If the Phillies played in the AL East

by RaysFanAL08 on Oct 29, 2008 12:38 PM EDT Comment 35 comments

The Phillies may win the World Series. Odds are they will, in fact. But that does not mean they are the best team in the majors.

Though they have been the better team in this small sample size, I wonder how they would have done if they played in the better league, specifically in the A.L. East. One could make the case that the Red Sox, Yankees, and even the Blue Jays were all stronger clubs than the Phils over 162 games.

What do you think? Would the Phillies have made the playoffs if they played in the A.L. East?

Poll

If the Phillies played in the American League East, with the exact same roster, they would have finished in...

First place--division champs

5 votes

Second place--Wild Card winners

11 votes

Second-place--no Wild Card

5 votes

Third place

45 votes

Fourth place

16 votes

Fifth place

14 votes

96 votes | Poll has closed

0 recs | Comment 35 comments

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

Actually, it does mean they are the best team in the majors.

The Phillies may win the World Series. Odds are they will, in fact. But that does not mean they are the best team in the majors.

by floridaroar on Oct 29, 2008 1:10 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Absolutely

The team that wins the world series is the best team in the majors. Anybody who says the winners aren’t the best team are bitter, sore losers (see this years Angels).

by kericr on Oct 29, 2008 1:16 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

AMEN!

Indie.

by Taylor H on Nov 1, 2008 2:54 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

yea, i believe it does make them the best team in the majors....but hopefully it will be us instead

by free hotdogs on Oct 29, 2008 1:55 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

no way

the World Series winner is the team who won the end-season tournament. that distinction is only mildly related to being the best team over the course of the whole season.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Oct 29, 2008 2:19 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

actually, that is just not true.

Anything can happen in a short series. Were the 83-win Cardinals the best team in the majors when they won it all in 2006. Of course not. They simply got hot at the right time. The postseason is a crapshoot. Even the ’27 Yankees could lost to a much weaker team in seven games.

The bottom line is the Phillies probably do not make the playoffs if they played the year in the A.L. East. Baseball is a sport a sport that should be decided in a marathon, not a sprint. The Yankees and Blue Jays each probably would have won the N.L. East, preventing the Phillies from ever punching a ticket to the postseason.

by RaysFanAL08 on Oct 29, 2008 1:47 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

The Yankees and Blue Jays each probably would have won the N.L. East, preventing the Phillies from ever punching a ticket to the postseason.

They still would have been the WC.

by rglass44 on Oct 29, 2008 1:54 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

assuming their record would have stayed the same.

if they had to play better competition in their division—either the blue jays or yankees—they would not have won as many games.

by RaysFanAL08 on Oct 29, 2008 1:56 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

if they had hypothetically been placed in the division

by RaysFanAL08 on Oct 29, 2008 1:49 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Hypothetically

I’ll play along. I believe playing in the NL is worth 5 wins (I tried to find the article, but couldn’t). So, an 87-win team in the AL East does not make the playoffs. If they switched with us they would finish 4th.

by rglass44 on Oct 29, 2008 2:00 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs

Exactly.

by RaysFanAL08 on Oct 29, 2008 2:01 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

the average NL team is five wins worse than the average AL team

so switching the phillies to the AL would drop five wins from their total. of course, the difficulty is know which “total” to use: real wins? pythag wins? third-order wins?

by real wins, the phillies would have snuck in fourth between the Yanks and Blue Jays. by any measure of wins related to run differential or talent, they would have been fifth

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Oct 29, 2008 2:23 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs

the phillies division is a joke, actually.

the entire nl is kind of a joke.

by RaysFanAL08 on Oct 29, 2008 2:23 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

and it would be a shame if, after the al dominated all year,

a fluke Phillies title will somehow make people forget about how much the National League blows.

by RaysFanAL08 on Oct 29, 2008 2:27 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Give me a break.

You have to win 4 out of 7 and if you can’t do that against a “fluke” or a “weak team” that “wouldn’t even have finished fourth in our division” then you’re obviously not the best team in baseball. Bitching and moaning about who was better in the regular season is a crutch that losers use to prop themselves up. If you’re so damn good then you should have no problem beating such a “joke” of a team.

The World Series isn’t over yet. I for one think the Rays are the best team in baseball and will still pull this out. If we don’t, I’ll have the courage to give the Phillies the credit they’ve earned and not make up a bunch of lame excuses like a lot of you are doing here.

by floridaroar on Oct 29, 2008 2:42 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

It's not about excuses. Games 1 and 3 could have gone either way, and the Rays have only picked a bad time to slump.

You are telling me that your opinion of the Rays being the best team in baseball will change after only four losses? Seriosuly? Think about that for a second. The thing about baseball at this level is that anything can happen. Anything. Even shitty teams like the Nationals sweep teams sometimes. It’s just part of the game. One week of baseball should NEVER change away someone looks at a club. It is not about being bitter or making excuses, it’s about objective reality.

by RaysFanAL08 on Oct 29, 2008 2:45 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Then maybe they should just give trophies based on regular season stats.

I’m sorry, but in my view the team that wins the World Series deserves to be called the best team in baseball. You don’t get to the World Series by chance. You’ve played well through the regular season, you’ve gone through the playoffs and beat the other powerful teams, you’ve dealt with the pressure and adversity associated with it all.

If you run 25 miles of a marathon at a world record pace, then fall over and die just before the finish line are you still the winner? No. It’s not about how you start, the best finish strong.

by floridaroar on Oct 29, 2008 3:09 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Bad analogy

A better analogy: Everyone runs the first 26 miles of a marathon, then they take the top 8 finishers and line them up a week later and have them run a 300 yard sprint to the finish line.

Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.

by PaulThomas on Oct 29, 2008 9:27 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

love that analogy

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Oct 30, 2008 4:29 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The Rays aren't/weren't the best team in baseball during the regular season.

The Red Sox and Cubs were 1/2 using BaseRuns. Rays were top 5, and four of the top five AL teams were ALE teams.

by R.J. Anderson on Oct 29, 2008 2:48 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

did you account for strength of schedule, including league-adjustments?

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Oct 29, 2008 2:55 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

No, I just took the two league leaders from Matthew Carruth's FanGraphs work.

by R.J. Anderson on Oct 29, 2008 3:03 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The problem with saying the league champions are the best teams is that they rarely are.

The teams that are the best at the end of the regular season, with some league adjustments, were the best. The teams that win the title are not always the best, but instead the benefactors of favorable random variance.

by R.J. Anderson on Oct 29, 2008 3:10 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

but

all the “best teams” then are play-off bound teams…..so whichever team ends up in the World Series is usually the best teams. I mean they don’t play round-robin or anything….but the Cubs had the best NL record, they lost to the Dodgers, and the Phils beat the Dodgers. Therefore they deserve to be called the best I think. I really think the ALCS had the two best AL teams, and we beat the Red Sox. So if the Phils beat us, they deserve the title. I mean, so what if the Cubs had the best record in the NL at the end of the season? They couldn’t put up in the play-offs, so there were better teams that beat them. If each series was a one-game winner take all, that’s one thing. but it’s a best of 7. The best team weathers all of this, and plays the best combination of regular and post-season baseball.

by free hotdogs on Oct 29, 2008 4:45 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

that is not true

There were at least three teams in the AL East that would have made the playoffs in the NL. It is truly a shame that the Rays lost, because now ignorant baseball fans think the Phillies are the “best” team, when they are not a top-five team in this league. Neither team really played well, but the Rays truly picked a bad time to slump. I just wish the series could have gone back down to the Trop, with Shields and Garza going in Games 6 and 7. I could not see Jamie Moyer pulling another start out of his ass—he would have been lit up.

by RaysFanAL08 on Oct 30, 2008 1:13 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

You have no idea if they would have made the playoffs in the NL.

They’d have played different teams, faced different pitchers, had a different schedule, played in different parks.

You can play the if game all day long. The fact is they have a World Series to crown a Champion. If’s and stats mean nothing now.

by floridaroar on Oct 30, 2008 7:00 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It is all about the time frame

You can be the best team in June and July. That doesn’t win you anything.

You can be the best team through 162 game. That wins you League Championship.

Or you can be the best team through the entire season. That wins you the World Series.

Championships are results oriented. There are no do overs.

by matthan on Oct 29, 2008 7:40 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Or...

You can be the fourth best team in your league, possibly near the middle of all of baseball, and then be the best team over three weeks worth of games and that also wins you the World Series.

by jullberg on Oct 30, 2008 1:36 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

"Or you can be the best team through the entire season. That wins you the World Series."

Really? In baseball there are two seasons—the regular season, where the best teams usually rise to the top. Then there is the eight-team crapshoot-of-a- postseason-tournament, which rewards hot teams and teams that play in the National League—as the road is so much easier for teams on the Senior Circuit.

It is kind of like the SEC and Big 10 equation in college football. In the SEC, teams beat up on each other, eliminating potential teams in the conference that could go to a BCS bowl game. And then shitty teams like Ohio State get to play for a title, even though they would lose 3-to-4 ballgames if they played a full SEC schedule. Only in football, the better team wins more frequently than in baseball, where anything can happen on any given night. This is why Ohio State has been manhandled twice in the past two years.

by RaysFanAL08 on Oct 30, 2008 1:18 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It’s about putting together an all around solid season. In baseball especially, you are not going to get into the playoffs unless you remain competitive throughout the entire summer. If a franchise does in fact keep up for six months and ultimately reach the post season, they then have to go through three of the best teams in order to claim the title.

All you need is a shot at October, it doesn’t matter who had the better rotation or scored more runs in the regular season because every team is competing just to have a chance. Additionally, who are you to say that the Phillies wouldn’t have adjusted if they were in the AL East? Maybe the Phils were playing down to their competition. These comparisons serve no purpose; in good fun I guess they’re fine on a blog, but not when you try to somehow to make the argument that your team is better even though they were eliminated, they become sketchy.

My best game plan is to sit on the bench and call out specific instructions like 'C'mon Boog,' 'Get ahold of one, Frank,' or 'Let's go, Brooks.' -Earl Weaver

by Baltimo on Oct 30, 2008 4:03 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs