Oct
15
2008
Are the Red Sox "done" yet??
With the latest thrashing by the Devil Rays -> are the Boston Red Sox showing that the statistically better team can always be eliminated by a "hot" team?
a) Yes - win streaks are more powerful than long term stats
b) No - Long term statistics should be the deciding factor of the contests
c) Neither -> head to head is the only way to decide who is the best team
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most definetly its twins all the way
yes about time
who knows.
Last night's game certainly puts this theory to the test! ;-)
Seriously, though, what we're dealing with here is sample size. In a short series -- best four games out of seven -- sure, a weaker team can get hot / get lucky and win. In football they have a saying, "On any given Sunday, any professional team can beat any other professional team."
But, when you look at the big picture -- the course of a season -- then the good luck and bad luck experienced by each team tends to cancel out, and the best team rises to the top.
Or, at least, they used to. For the last 30 years, baseball has had too many teams to declare a true winner within a 162-game season. We discussed this in an earlier post and comment.
In the case of the Red Sox and Devil Rays, after the season was done, the Rays won only 2 more games than the Sox. So the two teams are pretty closely matched.
Should be an exciting weekend!
A college professor has done a statistical analysis of the World Series and projects a 59 percent chance that the Rays will top the the Phillies. Here's the link to the full details. He has also done analysis on which players in each league should earn the MVP and Cy Young honors. Read away!!!
nooooooooo! they can't be done!
No, they cannot be done yet, but if they have some really good players though.
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