3
From August 26th to August 31st... The Mariners went 2-3
From September 20 to September 23... The Team went 0-4

7 stretches of games that would have knocked them out of the playoffs at that time if it were the playoffs.

BTW... In the actual playoffs in 2001... The Mariners 116-46 record during the regular season... Did not reach the World Series... They just got past the Indians 3 games to 2 which included a 17 to 2 loss to the Indians before being knocked out by the Yankees 4 games to 1 in the ALCS

The Yankees lost to the D-Backs.

in 2012... The Minnesota Twins finished with a record of 66 and 96.

From May 28th to June 12th... The Twins went 10-3

A winning streak that was long enough to put the team in the World Series if the World Series was happening at that time. From July 27 to

August 7... The Twins were 9-3. Which would have also gotten them to the World Series.

Yes I know... The Opponents for the Twins were not World Series caliber for all of those games... But they were not World Series Caliber teams that the Mariners lost to during their down periods in 2001 either.

The point of it all... Baseball is a streaky game... Once the Playoff starts... It's a clean slate and the 1st team to 11 wins... Gets the title. Your regular season record doesn't apply to anyone anymore.

Who is playing the best baseball at that moment will win. It ain't so much random... It's who's hot... But you gotta get in... so... getting into the playoffs is always going to be the most important goal.

I just picked the 2001 Mariners because they had the best record and I picked the 2012 Twins because we know them so well.

Pick any year... Any team... And you will find stretches where anybody was hot enough to win it and cold enough to lose it.

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Originally Posted by Riverbrian

During the course of that incredible Mariners 116-46 Season:

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Very nice analysis.

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Originally Posted by Riverbrian

The point of it all... Baseball is a streaky game...

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So can coin flipping, if you have 30 teams flipping (weighted) coins 162 times a year against each other. With that many sequences of flips you could easily find sequences like these. Or so they say - it's been a long time since I ran a coin-flipping tournament on a rainy afternoon, and I didn't keep my records.

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Originally Posted by ashburyjohn

Very nice analysis.



So can coin flipping, if you have 30 teams flipping (weighted) coins 162 times a year against each other. With that many sequences of flips you could easily find sequences like these. Or so they say - it's been a long time since I ran a coin-flipping tournament on a rainy afternoon, and I didn't keep my records.

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I just started flipping a quarter to test your theory... It came up Heads 3 Times and Tails once and once it landed on edge propped up against my phone... I did a do over and it rolled under my desk. I tried to find it but it was gone. I had to leave my office for a second and I came back to my office and saw a co-worker who is always short of change drinking a coke. I'm now suspicious of him.

I think this means the Twins will win on Saturday! ;)

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Originally Posted by Nick Nelson

Good lord, are you going to take every single quote posted on this board and spin it as proof that the Twins don't want to win a World Series?

There is not a single player or coach in all of baseball that does not desperately want to win the World Series -- I can pretty much guarantee you that. It's time to put your bizarre obsession with this absurd notion to rest, or at least keep it to yourself.

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It is not about wanting to win the World Series. Of course they do. This is not what I am arguing here.

It is about setting the bar of what success and "winning" are, up to there. Setting expectations. Saying that every season their goal (not their want, or they'd love to or whatever, because every team does) is to win the World Series... If the bar is set lower, mediocrity will "meet expectations" and everyone will be happy.

BTW, this quote is from Mauer, and not Ryan or Gardy. Still waiting.

Also, if the post-season were a crabshoot, the Twins would have won a World Series in the 00s and have been in at least another one. They haven't. On the other hand, look and the Giants and the Cards on relative post-season to WS success. Not a crabshoot.

I think you can certainly argue that the Twins have not generally been well built to win in the playoffs. As a rule, teams with high-end starters, power hitting and (perhaps most importantly) experience are going to be better off, which helps explain the Yankees' string of success not so long ago, but not even those things are fail safe by any means. Just look at the Yankees lately. Won 95 games last year, then got pressed in the ALDS by the mediocre Orioles and trounced in the ALCS by the Tigers. The prior year the Yanks won 97 in the regular season and got knocked off in the first round.

At the end of the day, it really is more random than anything. As grover astutely put it, we're talking about 5-7 game series between the eight best teams in the game. No one blinks when the Royals beat the Yankees in a three-game series during the regular season. That's baseball.

For everyone who says an ace is the be-all, end-all ingredient for playoff success, consider that the Twins last won a playoff series with Joe Mays as their ace. In three of the next four years, they dropped out in first round with Johan Santana -- indisputably one of the greatest pitchers in the game -- fronting their rotation.

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Originally Posted by thrylos98

It is about setting the bar of what success and "winning" are, up to there. Setting expectations. Saying that every season their goal (not their want, or they'd love to or whatever, because every team does) is to win the World Series... If the bar is set lower, mediocrity will "meet expectations" and everyone will be happy.

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Why do you care so much about the generic sound bytes they give out to the media? Utterly meaningless. Whether Terry Ryan tells a reporter that he wants to win the division or win the World Series (a matter of semantics, honestly) has no bearing on what will happen.

Anyway, making the playoffs is a fine goal. If your team is built to make the playoffs, it is by definition built to contend for a championship. Your implication seems to be that once they reach the postseason they stop trying, which just comes off as ignorant.

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Originally Posted by "thyrlos98

Also, if the post-season were a crabshoot, the Twins would have won a World Series in the 00s and have been in at least another one. They haven't. On the other hand, look and the Giants and the Cards on relative post-season to WS success. Not a crabshoot.

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For multiple reasons, this illustrates that you do not understand what a crapshoot is.

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Originally Posted by Nick Nelson

For multiple reasons, this illustrates that you do not understand what a crapshoot is.

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I was about to launch into a giant tirade about why this idea of a "crabshoot" is so godawful stupid, but I think you've summed it up pretty well. Not that he'd get it anyway...

I think crabshooting is illegal in the state of Minnesota.

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...Z3aN_TDnmXD3cq

I think Riverbrian and I are saying the same thing. He says whichever team gets hot wins. I say it's pretty much random who wins. I guess it's obvious that which ever team gets hot wins. I think it's random who gets hot.

A bit more digging. Here are the playoff records and ERA of the Cy Young award winners the past 10 years.

2011 - Justin Verlander - 20.1 IP, 5.31 ERA, Tigers - 5 wins, 6 losses, lost in ALCS
2010 - Roy Halladay - 22 IP, 2.45 ERA, Phillies - 5 wins 4 losses, lost in NLCS
2007 - CC Sabathia - 15.1 IP, 8.80 ERA, Indians - 6 wins 5 losses, lost in ALCS
2006 - Johan Santana - 8.0 IP, 2.25 ERA, Twins - 0 wins 3 losses, lost in ALDS
2005 - Bartolo Colon 8.0 IP, 4.50 ERA, Angels - 4 wins 6 losses, lost in ALCS
2005 - Chris Carpenter 21.0 IP, 2.14 ERA, Cardinals - 5 wins, 4 losses, lost in NLCS
2004 - Johan Santana -12 IP, 0.75 ERA, Twins - 1 wins 3 losses, lost in ALDS
2004 - Roger Clemons - 25 IP, 3.60 ERA, Astros - 6 wins 6 losses, lost in NLCS

So teams made the playoffs 8 times in the last 10 years while having the BEST pitcher in their league. These teams were "built to win in the playoffs". And those teams have combined for a 32-37 record and have never made the world series.

Oh, and I see the Yankees losing the last couple of years not as a random thing, I see it as proof there is a God. And I am opposed to shooting crabs.

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Originally Posted by Nick Nelson

Anyway, making the playoffs is a fine goal. If your team is built to make the playoffs, it is by definition built to contend for a championship.

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I'm not sure this is true. There still seems to me to be a difference between maintaining a steady course and holding a team together over the long course of the season and having a team that is built to win in shorter playoff series. I've thought about this a lot with regard to Gardenhire and why I think he's generally been a good regular season manager and yet had little playoff success. I think the Twins usually select players who have (or will develop) a conviviality with one another that allows them to function well over the course of a long season -- basically creating a team that (hopefully) won't implode due to personality conflicts (and I do think that may have led to "overachieving" during the regular season at times). But I also think that may lead to a team that is on too much of an "even keel" when they reach the playoffs -- and when they may need a player or two to get under other players' skins and to motivate when time is of the essence. I don't have any proof of this -- I'm just not sure that a team built to make the playoffs is NECESSARILY (or as you say, by definition) built to win a championship (and I think this may be especially true in the A.L. Central).

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Originally Posted by grover738

I think Riverbrian and I are saying the same thing. He says whichever team gets hot wins. I say it's pretty much random who wins. I guess it's obvious that which ever team gets hot wins. I think it's random who gets hot.

A bit more digging. Here are the playoff records and ERA of the Cy Young award winners the past 10 years.

2011 - Justin Verlander - 20.1 IP, 5.31 ERA, Tigers - 5 wins, 6 losses, lost in ALCS
2010 - Roy Halladay - 22 IP, 2.45 ERA, Phillies - 5 wins 4 losses, lost in NLCS
2007 - CC Sabathia - 15.1 IP, 8.80 ERA, Indians - 6 wins 5 losses, lost in ALCS
2006 - Johan Santana - 8.0 IP, 2.25 ERA, Twins - 0 wins 3 losses, lost in ALDS
2005 - Bartolo Colon 8.0 IP, 4.50 ERA, Angels - 4 wins 6 losses, lost in ALCS
2005 - Chris Carpenter 21.0 IP, 2.14 ERA, Cardinals - 5 wins, 4 losses, lost in NLCS
2004 - Johan Santana -12 IP, 0.75 ERA, Twins - 1 wins 3 losses, lost in ALDS
2004 - Roger Clemons - 25 IP, 3.60 ERA, Astros - 6 wins 6 losses, lost in NLCS

So teams made the playoffs 8 times in the last 10 years while having the BEST pitcher in their league. These teams were "built to win in the playoffs". And those teams have combined for a 32-37 record and have never made the world series.

Oh, and I see the Yankees losing the last couple of years not as a random thing, I see it as proof there is a God. And I am opposed to shooting crabs.

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:th_alc:

Before I got married "Randomly Hot" was a good discription of the girls I dated.

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Originally Posted by Riverbrian

:th_alc:

Before I got married "Randomly Hot" was a good discription of the girls I dated.

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win.

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Originally Posted by grover738

I think Riverbrian and I are saying the same thing. He says whichever team gets hot wins. I say it's pretty much random who wins. I guess it's obvious that which ever team gets hot wins. I think it's random who gets hot.

A bit more digging. Here are the playoff records and ERA of the Cy Young award winners the past 10 years.

2011 - Justin Verlander - 20.1 IP, 5.31 ERA, Tigers - 5 wins, 6 losses, lost in ALCS
2010 - Roy Halladay - 22 IP, 2.45 ERA, Phillies - 5 wins 4 losses, lost in NLCS
2007 - CC Sabathia - 15.1 IP, 8.80 ERA, Indians - 6 wins 5 losses, lost in ALCS
2006 - Johan Santana - 8.0 IP, 2.25 ERA, Twins - 0 wins 3 losses, lost in ALDS
2005 - Bartolo Colon 8.0 IP, 4.50 ERA, Angels - 4 wins 6 losses, lost in ALCS
2005 - Chris Carpenter 21.0 IP, 2.14 ERA, Cardinals - 5 wins, 4 losses, lost in NLCS
2004 - Johan Santana -12 IP, 0.75 ERA, Twins - 1 wins 3 losses, lost in ALDS
2004 - Roger Clemons - 25 IP, 3.60 ERA, Astros - 6 wins 6 losses, lost in NLCS

So teams made the playoffs 8 times in the last 10 years while having the BEST pitcher in their league. These teams were "built to win in the playoffs". And those teams have combined for a 32-37 record and have never made the world series.

Oh, and I see the Yankees losing the last couple of years not as a random thing, I see it as proof there is a God. And I am opposed to shooting crabs.

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And yet every single one of those teams that weren't the Twins managed to make it past the Divisional series. Weird.

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Originally Posted by 70charger

win.

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Yeah... But randomly not hot would also apply.

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Originally Posted by FrodaddyG

And yet every single one of those teams that weren't the Twins managed to make it past the Divisional series. Weird.

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I'm sure that means a lot to them and their fans, I know I always remember the teams that finished 3rd the most.

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Originally Posted by Nick Nelson

For everyone who says an ace is the be-all, end-all ingredient for playoff success, consider that the Twins last won a playoff series with Joe Mays as their ace. In three of the next four years, they dropped out in first round with Johan Santana -- indisputably one of the greatest pitchers in the game -- fronting their rotation.

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Now there is an "Homage to BYTO" topic we could all get fired up about. FWIW - I've always been in the same camp and got a good chuckle out of all of the media and fans that say "what we've always been missing is an ace!"

To me, what we've always been missing is just that one break that gets the ball rolling. See: The multiple bad breaks of 2006. Whether or not Gardy should be somehow accountable for not getting those breaks is beyond my pay grade, but at some point continued failure at least should generate consideration for changing up the "mojo" if nothing else.

So many of those teams just choked... Honestly, that started in 2004 when Gardy let Nathan in way too long. Everyone watching that game knew what was going to happen... except Gardy.

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Originally Posted by thrylos98

It is not about wanting to win the World Series. Of course they do. This is not what I am arguing here.

It is about setting the bar of what success and "winning" are, up to there. Setting expectations. Saying that every season their goal (not their want, or they'd love to or whatever, because every team does) is to win the World Series... If the bar is set lower, mediocrity will "meet expectations" and everyone will be happy.

BTW, this quote is from Mauer, and not Ryan or Gardy. Still waiting.

Also, if the post-season were a crabshoot, the Twins would have won a World Series in the 00s and have been in at least another one. They haven't. On the other hand, look and the Giants and the Cards on relative post-season to WS success. Not a crabshoot.

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Is Dave St. Peter good enough?

"It's probably unreasonable to think we're just one or two players away from being a world championship contender at this point," St. Peter said. "At the end of the day, I think we're trying to build this thing and do it the right way. Ultimately, that's going to come from the players within this organization."
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Originally Posted by Nick Nelson

I think you can certainly argue that the Twins have not generally been well built to win in the playoffs. As a rule, teams with high-end starters, power hitting and (perhaps most importantly) experience are going to be better off, which helps explain the Yankees' string of success not so long ago, but not even those things are fail safe by any means. Just look at the Yankees lately. Won 95 games last year, then got pressed in the ALDS by the mediocre Orioles and trounced in the ALCS by the Tigers. The prior year the Yanks won 97 in the regular season and got knocked off in the first round.

At the end of the day, it really is more random than anything. As grover astutely put it, we're talking about 5-7 game series between the eight best teams in the game. No one blinks when the Royals beat the Yankees in a three-game series during the regular season. That's baseball.

For everyone who says an ace is the be-all, end-all ingredient for playoff success, consider that the Twins last won a playoff series with Joe Mays as their ace. In three of the next four years, they dropped out in first round with Johan Santana -- indisputably one of the greatest pitchers in the game -- fronting their rotation.

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I think you took both sides of the issue. 1) "The Twins have not generally been well built to win in the playoffs."
2) "At the end of the day, it really is more random than anything."

I definitely agree with statement 1). especially when you add "...high-end starters, power hitting and (perhaps more importantly) experience...". I maintain that the Twins were constructed "assymetrically" to "conventional wisdom" (high-end starters, power hitters) in order to assemble a more consistently entertaining team, but one with "less upside". Sort of like teams trading stars for multiple decent players who individually won't improve (much) but the two extra (decent) players will generate an additional win versus the lesser competition of the regular season, but won't help when opposed by the stouter playoff opponent. The three combined salaries quite like represent a cost saving when compared to the one star player plus the two "replaced" players.

I will disagree with statement 2). because it more than just losing four consectutive playoff series, but every game of those four playoff series. If entirely random there should have been some wins along the way. Random implies something like a 50% probability of a Win in any game. 0.5 raised to the 12th power is (rounded) 0.000244, or less than a .02% occurence of zero wins in 12 games, definately not random. Clearly, the other factors in baseball outweigh random occurence.

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Originally Posted by Kwak

I will disagree with statement 2). because it more than just losing four consectutive playoff series, but every game of those four playoff series. If entirely random there should have been some wins along the way. Random implies something like a 50% probability of a Win in any game. 0.5 raised to the 12th power is (rounded) 0.000244, or less than a .02% occurence of zero wins in 12 games, definately not random. Clearly, the other factors in baseball outweigh random occurence.

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Sure, that's one definition. I think "random" is being used here in terms of there not being one set method/formula/recipe etc for winning. So the idea that you can sit, pre-playoffs - and call the winner is not easy to do. The other factors in baseball come into play on a game-by-game basis, but the idea that you can solve the World Series by having a particular roster construction is WAY overplayed.

There have been plenty of WS winners in the last ten years that were FAR from ideal on paper and still found a way to win.