MoneySox

Obviously the Red Sox sweep was not surprising to me. I'm not a particular fan of the Red Sox, even though I thought they would win the World Series. If there is one endearing quality about them it's that the Red Sox are in a lot of ways an affirmation of Billy Beane and his analytic approach to baseball made famous in Michael Lewis's Moneyball. Theo Epstein is definitely from the same school of thought as Beane and it shows. The 2007 had a distinctive Moneyball feel to them, with patient hitters like Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis (Beane's "Greek god of walks" after all). Hideki Okajima is so reminiscent of Chad Bradford in Moneyball, and you could easily imagine Billy Bean building big stats for his hard-tossing closer, Jonathan Papelbon, and then trading him for a slew of underrated talent. Of course The A's would never have the money to sign other guys that Beane would love like David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, J.D. Drew, and Mike Lowell. Would Beane like a guy like Josh Beckett? He typifies a lot of what Beane avoids (big, hard throwing right hander) though he certainly has put up some impressive numbers over the years. Anyways, if you're a fan of Billy Beane and Moneyball, then you probably had to root for the Red Sox.

World Series Predictions

My LCS predictions wound up being pretty good! I started writing this a couple of days ago and forgot about it. Now I've got to finish it as the first pitch is being thrown...

Rob Neyer speculated a 60% probability of Boston winning. That seems pretty plausible from a statistical point of view. Boston has better hitting and much better pitching. I've seen some nonsense about how Colorado's pitching was great after the All-Star break, but that is a cherry-picked stat. Maybe it was great because they played more road games and against lesser competition? Their line-up stands up pretty well side-by-side to the Red Sox, but their pitching is not even close.

So... yeah Red Sox in 5 seems appealing. That would have Beckett getting a chance to clinch, though it would be at Coors Field.