[frankbmd]

Barry's (Hi Barry) initial post in this thread sought an explanation for the fact that a team that goes 55-11 and then suddenly falls into a horrible slump going 1-17 for no easily apparent reason. Baseball, as we all know, is a measurable sport rife with statistics. We all recognize in any given year there are a few teams that seem destined for success and then there are a few teams that are god-awful. But on any given day a god-awful team can beat a team of destiny. It happens every year, sometimes for a day, sometimes for a series and this year sometimes for several weeks. The allure of baseball is the interplay between its randomness and its predictability (as determined the flood of statistics it generates). How many times have you watched a game and seen a play occur that you have never seen (or perhaps can't remember) before? After 60+ years of watching the game, it still happens.

The Dodgers winning ways in July and August were perhaps too good. Their announcers in late August speculated daily about how many games they would win and on what day they would top the record of 116. Not doing so was a possibility they never considered before the slump. Their losing ways in September were perhaps too bad. To shift overnight from being the team of ultimate destiny to a god-awful nine seemed unprecedented, but it happened.

Meanwhile the Indians streak emerged with only 4 losses (I think) in the last 5 weeks of the season. Did Francona suddenly become that good and Roberts suddenly become that bad as managers? Of course not.

But September certainly set the table for a lot of speculation about the post-season.

The "stats" or numbers were the attraction of the game for me at a young age. I'm a math guy, just born 10 years to soon and in the wrong place to become Bill Gates. In statistics, randomness can be measured to a certain degree by calculating standard deviations from the mean. The streaks of the Dodgers and the streak of the Indians this season both represent a greater standard deviation from expected results than in years past and perhaps in any past year. Because of the lengthy season, the final record of both the Dodgers and Indians approached their "mean" or expected result. Both teams ended up winning their divisions but neither was as good as their streaks might suggest.

The odds of winning in the post-season are speculation, determined by some on the basis of statistics and determined in Vegas by the money bet on each team. As in baseball, on any given day some gamblers win and some lose. I suppose in some sense the appeal of baseball (or any other game) is analogous to the appeal of gambling (with the obvious difference being the bookies cut in the latter).

Remember though on any given day the god-awful team can beat the team of destiny. Could a team win 162 games or lose 162 games in a single season? Sure, remotely possible but highly unlikely. But when you shift the framework to a single wild card game and short series of 5 or 7 games, the remote chance of an upset becomes a real possibility. I think the Dodgers won 21 or 22 consecutive series during their hot streak and then lost 6 in a row. In probability the result of an event is independent of the previous or subsequent event. If you flip a coin 28 times, one result would be 22 heads followed by 6 tails. Because the probability of heads or tails is 50%, the prior sequence is just as likely as the following sequential result:

H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-T

But if you flip the coin 162 times or 162,000 times the preponderance of aggregate results will cluster around the 50-50 line.

So, without introducing any vitriol regarding the merits or liabilities of individual players, as we have seen in the past, any team that makes it into the post-season has more than a minuscule chance of winning any individual game or short series or the whole enchilada. The randomness of baseball will prevail. That is precisely why the games have to be played to determine the winner and loser, and also why we watch them. Play ball!!!