Yeah, I wasn't taking a shot at St. Louis, or implying that they've benefited disproportionately from it (though two titles in otherwise so-so years is a lot to counteract). Just pointing to it as another example of how random the baseball playoffs are.
And yes, I agree that the main problem is that people extrapolate from it. IE: all those things about how Moneyball didn't work because the A's barely lost a couple of division series', or something about how such-and-such team choked "because of the spotlight" or something. Honestly, the only way to judge the best teams over any time period is total wins, or failing that, playoff appearances. I realize I'm fighting a losing battle on this front, however. Winning in the postseason will always trump all else, no matter what.
... I, for one, agree with your perspective. Division titles constitute a great gauge, too, probably the best over a sustained period.
And Oakland's four consecutive five-game ALDS losses from 2000-2003 indeed shouldn't represent an indictment of those teams' worth. That said, I think that the whole
Moneyball concept proves aggrandized and somewhat contrived, the better to sell books, attract Brad Pitt, and sell movie tickets. The Athletics became an elite club despite a low payroll for fairly traditional reasons, namely a fertile farm system marked by several top-ten first round draft picks in the mid-to-late nineties: most notably Ben Grieve (later dealt for Johnny Damon), Eric Chavez, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito. Thus they developed arguably the best starting rotation in the American League over the first half-decade of the twenty-first century and the
Moneyball stuff was supplementary material mistakenly presented as the main course. Hey, for a book to be commercially successful, it usually needs an unusual angle or hyperbole.
Additionally, the Athletics indeed could have used more speed in the postseason, for instance a pinch-runner for Jeremy Giambi in the seventh inning of Game Three of the 2001 ALDS.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bo...00110130.shtml
In the postseason, balance and versatility loom large.
But certainly, I concur about the lack of congruity between baseball's regular season and postseason and how regular season team accomplishments thus tend to be overlooked even though they constitute the truer test. The most glaring and disproportionate example is the Florida Marlins, who have never won a division title in almost two decades of existence and have only reached the postseason twice, yet have won two World Series (with almost entirely different rosters). The best testament to the postseason's randomness, especially in terms of which team will win three successive playoff series in one month, can be found in the first eleven completed seasons (1995-2005) of the newfangled NL East. During that span, the Atlanta Braves won eleven NL East titles and one World Series while the Florida Marlins won zero NL East titles and two World Series.
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