Why predict the World Series?

Baseball's last series starts on Tuesday, with the wildly unlikely Royals playing the equally unlikely Mets, and if you are a fan of either of those franchises, I'll try to be happy for you, and fail. Both teams show the essential wisdom of not trying for years, and stocking up on as many draft picks as possible, and bottoming out in a way that would have gotten them relegated in more responsible leagues and countries. Instead, they got to load up on top tier young pitching in bulk, make a savvy move or three, get hot at the right time and hey presto! Someone's going to be a World Champion, and fail to defend it next year, and people will think that baseball needs the Yankees and Cardinals to get to the Series to get decent ratings.

Here's the problem with playoff baseball: there's too much of it. Baseball used to have a 162-game playoff season, in that its regular season was one of the few that was all-important and all-encompassing. Fall too far behind in the spring, and there was no back door wild-card way in. As few as four teams got in for all of baseball, which meant that pennant races, still the best thing about the sport even though it no longer really exists, went away.

Instead, we've got teams just making the playoffs as one of the top 40% of the league, winning small sample size series, and it's supposed to be an equivalent accomplishment. It's just not. It's like saying that a movie that comes out this year is the best of all time, because it does the most revenue, because ticket prices are higher now. The rules have changed, and will never come back to the way things were. Instead, we're going to have these random World Series, with random teams, and coin flip predictions.

So if you are a Mets fan, or a Royals fan, it's not that the rest of the world really hates your team, especially when you see bad ratings later. We just don't watch baseball unless Our Team(s) are involved, and in the case of the Mets and Royals... hell, I don't even have anyone on these teams to worry about, even in fantasy.

So, a prediction? Yeah, sure, why not. The Mets have better starting pitching, an offense that can put up crooked numbers, and a fan base that's grown suspiciously large in the last week or so. I'll take them in six, not watch much of it at all, and start thinking seriously about baseball in half a year.