Okay, so that last little simulation was fun, wasn’t it?  What’s that you say?  Well, yes, I suppose that’s true — while it may have been fun (or not), it was also totally inaccurate:

PREDICTION: Angels in 5 | ACTUAL: Red Sox in 4
PREDICTION: Rays in 4 | ACTUAL: Rays in 4
PREDICTION: Brewers in 4 | ACTUAL: Phillies in 4
PREDICTION: Cubs in 4 | ACTUAL: Dodgers in 3

Blech.  Though the quarter has John Lackey’s approval, it gets very little support from the rest of the baseball world.  The Cubs winning in October?  And those sad Brewers past the Phillies?  What was that coin THINKING?! One series correct as far as the team was concerned, and two series correct as far as the number of games were concerned.  The chances of nailing each advancing team was 1/16, while the chances of getting each number of games correctly was 1/81 (each series has two possible team outcomes – Team A or Team B – and three possible games outcomes; 3, 4, or 5).  Coincidentally or not, we probably could’ve done better by using what we (apparently) knew about the teams: the Angels can’t beat the Sox in October, and the Cubs can’t win in October period, for example.

Let’s quickly try this again, shall we?  We have better odds here, especially of just correctly picking the two World Series teams: 1 in 4.  Our odds at nailing the correct winners AND the number of games for the remainder of the postseason?  1 in 512.  Yikes!  And finally, our odds at picking the winner of every single game correctly for the rest of the season?  Less than one in two million.  And you thought this would be easy.

ALCS: Red Sox (96-67) vs. RAYS (97-65)
HHHTH: Rays in 5

Your new classic AL East showdown: the upstart Rays versus the stalwart ‘07 champs.  The Rays take the first two games at Tropicana behind Shields and Kazmir, but Lester (who else?) gets the Sox right back in it with a Game three victory as the series returns to Fenway.  The euphoria is short-lived: Wakefield proves ineffective in Game 4 (Longoria puts one over the monster that takes about 45 seconds to land), and when the Rays return to the Trop with a chance to clinch it, they do so, waiting out Matsuzaka’s wildness to earn a trip to the big dance.  Evan Longoria’s your MVP.

NLCS: Dodgers (84-78) vs. PHILLIES (90-72)
THTTTHH: Phillies in 7

The superstar series of the postseason, this one has it all: two historic franchises, each with superstar offensive players, knuckle up and give the people seven memorable games.  Manny Ramirez!  Ryan Howard!  Russell Martin!  Chase Utley!  The Phillies actually go up 3-1 in the series, including a gutsy Jamie Moyer victory, but let the Dodgers even things up by Game 6 at Chavez Ravine.  Cole Hamels, pitching without his full alotment of rest, keeps his team in the game, but this one comes down to the bullpens.  The Phillies go up late and hold on for the victory.  Shane Victorino gets the NLCS MVP nod.

World Series: Phillies (90-72) vs. RAYS (97-65)
THHTTH: Phillies in 6

The series is tied 2-2 after 4 games, but a crushing Game 5 loss at the home spells disaster for the Rays, who can’t recover in time to prevent the Phillies winning the world series for the first time since 1980, much to the chagrin of everyone outside of Philadelphia.  The Rays have established themselves as serious perennial contenders for the postseason, and leave little doubt that they’ll be back in the thick of things in 2009, but this one goes to Utley’s bunch.  Brad Lidge closes out three of the four Phillies wins after a rather sketchy NLCS, and takes home World Series MVP.

Finally, I’ll briefly explore the idea of simply picking the two World Series teams.  The odds of doing so “randomly” are 1/4, so if we do four simulations, maybe we’ll have one of them prove right.  Home teams are still heads:

1. HH (Rays/Phillies)
2. HT (Rays/Dodgers)
3.  HH (Rays/Phillies)
4. TT (Sox/Dodgers)

The only combination we didn’t get was TH, or Sox/Phillies, while the one we got twice was HH, Rays/Phillies.  Our odds are pretty good here: we’ve got a 75% chance that the World Series matchup appears on that list.

Do you know something the coin doesn’t know?  There IS a comments section: see if you’ve got the smarts to beat the coin flip for the rest of the postseason.