YOU may not have seen the data posted below...we'd not thought to retrieve it from the trusty folks at Forman et soeur, but the light bulb finally flickered a bit and managed to stay on.
It's a summary display form that's probably new to most of you, but don't let it throw you off.
Note that this covers the 21st century only (just in case you're not ready the titles of the posts!) all the way up to this year's Championship series.
Interestingly, the Phillies are still the team with the best overall WPCT amongst teams with a sizable number of post-season games. They're slightly ahead of the Giants and Red Sox, the two franchises with the most World Series wins since 2000. The media has noted the long post-season losing streak of the Minnesota Twins, but we're not aware of anyone posting their overall record, which might actually be more astonishing....
The Yankees have still played in the most post-season games (161), but haven't had much to show for it since 2009. Behind them are the Cardinals (142), Astros (130), and Dodgers (126).
The Royals remain the great outlier, destroying literally everything in their path whenever they manage to make the post-season, but mostly operating as baseball's resident iceberg. Still, they're not the franchise with the fewest post-season games since 2000: that would be the Pirates (8), followed by the Reds (11), Orioles (17), Rockies (20), Mariners (24), Padres (25), and White Sox (26).
We added a few basic rate stats to add a little more spice to things. Note that the Rays are the homer-ingest team by the HR/G measure, but also note that it's not done them much good (no World Series win, and a very middling .438 post-season WPCT).
HR/G for post-season games since 2000 (1.12) remind us that "launch angle" was with us even before it was a "thing"... but note that the Giants did manage to buck the trend, winning three titles with significantly lower-than-average HR/G rates. (Much of the reason for that would be more evident if we were to run these standings again, but with pitching data--something we may just do after the World Series.)
Both of this year's participants in the World Series have burnished their post-season records sufficiently with their respective run-ups to the Fall Classic to currently be .500+ for their relatively limited number of playoff games (54 for the Rangers, 48 for the Diamondbacks). Odds are high that they'll both still be over .500 after the series, unless someone gets hot and sweeps the other one.
But let's kibosh that thought and root for a seven-game series, shall we? While the game still has many problems to overcome, it's still far worse when there are no games at all. Let's savor what remains...
