> This randomness explains why sabermetricians often view regular-season performance as a more reliable indicator of a team's true quality than its playoff results.

That makes sense statistically, but I think most fans would intuitively disagree. When your team plays great all season and chokes in the playoffs, you rarely come away feeling that the regular season was their “true quality.” Typically, such events are seen as revealing that the team wasn’t as good as it seemed, or at least not when it mattered most. There’s probably truth to both perspectives.