When you're using a computer simulation to revise history, you really don't know how it's going to come out. In a short series -- real or virtual -- pretty much anything can happen. We were fastidious in picking our 32-team bracket, so no matter who survived to play in our version of the league championship series round, the stories would be good. But we can't lie: The narratives of some teams seemed more compelling than those of others. As it turned out, we ended up with four teams that really embodied our theme: a second chance for great teams that didn't quite finish off great seasons.
A quick recap of our final four:
• 2001 Seattle Mariners: tied a big league record by winning 116 games, only to fall in the American League Championship Series to the New York Yankees
• 1977 Kansas City Royals: won a franchise-record 102 games but fell in the ALCS to the New York Yankees, the second of three straight ALCS losses to the hated Bronx Bombers
• 1993 Philadelphia Phillies: ended a streak of six straight losing seasons with a Cinderella run to the World Series, only to lose the deciding game of a dramatic matchup on a game-winning homer by Toronto's Joe Carter
• 1994 Montreal Expos: broke out to an MLB-best 74-40 record, only to have the rest of the season and the playoffs wiped out by a labor dispute
Let's get down to it! With only two series to recap, we're going to give the last two editions of the tournament a little more of an unfolding structure, so don't skip to the end if you're not in a hurry.
Jump to AL Championship Series:
(No. 1) 2001 Mariners vs. (No. 7) 1977 Royals
Jump to NL Championship Series:
(No. 3) 1994 Expos vs. (No. 12) 1993 Phillies
See the Second-Chance World Series matchup and all-AL and all-NL teams
How we determined our 32-team bracket
(All series best-of-seven)
American League Championship Series
(No. 1 seed) 2001 Seattle Mariners vs. (No. 7) 1977 Kansas City Royals
Game 1: Lighting Up the Basepaths
These two teams combined to steal 344 bases during their respective seasons, so the battle of the running game between Kansas City skipper Whitey Herzog and Seattle's Lou Piniella loomed large in this matchup. It proved to be the difference maker in a small-ball lover's delight in Game 1.
The Mariners ran themselves out of a couple of scoring opportunities early, with Darrell Porter gunning down Mark McLemore and Ichiro Suzuki, the latter on a well-timed pitchout call from Herzog. But Kansas City could do nothing against the Mariners' Freddy Garcia, who racked up seven one-hit shutout innings, backed by Bret Boone's solo homer off Jim Colborn.
In the eighth, Royals left fielder Tom Poquette smashed a hard comebacker to Garcia, who fumbled it for an error. Herzog sent Willie Wilson in to run for Poquette. Wilson is remembered as one of the great base stealers of all time and an overall outstanding player. In 1977, though, he was just 21 and about all he could do was run really fast. With Amos Otis at the plate, Wilson stole second against namesake Seattle catcher Dan Wilson.
The latter Wilson didn't have great success throwing out runners that year, and Garcia was never good at holding runners. One season, 2006, opponents were successful on 40 of 42 attempts against Garcia. Anyway, Wilson went to third on Otis' grounder and scored on Pete LaCock's single to left to knot the score. Back in the '70s, every time LaCock was mentioned on television, it was accompanied with some version of the statement, "He's the son of game show host Peter Marshall, you know?" Which was true.
The Mariners started a rally against Colborn in the bottom of the eighth. Pinch hitter Ed Sprague reached on an error, and Boone walked. So Herzog did what has worked for him so well all through the tournament: He summoned budding legend Mark Littell from the bullpen. Budding legend? Well, consider this: Littell promptly struck out Edgar Martinez, John Olerud and Mike Cameron in order. The Royals scored the go-ahead run when George Brett singled in Freddie Patek in the top of the ninth, and tacked on an insurance run when John Mayberry singled home Brett. Littell finished up, and the Royals stole the opener at Safeco Field. Final: Royals 3, Mariners 1
Game 2: They're crafty
The second game pitted a pair of prototypical crafty lefties, Jamie Moyer for Seattle against Kansas City's Paul Splittorff. After the M's nicked Splittorff for a couple of runs in the first, Mayberry evened things up with a two-run homer to center in the fourth.
The key sequence of the game unfolded in the bottom of the fourth. Olerud led off with a double, and Cameron walked. Both runners advanced on David Bell's sacrifice. Carlos Guillen walked to load the bags. So Split, as he was called, was in a jam. Luckily, at the plate was light-hitting Mariners backup catcher Tom Lampkin, who hit just .130 with a lone RBI against southpaws in 2001. Lampkin got the nod behind the plate from Piniella because starter Dan Wilson was ailing.
So what happened? Lampkin drilled a two-run double to right-center to give the Mariners the lead. Moyer wasn't threatened seriously after Mayberry's homer and gave way to two clean innings from Jeff Nelson and Kaz Suzuki. Series even. Final: Mariners 5, Royals 2
Game 3: Workhorse
Dennis Leonard was an absolute workhorse. Twice he topped 290 innings in a season, including 1977, when he won 20 games and finished fourth in AL Cy Young Award balloting. He had another season of 280 innings, and in 1981, a season shortened by more than a third because of a strike, he still managed to top 200 innings to lead the AL. He also was a power pitcher who struck out more than seven batters per nine innings in 1977 and whiffed more total batters than any AL pitcher not named Nolan Ryan that year. Over a two-year span -- 1977 and 1978 -- he completed 41 games.
The story of Dennis Leonard was maybe an extreme version of a common tale for workhorse starters of his generation. His managers rode him and rode him and rode him, until he finally broke. For Leonard, it wasn't his arm but his knee that gave way. Still, Leonard had some big postseason moments. In the 1977 ALCS, he went the distance and beat the Yankees on a four-hitter in Game 3. He beat the Phillies in the 1980 World Series.
But Leonard never had a playoff outing like he had in our Game 3 simulation. Against the dynamic offense of the 2001 Mariners, Leonard allowed only a fourth-inning single to Boone and three walks, going the distance in a 125-pitch, one-hit shutout at Royals Stadium. Brett started the scoring with an RBI single in the first and added a run-scoring triple in the third. It was more than enough. Final: Royals 3, Mariners 0
Game 4: Getting even
Paul Abbott will always have 2001. For his career, Abbott was 43-37 with an ERA (4.92) that was a good half-run worse than the average for the leagues in which he played. He pitched professionally in every season from 1985 to 2005, but only 162 of his 469 career games came at the big league level. His overall winning percentage (.516) was actually worse than what he had in the majors (.538). And that factoid was almost entirely a result of Abbott pitching for the 2001 Mariners.
Abbott went 17-4 that year despite an ERA worse than the AL average. Take away that year, and his big league mark was 26-33. Abbott didn't get an October start during Seattle's postseason run in 2001. However, our virtual Piniella turned to him to get Seattle even in Game 4. Abbott did what the 2001 version of himself tended to do -- he stayed out of just enough trouble to allow his high-scoring teammates to win the game. He allowed five hits to the Royals and walked six, but Kansas City converted that traffic into just one run. Seattle rode a balanced attack to a six-run second and cruised. Final: Mariners 7, Royals 3
Game 5: Heartland Hero
If you grew up on a baseball coast, you can't fully appreciate what George Brett meant to Midwestern kids playing Little League in the late 1970s and early '80s. Everyone wanted to play third base. Everyone wanted to go see Brett play. He played hard, he played great, and he was to Kansas City baseball what Mickey Mantle was to the Yankees, and Stan Musial was to the Cardinals. The difference is that those other franchises have had other all-time greats. For Kansas City, 27 years after he retired, there is still only George Brett.
Brett was one of those players who, if you rooted for his team, you automatically felt confident if he was coming up in a big spot. Conversely, as countless Yankees fans of the time will tell you, he was the last person the opposition wanted to see at the dish with the game on the line. Brett was not a home run hitter, but it seemed like every bomb he hit won something. Think of it like this: Among Royals with at least 50 career postseason plate appearances, the second-best OPS is Ben Zobrist's .880 mark. Brett's was 1.023.
You probably know where this is headed. Brett has had some moments, but this hasn't been a big tournament for him. The Royals have been winning with lockdown pitching, base stealing and, especially, airtight bullpen work. This time, though, they needed Brett and, well, even on a computer, he's George Brett. With two on in the seventh, Piniella sent for Norm Charlton to face Brett, who promptly sliced one down the left-field foul line and around the pole for a go-ahead, three-run homer. From there, the Royals turned the game over to lefty Steve Mingori, who pitched a pair of scoreless frames. The Royals snagged a 3-2 lead in the series, with the teams headed back to Safeco Field. Final: Royals 6, Mariners 4
Game 6: Things Get Heated
We've mentioned a couple of times in the series how the '77 Royals were in the midst of a three-year losing streak to the New York Yankees in the ALCS, a streak they finally broke in 1980, when Kansas City won its first AL pennant. The Mariners of the early 2000s can commiserate. Not only did a later version of the Yankees knock out the 116-win Mariners of 2001, they also defeated Seattle in the 2000 ALCS.
In the 2001 ALCS, the Mariners dropped the first two games at Safeco. Before the series shifted to Yankee Stadium, Piniella famously told reporters, "Before you guys start asking questions, let me start by saying we're gonna be back here [Seattle] for Game 6. I told the people out there the same thing. I guarantee you we will be back here for Game 6."
The series ended in five.
Anyway, this time the simulated 2001 Mariners indeed played a Game 6 of an ALCS at Safeco, this time against the fiery '77 Royals, battling some Yankee ghosts of their own. Brett, McRae ... it was an intense K.C. bunch who got into some scraps in their day. That's not actually built into the simulation, but you could imagine it was as Game 6 unfolded. First, the benches cleared after Moyer plunked little Freddie Patek with a pitch in the fifth. Nobody was ejected, but tensions only grew on the Seattle side as the Royals nursed a 2-1 lead -- behind a dealing Leonard -- into the eighth.
At that point, Herzog turned the game over to Littell in hopes of getting a two-out save to close out the series. Boone was the first batter Littell faced, and he took a called strike three that he did not like. The simulation doesn't assign umpires, so let's just pick a combative one who was active in both 1977 and 2001 and might have conceivably drawn a postseason assignment. Ah, here's a good one -- Joe Brinkman, who ranks seventh on the career ejection list. Well, Brinkman didn't like what Boone was telling him, and he kicked Boone out of the game.
Things can get chippy in elimination games. Royals fans remember how the St. Louis Cardinals unraveled against them in the 1985 World Series. Boone had committed an error in the top half of the inning, leading to a K.C. insurance run, so maybe that threw his algorithm off. Anyway, Littell just kept mowing down M's after that, putting two more zeroes on his perfect tournament stat line. The 2001 Mariners remain unrequited. Final: Royals 3, Mariners 1 (Royals win series 4-2)
MVP: Dennis Leonard (2-0, 0.56 ERA, 16 IP over two starts)
Key stat: Royals co-closers Littell and Doug Bird have combined to allow one run over 32⅔ innings in the tournament.
Clinching box score:
Clinching game details: Safeco Field | Time 3:33
E: Boone (2), Cameron (1)
2B: McRae (12), Suzuki (2)
SB: Zdeb (4), Cowens (4), McLemore (5)
CS: White (1), Patek (4), Brett (4), Guillen (1)
Ejected: Boone
Game MVP: Leonard
National League Championship Series
(No. 3) 1994 Montreal Expos vs. (No. 12) 1993 Philadelphia Phillies
Game 1: Best-laid plans
The schedule for the simulation is attached to a calendar, which makes a difference in how starting rotations are set for any given series. In this case, while the Phillies zipped through their Elite Eight win over the '98 Astros in five games, the Expos needed all seven games to outlast the '09 Rockies. Thus Philly had everything lined up for Game 1, with big-game legend Curt Schilling getting the call. Had Felipe Alou been able to set his own ideal rotation, Schilling would have faced future Red Sox teammate Pedro Martinez in the opener. But with an exhausted pitching staff, Alou turned to lefty Butch Henry. In terms of historical status, it was an on-paper mismatch, though Henry's best season in the majors was 1994, when he went 8-3 as a swingman.
As happens so often in baseball, how things look on paper is not how things play out on the (computer-simulated) field. Schilling went seven but gave up solo homers to Marquis Grissom (to lead off the Expos' first), Cliff Floyd and Moises Alou. Henry scattered seven hits and held the Phillies to Wes Chamberlain's second-inning homer. Henry went six before turning it over to Alou's high-power bullpen. Mel Rojas gave up a couple of runs in the eighth, one on a solo shot by red-hot Pete Incaviglia, but John Wetteland retired Philly in order for his seventh save of the tournament. Final: Expos 5, Phillies 3
Game 2: Before Pedro became Pedro
With a 1-0 series lead, home-field advantage and Martinez getting the start, everything lined up nicely for Alou. Alas, the final notes of "O Canada" had barely stopped reverberating around Olympic Stadium (and, yes, the simulation really did play "O Canada"), when Lenny Dykstra drew a leadoff walk, stole second and scored on Dave Hollins' 17th RBI of the tournament. The Phillies jumped on Pedro for six runs and sent him to the showers in the fifth.
Martinez was in his first season as a big league starter in 1994 after working out of the Dodgers' bullpen during his first two seasons. He wasn't Alou's ace that year. In fact, he started the campaign as the Expos' fourth starter behind Jeff Fassero, Ken Hill and Kirk Rueter. By the time the strike began, he was on his way to becoming the Pedro Martinez we now know as one of the game's greatest pitchers.
The timing of the strike coincided perfectly with a point of the season during which Martinez was dominating. Over his last two starts before the stoppage, he threw eight shutout innings against the defending NL champion Phillies and 8⅔ scoreless frames at Pittsburgh. There are so many what-ifs about the '94 Expos, but one of them is whether Pedro was on a run that could have carried into October.
In faux reality, Martinez faltered, as the Phillies eventually built a 10-2 lead and held on as Montreal strung together a five-run rally in the seventh. Mitch Williams pitched a scoreless ninth for his sixth save of the tournament. He has yet to allow a run during the proceedings. Final: Phillies 10, Expos 7
Game 3: Wild Thing
Mitch Williams came by his nickname the honest way. His famous quote was, "I pitch like my hair's on fire." Seldom has a ballplayer's biography been summed up as succinctly by a single, poetic quotation. Williams -- "Wild Thing," as he was called -- walked 7.1 batters for every nine innings he pitched in the majors. He struck out 8.6 batters per nine and somehow rode that combination to 192 career saves.
In Philadelphia, Williams will always be remembered for giving up Joe Carter's home run for the ages in the 1993 World Series. Wild Thing's struggles in that Fall Classic went deeper than that. He lost two games to the Blue Jays. He faced 15 batters, five of whom got hits and another four who walked. Still, as it is with all of baseball's great goats, there was a reason Williams was out there in the first place. You have to be good to fail in a big spot, and Jim Fregosi's Phillies would never have gotten to the World Series if not for Williams' 43 saves. Then again, if not for his World Series showing, the Phils probably wouldn't have shipped him to Houston after the season for Doug Jones. And, perhaps, Williams' big league career wouldn't have gone into a permanent tailspin.
This fantasy tournament asks: What if some of baseball's most tortured teams -- and the aggrieved souls who played for them -- got a second chance at glory? If it could really happen, maybe their pain could be eased, as that of Shoeless Joe in "Field of Dreams." Or, maybe, it could go bad all over again.
Williams had been dazzling throughout the tournament, with six saves and a spotless ERA. That is until Game 3 against Montreal. Starters Ken Hill of Montreal and Danny Jackson of Philly were both outstanding, holding their opponent to one run into the seventh inning. The bullpens got things to the ninth with the game still knotted at 1. Though it wasn't a save spot, Fregosi called on Wild Thing. And he promptly walked Mike Lansing. Lansing went to second on a grounder and scored on Grissom's base hit. Wetteland retired the Phillies in order, and Montreal grabbed the series lead. Just like that.
For the first time in the tournament, Wild Thing had fallen off the tightrope he walked through his entire career. That scent you imagine might be that of singed hair. Final: Expos 2, Phillies 1
Game 4: Booger
The narrative thrust behind including the '94 Expos in our bracket was among the most obvious of the tournament. A team that eventually left its city -- and country -- had its best season in the first year that baseball didn't have a postseason in 90 years. That great Montreal club was gradually dismantled, with Martinez going on to greater glory with the Red Sox and Larry Walker moving on the very next season to the Colorado Rockies.
Walker, a native of British Columbia, will enter the Hall of Fame wearing a Rockies cap. You can't blame him. As good as he was during his time in Montreal, he was next-level good in Colorado. He only got into one postseason with the Rockies and later played into October twice during his time with the Cardinals. He finally got to the World Series in 2004, when he hit two homers in a losing cause as the Redbirds were swept by Martinez's Red Sox. Walker never got a ring.
The best team he was on was probably the '94 Expos. As if his virtual counterpart could know this, he has perhaps been the MVP of the tournament so far. In Game 4 against the Phillies, he propelled Montreal to a commanding 3-1 series lead with a monster performance. Walker broke open the game in the fifth with a bases-clearing double and added a three-run homer in the ninth off Mike Williams. He's now hitting .330 with six homers and a tournament-best 21 RBIs. Final: Expos 12, Phillies 2
Game 5: Unlikely Hero
With the Phillies down 3-1, they could not have picked a better pitcher to try to save their season than the one who started Game 5: Schilling. We have a few times referred to him as a premier postseason pitcher, and it's not mere hype. During a career that will probably land him in Cooperstown one of these years, Schilling went 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA over 19 postseason starts. He won four times during Arizona's run to the 2001 championship. He won three times each in October for Boston's title teams in 2004 and 2007. For the '93 Phillies, he went 1-1 but put up a sterling 2.59 ERA over four October outings.
On the other hand, his opponent in Game 5 was again the lefty Henry, who never threw a postseason pitch in real life, though he would have if fortune had been kinder to the '94 Expos. Among the things the internet tells us about Henry are that he's a member of the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame and that he has an IMDB page because apparently you get one if you pitch on Sunday Night Baseball. The internet tells us a lot of things about Schilling.
Schilling lost only twice in the postseason during his actual career, but in this series he lost twice to Butch Henry. And, yeah, that seems crazy, but the list of unlikely postseason heroes through baseball history is long ... Brian Doyle, Howard Ehmke, Kurt Bevacqua, Pat Borders. Heck, Don Larsen went 3-21 for the Orioles two years before he threw a perfect game in the World Series for the Yankees.
Henry again held Philly to one run over six innings and had plenty of offensive support, getting homers from Alou and Rondell White. History prevented the 1994 Montreal Expos from playing in the World Series. Given a virtual second chance, they are going to do just that. Final: Expos 7, Phillies 1 (Expos win series 4-1)
MVP: Butch Henry, Expos (2-0, 1.50 ERA)
Key stat: After rolling up 10 runs in their Game 2 win, the Phillies managed just four total runs over the last three games of the series.
Clinching box score:
Clinching game details: Veterans Stadium | Time 3:15
E: Stocker (3)
2B: Floyd (5), Walker, L 2 (9), Dykstra (7)
HR: Alou, M (4) off Schilling (4) in the 6th with 1 on base, 383 feet; White, R (1) off Schilling (5) in the 7th with bases empty, 387 feet
CS: Lansing (2)
Game MVP: Moises Alou
World Series matchup
1977 Kansas City Royals vs. 1994 Montreal Expos
(Note: Expos will have home advantage.)
All-AL bracket team
P: Mark Littell, Royals
C: Carlton Fisk, White Sox
1B: John Olerud, Mariners
2B: Bret Boone, Mariners
3B: Adrian Beltre, Rangers
SS: Freddie Patek, Royals
LF: Albert Belle, Indians
CF: Mike Cameron, Mariners
RF: Al Cowens, Royals
DH: Hal McRae, Royals
AL MVP: Littell
All-NL bracket team
P: Kevin Brown, Padres
C: Chris Iannetta, Rockies
1B: Cliff Floyd, Expos
2B: Craig Biggio, Astros
3B: Dave Hollins, Phillies
SS: Troy Tulowitzki, Rockies
LF: Moises Alou, Expos
CF: Marquis Grissom, Expos
RF: Larry Walker, Expos
NL MVP: Walker