2016 MLB Postseason: The statistical view

THE CUBS WON THE WORLD SERIES!!!!!

It's been just over a week and it still hasn't fully sunk in. But I'll try to cut through the haze of post-title bliss and be as rational as possible in breaking down what the numbers have to say about the highly memorable 2016 postseason.

Game of the Day (10/6/91)

On the last day of the 1991 baseball season, all four division titles were locked up, and there were no other playoff spots up for grabs because no other playoff spots existed.

So there wasn't much at stake in any of the games played on this particular date - except, of course, for professional pride. And in the case of Brewers 6, Red Sox 3, there were two starting pitchers looking to put exclamation points on excellent seasons - Milwaukee's Bill Wegman hoping to extend his career high total of 15 wins, and Boston's Roger Clemens trying to seal a third Cy Young award after having been robbed in the previous year's voting.

Game of the Day (10/5/91)

On October 5, 1991, the Atlanta Braves won their eighth game in a row, 5-2 over the Astros, while the Dodgers were shut out 2-0 by the Giants for their third straight defeat. The results put the Braves two games ahead of the Dodgers in the standings - and since October 5 was the second-to-last day of the season, the Braves wrapped up the year's final division title.

Meanwhile, in the American League, the dreadful Yankees were facing the Indians, who were much worse. The starters were Eric King, who would pitch seven seasons in the majors (including four in which he was almost exclusively a starter) without ever qualifying for the ERA title, and Eric Plunk, who was making the last start of his career but would spend the remainder of the '90s in major league bullpens. If you had asked me to guess which man started for which team, I would have picked Plunk on the Indians (he pitched there for seven years), and I would have been wrong.

But these two unimpressive squads combined to produce Indians 7, Yankees 5 (12), which sounds pretty impressive... and was actually better than it sounds.

Game of the Day (10/4/91)

Tigers 4, Orioles 2 (14). Detroit's Scott Aldred and Baltimore's Mike Mussina were born almost exactly 6 months apart, and were 23 and 22, respectively, when this game took place. Both pitched partial seasons in 1991 - Aldred started 11 games, Mussina 12. And... well, Mussina pitched about 50% more innings, and Aldred gave up more runs. Which gave a pretty accurate indicator of how their respective careers were going to play out.

Game of the Day (10/3/91)

There were only five major league games played on October 3, 1991. When the total is that low, the selection is often not terribly impressive when it comes to excitement.

On the other hand, sometimes five-game days give you White Sox 13, Twins 12 (12). Minnesota started Kevin Tapani, who was closing out a season in which he had arguably been the best starting pitcher on a division champion; Chicago started Greg Hibbard, finishing up a year in which he had barely held onto his spot in the rotation.

Game of the Day (10/2/91)

Mets 9, Pirates 6 (11). New York's Pete Schourek and Pittsburgh's Randy Tomlin were both reasonably effective, reasonably young starters. For no reason that was immediately apparent at this point in time, Schourek's career would last just about twice as long as Tomlin's.

Game of the Day (10/1/91)

Phillies 6, Cubs 5 (13). Chicago's Frank Castillo faced Philadelphia's Tommy Greene. Both were young pitchers, and both would end up between 5 and 10 WAR for their careers. Greene had the bigger highlights (a no-hitter, a 16-4 season for a pennant winner), but Castillo would last over twice as many innings.

Game of the Day (9/30/91)

Mariners 3, Rangers 2 (11). Seattle's Erik Hanson was 26 years old, and struck out 143 hitters in what was a fairly solid season. That strikeout total was about 70% of his opponent's mark in 1991 - and less than 40% of what Nolan Ryan had done when he was Hanson's age.

Game of the Day (9/29/91)

We've spent the last few days completely ignoring active pennant races in this space, so let's check back in on the year's best contest. Entering play on September 29, the Dodgers led the Braves by a game in the NL West. They spent the first six innings of their game that day getting shut out by Bryan Hickerson, who I presume you have never heard of, because he wasn't particularly good and didn't last long in the majors. But in the eighth and ninth, they rallied from a 2-0 deficit to pull out a key 3-2 victory, with Darryl Strawberry delivering the walkoff.

And they needed it to stay ahead, too, because their pursuers played Braves 6, Astros 5 (13). The starters were Steve Avery for Atlanta and Pete Harnisch for Houston; both were pretty good young pitchers who would go on to pretty good careers.

Game of the Day (9/28/91)

Tigers 5, Orioles 4 (10). Detroit sent out veteran Bill Gullickson, who at age 32 was on the way to his first and only 20-win season. Baltimore replied with Mike Mussina, who was 22 and making the eleventh start of his career; he would go on to a Hall-of-Fame-worthy 18-year tenure in the majors, and would exceed Gullickson in many categories, including length of wait before finally winning 20 games in a season.

Game of the Day (9/27/91)

Expos 12, Pirates 8. It is inevitable that at some point when writing up one game every day of a baseball season, you will run out of things to say about pitching matchups. This game pitted Montreal's Mark Gardner against Pittsburgh's Zane Smith. Both men were pretty OK; they were similar ages (Smith a year and two months older), but their 13-year careers were offset by five years anyway. And that's all I've got.

Game of the Day (9/26/91)

Pirates 4, Mets 3 (15). Pittsburgh started Randy Tomlin, who lasted five years and looks to have been pretty effective most of the time despite a very low strikeout rate. New York replied with David Cone, who spent considerably more than five years in the majors, and had a notably higher K rate than Tomlin - to wit, he was just about to finish his second consecutive league lead in strikeouts.

Game of the Day (9/25/91)

Entering play on September 25, there were two divisional races that could be considered closely contested. One of those was in the NL West, where the Dodgers led the Braves by two games - at least before the day began. But the Dodgers were thoroughly thrashed by the Padres, and the Braves were looking at a doubleheader against the unimpressive Reds. They took the first game, 2-1 in 10 innings, and with LA's loss, a sweep would have brought then within half a game of first place.

Instead, the nightcap went Reds 10, Braves 9 (10). The pitching matchup was an interesting one: Atlanta's Steve Avery, a 22-year-old in his third season as a full-time starter, faced Cincinnati's Randy Myers, a 28-year-old in his seventh year, but serving his first stint as a starter; this was his 12th start of 1991 after his entire career had been previously spent in the bullpen.

Myers's rotation stint worked out so well that this was the last game he would start in his entire career; he would remain in the majors until 1998, and spend the next seven years camped out in the bullpen.

Game of the Day (9/24/91)

Pirates 10, Mets 8. The starters were both veterans whose best years had been in the '80s, and who would end their careers with records around 25 games over .500. But there's still a wide range of quality possible with those two descriptions, and Pittsburgh's Bob Walk was significantly lower on the available spectrum than New York's Frank Viola.

Game of the Day (9/23/91)

Rangers 11, Mariners 4 (11). The pitchers were Texas's Brian Bohanon and Seattle's Randy Johnson. It was not a particularly even matchup at the time, and it would appear far less so as the decade progressed.

Game of the Day (9/22/91)

Yankees 7, Red Sox 5 (10). New York's Pascual Perez was 34 and pitched less than half a season, averaging barely 5 innings per start in the 14 starts he managed to make. Boston's 22-year-old Kevin Morton started a little more and pitched a lot worse. Counting this game, both men had exactly three major league appearances remaining in their careers.

Game of the Day (9/21/91)

Angels 4, White Sox 3. California started Kyle Abbott; he was the second Abbott on their pitching staff in 1991, and the less effective of the two. Which is... let's just say it's not the most noteworthy difference between the Abbotts, and move on. He was opposed by Chicago's hyper-veteran knuckleballer, Charlie Hough.

Game of the Day (9/20/91)

A's 6, Blue Jays 5 (11). In 1990, Oakland's Bob Welch went 27-6 and won the Cy Young. Toronto's Todd Stottlemyre went 13-17 and exceeded Welch's ERA by nearly a run and a half (in the bad direction).

In 1991, Stottlemyre was the better pitcher of the two. Betting on consistent pitcher performance is not typically a winning proposition.

Game of the Day (9/19/91)

Phillies 5, Expos 4 (10). Montreal's Brian Barnes was 24 and putting the finishing touches on a fairly unimpressive season in which he just missed qualifying for the ERA title; Philadelphia's Andy Ashby was 23, and pitched both less and worse. Neither pitcher's results looked terribly promising in 1991, but Ashby would go on to a solid 14-year career while Barnes would be out of the league after three more campaigns.

Game of the Day (9/18/91)

Blue Jays 5, Mariners 3 (12). The pitching matchup comprised two pitchers who generally had no idea where the ball was going, for very different reasons: Toronto knuckleballer Tom Candiotti and Seattle flamethrower Randy Johnson.