The second half of the Alt-1924 season was a continuation of the first, and a coronation of the Yankees and Cardinals. The Yankees played at a torrid pace, winning their fifth consecutive AL pennant and shattering the single-season wins record in the process. The Cardinals cooled slightly in the second half but cruised to their own pennant, setting up the third Yankees-Cardinals championship series in the last seven seasons.
Heilmann could not quite keep up with Cobb's 1921 record-setting pace, finishing at .419 and settling for the 4th-best single-season batting average of the 20th century and the third-most hits in a single season. I expect him to win the AL MVP award, but his performance might not have been the best in the MLB--Al Simmons in his first full season erupted for 262 hits (a record) and 433 total bases (another record) while hitting .400 on the dot. He became the first NL .400 hitter of the 20th century, with 11.6 WAR. He's a shoo-in for the NL MVP, which was cinched when Hornsby fell to an oblique strain in early August that cost him 8 weeks of time. This is the third year of the last four where Hornsby lost significant time due to injury, though he's at least back for the series.
On the pitching side, Pennock led all qualifiers in ERA by over a half-run, though Streeter led MLB in strikeouts and wins. I suspect Pennock will win the Cy Young Award, but would not begrudge a win for Streeter. In the NL, there was no single pitcher with a dominant year--the Cardinals' success led them to clog the leaderboard for wins, but they only had one pitcher with a sub-3.00 ERA (Byron Harle at 2.99, and he got demoted to Indianapolis at the end of the season for some reason).
This seems as good a segue into the World Series Preview as any!
Naively, it seems like it should be as simple as pointing to the 125 wins the Yankees had in the regular season vs. the 108 (still excellent!) the Cardinals had. The Yankees scored more runs than St. Louis and allowed fewer. The Yankees led the AL in both categories while the Cardinals were 3rd in runs against. However, I've consistently underestimated the Yanks' opponents in these previews and/or misestimated how things can go in a short series. So, let's go a bit deeper and see if I can do better (I usually can't).
The Yankees "only" won 121 games according to their Pythagorean record, but the Cardinals overachieved by 5 games, so the Yankees are still much better by that metric. New York's ERA is a full run better than the AL average, while the Cardinals are 0.2 runs better. The Yankees scored 1.7 more runs per game than the AL average, while the Cards scored 1 run per game more than the NL average. If I did the math right (always a question) to only look at non-Yankees/Cardinals games, all those gaps get bigger by a bit, but not a lot. The Yankees actually scored more runs per game on the road than at home, and had identical stats for home/road ERA. St. Louis were league average as far as road ERA but much better at home. They also scored a bit more at home than on the road. Looking at all of this, the Yankees still look like they should be the dominant team here. What if the NL is just a better league than the AL, so the Yankees dominated weaker competition but aren't actually better than the Cards? I'm not sure there's a way to really figure that out without interleague play. Sam Rice tore up the AL the first half of the year with the Senators, and was traded to St. Louis and did fine in the NL (but didn't tear it up).
Moving on from there, we can look at the individuals on the teams. Heilmann had the best season by WAR (9.8), but it's hard to imagine a healthy Rogers Hornsby isn't the best player in the series. Even missing 1/3 of the season he was in 2nd place by WAR (8.5) among all the Yankees and Cardinals, and closer to 1st than to 3rd. In third by WAR is old pal Casey Stengel (7.1), with Glenn Wright about a half-win behind. After Wright is a string of Yankees, with a resurgent Peckinpaugh in 5th followed by Santop, Collins, and Cobb before reaching Sam Rice (who did most of his damage while in Washington) followed by another Yank in Pie Traynor.
Pitching-wise, it seems like it's all Yankees. Nine pitchers for the Yankees or Cardinals had ERA+ better than 110, with three of them on the Cardinals and healthy, and five of them on the Yankees and healthy. Pennock and Mendez lead the way, with ERA+ over 200. Pennock, Fitzsimmons, and Luque top the leaderboards for Win Probability Added, though the list by pitching WAR is much more mixed. I plan to have Fitzsimmons in the pen during the World Series as the stopper/closer.
Only three players from the 1918 champions remain on the Cardinals: Hornsby, Witt, and Hoyt. The Yankees still have 11 players from that first meeting on their roster. The 1920 Cardinals had five players in common with the 1924 version.
OK, so. Prediction time, I guess? I'm definitely gunshy from previous predictions, especially last year. This year's Yankees are healthy, though, and have seemed practically unstoppable. This is no pushover St. Louis team, but it's just hard for me to think that they can win it all. Yankees in 5.
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