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.

A refreshing Fall indeed

The 2008 Fall Classic will get underway in mere hours. And it's probably safe to assume no baseball pundit foresaw this match-up back up February.

The media supposition on this World Series is that the average person doesn't care and the match-up is television ratings nightmare. A Phillies-Rays match-up is obviously far less sexy and appealing than say Manny and the L.A. Dodgers heading to play his former team the Boston Red Sox. But the pundits shouldn't necessarily jump to that conclusion.

We're in the midst of an election year where "change" is the mantra, and baseball should reap the benefits of having fresh teams face off.

Look, Philadelphia is the 10th different National League champion in 11 years, with only St. Louis winning more than once in that span. And Tampa Bay is the sixth American League champion in the past seven years, with only Boston claiming multiple pennants.

So are average fans really thinking?

The Washington Post asked its readers if the Rays-Phillies World Series match-up will be a boring or refreshing change? The results as of 5 p.m. yesterday in their informal poll were a resounding 61 percent of the respondents saying it's a refreshing change.

Several reader comments drive home that point...

"The only people who will find [the series] boring are the self-important Yankees/Sox fans who seem to think the success granted by baseball's horribly imbalanced revenue/payroll structure indicates some sort of inherent superiority."

Agreed, and don't even get me started on baseball's economic imbalance.

"Only fans of the Red Sox or Yanks would rather not see the Rays. They think the baseball universe revolves around their rivalry."

Yes, yes and more yes. It's really not that hard to understand why Sox and Yanks fans have that contorted view. An overwhelming amount of the national coverage TV coverage from Fox to TBS and especially ESPN focuses on them.

Finally.. "The definition of boring is watching the same match-up over and over, expecting anything but the same old thing. I am thrilled there are no teams from New York, Boston, Chicago or Los Angeles [in the series]."

It does feel nice, doesn't it?

MLB is in an era of openness. So enjoy the Tampa Bay Rays worst to first story. And enjoy watching the Phillies MVP play of Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard and the MVP-caliber play of Chase Utley in this Fall Classic.

The 2008 World Series has potential to be a great. Seriously, enjoy it!