Winning Isn't Key, Timing Is

The Cardinals were only the best team when it mattered (AP Photo)

Fresh off their second World Championship parade in six years, the St. Louis Cardinals are going to go into the history books as one of the baseball's more improbable champions.

The Redbirds were 10 games out of playoff contention on Aug. 1, a strike away from defeat before staging a legendary comeback in Game 6, and erasing an early deficit in Game 7 to claim its 11th World Series title, second-most all-time.

They'll no doubt go down as the "Comeback Cards" or "Cardiac Cards."

But it shouldn't come as a surprise that St. Louis, who eked into the postseason, rolled to another World Series title.

With the advent of the Wild Card, baseball's playoffs are not about the best team winning anymore, it's now about who's the hottest team come October.

Over the past five years, World Series winners share one common factor, they all carried winning baseball from September in to October.

Just one World Series Champ in the past five years can truly claim to be the best team. The 2009 New York Yankees had the best record in the regular season (103 wins), but the Bronx Bombers played great in September that continued into the postseason.

Only the 2007 Boston Red Sox had a final month regular season winning percentage that was less than 63 percent. The Sox went 16-11 down the stretch, which translates to a 0.592 winning percent.

In the '07 World Series, Boston cooled off the then red-hot Colorado Rockies, who grabbed the Wild Card by winning three out every four games in September.

The Rockies were a perfect 7-0 in October and might have won the World Series if they didn't have to wait nine days between the NLCS and the start of the Fall Classic.

This year, St. Louis won nearly 70 percent of their games down the stretch, going 18-8 catching Atlanta for the NL Wild Card.

The Cards had to win to clinch a playoff spot, and did so on the final day of the regular season.  That's nearly identical to last year's World Champs.

Like the Cards, the San Francisco Giants barely made the postseason winning the division on the final day of the regular season. But playing desperate and winning in September, San Fran was 19-10, was key for the Giants ending a 56 year pennant drought.

It doesn't pay to be the best team in the regular season anymore. It only pays to win in September.