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Pitching Wins Championships, Except for Maybe This Year and the Last

What the below image shows you is the pitching and hitting league ranking for each of the World Series winners since 1995. The shaded blue areas show the hitting ranking for each squad (AL & NL Rankings Only) and the shaded orange areas show the pitching ranking of each team. The X show the discrepancy between the hitting and pitching rankings.


If you look at the World Series champs from the past 14 years they almost all have had pitching staffs superior to their lineups. Only two World Series champs in the 14 years have had a higher hitting rank than pitching rank and only the Yankees of 1998 had equal pitching and hitting rankings. Four World Series teams had the #1 pitching staffs in their league in comparison to three World Series teams with #1 lineups. Five of the last 14 World Series Champs have even had middle of the pack (8th or worse) offenses and still came home with the trophies. In stark contrast no team has won a World Series since 1995 with a staff that ranked worse than 6th in their respective league.

Now let's take a look at this years remaining playoff teams.


The Dodgers are the team who fits the most typical bill from the last 14 years. The Angels would have the worst team pitching since for a World Series Champ since the Wild Card era began, but much of this can be explained away by the devastation of injuries they took in the opening seasons months. As for the Yankees and Phillies, they mirror each other, 1st in hitting and 6th in pitching, sounds like a potentially good World Series.

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