From here

The yellow shaded teams are the postseason teams.

Notice anything? No?

That’s exactly the point. The amount of innings your starters pitch is utterly no guarantee of postseason success.

Nor are bullpen innings.

Of course, there are two important considerations:

1) When Chien Ming Wang and Sergio Mitre make as many starts as they did for the Yankees in 2009, the bullpen’s gonna get its fair share of work;

2) Just because your starters pitch a lot of innings doesn’t mean they are good innings–or that your offense is any good, either.

Still, the over all randomness is something much in line with some of the really more intense stat developments (I’m trying to make my way through The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball and failing so miserably it’s funny), and less in line with conventional wisdom.