Maui C Bruce Maxon powered the Mashers to a 7-4 victory over the Seattle Monarchs, putting them one victory away from capturing the Cecil Cup. Maxon provided four hits, with three singles and a double and 4 RBI.
If (when?) Maui beats Seattle in Game Six, the Seattle Monarchs will be 7-7 in the 14 Cecil Cup series they have played. They will also be 40-40 in the 80 games played in those 14 series.
I'm kind of looking forward to the symmetry as the ultimate vindication of my "playoffs are a coin toss" theory.
In my 2 Cecil Cup appearances, I am 4-8 and have lost both of them. In the year I was worse I won three games in the year that I kicked ass I only won 1. This may help prove your point, I am not sure.
Overall in the entirety of the Cecil Cup and the playoffs as a whole, the same number of games will be won as lost, and a majority of the time (excluding my run in 2014 where I only won 83 games in the regular season) the best teams make the Cecil Cup making it an even run.
Therefore, once you get to a critical mass of being in 14 Cecil Cups (a number that most of us only dream of getting to) it is completely plausible that you will have won half of them and lost half of them. I do not think that is unimaginable, but it does not support the theory as a whole that 'the playoffs are a coin toss'.
If you would have only made the Cecil Cup half of the total times that you were in the playoffs then that might prove your point (and that might be true, I do not have any of this data at my finger tips). If you can share with us the data about how many time the best team going into the playoffs lost a series and how often the worst team won it all, that would do more to prove your coin toss theory.
In the 34 playoff series in SDMB history so far, the team with a better regular season record has won 16 series. The team with the worse record has won 17 series. Once the two teams had the same record.
In Pythagorean terms, the team with the better Pythagorean record is 13-15. (Five series had the same P% and for one series, the 2002 Cecil Cup, I don't have the data.)
In the opening round, the team with a better regular season record is 10-6, while the team with a better Pythagorean record is 6-8 (two ties)
When there's a dramatic difference in quality (80 wins vs. 105 wins), it's not really a coin flip. But if the two teams are within 10 games or so, then I contend that randomness rules the day.
I wrote an article for SABR about 10 years ago on just this subject. I broke down team performance with these metrics: OPS, ERA+, and Pythagorean Record. I used these to compare all playoff matchups since the beginning of divisional play. So that would be World Series, Championship Series, and so forth. Essentially all playoff matchups since 1969.
I measured which team won a specific series by contrasting opponents metrics against there own. Easy enough. I found that, absent some large amount of disparity each series had a close to random outcome. That is, unless one team was dominant in all three metrics there was little statistical means by which to predict which team would win. The team with the better ERA+ won, in my sample, about 51.5% of the series...just a hair over a coin toss.
When a team was dominant in all three metrics (meaning 5% or more better in all) it became a slightly different story with the dominant team winning about 58-60% of the series. But that didn't happen all that often and it could be noise in the data.
Those bastards never published it either. Nor did the Prospectus.
If (when?) Maui beats Seattle in Game Six, the Seattle Monarchs will be 7-7 in the 14 Cecil Cup series they have played. They will also be 40-40 in the 80 games played in those 14 series.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of looking forward to the symmetry as the ultimate vindication of my "playoffs are a coin toss" theory.
In my 2 Cecil Cup appearances, I am 4-8 and have lost both of them. In the year I was worse I won three games in the year that I kicked ass I only won 1. This may help prove your point, I am not sure.
ReplyDeleteOverall in the entirety of the Cecil Cup and the playoffs as a whole, the same number of games will be won as lost, and a majority of the time (excluding my run in 2014 where I only won 83 games in the regular season) the best teams make the Cecil Cup making it an even run.
Therefore, once you get to a critical mass of being in 14 Cecil Cups (a number that most of us only dream of getting to) it is completely plausible that you will have won half of them and lost half of them. I do not think that is unimaginable, but it does not support the theory as a whole that 'the playoffs are a coin toss'.
If you would have only made the Cecil Cup half of the total times that you were in the playoffs then that might prove your point (and that might be true, I do not have any of this data at my finger tips). If you can share with us the data about how many time the best team going into the playoffs lost a series and how often the worst team won it all, that would do more to prove your coin toss theory.
In the 34 playoff series in SDMB history so far, the team with a better regular season record has won 16 series. The team with the worse record has won 17 series. Once the two teams had the same record.
ReplyDeleteIn Pythagorean terms, the team with the better Pythagorean record is 13-15. (Five series had the same P% and for one series, the 2002 Cecil Cup, I don't have the data.)
In the opening round, the team with a better regular season record is 10-6, while the team with a better Pythagorean record is 6-8 (two ties)
When there's a dramatic difference in quality (80 wins vs. 105 wins), it's not really a coin flip. But if the two teams are within 10 games or so, then I contend that randomness rules the day.
I wrote an article for SABR about 10 years ago on just this subject. I broke down team performance with these metrics: OPS, ERA+, and Pythagorean Record. I used these to compare all playoff matchups since the beginning of divisional play. So that would be World Series, Championship Series, and so forth. Essentially all playoff matchups since 1969.
ReplyDeleteI measured which team won a specific series by contrasting opponents metrics against there own. Easy enough. I found that, absent some large amount of disparity each series had a close to random outcome. That is, unless one team was dominant in all three metrics there was little statistical means by which to predict which team would win. The team with the better ERA+ won, in my sample, about 51.5% of the series...just a hair over a coin toss.
When a team was dominant in all three metrics (meaning 5% or more better in all) it became a slightly different story with the dominant team winning about 58-60% of the series. But that didn't happen all that often and it could be noise in the data.
Those bastards never published it either. Nor did the Prospectus.
Y'all are way too smart for me.
ReplyDeleteYet somehow you're up in the series.
ReplyDeleteRemember! The more math you KNOW the more math you SEE!