Quote:
Originally Posted by rats60
You say it, but that doesn't make it true. Baseball is a situational game. Games are decided by performance in clutch situations such as getting a two out hit with runners in scoring position or on the other side getting the third out to get out of the jam. Pythagorean wins are just a bunch of nonsense. All they do is tell how much a team under performed or exceeded expectations in crucial situations. They aren't real.
That is a really ironic quote. The Giants and Dodgers played a 162 game schedule and the Giants won more games. However, you have decided because of " theoretical" wins, those 162 games should be ignored and the Dodgers are the best team. Why even have a playoffs? Just give them the title because you said so.
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The great thing about statistics is that we don't have to guess at who is right or wrong. We can test out different theories and see which ones are more predictive of future success. Pythagorean wins are not "a bunch of nonsense". They are more predictive of future success than regular wins are. It may be a statistic you don't care about, but that doesn't mean it's not useful or informative. I've been building predictive baseball models for years using advanced statistical techniques (I also work in this field). I've beaten the Vegas spread 8 of the last 9 seasons. I am well tuned into what makes one team better than another, and spoiler alert, it's not their record of wins & losses. I assure you, on a neutral field, the Dodgers in a 7-game series would be favored against any team in baseball this season at every sportsbook across the country. But that doesn't mean they will win the World Series. There is a tremendous amount of variance and short-term luck in baseball. Far more than in any other major sport. The worst team in the league can beat the best team on any given night. This almost never happens in football or basketball. It's just the nature of the game. The difference between a game-winning double in baseball can be a bad hop where the ball catches a seam on the bounce, or whether or not the seam on the ball makes contact with the bat, causing the ball to shoot off at a different angle, or the launch angle can be changed by just 1 millimeter difference in the swing plane. A player has little to no control over many of the most important variables that ultimately determine the outcome of a game. Anyhow, I could go off on this topic for hours, but nobody wants to read that. I'm either preaching to the choir or arguing with someone who has no idea what they're talking about. I'm not breaking new ground here though. This stuff isn't exactly a secret.