Cardinal Rank

I plan to use this space to tell readers what I'm reading, both the good and bad of it. I recently read The Wages of Wins and will discuss it next week. But one point the book made (and made well) concerns an argument one often hears in discussions about sports teams or players. That argument assumes that post-season success is the proper measure of the quality of a team or player.

1. As consumers of sports entertainment, we have to realize that post-season tournaments or playoffs are not designed to determine the best teams. They're designed to entertain us and make money. This is not a bad thing, of course. But we shouldn't be duped into thinking that the playoff system some league designed to maximize fan interest also, by wonderful coincidence, just so happens to identify the best team. That is not the purpose of the playoffs.

2. If we genuinely wanted to identify the best team we'd have the teams play in a balanced schedule and then crown the team that won the most games. The larger the set of games the better. Very old school, much less interesting if some team ran away with it, but superior, if the goal is to identify the best team.

3. Some sports leagues care very little about any plausible claim to crowning the best team. NCAA basketball, for instance, with its single-elimination tournament, produces champions almost capriciously. The NFL tournament is similar: virtually the only significance of the regular NFL season is to eliminate the weaker teams and decide the location for playoff games.

4. No way the Cardinals were the best team in baseball this season; they would not have made the playoffs in virtually any other National League division and certainly not in the American League. One could make a plausible argument that the Cardinals were the weakest team in the entire playoffs. Yet we celebrate them as champions because they won the tournament.

5. I understand that we all have tacitly agreed to pretend the tournament winner is the league's champion because that's the way the league has organized itself. But really, just a few plays here and there can determine the outcome of a short series, even seven games.

6. The best team in baseball, Season 2006? The dread New York Yankees. Good pitching, decent defense, unbelieveable offensive lineup. Now, to use the stock sports argument, since the Cardinals won and the Yankees didn't, the Yankees should emulate the Cardinals in order to improve their team. Yankees: weaken your lineup, trade for mediocre pitching, shed any decent backup players, and then you'll be ready to compete for the title.

7. I don't think we should collectively pretend the Cardinals were baseball's best team this season. It smacks of "political correctness" that we all have to term something to be the case when we know it's not. Dishonesty has a price. If only in suppporting bogus sports arguments.