baseball playoffs

[MCoxon]

Humans crave certainty, predictability, and rationality. Evidenced lots of places (religion, economic theory, physics, conspiracy theories like that Oswald couldn't have been a lone gunman, because it bespeaks randomness and disproportionality for a nobody to kill the leader of the free world).

But in baseball, especially short series, there is:
1) Underlying skill
2) Mental aspect ("clutch" or not)
3) Randomness
4) Luck

All 4 exist. Sabre-matricians want it to be #1 only. Historicals and qualitatives want it to be heavly weighted on #2. But #3 and #4 come into play a lot as well.

And, I don't think it's knowable how much is #1 vs. #2 vs. #3 vs. #4, either in any single series or in all series in the history of baseball.