How Real is the Sports Illustrated Curse?

Possibly the biggest news story involving the Cleveland Indians last Spring was Sports Illustrated choosing them as their consensus World Series pick. At the time, there was little rejoicing at the national respect, instead there was terror at the prospect of a “cursed” season.

While the fervor died down as the season progressed, the initial pick was never forgotten. Most fans knew better than to blame a magazine for the struggles of a professional baseball team, but like any good comedy routine, there was always the call back to the original pick.

Beyond the Indians, Sports Illustrated’s picks this year were as bad as everyone else in the country’s were. From right to left, their picks for the AL divisions were the Red Sox (finished last in the AL East), Indians (third in the Central) and Mariners (fourth in the West) with Wild Cards of Detroit (last in the Central) and Angels (3rd in the West). In the NL, things weren’t much better with the Nationals as the Eastern and NL Champions and the Marlins as a Wild Card pick. At least they chose the Cardinals, Dodgers and Pirates correctly after missing out on the entire AL play-off field.

To be fair, they did state before making any picks how close the American League field was and that played out into the final weeks of the season with 12 of 15 teams within six games from a play-off spot at the beginning of August. However, with the extra Wild Card, a full third of teams from each league make the postseason and Sports Illustrated got none correct. Before judging their Indians pick individually, think about that.

After that, we can look at who SI has picked in the past few seasons to see if they have “cursed” other teams:

Essentially, there have been two kinds of picks. The easy choice where a team who played in the World Series the previous year is picked to go back or the harder one where they actually evaluate all the teams and attempt to pick someone a little less obvious. Year by year, the Red Sox won the World Series in 2007 and lost in the ALCS in 2008 before being picked in 2009 by SI. The Yankees won it all in 2009 and were picked the following year. The Phillies won the series in 2008, lost it in 2009, then lost the NLCS in 2010 and were picked in 2011.

Continuing with the loser picks, the Rangers lost the series in 2011 and were picked to win it in 2012 then the Cardinals lost the series in 2013 and were picked to win in 2014. The only two teams picked to win the series since 2009 that weren’t obvious choices were the Indians this year and the Nationals in 2013 and obviously, they liked the earlier pick so much they nearly went with them again this year despite no postseason success.

Given all the obvious picks and the fact that for some reason they are still considered on the top of sports media, Sports Illustrated should have been expected to accidentally get one team right, but they haven’t even picked a team that got into the World Series. Of those, the Indians, Nationals and Rangers either didn’t make the play-offs or just played one game and the Phillies and Red Sox were out in the first round.

Going back to 2005, only 12 teams have made it to the World Series (of 22 entrants) with the Red Sox, Giants and Cardinals each reaching three. If they cared more about being right than selling the most issues in March, they could have just pick St. Louis every year and would never look bad.

While many of these were poor choices, none of the teams were cursed. In general, SI has had a tendency to be a year or two years behind, picking aging teams to perform well because they did in the past. That goes along with the choice of Detroit for a Wild Card this year over the Royals or even the Rays or Orioles.

The exclusion of the Royals and high expectations of the Indians, Nationals and Mariners seem to show a shift towards the extreme. As alluded to earlier, Sports Illustrated’s number one priority should be selling magazines in March, not getting picks right months in advance. It’s almost impossible to pick the World Series winner before the season anyway, so why not try to make some waves. The Cardinals, Dodgers and Royals expected to make the play-offs this year so picking them wouldn’t sell many more than normal in those markets, but putting the Indians, Mariners and Nationals on the cover (the Royals were also on a cover) would help sales in those particular markets.

Despite picking three teams who weren’t in the post-season the year before may seem out of line, but the three had solid reasons to be optimistic looking into the season. On paper, all three looked great and the Indians managed to stick around in the race until the final two weeks. The Nationals were eliminated not much earlier and had the joy of watching the best player in baseball, Bryce Harper. The two teams were also the consensus pick of the Burning River Baseball staff, but there were plenty of problems on both sides going in.

In general, “curses” from magazines or video games generally result from two things. Either they are outlandish to begin with, which both the Indians and Nationals picks were, or they fall victim to the fact that many favorites lose every year. While the Indians were favorites this year, the fact is that in order to surpass their 2014 season, they would have to have similar seasons from Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, Yan Gomes and Michael Brantley with a much improved Jason Kipnis and Danny Salazar and a great rookie year from Francisco Lindor. The fact that the Indians got all but one of these and still finished in third shows how outlandish the claim really was.

For the other side, there are numerous examples with this year’s Tigers possibly being the most perfect. The Tigers are one of those teams who have been to multiple World Series since 2005. After missing from 2007 through 2010, they made it to three straight AL Championship Series and made it to the play-offs for four straight years. They still have a hitter who is as good as any in baseball history as well as a solid offense around him and a pitching rotation that includes a former Triple Crown winner. Just looking at past results, there is no reason they wouldn’t have been a legitimate World Series pick going into 2015, but if you looked deeper into the injury histories of Victor Martinez, Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander as well as their increasing age, there was reason for concern even before the season started. Even with these, most still had them at worst at third in the Central yet they managed to finish last without a curse.

There are teams like that every season. There are surprise teams, like the Astros, Rangers and Mets this year and for them to be successful, there have to be favorites who don’t play well, like the Tigers, Mariners and Nats. Because of the Indians long stretch without a World Series win, the pick made bigger news than it would have for other teams, but it certainly wasn’t a curse. It was simply a long shot pick made to sell magazines and the long shot didn’t play out.