The justification for the kings of mediocrity, the Cardinals, winning the World Series is that they had so many players that missed substantial stretches of the season. They got healthy to start the players and the end result was that they slid into the postseason by the skin of their teeth but given the actual talent they had on the team, they easily won in it all. And what kind of jerk am I anyway for not seeing it all along?

Well, that sure sound great, but did the Cardinals really miss more games than the average playoff team? Does getting players back for the postseason guarantee success?

The Cardinals starters missed a total of 206 during the regular season:

* Belliard played just 54 G w/ St. Louis;Wilson 33

Of course, this kind of study is rife with assumptions. I am assuming that the starting position players used in the postseason are the team's ideal lineup, which is of course not always the case. A team could have a starting player who played all 162 games but gets hurt in the final game and misses the playoffs entirely. He gets replaced by a backup who may have played just a handful of games. By my assumption, it looks like the backup missed was the preferred player but he missed most of the regular season. But it's impossible to state in all situations who was the player the teams preferred.

Anyway, here are the playoff teams that lost the most regular season games to their starters:

You might notice by the way that only three of those teams won a World Series. Overall, there is the very slightest correlation against the missed game theory (-0.024).

The real reasons that the Cardinals' offense went wild in the postseason was that they upgraded two of their sore spots (second base and left field) and their other liability, "It's Yadier!" Molina had the postseason of his life.

By the way, here are the teams that lost the least time during the regular season: