Serious question, no dooming, no trolling: If getting to the World Series is such a crapshoot nowadays, how have the Dodgers and Astros been to the WS a combined 9 times in the last 10 years?

35 comments

1. I think there’s randomness, but Hal should acknowledge that the extreme spending does yield results.

   Ignoring it at this point is kinda reaching.

2. It’s MORE of a crapshoot than other leagues historically. But the best rosters still generally stick around the longest.

3. I don’t think anybody with a serious opinion would call it a crapshoot, but the length of the season and it’s affect on players health adds to the parity. Baseball is a war of attrition in many ways, and it’s hard to predict who’s going to go all the way because you can’t predict injury.

   The Dodgers and Astros have had the unique combination of luck in avoiding a litany of major injuries and the depth/development necessary to be able to weather those injuries.

   The Yankees, on the other hand, have been oft injured, have had poorly constructed depth, and have a history of poorly developing position players specifically to fill those inevitable gaps injuries leave.

4. Uhh, those teams don’t fall asleep end of May through August?

5. The 2026 World Series teams will probably be the Dodgers and the Orioles with the Dodgers winning, since the Orioles are the only AL East team who haven’t played against the Dodgers in a World Series yet.

6. I think bringing SFG and Texas in the conversation hurts your argument to be honest. They sort of demonstrate the crapshoot theory. Put a good team together, get hot at the right time, and win it all.

   Look at Texas, Garcia hasn’t been a good player since, yet turned into a god for the one postseason run.

7. Overall win-loss is better correlated with playoff success than win-loss vs ≥.500 teams or regular season games against playoff teams. Run differential is better correlated than win-loss.

8. Ever played craps?

9. Obviously winning teams have good stats (because they win, duh. Kinda cherry picked) but the first thing that comes to mind is you gotta hit and pitch well under circumstance. And something about those things always unravel. IE: defence for pitchers, or just shitty ABs for hitters be it bad luck or filthy stuff.

10. Cheaters don’t count

    One is cheating on field; one is cheating off field

11. It’s not a crapshoot at all. That’s an excuse that executives use when they want to justify not doing what’s necessary to actually go for it.

    If you build a roster the right way, you will have success. This strategy changes with time, but right now, a championship caliber team needs:

    – 3 Quality, Reliable Starters

    – An offense that knows how to put the ball in play, and doesn’t waste ABs with strikeouts.

    – A strong bullpen.

    We have the starters. We usually have the bullpen pieces (even though last year was a mess). And the one year we had someone who could get on base at a great clip in front of Judge, we went to the World Series.

12. Contrary to what Cashman says, it isn’t a crap shoot.

    It starts by investing in the team, having strong fundamentals and taking the regular season seriously. Then if you wrap up home field you put yourself in the best position to win in October AND compliment that by having strong pitching, defense, and clutch hitting.

    Dodgers, Astros (minus the cheating), and even the Red Sox in 18 have kind of proven that’s the way to win

13. It’s a bit of a crapshoot but not a total one. A given year a great team might lose a series to a good team on a hot streak. But over multiple years the better teams are going to have more success.

    All of our recent playoff loses I’ve felt we got beat by a better team. We didn’t go back and forth to 5 or 7 games and have it come down to a couple plays or at-bats. That would be the luck portion. We’ve gotten beat fair and square by teams that are flat out better built. And for that to happen consistently means the Yanks are doing something wrong.

    The playoffs are a crapshoot, but they’re a rigged crapshoot.

14. The playoffs are obviously not entirely random, if they were then we would see way more variation in the seeding but in reality 7 of the last 10 WS were won by a 1 seed in their respective league.for the most part the cream still rises to the top.

    We can still see though that there is an inherent randomness in the playoffs. Even in a time where team like HOU and LAD have had sustained success 13 different teams have still made the WS. Almost half of the MLB has a WS appearance in the last 10 years.

15. Houston had really good player development.

    Astros: Altuve, Correa, Bregman, Springer, Teoscar Hernandez, Chris Devenski, Keuchel, McCullers, Musgrove, Valdez, Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Tucker, Marwin Gonzalez, Myles Straw, etc. It’s gross really . . . then getting Cole, Verlander, fixing and improving guys like Morton, Brad Peacock, Ryan Pressley, Collin McHugh, etc.

    Similar story with LAD.

    Allowed them to maintain a high level of competitiveness and have the developmental depth to acquire additional assets.

16. Cheating (Astros), Spending and taking advantage of contract loopholes so severely that we will have a lockout next year (Dodgers)

17. It’s a crap shoot but you also have to have a team that doesn’t play one dimensional baseball, which unfortunately we do.

18. Because they are the exception, not the rule. I mean they have both dominated, yet they have only played eachother once.

    We can talk about how the Yankees should also be one of the exceptions but that is a different story.

19. The crapshoot narrative comes from random players getting hot for a series or two and carrying a team. Like the 2019 nationals were carried by basically 7 guys: Rendon and Soto who hit a home run basically everytime they needed to, Scherzer, Straus, and Corbin who each went super sayan, and Hudson and Doolittle who were just good enough. On paper that was one of the weakest teams to ever win a World Series and would’ve been out of the playoffs completely if Milwaukee hadn’t made that error.

    Ultimately Yankees have been far less aggressive than other teams in the free agent and trade markets than either the As*tros or Dodgers. They got Giancarlo in 18 but didn’t address pitching. They passed on Machado and Harper despite clear needs (and clear interest by those players) because of cost. Recently they’ve given big contracts to Fried and Rodon and both have been…less than stellar in the post season. Rodon has been less than stellar in all aspects. Last reason they tried to address the bullpen and Williams and Doval basically just sucked and Weaver regressed heavily.

    Meanwhile the dodgers and As*tros over the last ten years have continued to accumulate good players more or less without regard to need. The dodgers’s 6-7 pitcher would be most teams’s 2-3. They have Roki Sasaki out of the bullpen. They’re doing what every fan wishes their own team was doing, and what most teams COULD afford to do.

    And even when Texas won, they did it by investing heavily in Seager and Siemien, and getting unexpected contributions from Garcia, etc. Atlanta’s mid season outfield acquisitions like Rosario and Ozuna (solid but not superstar players) carried that offense.

    Ultimately those two ownership groups have shown a greater desire to win than others and have earned more opportunities to compete than other teams have.

20. They don’t choke at the most critical moments

21. The Astros built a very strong roster through tanking. That got high picks, made smart trades and signings. They also cheated 2017-2019, so it’s hard to say how good they actually were.

    The Dodgers just sign every good player they can. They actively look to improve in every way they can. Good signings and good trades.

    Both also had/have very good roster constructions and potent line ups and great pitching.

    These are two ways to build teams – tank and make good picks, trades and signings, or buy the best roster possible. Other teams don’t commit to either.

22. Because it’s only a crapshoot if your team doesn’t put winning first.

23. Pitching.

24. Its a crapshoot the same way that you always see the same guys with like 10 WSOP bracelets. Yes obviously there’s luck or sometimes you just run into someone that it’s at the top of their game. But there’s a reason why, in tournaments with thousands of people, the same 10 keep winning.

    Poker is way more of a random, luck, based game than baseball.

    I feel crazy thinking that I’m smarter than the Yankees brain trust, but how many obvious things do the fans see and yell about that Cashman et al tell us is not a problem before they eventually relent a few years later?

    The Yankees somehow seem to have forgotten what they learned in the 90s. Just like how hitting in the playoffs is a different skill than hitting in the regular season. A team that’s built to win in the playoffs against other really good teams has a better chance of winning than a team built just to clean up in the regular season. And that team, let’s use the LAD as an example who is good enough to beat the brewers, blue jays, Yankees, Phillies, is also obviously going to be good enough ti get through the playoffs.

    This is a either Yankees brain trust gaslighting us or a textbook case of not seeing the forest for the trees

25. It comes down to whether New York Yankees fans would tolerate legitimately sucking for a time. With the exception of the Dodgers, all of those teams went through absolutely terrible stretches over the same course of time. So I think it has been settled that the management would rather extend the 33 year winning season streak then sell off and rebuild or however.

    It is also management that plays a role in the overall system of how a team plays and what they focus on. As far as the clutch thing, whether people admit or not playing for the Yankees is not always fun and what goes on between the ears can be just as important as anything else.

    I hold to the theory that in 2001 the Diamondbacks showed baseball like Rocky vs Drago that they can be beat and they have never really had the psychological advantage they used to have since then. 2009 Phillies were defending champs and felt like they had the upper hand but the Yanks played smart, solid baseball and beat them. We definitely have not seen the Yankees playing smart, solid baseball for some time in the playoffs.

26. The answer is that it’s not a crapshoot. That’s the excuse by guys like Beane and Cashman who can’t solve the puzzle.

27. > If getting to the World Series is such a crapshoot

    It’s not *getting* to the World Series that’s a crapshoot, it’s the post season that’s a crapshoot.

    The Yankees are not bad at building a team that can get to the post season, but struggle to beat the top notch teams.

28. Because it’s not a crapshoot, not entirely

    You can boost your odds greatly if you’re willing to spend money or you’re really good at drafting and developing

    The Dodgers have their approach in the Astros had their approach.., and the cheating

    The Yankees refuse to spend money so they’re not gonna win anything this year

29. It’s because hitting is the hardest thing to do in professional sports. It’s the one thing you can fail at 70% of the time and become a HOF. 

    In a short series Ernie Clement could outperform Barry Bonds. That doesn’t happen in other sports. 

30. I swear you guys look at headline stats without context.

    The Astros tanked for 3 years and basically fielded a triple AAA team to get to a point of sustained success, notwithstanding the fact that they cheated. They also played in a non-competitive division for the longest time with the Mariners and Athletics being distant divisional threats across different seasons, and the 2023 season where the Rangers and the Mariners were competitive. They arguably had the easiest path to the playoffs besides the Dodgers.

    And the Dodgers should be the poster child for playoffs being a crapshoot. Lucked out against a superior Brewers team in 2018 ,and then proceeded to lose to teams riding the momentum in 2019 (Nationals), 2021 (Braves), 2022 (Padres), and 2023 (Diamondbacks). Or are we going to pretend that people weren’t calling the Dodgers postseason jobbers for consistently losing despite getting triple digit wins in each of those years?

31. The Yankees don’t follow the fiat adage of baseball.

    Keep your eye on the ball.

    Until we get some people that can actually consistently make contact with the baseball, and can actually field the ball consistently, we’re just going to throw heat hit homers crush scrubs and get destroyed by teams that play baseball.

32. “Crapshoot” was first used in baseball to describe the moneyball teams who snuck into 100 wins because of being in the anonymous AL West but were exposed in October while playing the best teams.

    When Cashman executes the crapshoot startegy it is an admission that his team is not the best one who got there.

33. Serious answer: It’s not a crapshoot. Every team has flaws but teams with lots of talent and good management tend to put themselves in place for success. Teams that hang on to mids like Boone and Volpe with a deathgrip and cheap out on their rotation or bullpen or just get plain lazy at the trade deadline put on a good show but don’t make deep runs.

34. Football is a crapshoot one and done baseball is best of five and 7 better baseball team wins. Cashman lied

35. There is definitely an element of luck. That doesn’t mean the best team isn’t the most likely to win.

    If being good doesn’t matter, maybe the Yankees should hire a lucky GM instead.