2014 World Series Projection, October 8

Baltimore over San Francisco

League Championship Series
KC 0-0 BAL
STL 0-0 SF

Division Series
KC 3-0 LAA
DET 0-3 BAL
STL 3-1 LAD
SF 3-1 WAS

Wildcard Round
OAK 0-1 KC
SF 1-0 PIT

Team	Strength	WS	Win
BAL	0.5783	62.80	38.61
SF	0.5363	55.33	25.23
KC	0.5193	37.20	18.10
STL	0.5119	44.67	18.05

The two League Championship Series are all set, as both San Francisco and Saint Louis won last night to win their NLDS in 4 games each.

I'd consider the Cardinals extremely lucky to have beaten Clayton Kershaw 4 times in the last 2 postseasons. It's certainly no knock against him, or any indication they have him "figured out"; these things are inherently random. After all, he only gave up 3 runs last night. That's not a bad game if you're offense can score 4. In terms of W-L record (which is not a perfect stat, but go with me), he's 99-54 including the playoffs. That's outstanding, but with 54 losses, some team among the other 29 is going to appear to have your number, and be responsible for a disproportionate number of those losses. Overall it was a close series that could have easily tipped either way, with a run differential of 1, 1, 2 and 1 in the 4 games.

The Giants and Nationals had another close series, with run differentials of 1, 1, 3, and 1, and an overall differential of 0. They scored the same number of runs, San Francisco just distributed them better. Now we'll get a rematch of the 2012 NLCS, hopefully with different results this time.

There's no baseball until Friday, so projections will resume Saturday morning.