Come shed a tear

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by raulus

So a 3.5% difference in win probability between a 5-game series and a 7-game series?

Doesn't seem like it's enough to get too fussy about the Dodgers losing a short series. But I suppose if you were banking on that 3.5% to be the difference between victory and defeat, then your fussiness level might rise.

Ya, it's not a huge gap. The delta between 5 & 7 game series is not uniformly distributed though, meaning it's not always going to be 3.5%. It depends on the delta between team strengths.

For the Yankees vs Guardians series, the calculation works out to the Yankees winning a 7-game series 59.6% of the time and a 5-game series 58.3%, so it's even more narrow when the teams are closer in strength.

Honestly, the whole idea of having playoffs is kinda silly to begin with if looking at it from the perspective of wanting the best team to win. The way they did it back in Mantle's day was obviously best for that. You just played 162 games to see who the best teams are. Now you know. Just have one 7-game series between the Dodgers and the Astros, and call it good. But where's the fun in that (and the money)? Hence... playoffs.