AL Wild Card Scenarios

[nineunder71]

Damn that Devers

Originally Posted by SteveS

It's pretty obvious that I'd want the Dodgers to beat the Giants. But you made my point for me in your second paragraph. I don't think anybody who follows baseball thought that the Padres would give it their all today. It was pretty clear that the Giants were going to win the division no matter what the Dodgers did. So why not save Buehler, who has been on a roll recently, for Wednesday? Scherzer is obviously no slouch, but he has pitched horribly lately and is mediocre in the postseason (7-5).

As for Urias, I'd award the CY to his 20-3/2.96 over any of the other contenders by a mile.

[BobbyStrawberry]

NYY@BOS should be fun.

[nineunder71]

Agreed, but not as fun as Cards @ Doodies for us NL folk

Go Arenado!!


QUOTE=BobbyStrawberry;2150548]NYY@BOS should be fun.[/QUOTE]

[BobbyStrawberry]

Originally Posted by nineunder71

Agreed, but not as fun as Cards @ Doodies for us NL folk

Go Arenado!!

That one should be fun too. I am happy for Arenado. (And anyone who gets out of COL, honestly)

[Peter_Spaeth]

Fear the Wainwright.
Doesn't seem right that a team with 100 wins is out if they lose one game, but such is baseball.

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Fear the Wainwright.
Doesn't seem right that a team with 100 wins is out if they lose one game, but such is baseball.

Just win your division and then you don't have that problem. If there was still just one wild card, then the Giants and Dodgers would have had little motivation to play hard down to the wire since winning the division wouldn't get you much more than being the wild card would. Home field advantage would be about it.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by jayshum

Just win your division and then you don't have that problem. If there was still just one wild card, then the Giants and Dodgers would have had little motivation to play hard down to the wire since winning the division wouldn't get you much more than being the wild card would. Home field advantage would be about it.

Right but then one of them wouldn't be facing single elimination.

[mrreality68]

Originally Posted by nineunder71

Agreed, but not as fun as Cards @ Doodies for us NL folk

Go Arenado!!


QUOTE=BobbyStrawberry;2150548]NYY@BOS should be fun.

[/QUOTE]

Both wild card match ups should be fun.

Just amazing that a 106 game winning team is in the wild card game.

[jayshum]

Unfortunately, no tie breakers needed.

[nineunder71]

For you easterners, it’s kinda like the Pats missing the playoffs with 11 wins, remember that? Shit happens in all sports, go Cards!!

106 wins & watching the playoffs next round from Beverly Hills

Wain will be Right




QUOTE=mrreality68;2150562][/QUOTE]

Both wild card match ups should be fun.

Just amazing that a 106 game winning team is in the wild card game.[/QUOTE]

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by mrreality68

Both wild card match ups should be fun.

Just amazing that a 106 game winning team is in the wild card game.

Yet another reason why people often say "baseball is all luck". The Dodgers were the best team in baseball this season (and by a sizeable margin as well). They have an SRS of 1.6 vs the Giants 1.2, which is a better predictor of playoff success than is total wins or even Pythagorean wins (and they had 109 PWs vs the Giants 101). Yet, here they are in a one-game playoff just for a shot at a series against the inferior Giants (albeit with a slightly better record).

Here's an interesting and relevant excerpt from The Drunkard's Walk that I often reference when discussing statistical probabilities in baseball with my friends...

Originally Posted by Leonard Mlodinow

…if one team is good enough to warrant beating another in 55% of its games, the weaker team will nevertheless win a 7-game series about 4 times out of 10. And if the superior team could beat its opponent, on average, 2 out of 3 times they meet, the inferior team will still win a 7-game series about once every 5 match-ups. There is really no way for a sports league to change this. In the lopsided 2/3-probability case, for example, you’d have to play a series consisting of at minimum the best of 23 games to determine the winner with what is called statistical significance, meaning the weaker team would be crowned champion 5 percent or less of the time. And in the case of one team’s having only a 55-45 edge, the shortest significant “world series” would be the best of 269 games, a tedious endeavor indeed! So sports playoff series can be fun and exciting, but being crowned “world champion” is not a reliable indication that a team is actually the best one. (p. 70-71)

[rats60]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Yet another reason why people often say "baseball is all luck". The Dodgers were the best team in baseball this season (and by a sizeable margin as well). They have an SRS of 1.6 vs the Giants 1.2, which is a better predictor of playoff success than is total wins or even Pythagorean wins (and they had 109 PWs vs the Giants 101). Yet, here they are in a one-game playoff just for a shot at a series against the inferior Giants (albeit with a slightly better record).

Here's an interesting and relevant excerpt from The Drunkard's Walk that I often reference when discussing statistical probabilities in baseball with my friends...

You say it, but that doesn't make it true. Baseball is a situational game. Games are decided by performance in clutch situations such as getting a two out hit with runners in scoring position or on the other side getting the third out to get out of the jam. Pythagorean wins are just a bunch of nonsense. All they do is tell how much a team under performed or exceeded expectations in crucial situations. They aren't real.

That is a really ironic quote. The Giants and Dodgers played a 162 game schedule and the Giants won more games. However, you have decided because of " theoretical" wins, those 162 games should be ignored and the Dodgers are the best team. Why even have a playoffs? Just give them the title because you said so.

[mrreality68]

Go Yankees Go

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by rats60

You say it, but that doesn't make it true. Baseball is a situational game. Games are decided by performance in clutch situations such as getting a two out hit with runners in scoring position or on the other side getting the third out to get out of the jam. Pythagorean wins are just a bunch of nonsense. All they do is tell how much a team under performed or exceeded expectations in crucial situations. They aren't real.

That is a really ironic quote. The Giants and Dodgers played a 162 game schedule and the Giants won more games. However, you have decided because of " theoretical" wins, those 162 games should be ignored and the Dodgers are the best team. Why even have a playoffs? Just give them the title because you said so.

The great thing about statistics is that we don't have to guess at who is right or wrong. We can test out different theories and see which ones are more predictive of future success. Pythagorean wins are not "a bunch of nonsense". They are more predictive of future success than regular wins are. It may be a statistic you don't care about, but that doesn't mean it's not useful or informative. I've been building predictive baseball models for years using advanced statistical techniques (I also work in this field). I've beaten the Vegas spread 8 of the last 9 seasons. I am well tuned into what makes one team better than another, and spoiler alert, it's not their record of wins & losses. I assure you, on a neutral field, the Dodgers in a 7-game series would be favored against any team in baseball this season at every sportsbook across the country. But that doesn't mean they will win the World Series. There is a tremendous amount of variance and short-term luck in baseball. Far more than in any other major sport. The worst team in the league can beat the best team on any given night. This almost never happens in football or basketball. It's just the nature of the game. The difference between a game-winning double in baseball can be a bad hop where the ball catches a seam on the bounce, or whether or not the seam on the ball makes contact with the bat, causing the ball to shoot off at a different angle, or the launch angle can be changed by just 1 millimeter difference in the swing plane. A player has little to no control over many of the most important variables that ultimately determine the outcome of a game. Anyhow, I could go off on this topic for hours, but nobody wants to read that. I'm either preaching to the choir or arguing with someone who has no idea what they're talking about. I'm not breaking new ground here though. This stuff isn't exactly a secret.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by rats60

You say it, but that doesn't make it true. Baseball is a situational game. Games are decided by performance in clutch situations such as getting a two out hit with runners in scoring position or on the other side getting the third out to get out of the jam. Pythagorean wins are just a bunch of nonsense. All they do is tell how much a team under performed or exceeded expectations in crucial situations. They aren't real.

That is a really ironic quote. The Giants and Dodgers played a 162 game schedule and the Giants won more games. However, you have decided because of " theoretical" wins, those 162 games should be ignored and the Dodgers are the best team. Why even have a playoffs? Just give them the title because you said so.

On paper the Dodgers do look like the superior team, but it's hard to argue with the Giants' success. As I recall the Giants teams that won the WS three times in the 2010s weren't overwhelming on paper either.

[nineunder71]

Sorry, didn’t mean to quote you On that last comment