27 October 2015

World Series Preview Nonsense

In my newspaper Tuesday; in your newspaper too, most likely; indeed in newspapers across America; is a World Series preview. It is written in that time-honored tradition of matching up players from the two teams at each position and assigning one team or the other an edge.

This is a time-honored tradition just as hitting a woman over the head with a club and dragging her to your cave by the hair is a time-honored tradition. By that I mean, it's obsolete, makes no sense, is counterproductive,  stupid and makes the receiver's head hurt without enlightening them.

Unless Daniel Murphy and Ben Zobrist are going to line up against each other across the line of scrimmage, the idea that one of them is a superior second baseman is irrelevant. (Besides that, the AP listed Murphy as the better player. Zobrist produced an .809 OPS and 2 WAR, according to Baseball Reference. Murphy hit for a .770 OPS and 1.4 WAR. Evidently the last six games are more relevant than the entire season, according to them.)

In addition, it weighs each position equally, as if the gaping yaw between Lorenzo Cain and Juan Lagares is equal to the slight edge David Wright has over Mike Moustakas this year.

Then, it examines the starting staffs and adds a point to the team with the superior rotation. Forty percent of the game gets the Mets a credit equal to having a marginally better DH. The same for bullpens, managers and benches. Defense and speed don't seem to get captured at all, except in the player match-ups.

It's all for naught in a short series anyway, but if we're going to read a World Series preview, could it at least make sense?

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