Pitching Wins

People always say that pitching wins in the playoffs, but when they analyze a match-up it always seems that this is ignored. I put myself in this group. The Tigers clearly had a better staff and a much better pen, but I was distracted by the Yankees' great offense. If you look at what things help teams succeed in the playoffs, virtually any pitching stat helps. There is no correlation between playoff success and offense. None. And if you think about it, it makes sense. When a pitcher is on, he's gonna pitch a good game. I always hear, "Well, he didn't have his best stuff, but he got the job done" but never, "He had great stuff today, but the offense was just too good".

And this is why even in a league without a salary cap, there's some inherent parity in baseball, especially in the playoffs. It's easy to buy offense (Giambi, Sheff, Matsui, A-Rod, Abreu, etc.) but very hard to buy good pitching (Wright, Pavano, RJ, Contreras). People have attributed the Yankees' playoff failure the past 6 years to the lack of "true" Yankees, which is a load of crap. Each year, from 2001-2006, the Yankees were beat by a team with better pitching.

Let's apply this to the remaining match-ups. The Mets don't look good SP-wise, but they're in pretty good shape, given none of the other 3 NL playoff teams have a really good rotation 1-4. The Mets are clearly the dominant team in the playoffs, but they have Oliver Perez in their starting rotation. A heavily flawed team can easily be the best team in the NL, which is a problem. The Mets are my pick to win the NL pennant. The "Real" World Series, so to speak, is the ALCS. Both the Tigers and the A's are going to be better than whoever comes out of the NL. I would say that the Tigers will win in 6 games, and go on to win it all.