WORLD SERIES TEAMS WITH SUB-.500 ROAD RECORDS...

THIS is most likely our last post for 2023, with the early part of '24 certain to bring us the chess/checkers machinations of present-day GMs and the ongoing loopiness of the Hall of Fame voting process.

And for a swan song we have something relevant from the '23 season itself--the seventh occurrence of a phenomenon that, in this instance at least, is overlain with irony (fear not, we'll explain that reference eventually)...

Just what are we talking about--seventh son of a seventh son, or something like that? No, it's not some antediluvian mumbo-jumbo: it's simply the seventh time that a team winning the World Series did so despite having a losing record in road games during the regular season.

A total of twenty-three teams have won league pennants while playing sub-.500 baseball on the road, as the chart at right will show you. Only 21 of those are relevant to the World Series, however, since the 1902 A's and the 1914 Indianapolis Hoosiers (Federal League) had no World Series in which to participate.

So that means that one of every three teams to win a pennant with a sub-.500 record in road games has gone on to win the World Series.

AND the most recent team to do so: the 2023 Texas Rangers--who, in the height of irony, achieved their post-season feat by winning all of their post-season road games.

As you can see, most of these teams were just barely "in the red" with respect to their road record--14 of the 21 teams who played in the WS had a road WPCT of .481-.494. The two WS champs who were truly sub-par road teams are shown right up at the top--the 1987 Minnesota Twins (29-52) and the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals (34-47). 

We've never had teams face off in the World Series who both had sub-.500 road WPCTs, but we came close this past year: the Arizona Diamondbacks had a 41-40 record in road games. That combined road record of 81-81 isn't the lowest of all time for World Series opponents, however: such would be found in 1987, thanks to the woeful road record of Twins. Combining their 29-52 with the 1987 Cardinals' 46-35 mark, we get a combined road won-loss record of 75-87 for that World Series--which was the first World Series where the teams won all of their home games.

One last graphic on this--one of our TimeGrid™ charts (at left) showing the evolution of this phenomenon. As you might expect, most of these occurrences have happened since divisional play began, with an added acceleration during the Wild Card Era.

The greatest preponderance for this (thus far, at least) occurred during the 2000s, when it happened six times, including four in a row from 2005-08; it's also the only decade where two sub-.500 road record teams won the Series.