Yankee Postseason Success
Have they been really, really good, or just lucky?
There’s been a lot of concern about perceived competitive imbalance in baseball lately—concern that has been focused on New York Yankees’ most recent run of postseason dominance. It seems that every fall, the Yankees plow mercilessly through another set of helpless opponents. But it also seems that their opponents are not always so helpless—in fact, sometimes their opponents seem distinctly better. This was certainly the case during last year’s playoffs, when they not only squeaked past a superior Oakland Athletics team, but embarrassed the historically successful 2001 Seattle Mariners.
It’s tempting to dismiss the October success of the Yankees as a fluke, to decide that they’ve had the occasional good fortune of defeating a better team. But the fact is that the Yankees dismantle superior opponents with alarming consistency as soon as they reach the playoffs.
One way to look at New York’s postseason success is to see how many times they’ve outperformed their regular season win-loss record in the playoffs. Because a playoff team is virtually guaranteed to have a winning record in the regular season, and to face tougher opposition in the postseason, and because multi-tiered playoffs create multiple losers, one would expect that usually, a team’s winning percentage in the playoffs is worse than it was in the regular season. That’s absolutely true; in fact, only 25 percent of the time has a team posted a better winning percentage in the postseason than they did in the preceding regular season. It doesn’t work that way for the Yankees, though:
Team* Postseasons Higher WPct %Higher WPct
Florida Marlins 1 1 100%
New York Yankees 41 21 51%
Arizona Diamondbacks 2 1 50%
Toronto Blue Jays 5 2 40%
Oakland Athletics 20 7 35%
Cleveland Indians 9 3 33%
Boston Red Sox 14 4 29%
Chicago White Sox 7 2 29%
Baltimore Orioles 11 3 27%
Cincinnati Reds 12 3 25%
Minnesota Twins 8 2 25%
San Francisco Giants 20 5 25%
Detroit Tigers 11 2 18%
Los Angeles Dodgers 22 4 18%
New York Mets 6 1 17%
St. Louis Cardinals 18 3 17%
Chicago Cubs 13 2 15%
Kansas City Royals 7 1 14%
Pittsburgh Pirates 14 2 14%
Atlanta Braves 16 2 13%
Philadelphia Phillies 9 1 11%
Anaheim Angels 3 0 0%
Colorado Rockies 1 0 0%
Houston Astros 7 0 0%
Milwaukee Brewers 2 0 0%
Montreal Expos 1 0 0%
San Diego Padres 3 0 0%
Seattle Mariners 4 0 0%
Texas Rangers 3 0 0%
Total 290 72 25%
*Includes all previous franchise names and locations.
Postseasons=Postseason Appearances
Higher WPct=Times with Better Winning Percentage in Postseason than Regular Season
%Higher WPct=Percent of Times with Better Winning Percentage in Postseason
A little over half the time, the Yankees do better in the postseason than in the regular season. No other team with a meaningful number of appearances comes close. And this has been going on as long as the Yankees have been going to the playoffs:
Years Postseasons Higher WPct %Higher WPct
1920-1939 11 7 64%
1940-1959 13 6 46%
1960-1979 8 3 38%
1980-2001 9 5 56%
Total 41 21 51%
In each of the above time periods, the Yankees have been well above the league rate. And the Yankees haven’t managed to do that simply by playing clearly inferior teams. While they’ve compiled a postseason record of 117-69-1 (.629) against teams with worse regular season records, they’ve also managed to go 57-39 (.594) against teams with better regular season records, and 8-4 (.667) against teams with equal regular season records. In 1981 and 2000, the Yankees won the World Series despite having to face three different teams in the playoffs that had better regular season records. This is one area where New York has had more opportunity and more success during their current run:
New York Yankees Playoff W-L Records
Vs. Worse Teams* Vs. Equal Teams* Vs. Better Teams*
Years W L T W L T W L T
1920-1939 38 18 1 - - - - - -
1940-1959 23 13 - 8 4 - 16 14 -
1960-1979 24 20 - - - - 7 9 -
1980-2001 32 18 - - - - 34 16 -
Total 117 69 1 8 4 - 57 39 -
*As determined by regular season winning percentage.
Since 1995, the Yankees have not only gone 32-15 (.681) in the playoffs against teams with worse regular season winning percentages, but they have gone 26-10 (.722) against teams with better regular season records.
Furthermore, the Yankees have played 91 playoff games against teams they also faced during the regular season. Their record against these teams in the postseason was an incredible 62-29 (.681). But when they faced these same teams during the regular season, the Yankees only managed to go 99-100 (.497). In terms of winning the whole series, New York has gone 17-3 in the playoffs, but has only posted a record of 8-10-2 in the regular season series against these same teams. The Yankees have done this over two runs of postseason appearances, one from 1976-1981, and the other from 1995-2001. The following chart shows how the Yankees have done against teams they have played in both the regular season and the post-season:
In Playoffs In Reg. Season
Years W L SW SL W L SW SL ST
1976-1981 15 10 5 1 26 32 1 3 2
1995-2001 47 19 12 2 73 68 7 7 0
Total 62 29 17 3 99 100 8 10 2
W=Individual Game Wins, L=Individual Game Losses
SW=Playoff Series or Season Series Wins, SL=Playoff Series or Season Series Losses
Somehow, the Yankees make short work in the postseason of teams they struggled against in the regular season.
The Yankees’ success in this regard deserves recognition as much as it defies explanation. There’s no clear way that Yankee teams have been consistently geared toward more postseason success than other teams. But until their opponents can figure out their secret, New York may well continue to dominate the month of October, while fans of other teams remain frustrated.
Dan 'The Boy' Werr
Posted: August 23, 2002 at 06:00 AM |
13 comment(s)
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1. Bob T Posted: August 23, 2002 at 12:42 AM (#605964)George Steinbrenner purchased a time machine and kept George Frazier's parents from ever meeting.
I'll try to sort the home/away, 1-run records, and perhaps a little pythagorean out here soon.
In 28 postseasons, the Yankees have had a winning postseason record.
In 28 postseasons, the Yankees have had a postseason pythagorean record above .500.
Eight times, these haven't been coincident. In 1957, 1960, 1964, and 1997, the Yankees have had a losing postseason record despite outscoring their opponents. In 1962, 1977, 1996, and 2001, they had a winning postseason record despite being outscored.
Where they've improved on their WPct 21 times in the postseason over their regular season WPct, they have done so 20 times with Pyth. Pct (5 times not coincident).
Here is their overall showing only in years they have gone to the postseason:
Reg. Season Postseason Act. .630 .619 Pyth. .626 .597-- MWE
But the 1-run results are really interesting when you break out their current run:
In addition to 1996 and 2001 being two years where they've had a winning record despite being outscored, it's clear that their most recent run has involved more luck than they had in the past.
Mike, if we pretend 1960 never happened, here's how it changes:
Reg. Season Postseason Act. .630 .624 Pyth. .627 .589But bear in mind that that's just one of four times when they've underperformed their pyth. %, and there are also four times they've outperformed it. In 2001, for example, they went 10-7 despite being outscored 71-57.
Based on their opponents' records and their own, the Yankees would expect to go 42-41 (actually expected wins were 42.47) from 1995-2001. The Yankees actually went 58-25. Using a binomial distribution, we would expect this result 0.0413% of the time. This record did not result from random chance.
By the way, above, where I said the pre-1995 home record is 62-41, it should actually be 62-41-1.
F. James,
You raise a valid concern that WPct may not be the best thing to look at. Of course, it's not always clear who a team's top 3 starters are. One possibility, I suppose, would be to see who actually pitched in the postseason. But I'm not sure how to go about that, exactly, either. For example, from the 2001 ALCS:
Obviously, since both teams had suffered a 5-game ALDS, they couldn't use their best starters as much as they would have liked. So would you use a pro-rated formula, like:
(2*SEL+MOY+GAR+ABB)/5 and (2*PET+HER+MUS+CLE)/5
Where SEL=Seattle's WPct in Sele-started games, etc.? Or if you use the best three, do you average the WPcts or do you take the aggregate WPct of all games any of them started? The latter approach could really skew things for a mid-season pickup, etc.
Of course, there are some other factors, too.
I?m glad to see that you?ve resurrected and expanded this info from where it first appeared (as a comment tied to one of my more infamous blog entries about ?anti-Yankee bias,? where it was suggested that the Yankees? incredible post-season record was contributing to a creeping subjectivity from otherwise solid analysts).
Some thoughts:
1?I think the standard Pythagorean method is a bit dicey to use here, due to the sample size. Charlie?s approach is probably the best way to go. There?s too much noise in those blowouts.
2?One thing that could be checked against the Yanks? penchant for beating teams with better WPCTs is the overall historical record in that regard. How many times has the team with the lower in-season WPCT won a division series/World Series? (This is just for comparison purposes.)
3?It?s actually more impressive to do what the Yanks have done since the addition of a third round of playoffs.
4?It strikes me that the key to their success is their ability to win on the road, and that?s been a consistent feature of their post-season play from the beginning.
5?Jumping off from that, what are the home/road splits in one-run games for 1995 to the present and prior to 1995?
6?As regards ?top three? starters for establishing a more ?representative? in-season WPCT, using the three best ERAs might be a way into such an approach.
Charlie?s binomial value, IMO, would be a very good ?sound bite? with which to counter the standard complaints about competitive balance. Of course, it would really be helpful if the Yanks would simply get knocked out in the first round, a la 1995 and 1997.
Re "thought" #2--my bad. You'd already covered that issue in the article, and I managed to forget that you'd done so. In the words of Emily Litella, never mind... :-)
Teams with the better regular season record are 104-85 in terms of winning an entire series (those are not individual games). In other words, in 189 playoff series, the team with the better regular season record has taken 104. Here's the breakdown:
As you'd expect, the WPct has meant a little more when teams from the same league meet.
The Yankees are 25-14 (series W-L, not individual game W-L) when they have the better record, 14-4 when they don't, and 3-0 when they have the same record.
About your other points:
1. I agree that pythagorean WPct isn't the greatest here, but having used only standard WPct in the article, and given the preference for Pyth around here, I felt I was sort of begging the question. I appreciate the value of Charles's analysis but am afraid it's not my area of expertise.
5. How I wish you'd asked me that yesterday, when I sorted those two things out separately. Oh well, here it is:
I bet you didn't expect that.
Three best ERAs works... that still leaves the question of whether you aggregate the wins and losses and then find the WPct or average the three percentages.
Oh, and I should have mentioned that some of this material appeared in a different (less refined) form last winter on Don's excellent site. So I'm doing that now.
Kerry,
You might have a point... of course, it goes hand in hand with what I'm saying: that Yankee postseason success is really remarkable considering that they haven't always done that well in the regular season. But there's also the unavoidable fact that we can't treat the standings as though they'd be the same under a different divisional structure, especially when it involves the Yankees, who have a knack for doing what's necessary to win.
But if you look at the total number of runs scored and allowed in the 2001 World Series, you'll see that the D-Backs blasted the Yankees off the diamond.
Don,
It would also help if the Yankees did not make the playoffs every year.
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