Originally Posted by webrian
That was marvelous work you did. I was surprised to see the 2015 Blue Jays topping the 1985 team by the pythagorean metric, but after giving it more thought, it makes sense. The 2015 Jays were more offensively explosive, especially after they got hot in mid-summer. That means they won more games by bigger margins and scored more runs even in the games they lost. In fact, the 2015 Jays scored 140 or so more runs than the 1985 Jays did.
It's difficult to account for the different eras they played in. I certainly do not contend that better baseball was being played in the mid-1980s (I don't believe it myself), but it was different. Teams valued contact hitting and spray hitters more than in recent years. Starting pitchers went longer. A pitcher with an ERA over 4.00 was considered quite mediocre. The 1985 Blue Jays could certainly score, but their strength was their solidity, their ability to wear teams down with consistently strong pitching, a talented and versatile lineup that had power, speed, lefty-righty-switch hit variations galore, and a perfect mix of vets and rising young talent.
In fact, I'd contend the 1985 Blue Jays were a lot like the 2015 Royals, and perhaps even better at what they both tried to do. The 2015 Royals tried to keep games close until they could jump out to a lead and then choke teams out with their bullpen. The 85 Blue Jays had an excellent rotation (Stieb, Key, Alexander, Clancy) and the best bullpen in baseball. They didn't blow teams out as much as the 2015 Jays did, but had more plug-&-play options for pulling out close games. This shows up in the numbers: The 2015 Jays were 15-28 in 1-run games and 6-8 in extra innings, but 37-12 in games decided by 5 runs or more. /// The 1985 Jays were 26-21 in 1-run games, 12-5 in extra inning contests, and 30-10 in games decided by 5 runs or more, showing they certainly could dominate.
The 1993 Blue Jays were not as impressive on paper over an entire season as either the 1985, 2015 or 1987 Blue Jays. The starting pitching especially fell off quite a bit from the year before. But they had an intangible quality: They knew how to win when they had to win. The 1987 Jays lost their last seven games of the regular season and handed the title to Detroit. The 1993 Jays lost their slim division lead in a 6-game losing streak in early September, but then they put their collective foot down and won 16 of the next 18, then trimmed the Sox and Phillies in the post season. That's the value of veteran leadership.
It's not surprising the George Brett-led Royals teams had the best run of success. But it wasn't all Brett. Back then, the Royals had a billionaire owner in Ewing Kaufmann who didn't mind losing money to put a winner on the field. Kaufmann aged, then died, and GM John Schuerholtz left to build a dynasty in Atlanta. The new braintrust in KC cared more about cutting expenses and maximizing profits; they figured loyal Royals fans would come out even for mediocre baseball, so they spent nearly two decades shipping off top talent (Cone, Damon, Dye, Beltran, Greinke, etc) or losing it in free agency.
The 1977 Royals are the gold standard for KC fans, even though they're not one of the four teams KC got into the World Series. That's the best team KC ever put on the field. The 1985 and 2014 Royals got super lucky at the right time. The 2015 team was great, but felt a bit mechanical or over-engineered. The 1980 team rolled through a weak AL West, then caught some key breaks against the Yankees in the playoffs (before losing to the Phillies in the WS). But, oh that 1977 team. They were young, gritty, brawling upstarts who didn't just go toe-to-toe with the Yankees and Red Sox of the AL East, but also had to beat out strong seasons from Texas, Chicago and Minnesota that year. That team didn't really heat up until after the all-star break, then they really floored it in the late summer, winning 24 out of 25 games during one stretch from late August to mid September. That team looked so ready to knock the Yankees off their perch, and they almost did it, but the bullpen blew a lead in the ninth inning of Game Five.
Nothing in your post surprised me more than the high placing of the 2008 Blue Jays. I remember them being decent that year, but there was so much hullabaloo about Tampa Bay that summer, it kinda drowned everything else out. Alex Rios had a banger of a season (47 doubles!) and Roy Halladay was in good form. The rest of that pitching staff, though, was a who's who of 'who's that?' If that team had one more big hitter and one more solid starter, they might have seriously challenged the Rays.
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