The World Series will be starting as soon as I get myself psyched up to do it, probably this weekend. But one item I wanted to scratch off the to-do list before playing the games was this preview. :)
The Yankees dominated the leaderboards for team statistics:
They saved their hottest stretch for September, and ultimately the Red Sox couldn't keep up with that 22-5 record, and wouldn't have won the pennant even if they'd swept the Yankees during that key September series I mentioned last time rather than the reverse.
The Cardinals had an even hotter August than the Yankees' September, which allowed them to scuffle a bit coming to the finish. They led a bunch of pitching categories (though were middle of the pack in walks and strikeouts), and led the league in runs (though were only 3rd in OPS and home runs):
Looking at that alone, we might favor the Yankees over St. Louis. However, we would also have (and kind of did) expect Boston to beat the Phillies last season, and take the White Sox over the Rustlers before that. The problem is the AL is rather stratified--the Packers have been historic-level bad for a few years, and the Peppers have been a more pedestrian bad. With the Packers giving out 114 wins to the rest of the league and Newark contributing another 97, it's not obvious how the Yankees (or Red Sox) would do if they were in the NL playing Baltimore and the Cubs instead*.
Looking at things a little bit more closely, though, I do think the Yankees dominated their league in general a bit more than the Cardinals. Even if you remove Newark and Kansas City, the Yankees beat the rest of the league at a 103-win pace. The Yanks were offensively very strong, scoring runs at a pace 20% more than the league average and with a team OPS 8% higher than the league. Those numbers are actually pretty similar to what the real-life 1998 Yankees did. For their opponents in St. Louis, those numbers were 10% more run scoring and 6% higher OPS. So, the Yankees seem to be a bit better than the Cards.
Pitching-wise, despite the Cardinals' gaudy numbers (Team ERA of 2.23!) they're not appreciably better than the Yankees relative to their leagues. St. Louis' ERA is 15% better than the NL average, and in runs per game they're 11% better. For the Yankees, though, those numbers are 13% and 15%. Certainly competitive.
I'd intended to also talk about positional comparisons between teams, but this is getting long so I'll do that next time.
*Interestingly enough (to me), Buffalo went 74-88 and finished in 7th place largely because of their awful performance against terrible teams--they were 13-23 vs. Baltimore and the Cubs. If they'd gone 18-18 against them they would have been just below .500 and the season might feel different in the Queen City. If they'd won at the same pace against those teams that everyone else did, they'd've gone 21-15, finished over .500 and been seen as a team on the rise. Maybe they are a team on the rise? Their Pythagorean record suggests they "should" have been 79-83...
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