Who is the best Postseason team since 1995?

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.”

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