Chokees

[libertango]

Well, for the 6th year in a row the Yankees have choked in the postseason. This time, it was against the Detroit Tigers, who as recently as 2003 lost 119 games in a single season. (That was the year the Yankees choked in the Series itself against the Florida Marlins, a recent expansion team.)

To give you an idea of how big an upset this is against what passes for "conventional wisdom" in baseball, when Yahoo polled their six or so analysts just a few days back for their postseason picks, all but one picked the Yankees to go all the way (unsurprisingly, no link to that piece can be found). This wire story from the AP was typical of the, "Why do they even bother to play the games?" style of coverage the Yankees fawningly get from the baseball press.

And so the triumphal 21st Century march of keeping the Yankees from ever winning the Series again -- for the good of the game -- continues.

ADD-ON: Oh, jeez. This article at ESPN.com, by Jayson Stark, is just embarassing to read now.

{beat}

bwa-ha-ha. :)

Comments

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

One of the interesting things is their overall record in Series play (I've not managed to chase down their total record in the playoffs yet).

39 appearances, 26 wins, for an average of .666.

Of other teams with 10, or more, appearances, the A's (with 14) have a .642, the Sox, (with 10) have a .600.

The worst is the Giants, (with 17) coming in at a miserable .294.

But the Yankees lost.

Record

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

That's not the interesting split, to me.

Up until 1962, the Yankees were 20-7 in WS play.

From 1963 to today, they're 6-6.

The effect of expanding the leagues, to me, is obvious here.

You'll also notice they've lost more Series than any other team -- which hardly ever gets mentioned. "There's a lot of history at Yankee Stadium... 13 World Series losses, for a start."

Re: Record

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I didn't have the time when I wrote that to crunch out that number.

And the lost more than any others is only so-so, since the gap between their appearances, at 39, is 21 more than the next contender (the Dodgers, with 18 (with a miserable record in Brooklyn, but .500; 5/10) since), so the retort has always been, "Well, with that many Series, of course they've lost more than they others, the others never had the chance to lose so many).

Looking at the stats says, The Yankees, in all of recorded baseball history, are a little better than average. They had some peaks, but compared to the others who have 10, or more, Series appearances, they are only a little better than the A's and the Sox.

Which really chaps a Yankee supporters hide.

I'm not sure, given the amount of time since expansion, that it can be attributed to just that. I think part of it is that in the modern era more teams/managers/coaches, understand the game, at a nuts a bolts level, than they did.

So money (for all the Yankees spend it) has less power to buy winning teams. When the talent pool is drawn from so large a base, and the level of play has risen, as a whole, the ability to stand, head and shoulders, above the rest is reduced.

Look at Atlanta. This is the first time in 16 years they've not made the playoffs, bt they've not been in the series since 1999 (when the Yankees lived up to their reputation). In that run they made it to the Series five times, losing to the Yankees (twice) the Blue Jays, and the Twins, only managing to beat Cleveland, in a year that had snow during one of the games.

I think free agency has a lot to do with it too. They can't buy up the talent and then lock it away forever.

TK

Re: Record

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

As a closer,

alicublog

But why, Uncle Roy, are you not pleased at the victory of the Yankees?

Well, children, there was once a wonderful comedian named Joe E. Brown, who made the truest statement ever about the Bronx Bombers: "Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel."

But you don't know who Joe E. Brown was, and you don't know what U.S. Steel was. Brown had the greatest exit line in the greatest screen comedy ever [Some Like it Hot]. And U.S. Steel was a powerful monopoly; we might compare it to Microsoft today, but you probably love Microsoft, because it produces the operating system that powers your Xbox, notwithstanding that it is inferior in every way to the Apple system that Microsoft has managed to squeeze into near-obsolescence by the unfair advantage of its wealthy patronage.

So there is no way to explain my contempt for the Yankees to you. You love and worship power, and by such as yourselves -- from the pinstriped and suspendered Yuppie assholes bellowing on their highly-polished barstools midtown to the locals who imagine their own powerlessness momentarily reversed by the bats of Jeter and Giambi -- those who, out of fear or ignorance, would never allow themselves to stick up for anyone who has ever been down -- no appeal to what was once called soul could possibly be heard.

But to those of us who love what is best in this city -- the old Brooklyn Dodgers fans, the Mets fans, the champions of the meek and downtrodden, those who remember the dear, dirty New York before Giulianification and still try to make sense and art in the sterile canyons and joyless, smokeless bars of its pathetic remnants -- the Yankees will always be the well-fed champions of privilege, pusillanimity, pussification, and everything that anyone with a shred of soul -- who is still, in a word, human -- is duty-bound to despise.

Re: Record

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Whoa, that's quite a rant. I thought I hated the Yankees, but after reading this, my feelings seem puny and weak and unworthy of being mentioned, let alone called hatred. But perhaps the "smokeless bars" bit gives the game away. Dude is obviously suffering nicotine withdrawal.