Odds are this guy doesn't know what he's talking about

This annoys:

Repeating as World Series champions is, as the last nine winners can attest, exceedingly difficult. The last defending champion even to reach the World Series was the 2001 Yankees. The last National League team to win consecutive World Series was the 1975-76 Cincinnati Reds, known as the Big Red Machine. So the odds are stacked against the Phillies, not that they mind.

He makes it seem like the fact that the Phillies won the Series last year actually makes it more unlikely that they will win it this year. But that's just the ol' gambler's fallacy at work.

I think the real insight lurking here is that baseball is, relatively, a very stochastic game, and so even a very dominant team is going to require a significant amount of luck to make it all the way twice in a row. Compare this to, say, basketball, which is not as stochastic and where you see higher winning percentages and where championship streaks are relatively common.