Monday, October 8, 2007

A Rocky Mountain High and a Boston Tea Party

Click Image to Enlarge

I guess $200,000,000 plus payrolls just don't go as far as they used to anymore.

The probable winners in the LCS's will be the Rockies and the Red Sox. Of course, that's not to say that they will win. As I often find myself explaining to people that the statistics show the most probable world, not the way the world will be. That's also why I don't take this information and bet on it. It's entirely possible that the Cleveland Indians can stun Boston (37% chance is pretty high). But it is unlikely. It should be a good series, though, that's for sure.

And in the NL, the ratings bonanza that is two teams formed in the Nineties in the baseball mecca of this country, the D-backs certainly could overcome an incredible home field advantage that is Rockies Stadium, but it's unlikely.

On a side note, as to method: I'm still on board with log5, and the same with pythagorean, but I'm thinking the better way to slice and dice the runs is perhaps not just home and away runs/runs against, but to look at it only against teams that are better than .500. Too often in a short series, which is a crapshoot anyway, the real way to examine teams is to look at how well they performed against their real competition, rather than against the dregs of their own division. If I had the stats to do that, I would use that method instead. For instance, the Cubs totally fattened their pythagorean record on their bad division, whereas the Arizona record didn't get properly weighted for playing against basically a whole division of playoff contenders (minus San Francisco--and even they weren't pushovers!). We'll see what we can do next year...

(Editor's Note: I changed the image for two reasons from the original post: 1. there was an error in the formula for the home series in both LCSs; 2. I added the current, as of Oct. 13, changes in the odds based on the games played.)

1 comment:

Dave Tainer said...

I need to apologize that I did not thoroughly check my formulas in the spreadsheet because I found an error in the first home series for both the AL and NL LCS series. The odds did not change much and showed exactly the same winning teams (Colorado and Boston), but both had more compelling chances of winning. I might perhaps have influenced only a handful more of bettors :)

I also added in the current probability of winning the series after the opening games. Colorado, now with a huge homefield advantage of 3 games to win two, should win easily (unless they decide to channel the '03 Cubs).

Boston has even more commanding odds after taking the first game, but surprisingly have only improved their already high probability by only 4% points! Game 2 will definitely prove pivotal for the crimson hose.