100 win team playoff jinx- real or myth?

I just recently completed a review of all the leagues I've been in for the last 12 years- over 300. I found 86 instances of a 100 win team in the playoffs (I only included 12-team leagues) Here are the results:

A 100 win team won the championship 35 times. That's nearly a 40% rate. And when the 100 win team faced a non-100 win team in the finals they won 28 of the 39 times- an incredible 72% of the time. But what about the dreaded semi-final jinx?

There were 86 times that a 100 win team faced a non-100 win team in the semi-finals- 55 wins for the 100-win team vs 33 wins for the non-100 win team. The 100-s won the semi's 62% of the time.

It gets really lopsided in favor of the 100-win team in the semi's if the team they are facing had less than 90 wins. In this case the 100-win team wins 2/3rds of time 34 of 51.
And, 12 of 16 series wins in the finals. Anytime a 100-win team faces a team that won less than 90 in the semi's or finals they win 46/67 times- almost 70% of the time.

The eighty-six 100-win teams averaged 103 regular season wins (.636 winning percentage) and the non-100 win teams averaged 89 wins(.550 winning percentage). Semi-finals 100's vs non-100's 55-33; Finals 100's vs non-100's 28-11. Total, all instances: 100's- 81 series wins, 44 series losses- .648 winning series percentage.

Something to note: The average regular season winning percentage of all 100 win teams is .636 but their average series winning percentage is actually higher (.648) even when facing very good teams.

This notion of a jinx could be -well it really stands out when a 100 win team loses, but the facts are- at least with this study, that the 100 win team wins at just about the correct rate, or even higher.

Great work, Terry, thanks!

Scientific mathematical analysis once again puts superstition and gossip to rest.

Thanks Terry. That was great information on postseason play. Robert

Maybe, it's a reverse-jinx. SOM 100-win teams are faring better than MLB 100-win teams.

Including the 2016 Cubs, 16 teams since 2000 have won 100 or more games in the regular season. Of the previous 15 teams, 60 percent of them (nine) failed to win a postseason series, all losing in the division series.
The 2015 St. Louis Cardinals (100 wins), 2011 Philadelphia Phillies (102), 2008 Los Angeles Angels (100), 2003 Atlanta Braves (101), 2003 San Francisco Giants (100), 2002 Oakland Athletics (103), 2002 New York Yankees (103), 2002 Braves (101) and 2001 Athletics (102) failed to win a playoff series the year they won 100 or more games.

Interesting. When I saw this post my first impression is that is a lot of 100 win teams. So I checked my teams and there were 5 out off 55 leagues with a 100 win team. If the same percentage were applied to 337 leagues that would yield about 31 teams with 100 wins (25.5% vs 9.1%)

Interesting. When I saw this post my first impression is that is a lot of 100 win teams. So I checked my teams and there were 5 out off 55 leagues with a 100 win team. If the same percentage were applied to 337 leagues that would yield about 31 teams with 100 wins (25.5% vs 9.1%)

Many of the 100 win teams came from 12-team keeper leagues- showing a higher percentage of 100 win teams- The percentage of 100 win teams on non-keeper leagues was 29 out of 218 leagues 13.3%. Fifty-two 100 win teams came from keeper leagues- over 40% of those leagues had 100 win teams (some leagues had more than one). I was curious- after your post if the winning percentage would be different between the keeper 100's and the non-keeper 100's. The winning percentage from both groups were near identical : the non-keeper league 100's posted an overall winning series record when facing non-100 winning teams of 28-17 a winning percentage of .622 and .667 in the finals.

It would be nice if Strat did a 10 year study of 1000's of leagues-

Love the post, thanks Terry. Analysis over cliche every time.

I had 3 100-win teams recently, two of them won a championship and the other made the Finals, for a 5-1 record, series-wise.

I do try to avoid leagues with good players--that probably explains the low rate of 100 win teams in my leagues!

Particularly Marcpelletier!!! Let me keep some self-esteem...