Sea World’s new Make-A-Wish program gives a cancer-ridden Shamu a chance to shag grounders at Target Field.

Next time you kneel in His presence.

One question asked in the last post intrigued me, so I did some research specifically on the last month of the year (I incuded October in those seasons with a series or two played in the month to end the season).  To recap, this is research on the relation of performance of playoff teams during the Wild Card era, so since 1995.

Oddly enough, what I found was that a team’s second half success is MORE important than its success in September.  While the mean of second half records of World Series winners was .610, the mean of September records for those same teams is .575.  In fact, one interesting piece is that the September records posted get better as the distance in the playoffs gets lessened.  Teams that made the playoffs played, on average, .601 ball in September.  Teams that advanced one round played .598 ball, while teams that won their league’s championship played .576 ball.

One really, really interesting piece that developed from this is the actual LACK of success that excellent September play brings.  Sorting the top winning percentages in the list, one has to go to the 18th ranked team to find a World Series champion.  Not one single team that played .700+ ball in September won a World Series.  Only one team that even MADE it to the World Series was in the top 18, and that was the 2007 Rockies.

Interestingly enough out of the bottom 10 performances in September, there are 6 World Series participants and 3 World Series champions.  The conclusion one has to come to is that while we hear from plenty of sportswriters how important momentum is from the last month into the postseason, the statistics completely bear the opposite.

Bullet points to consider:

-The 2003 Marlins have the best September record of any World Series winner with a .692 percentage, while the 2006 Cardinals have the worst with a .414

-The Oakland Athletics had the best September with an astonishing .852 in 2001 when they lost in the first round to the Yankees.  In fact, Oakland’s only postseason advance was on their worst September of their 5 playoff appearances in the time frame.

-The Yankees have played in 7 World Series and won 5 since 1995, but their 5 best September records during the era resulted in 1 World Series loss and 4 first round exits.

-Twins teams in the era advanced to the playoffs five times, but only advanced to the LCS once, in their season with their worst September record, 2002.

-Of the 10 teams that made more than 5 playoff appearances since 1995, the best September record of the team’s era only made the World Series once, the 1999 Braves.

-Playing well above a team’s season performance in general seemed to be the kiss of death to a team in the playoffs.  The 10 teams who played .150+ over their season’s winning percentage in September had one World Series appearance, while the 14 teams that played over 100 points lower baseball in September amassed 8 appearances and 4 championships.

Everyone knew allowing Justin Morneau to participate in the pre-game ceremonies was a bad idea but his convincing argument of “I got this” as he dizzily stumbled out of the clubhouse proved to be enough for management.

Not absolutely nothing, but darned near. 

With the Twins having a very stout second half this season, a number of people have mentioned that this could be a precurser to a successful Twins postseason.  As a Braves fan, I remember similar comments made whenever the Braves did well in the second half, so it’s a belief held by many that the better you finish the season, the better you will play in the postseason.  Is this true?  I did research on every season of the Wild Card era and the second half records of every playoff team during that era.  Some very interesting things came out of the research.

First, on the team with the best second-half record each season.  Since 1995, there are 30 teams that have had their league’s best record (or tied for it) in the second half.  Only 9 (30%) have made the World Series, while only 4 (13%) have won the World Series.  In fact, the best record in the league is almost twice as likely to lose out in the divisional series (18 of 30, or 57%).

I then took into effect how well a team played by record after the break.  Those teams that made the playoffs playing .700 ball or better were actually less likely than any other grouping (.700+, .600-.700, .500-.600, >.500) that I measured.  Only 6 teams since 1995 played .700 or better ball, and only two made the World Series.  Only one team in the Wild Card era has won the World Series after playing .700+ ball in the second half, the Yankees of 2009.  Three of the .700+ teams lost out in the divisional round.  Teams playing between .600-.700 ball had the best World Series ratio (only the middle two groups had enough notations to be statistically significant) with 30% of teams playing at that level making the World Series and 13% winning the World Series.  The oddity of all this is three teams during this time have made the playoffs after playing sub-.500 ball in the second half, and 2 made the World Series with one champion, easily the best percentage ratios of any grouping.

The conclusion after looking over all the results and second-half records is this: while playing .600+ ball does seem to have a better record getting past the divisional round, having the best record in the league or playing .700+ ball does not seem to increase over the mean the likelihood that a team will advance in the playoffs.

Some interesting bullet points found doing this research:
-Most seasons have  a mix of records, but one season had every playoff participant with a second half record of better than .600, 2002.  Interestingly that season, the worst NL record and second-worst AL record met in the World Series.
-2006 saw a very weird oddity in that 2 of the 3 sub-.500 teams made the playoffs made it that season, and they met in the World Series!
-The two best records met only twice in the World Series: 1995 and 2004
-Teams with the best records and number of times: Yankees 5 (only 2 WS championships when the best record); A’s 4; Braves, Cardinals 3; Indians, Astros, Rockies, Giants 2; and Dodgers, Padres, Diamondbacks, Rangers, Twins, Red Sox, Mets, Angels, Cubs, and Phillies each with 1.