so i started with this trying not to be too big of a data geek, and still pick lots of players i love. For most of my intital seasons, i completely avoided 08 joss, trying to prove a point. so now, i'm 10 out of 14 getting into playoffs (which i admit is quite solid), but i'm 1 out of 10 for advancing in playoffs, and the one time i advanced to the TOC, i got a beatdown like a redheaded stepchild. what does it take to get somewhere in the playoffs??? i kinda feel like the '01 Mariners, like my team is designed for the regular season, but all the other adults in the playoffs know something that i do not (and they're all thrilled to see me on the other side of their bracket). Am I being too self conscious, and just wait for the distribution of my playoff berths to achieve normality over a longer set of data, or am i actually barking up the wrong tree somehow?

Posted by pfan on 5/20/2016 8:00:00 PM (view original):
so i started with this trying not to be too big of a data geek, and still pick lots of players i love. For most of my intital seasons, i completely avoided 08 joss, trying to prove a point. so now, i'm 10 out of 14 getting into playoffs (which i admit is quite solid), but i'm 1 out of 10 for advancing in playoffs, and the one time i advanced to the TOC, i got a beatdown like a redheaded stepchild. what does it take to get somewhere in the playoffs??? i kinda feel like the '01 Mariners, like my team is designed for the regular season, but all the other adults in the playoffs know something that i do not (and they're all thrilled to see me on the other side of their bracket). Am I being too self conscious, and just wait for the distribution of my playoff berths to achieve normality over a longer set of data, or am i actually barking up the wrong tree somehow?

1) Playoffs are small sample sizes (and so is the TOC). Very close to coin flips between teams that are close. This is the most important thing to understand. The better team wins just over 50% of the time.

2) Beware relief pitcher fatigue in the postseason. Very few RPs can pitch back-to-back games, ever, and this can really hurt.

3) Especially in uncapped leagues with good benches or on teams you have viable platoons: consider actually playing the matchups a bit when appropriate. Does the other team run? If not, you don't need to start your good-armed catcher (but he should play anyway if he hits best.) What park will games be played in and can you tweak your team for your opponent's park? If you have SPs of similar quality of different hand, does the opponent's lineup have a lot of one particular hand?

Then again I also suck in the playoffs so who knows if I know what I'm talking about.

uncleal, i really appreciate your insight. thanks for responding, i really appreciate your insight. my most recent regular-season-monster-team get lynched in the playoffs, and i kinda feel like there's something i'm missing, like a secret ingredient that makes ligapalota's pitchers better than the 2.4 ERC pitchers that they are.... the ancient jedi knowledge about the decision engine is buried deep in the vaults and, from what i see, is still not source material. what's the essential proposition, i read somewhere that its like 52% pitcher dependent and 48% hitter dependent.... that being said, all the teams i had that i overinvested in pitching did poorly, but that could have been a function of luck. i really hate luck. thanks for your insight. i hope your teams do well.

I want to be careful here not to give away too much. There is definitely no magic formula that guarantees postseason success. But while I agree in general that luck plays a huge factor in any short series, I do think you will find that some owners make adjustments to how they manage their teams in the postseason, and that those changes give them a slight advantage. Any advantage, no matter how slight, can pay big dividends in the post season.

Without going into the math (if you search online you can find many sources that will show you how the probabilities work), if each team is equal so that your chance of winning any game is 50%, then the chance of winning the series is also 50%. But if you improve your chances of winning each game to 55%, then your chance of winning a 5-game series increases to about 59%, and in a 7-game series your chances are just over 60%.

So the question becomes, it is possible to take two teams that are roughly equal, and make tactical changes so that one team's chance of winning becomes greater than 50%? I would say yes it is. My guess is if you look at successful playoff teams over time, and read the boxscores carefully, you will be able to infer what some of these tactics might be. uncleal has already given you some suggestions.