Quote:
Originally Posted by tschock
Then I would counter that your statistical model needs tweaking because it's not accounting for all the variables. The Dodgers weren't "The Best Team in Baseball" as they didn't win the championship. Though they may have had the best group of individuals in baseball playing for the same team. There's a difference.
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Every regression model has coefficients that estimate the value of impact of each variable in the model along with confidence intervals for those estimates and an error term. That error term encapsulates both things you haven't yet accounted for but otherwise could and random chance. While it is always true that there are probably ways to account for more of the variance in the data by finding new variables to control for, and thereby reducing your error term, it is a mistake to assume that all variance is explainable if only you had built a better model with more explanatory variables. There is always an element of randomness in sports, but baseball in particular is exceptionally subject to randomness, far moreso than other mainstream sports. A slight shift in the breeze could be the difference between a grand slam and a 2nd strike, a "bad hop" is the difference between an out and a hit, the angle of the ball leaning the bat depends on whether it made contact on the seams or the leather, etc. If you set up a 5 gallon bucket at random locations on the infield and told players to hit the bucket while major league pitchers were launching 100 mph fastballs, curveballs, and change-ups at them, even the best hitters in the league would be lucky to hit the bucket 2 times out of 10. They simply don't have that level of control. It's not possible. At best, they could hit the ball within something like 10 feet of the bucket, and that's if the bucket is on the ideal side of the field for them. If they have to push to the opposite field to hit the bucket, it's even harder. A player can control directional accuracy by trying to push or pull the ball or to swing up on it or down, but once they make contact, they have little to no control over whether that ball is hit right at the shortstop or just out of his reach. They just make contact and roll the dice most of the time. The worst teams in the league can beat the best teams on any given night. A bad team often takes 3 games out of 10 against a good team. This doesn't happen in the NFL. The worst team in the league almost never beats the best teams. And the team that wins the super bowl is far more likely to have also been the best team in the regular season in football as well. Same with basketball and hockey. But baseball is different. A 7 game series is simply insufficient for determining which team is better in baseball. Luck plays too big of a role. This is evidenced by the outcomes of past seasons. Any random team can, and often does, win the world series. But that doesn't mean they are the strongest team.