It’s just your regular question you ask you mates down the pub.
“Who is the best Postseason team since 1995?”
They stare at you blankly for what feels like a lifetime, one friend finally speaks.
“Are you talking about baseball again, Tom? You know we don’t watch it or understand it.”
You laugh, nod your head and whisper into your pint glass as you raise it to your mouth: “Yes, I am talking about baseball, when will you stop talking about football and get into a real sport?”
“What?” says your oldest friend from school, Marcus Aurelius.
“Nothing.” you reply, whilst wiping the Guinness froth from your top lip and wondering “Well, who is the best Postseason team since 1995?”
The easy and obvious answer is the New York Yankees, because they have won five World Series. But we don’t like easy here at Bat Flips and Nerds, so lets get complicated!
First, I decided to pick 1995 as the start year as that’s when the Wild Card era began, it was also the beginning of the Divisional Series. The lesser of the three divisional winners in each league would play a wild card team (The 4th best record in each league). The Wild Card points don’t kick in until 2012, when the Wild Card game begun. You can’t have points for being a Wild Card, you have to actually play in the game to get the points.
I also decided to create a points scoring system, based simply on a team appearing in that round. If the team didn’t advance, they still get the points.
For example, let’s take the 2014 San Francisco Giants. Because they went from Wild Card 2 to World Series Winner, they receive almost maximum points. The only way to better their game, would have been to finish as the number one Wild Card team and achieve the excellent WunderPointz Award.
For the record, no team has ever achieved WunderPointz
Anyway, here’s the scoring table.
| Team Appearance | Points Awarded |
| Wild Card 2 | 1 |
| Wild Card 1 | 2 |
| League Divisional Series | 8 |
| League Championship Series | 12 |
| World Series | 20 |
| World Series Winner | 30 |
So for the 2014 Giants they received the following points for appearing in these rounds:
- 1 point for the WC 2 spot.
- 8 points for the NLDS
- 12 points for the NLCS
- 20 points for the World Series
- 30 points for winning the whole thing
A grand total of 71 points.
Here’s a quick fact:
Purely based on this unnamed scoring system, the 2014 Giants are the best Postseason team since 1995.
Wait, we haven’t got a name for this system? Answers on twitter please, the sillier the better.
Oh I forgot, before we get started, this only runs up to and including 2017. We’ll wait for the Red Sox and *insert NL team here once it’s over* to play it out before adding the 2018 results. Also, I know the Florida Marlins won the World Series twice, but I’m not having multiple versions of the same franchise on here. That’s mental.
| Position | Team | GRAND TOTAL |
| 1 | New York Yankees | 570 |
| 2 | St Louis Cardinals | 365 |
| 3 | Boston Red Sox | 318 |
| 4 | San Francisco Giants | 284 |
| 5 | Atlanta Braves | 268 |
| 6 | Cleveland Indians | 194 |
| 7 | Houston Astros | 171 |
| 8 | Los Angeles Dodgers | 168 |
| 9 | Chicago Cubs | 155 |
| 10 | Philadelphia Phillies | 146 |
| 11 | Los Angeles Angels | 142 |
| 12 | Miami Marlins | 140 |
| 13 | Detroit Tigers | 128 |
| 14 | Arizona Diamondbacks | 124 |
| 15 | Texas Rangers | 122 |
| 16 | New York Mets | 122 |
| 17 | Kansas City Royals | 112 |
| 18 | Chicago White Sox | 86 |
| 19 | Baltimore Orioles | 70 |
| 20 | Oakland Athletics | 69 |
| 21 | Seattle Mariners | 68 |
| 22 | Tampa Bay Rays | 65 |
| 23 | San Diego Padres | 64 |
| 24 | Minnesota Twins | 61 |
| 25 | Colorado Rockies | 57 |
| 26 | Toronto Blue Jays | 42 |
| 27 | Cincinnati Reds | 37 |
| 28 | Washington Nationals | 32 |
| 29 | Milwaukee Brewers | 28 |
| 30 | Pittsburgh Pirates | 14 |
Ta-da! Guess what? The New York Yankees have been really good in the Postseason since 1995! What a #HotCake eh? Seriously though, that split from 1st to 2nd is ridiculous. It would take the St. Louis Cardinals THREE WunderPointz to overtake the Yankees, IF the Yankees didn’t reach the Postseason during those three years.
The spread from 2nd to 5th is roughly 100 points, 5th to 8th is exactly 100 points, 8th to 21st is 100 points, what does this tell us? Well, the good (Minus the great Yankees) have been really good and consistent, the above average are also tightly packed, a World Series win could jump them into that upper echelon. The average are all spread out, meaning one decent run could see them right up the top. The rubbish are rubbish (Poor Pirates).
Another interesting tidbit, was it took until 2015 to get every team on my manually inputted spreadsheet (There are probably errors). The last team to make the list was the Toronto Blue Jays, which despite their very late arrival to this…whatever it is, sit nicely in 26th.
Well, that’s all I can waffle on for over some made-up scoring system. What’s the main point we have learned here?
“Don’t try and talk baseball to your friends in a pub.”