The Yankees are playing the Rangers, who are the current World Series champions.

The Rangers are a mediocre team that won the World Series. They're right in front of you and they strongly support the argument that the baseball postseason is a crapshoot:

"I love it when I still hear about what a 'crapshoot' the postseason is in baseball."

It is.

"What, it wasn't a crapshoot when Mr. Torre's Yankees were winning four World Series in five years and nearly making it five out of six?"

It was a crapshoot. Ask the superior Braves in 1996. Or the inferior Diamondbacks in 2001. Or the inferior Marlins in 2003.

Not sure why he stopped at five out of six when it was "nearly" six out of eight.

The "nearly" part kind of contradicts his entire argument, if you think about it.

It's excruciating, isn't it? 

"Nearly" winning is the same thing as "losing," and it's cut and dried, it's all or nothing, it's binary.

It's a bloop single into centerfield, it's non-HOFer Graeme Lloyd getting HOFer Fred McGriff to ground into a double play. You put your best team out there and hopefully they'll play with poise and skill. But you just never know what is going to happen.

Kind of like every time a roll of the dice craps out it was "nearly" a winner. Which is why it's a good analogy.

"That is still the biggest and best reason why Torre is the greatest Yankee manager of them all, even if others won more World Series than he did."

To the victors go the spoils. Only a fool would ignore the fact that luck plays a part in it.

The earlier Yankee dynasties didn't have to deal with multiple playoff rounds, did they?

The Torre era didn't have to deal with three wild card teams in each league.

Each round of the playoffs is just Bayesian Logic writ large in the sporting world.

Conclusion? Yeah ... it's a crapshoot.