Similar to the football adage, baseball wisdom tells us that pitching and defense wins World Series. Let's take a look at the World Series champions from 1969-2009 and compare their runs scored and allowed during the season with the league averages. The graph below shows, as expected, that most of the champions scored more runs and gave up less runs than the league average. The 1976 Cincinnati Reds go down as the most prolific offensive squad, exceeding the league average by 32.4% while the 1995 Atlanta Braves allowed 22.6% less runs than the average team that year. The 1998 New York Yankees recorded the best combined percentage(39.8%) which translated into a record 114 regular season wins. The 1987 Minnesota Twins go down as the most unlikely World Series champion, with a combined percentage of -2.6%.
It is interesting to note that of the 40 champions since 1969, only 3 of them allowed more runs in the regular season than the league average, including last year's champion, the New York Yankees. On the other hand, champions have scored less than the league average 9 times. So comparing the two, runs allowed(pitching and defense) is a better indicator of post-season success than runs scored.
I also included a chart of the teams taking part in the 2010 post-season. Based solely on the combined percentage, New York and Philadephia are the favorites to meet again in the World Series. However, given that runs allowed carries more weight, it wouldn't be surprising to see Tampa Bay and/or San Francisco in the Fall Classic.
Team RS RA RSPG RAPG LRPG Sdiff Adiff Combined
NYY 859 693 5.30 4.28 4.45 19.2% 3.9% 23.0%
MIN 781 671 4.82 4.14 4.45 8.3% 6.9% 15.3%
TB 802 649 4.95 4.01 4.45 11.2% 10.0% 21.2%
TEX 787 687 4.86 4.24 4.45 9.2% 4.7% 13.9%
PHI 772 640 4.77 3.95 4.33 10.1% 8.8% 18.8%
CIN 790 685 4.88 4.23 4.33 12.6% 2.3% 15.0%
ATL 738 629 4.56 3.88 4.33 5.2% 10.3% 15.5%
SF 697 583 4.30 3.60 4.33 -0.6% 16.9% 16.3%
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