Dugout Central: "Can Anybody Beat the Yankees?"

Bill Wellman over at Dugout Central asked that question today on the site, and then broke it down the numbers. It's a very interesting article and worth checking out. Here's his explanation:

There are other differences in the playoffs. Those differences can be summed up in one phrase: long-sequence offense doesn’t work. Only the best three or four starting pitchers for each team are used for anything other than mop-up long relief, while five or six, or occasionally even more, starting pitchers get significant use for each team over a full season. The best bullpen pitchers throw almost all of the critical innings following the best starters’ work. With better pitchers on the mound, the effects of defense are magnified. Likewise, extra base hits, especially home runs, are more important in the playoffs, while singles become comparatively less important.

With the wealth of metrics at our disposal as modern fans, we can choose a few tailored to the specific factors in play during the postseason. I’d suggest four:

• Bullpen WPA. The ability of the bullpen to protect close leads is an obvious critical aspect of any playoff team.
• Isolated Power. Isolated power is a great gauge of a team’s ability in postseason offense. Most of isolated power is home runs, and home runs are especially critical in October. A double gets a third of the credit of a home run, which makes sense in playoff context; a triple counts two-thirds as much as a home run, which makes sense if a triple is regarded as both a double and a proxy for player speed, a factor with lesser importance than pure slugging that still can certainly make a bigger difference in tight October games than it makes in the regular season.
• League-Indexed FIP. Fielding-Independent Pitching credits strikeouts while strongly penalizing home runs allowed and gently penalizing walks allowed. All of these things are appropriate for modeling playoff chances. Furthermore, each team’s primary starting pitchers get most of the innings pitched that generate the team stat, so the right pitchers get more weight in most cases. Dividing the team FIP by the league ERA to create a percentage adjusts for the effects of the DH rule differing between the two major leagues.
• UZR. UZR measures team defense better than most other measures of defense, and defense is certainly an important part of the playoffs.

I suggest going to Dugout Central and looking at the break down. His conclusion based on the stats above might give you some much needed confidence, especially after watching the last three stinkers:

Anything can happen in a short series, but the Yankees have had time to set up their rotation and to rest their regulars. The team that looks best-capable (Boston) of beating the Yankees by these stats has looked almost incapable of beating the Yankees on the field through the second half of the season. The talent gap between the Yankees and any other team is even broader. Any team playing the Yankees this autumn is facing steep odds. If the Yankees do as well this fall as it looks as if they might, they may go down as one of the greatest teams of all time.

I certainly hope things play out that way, but no statistical breakdown will matter unless CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, and Andy Pettitte pitch up to their capabilities.