Grantland’s Ben Lindbergh published a great piece last Friday, going through the laundry list of myths we hear rolled out every October, and showing that there is little or no evidence to support nearly any of them. On his hit-list:

Recent Performance Doesn’t Matter.

I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but it’s maybe the most important thing to remember, as we’re going to hear the word “momentum” about a million times in the next 24 hours. The A’s stumbled into the playoffs, going 29-38 in the second half of the year, the worst second-half record of any team that has made the postseason since 1995, but two of the three prior teams to win fewer than half of their games in the second half of the season went on to meet in the World Series. And as Jay Jaffe showed, even looking at just the final month, or the final few weeks, or even the final week of the season doesn’t really tell us anything about what is going to happen in October.

It’s very tempting to put a strong emphasis on what we’ve seen lately. Don’t do it. Recent performance isn’t predictive of future performance.

Experience Doesn’t Matter.

Lots of people have studied this. Lots of people have reached the same conclusion. Young, old, experienced or not; we can’t find any evidence that any particular group outperforms in the playoffs. I guess this is why the “they don’t know they’re not supposed to win” cliche was invented for times when the “experience is the only thing that matters” cliche is proven wrong.

Pitching Doesn’t Win Championships.

Having a heavily loaded front of the rotation is great. Having really good hitters is great. Having a great bullpen is great. There are lots of ways to win. No single way has proven better than the other.

He goes through a longer list, and provides plenty of good links, so keep the piece handy when you’re being inundated by announcer cliches over the next month. Most of them are total bunk.