So you're saying the Yankees won't win the World Series.

Let's talk about things that everybody knows:

"Everybody knows this is a home run time in baseball. Everybody can see it’s another home run season, one in which teams will again hit more home runs in a season that at any other time in history."

Unless we're talking about Pete Alonso.


"The Yankees set the team record last season with 267, and they are likely going to fly past that number in September -- even in a season when Giancarlo Stanton, who once hit 59 in a season for the Marlins, has hit just one because of injuries and Aaron Judge, who has gotten hot lately, had just 18 coming into the weekend because of his own injury issues earlier in the year."

No mention of Encarnacion.


"The Yankees have hit more home runs in August alone (70) than any team has hit in a calendar month. They had 250 for the season heading into their weekend series against the A’s, and guess what? That number wasn't even the most in baseball this season, because the Twins had 261."

Twins hoping to ride home run surge to World Series win.


"I called the Elias Sports Bureau on Thursday -- they know everything! -- because I was curious about the correlation between homers and winning a World Series. This is the list I was given:"

You called the Elias Sports Bureau?

That's 5 minutes of research on the Internet.


"Not only are the 2009 Yankees the last to do it, the Astros in '17 were the last team to finish in the Top 5 in homers and win it all."

2009 was only ten years ago.

2017 was only two years ago.


"Nobody would suggest that the number of homers hit by the Twins and Yankees -- who are going to finish first and second in homers in 2019, unless the Dodgers or Astros have the kind of power surge in September that the Yanks just had in August -- are some kind of disqualifier for actually winning the World Series in a home run world."


Nobody except you.

This entire exercise is suggesting that the number of homers hit by the Twins and Yankees are some kind of disqualifier for actually winning the World Series.

If you're not suggesting that, then why did you call Elias Sports Bureau and provide us with a table correlating regular season home run totals to World Series victories?

If it's just rows and columns of random numbers signifying nothing, then you can call the folks at Purina and ask how much dog food was purchased in the cities of ALCS Champions over the past 20 years. You can even run trending analyses and figure out the standard deviation.


"And they're probably going to hit 300 home runs this season.

It’s a pretty amazing number. So are the numbers in our list of World Series winners."

The numbers that don't suggest anything. They're simultaneously amazing and suggestive of nothing.


Say what you mean, coward.

You're saying the Yankees won't win the World Series because they rely too much on the home run and strike out too much.

You're saying you're unimpressed.

You can't wait for Madison Bumgarner to shut 'em down in October.

Well, if that's what you really think, then don't hedge your bet.

If that's not what you really think, then there is no point to any of this.


It's not even a risky proposition.

Only one team is going to win the World Series. It probably won't be the Yankees or the Twins.

It probably won't be the team that hits the most home runs. It also probably won't be the team who wins the most games in the regular season. It probably won't be the team with the best team ERA.

Boston was 8th in team ERA in 2018 ... Houston was 11th in 2017 ... the Cubs were first in 2016, but that was three years ago! ... KC was 10th in 2015 ... San Francisco was 10th in 2014 ...

Not because any of these are bad things for baseball teams to do, but because ten teams make the playoffs and winning the World Series is hard.

You have to play well at the right time and get lucky.


You'll always be able to explain why the championship team won the championship. The winning team probably out-pitched the competition and, in retrospect, the bullpen had hearts of champions and overcame adversity. The vets came through by providing leadership and two or three unheralded heroes "stepped up."

But you won't find regular season team stats that provide much predictive guidance, nor will you easily be able to predict the winner before the playoffs start.

I figured that out all by myself without calling Elias.