71Bear said:
tequila4kapp said:
The Nats win raises some interesting questions about how to build your roster. The Dodger's way of incredible depth is great for the regular season. But the Nats approach with 2 dominant starters (not unlike what the Giants did during their 3 WS victories) wins titles.
Yep. The secret to success is build a roster to get you to the post season (wild card, divisional title? It makes no difference, just get there...). Then, anything is possible. I didn't look it up but I think the number of wild card Series winners is substantial.
There have been 25 seasons with a wild card, starting in 1995. 13 teams in the World Series, 7 winners. In the 17 years of the one wild card team in each league era, there were 10 teams in the World Series, 5 overall winners. In the 8 years of the two wild card teams in each league era, there have been 3 teams in the World Series, 2 winners. In each era, there was one World Series matching up wild card teams, 2002 Angels-Giants, and 2014 Royals-Giants, each going 7 games. 5 of the 7 wild card World Series winners needed 7 games to win the Series, only the 2003 Marlins beating the Yankees 4-2 and the sweep by the 2004 Red Sox after their comeback from 3-0 down to the Yankees in the ALCS being the exceptions.
If everything is a toss-up, then the change starting in 2012 to having 2 wild cards in each league shouldn't make a big difference, since the final four still includes 1 wild card.
In theory, however, the new system should make it tougher for the wild card to get out of the division series, because, if possible, the wild card teams will throw their best pitchers in the wild card game, meaning they will mostly be available for only a game 3 start in the LDS best of 5 series. In theory, the Nats were using Scherzer as their ace in the wild card game, and then he didn't start again until game 4. Of course, it eventually became apparent that Strasberg was the hotter pitcher in post-season.
The most remarkable thing about the Giants 2014 NLDS win over the (on paper) superior Nationals was that the only game they lost was the only game Bumgarner started, game 3. Of course, having pitched Bum in game 3, he was then on track to start games 1 and 5 of both the NLDS and the World Series. Again in 2016, however, the Giants were in a situation where they could only start their ace once in the NLDS, because he had pitched the wild card game.
For the most part, the biggest thing is to get there, although it helps to get there hot, and especially to get there with a hot and deep starting rotation. There are exceptions, the 2012 Giants starting rotation was not hot, and other than Vogelsong (to keep relevant to the OP, a MUCH better post-season pitcher than Kershaw), didn't really get hot until the World Series. And the 2014 Giants somehow won it all with only one good starting pitcher, which is really hard to do.
And now that we're in the era with two wild cards who start with a winner take all, it sure helps if the rotation is set up to start the ace in that game, even if it hurts chances in the LDS. In 2014, the Pirates burned their best starters in an effort to win the Central and avoid the wild card game, and were left with Volquez to start the wild card game, as opposed to, say, Cole or Liriano. It is obviously better to avoid the winner take all wild card game if you can, but you can get burned if you try and fail and don't have an ace to pitch in the winner take all game.
In the end, it's baseball. In a short series, or one game, anything is possible.
