Bad Year for Big Markets

If you were a betting person and placed your money on all the small market teams this post-season, you would have won lots of money.  Why?  It was a clean sweep for the smaller markets in the divisional series.  In fact, if not for the Yankees' win on Sunday, the big market teams would have been shut out completely.

Each of the matchups in the divisional series featured one team with a lopsided market size advantage over the other.  Conventional wisdom says that teams in bigger markets have an advantage in baseball.  Conventional wisdom was wrong in these playoffs.

Here are the divisional series breakdowns with market sizes from this Baseball Almanac story:

Colorado Rockies (2,581,506) v. Philadelphia Phillies (6,188,463):  Rockies win 3-0

Arizona Diamondbacks (3,251,876) v. Chicago Cubs (9,157,540):  Diamondbacks win 3-0

Boston Red Sox (5,819,100) v. Los Angeles Angels (16,373,645):  Red Sox win 3-0

Cleveland Indians (2,945,831) v. New York Yankees (21,199,865):  Indians win 3-1

There's no doubt that a five game series does not offer the best data from which to draw conclusions.  So, I'll avoid doing that here, except to say the following, which I can say quite confidently:  this is not how MLB or TBS wanted things to happen.