TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Padres Within Reach of Greatness...I Think

Greatness, that is, when measured by the yardsticks of grade inflation, social promotion, automatic non-merit-based pay increases, and other similar social phenomena in the modern age. The Padres have a more or less comfortable five-game lead in the NL West this year, at this writing sporting a 71-73 record and a five-game advantage in the loss column over both the Giants and Dodgers. The NL West is weak, but not as depleted as the AL West, where there are only four teams. But the AL West has been a powerhouse for a while, with all four teams being decent and producing their fair share of wild cards. What the Padres are threatening to do -- win a division title, and a shot at the World's Championship, with a sub-.500 record has never been done. Even if they fail to do this, they almost certainly will have the worst record for a playoff qualifier for a non-strike year, ever. Watch out, you 1973 Mets.

If we go back before the era of division play, when there were two eight-team leagues, and omit the shortened season of 1918, there were only five teams that made the post-season and did it winning fewer than 90 games -- even during the era of only 154 games per season.(The 154-game schedule was established with the 1904 season, although many rainouts and browned-out games were not made up in the early part of last century.) We're talking five teams in 65 years.

This list includes two war-addled years: the 1945 AL Champion Tigers, who were 88-65, and edged out the Senators by one game in the standings before going on to win the World Series, and the 1944 St. Louis Browns, who topped the Tigers in the standings by one game, finishing 89-64. In the NL, there were three such champs. The 1959 LA Dodgers finished 88-68 to beat the Milwaukee Braves by two games, and went on to win the World Series by beating the Go-Go White Sox (who won 94 games in what was considered at the time to be one of the most mediocre collection of teams in the AL of the era.) The 1938 Cubs finished 89-63, a comfortable three wins over the Pirates and two in the standings. They did not win the series, of course, but the 1926 Cards, who won the NL that year with an 89-65 record, edging the Reds by two games, beat the Yankees in the series that year (which featured the infamous Babe Ruth caught-stealing to end the series play.)

When divisional play was established in 1969, the four divisions each had 6 teams in them. Uneven and irregular expansion caused the leagues to have several occasions when the number of teams were not balanced, and the exact number has varied from the low of the present-day AL West at 4 to the crowded 7-team AL divisions from 1977 to 1993. (The NL had two seven-team divisions only in 1993.) Of course, the smaller your division, and the more "balanced" the schedule, the more likely a poor record would win you a division title. It's been undeniable that the nature of the wildcard is such that it is impossible for a team to qualify for the post-season with anything worse than a fourth-best record, and in nearly every year of the wild card, the wild card team's record has been better than at least one and sometimes two of the division-winning qualifiers. By contrast, some of the division winners in the list that follows had four and even five teams in the "other" division(s) with better records.

Skipping the strike seasons of '72, '81. '94, and '95, though, the playoff era still has a relatively small number of teams making the post-season with records of less than 88 wins. The '73 Mets were infamously 82-79, the worst team ever to make it to a world series, where they stretched it out to seven games. That year the Cards finished second with an 81-81 record. The 1984 KC Royals were 84-78 and won the AL West, with the Cards and Twins tied for second with identical 81-81 records. The 1987 Twins were 85-77, although also perilously close to the .500 mark at times during the season, and of course went on to win the World's Championship, the team with the worst winning percentage on record to do so. Second place KC was 83-79 that year in the AL West. In 1997, the Cleveland club came within a pitch of winning it all following their win of the AL Central with an 86-75 record. Also of note, the 2000 Yankees were only 87-74 after a week finish to best the 85-77 Red Sox. And perhaps the closest analog to the 2005 Padres is the 1997 Houston Astros, who were battling with the Pirates and Reds for the division title into the last week -- with no team above .500 as late as a week before the season's end. Pittsburgh was second in the division that year, with a 79-83 record.

One still notes that the worst of these teams finished six games over .500 in the end (except for the essentially one-game over .500 1973 Mets). It's hard to compare any and all of these teams because of the ever-changing nature of the schedule, which has moved from the symmetry of complete balance across the league -- a feature of the traditional eight-team leagues and many years of the seven-team AL divisions -- to a wildly imbalanced hodgepodge today where no team in any division or league has the same schedule as any of its opponents. With the "rivalry" match-ups between certain interleague opponents being a real patchwork, it's safe to say that among major professional North American sports, there's no schedule quite so unpredictable with respect to the eventual winners -- not even to say, unfair to some teams.

In any event, baseball, with only four playoff qualifiers per league, still has the lowest percentage of its teams making the post-season among the major sports. It certainly has not come close to the NBA and NHL, which have sub-.500 teams in the playoffs nearly every year. So if the Padres fail to finish above .500, they will have the distinction of becoming the first major league baseball "champion" that has a losing record.

The slightly ugly side to this is the Padres are really, at their core, a better team than their record would indicate. They've dominated at home, but injuries to their starters, some erratic offensive performances, and some bad luck have conspired against them. That's to say -- they actually are not pushovers in the post-season. A healthy Jake Peavy and Adam Eaton matched up with the best end-of-game bullpen in the league -- Seanez, Otsuka, Linebrink, and Hoffman -- combined with that home field advantage give them a reasonable shot at winning it all. I'm not laying any money down on them just yet, but you'll need to brace yourself for the possibility of a World's Champ with a losing record in the regular season. That has not happened in any of the major sports.

What kind of asterisk would that be on the sport's history? A weird one to say the least. I'm having a hard time imagining the victory parade stretching from Balboa Park to downtown being as raucous had the Padres really flexed their chops to a better record this year. But I suppose a trophy's a trophy...

posted by The Crank 12:01 AM