Pick some winners!

Got this from a guy I follow on another site.  Most "analysis" one reads about sporting contests aremostly opinion, and a lot of so-called statistics are actually meaningless trends.  But I thought this was interesting enough to share...

The 'warning bells' statistic concerning KCR's unbeaten run to me is the following:

7, 2, 1, 8, 5, 6, 2, 2

That's their run production inside regulation innings this post season. It's almost all but all or nothing, basically. Here's SF's:

8, 3, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6 (this last one "inflated" somewhat: should be another 3 or 4 but for the rare occurrence of a multi-run walk-off HR)

Much more consistent. Less highs but more importantly less lows. 3's & 4's are regulation scores that win multiple games in the WS (since 2000, 31 WS games have been won by teams managing 3-4 reg. run scores, compared to 15 won by teams managing 5-6 reg. run scores). Where are KC's regulation 3's & 4's? The horseshoe they have up their ass is all but coloured by an offensive hue. They've won multiple games in the playoffs via a mode they were worst at league wide in the regular season: the long ball (as well as 2 notable extra base hits which hit the wall, but didn't have the oompf to go the few feet more needed to clear it). What happens when their freak deep hitting ways dry up? Remember the Cards from last season and their highly flukey (& record setting) productive BA with RISP, and what happened to them when that dried up? Teams simply do not sustain doing things that are exceptionally beyond the[ir established] norm. Keep in mind KC will play SF off their 2 worst overall offensive outings thus far in these playoffs. Because they won those games & made the WS as a result, attention is deflected from the fact that maybe their big hitting ways have actually already come to an end: they didn't manage a hit w/a RISP in those 2 games, nor did they manage any HR's (the pitching they faced in those 2 efforts hardly warranted such a drastic drop off in the form they'd shown over their previous 6 games, especially at home). The last time they had an offensive lull - their 2 reg. innings efforts @laa - they at least had another game quickly around the corner to reassert/refind their offensive form. Here their suddenly quiet bats have been forced into extended rest.

The issue for KC's offense in the WS is going to be: what saves them if & when the big hits dry up? This isn't to say KC is incapable of winning a tight WS game late without hitting a longball, but how are they going to react when what they're so used to getting from themselves recently suddenly disappears on them, and this happens to happen in the most pressure filled atmosphere they've ever experienced? The Tigers lost the WS to SF after just 1 game was in the books 2 years ago, and the Tigers entered that WS off 5 straight wins: everything had been running their way back then, just as it is now for the Royals. 3 Panda HR's later & their ace mauled, the Tigers were shellshocked & never recovered.

One final note on this point: As well as KC has managed the big hits, they've still "only" totaled 8 HR's in 8 games. STL managed 15 HR's in 9 games, an average of 1.66/game. How difficult will SF find dealing with KC if the their current 1.00 HR/game rate drops away to any significant degree, as expectations of a regression anticipate, given they just managed a comprehensive (on paper, at least) 4-1 series win against a team who hit the longball significantly better than what KC is currently managing to do?

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Big Game James goes against Bumgarner in game 1: Bumgarner is 4-0 on the road in the postseason, while BGJ has looked average at best (his lack of a loss to his name at this point being due to his being the most consistent beneficiary of KC's flukey big hitting ways: he's gotten an average of 8.33 runs support so far - that's more than double KC's rpg production from the regular season, and nearly 2 1/2 times as much RS as all the other KC starters have received. Such statistical deviations simply do not continue unabated). This is another WS that has the potential be over for one team psychologically very early, imo. If KC's big hitting continues unabated then I think it's the toss up the odds suggest: either team wins in 7. Since KC's big hitting holding up is a scenario I don't contemplate (even though Black Swans will continue to exist despite normative expectations), I think SF wins in 6 (or - if KC's bats really hit the wall like STL's did off their own respective high last season - in 5). SF's starters are't good enough across the board this time around for me to possibly think sweep (Pissvy & Vogelsucks are no Cain-Lincecum or even Cain-Zito duo), even if KC does repeat the stage fright of the 2012 Tigers.

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Last thought for this post: KC's beating SF 3-0 in the reg. season @kc (SF's bats managing 3 total runs over those 3 games).

SF's reg. season was a 3 act play:
(1) Their swift start out of the blocks (43-21 SU),
(2) Their mid-season slide (20-36 SU between June 9th-August 12th) which threatened to derail their p.s. hopes, then
(3) Their late recovery (25-17 SU) which salvaged a WC spot.
[Fortunately for them, one of the best performed teams on paper they met during their slide also happened to be sliding bigtime themselves: MIL got swept by SF during their own 19 game, 3-16 SU slide. If the Brewers had been playing to their previous standards heading into that series, SF would've likely failed to grab a WC spot].

No prizes for guessing which period of form SF was in at the time they headed into KC (specifically, at the tail end of a 10 game road trip: it was upon returning home that they set about generating their 3rd act of the reg. season). Conversely, KC was in the middle of a 27 game, 22-5 SU run (rebounding off a prior 3-10 SU slide that straddled the AS break) at the time they hosted SF. The nature of each team's efforts in that series reflects perfectly where each team was psychologically at that time.
Of course KC might've inflicted exactly the same outcome had SF been in better form, and those results could actually be indicative of the way these two teams match-up. It's possible, but, as with my expectations re KC's batting continuing to pull horseshoes out of its ass, I think the surface factors I've highlighted adequately explain matters. Hence - given SF's current form is much different from their reg. season's 2nd act - I don't see anything from those early August results being useful, statistically speaking, as a WS reference.