6 ms·

I don't follow baseball. Are you saying that a large part of baseball is luck, and you are bound to lose regardless of how skilled your team is?

supercanuck 11y ago
Yes, injuries are usually attributed to bad luck and can impact a season mightily
mwhite 11y ago
Enough of it's luck that it's unlikely that a team would go undefeated for half of a season, but it's also the fact that it's hard to get a team with only the best players; most teams have a mixture of player ability. If you put the best major league team in the minor leagues they'd probably have a 90%+ winning percentage. (Highest MLB season winning percentage is 76%, longest winning streak is 26 games out of 162, including a tie.)
- daveguy 11y ago
  Two additional points. 1) The mixture of player ability is mostly due to cost penalties for paying players a higher salary (although Yankees just pay it). Not as distributed as (american) football, but still distributed. 2) Note the longest winning streak is 26 games out of 162... out of 162. Longest basketball streak is 33 games (not enough for an undefeated 82 game season). The ability to have a 162 game streak that starts on game one and lasts through the baseball season is essentially impossible. It is possible to have an undefeated season in american football where the season is 16 games (but it is rare -- hasn't happened since pre-NFL 1937, 1948). Baseball has an order of magnitude more games per season. EDIT: I knew that wasn't right (that's what I get for haphazardly scanning Wikipedia for facts). A couple others since recently 2007 Patriots and 1972 Dolphins also had undefeated seasons in NFL. Still rare, and still a fraction of the number of games. Point is: luck is only part of it, no matter the sport staying undefeated is difficult -- especially for a season when season means 162 games! Thanks for pointing out the mistake everyone. Sorry for the confusion!
  - tomlor 11y ago
    2007 Patriots went 16-0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_England_Patriots_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_England_Patriots_seas...
    - datawrangler 11y ago
      The 1972 Dolphins went 14-0 and also won the Super Bowl [1].
      - cubano 11y ago
        They actually went 17-0 and won the Super Bowl.
        datawrangler 11y ago
        I know--I was only counting the regular season. :)
    - datawrangler 11y ago
      Can't seem to edit on iPhone client, but here's the link I meant to post. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Miami_Dolphins_season https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Miami_Dolphins_season
cortesoft 11y ago
Yes, there is a lot of luck. For one thing, the gap between very bad players and very good players is fairly small in an absolute sense; for example, a player who gets a hit 25% of the time would have trouble staying in the league, but a player who gets a hit 30% of the time has a good chance of being an all-star. A 5% increase in your success rate separates the very worst players from the very best. There is a great saying about baseball: Every team is going to win 54 games and every team is going to lose 54 games; it is what you do with the other 54 games that counts. (There are 162 games in a season)
- kriro 11y ago
  Isn't a 20% skill difference pretty meaningful in most endeavors? Maybe not the difference between unemployment and rock star but being 20% better at sales for example can be quite lucrative.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    Your 20% is a relative difference, not an absolute difference. The difference between hitting 0.5% of pitches and 0.6% of pitches isn't meaningful at all despite being the same relative difference.
    - kriro 11y ago
      The league wide batting average in the MLB was .253 in 2013 (first Google result, I'm assuming it doesn't vary all that much between seasons). While you are correct that hitting 0.6% compared to 0.5% doesn't mean much the numbers I responded to were meaningful in an MLB context (.250 vs. .300) so I think it's justified to use relative differences. In fact I think it's more insightful than using absolute numbers. Speaking of a 5% increase in that context is confusing (at least to me :D) when in reality the skill is roughly 20% above league average. A programmer who is 20% above average will certainly command a premium as will a salesperson.
      - thaumasiotes 11y ago
mmanfrin 11y ago
No, but everyone has bad days, and the players are all human. A small error can lead to points which can change the outcome of the game.
umanwizard 11y ago
Practically everything in the world more complex than basic physics is non-deterministic, especially who wins games of skill. Things occur or don't occur with probabilities. Even if you have a 95% chance of winning each game (unrealistic IMO), the probability of winning 81 games in a row is under 2%. This is less apparent in other sports than in baseball, not because the outcomes of those games are more deterministic, but because fewer games are played per season.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- closed 11y ago
  You are a bayesian analysis with strong priors on the chance of winning. I'm not objecting to your critique (as I don't know much about sports), I just keep thinking of P(data | model).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - umanwizard 11y ago
    Well, there is no sport or other organized competitive activity I can think of where the best in the world beats the second best in the world more than 95% of the time.
    - largote 11y ago
      Maybe sprinting?
      - markeroon 11y ago
        Good call. 800m-10km track races too.
      - umanwizard 11y ago
        Good point. I'd guess that's true of stuff like weightlifting also. These sports that are about pushing your body as far as it can go in one dimension are a lot simpler and "purer" than a team game with lots of moving parts like baseball.
ericdykstra 11y ago
Off the top of my head, here's a list of reasons that may tip the scale of an outcome in favor of the worse overall team in a baseball contest, whether luck or other factors. (the first two are by far the most important, and are in general order of how much variability each factors to a game): - sequencing (3 walks, 3 strikeouts, and a home run in an inning can end with 1 or 4 runs depending on sequencing) - ball-in-play luck (batters have little-to-no control over whether their line drive finds a glove for an out or a gap for a double) - pitcher/hitter matchups favoring one team or another - other luck over a single game (2+ errors in a game, 3+ home runs in a game, etc) that are well above the average for any team, but any team will have many of these games over the course of a season - umpire strike zone favoring one team's pitchers - umpire calls consistency - park/weather favoring one team's players If you need any explanation on any of these I'd be happy to provide it. I'll add more if I think of them, but this should give you a pretty good idea of why the best teams in baseball usually end up with a less than 60% win record.
ubernostrum 11y ago
cortesoft is on track by pointing out how small the gaps are (in absolute terms) between bad, average, good and very good in baseball. And just as importantly, the gaps have been shrinking. Stephen Jay Gould famously wrote about this in explaining why we don't see .400 batting averages anymore (that's a hit 4 out of every 10 times a player bats; it last happened in the major leagues in 1941). The average major-league player of today is significantly better than the average player of seventy years ago, so there are fewer opportunities for the best player in the league to take advantage of large numbers of truly-outmatched opponents and achieve inflated performance numbers. The highest batting average in the modern era of baseball is .426 by Nap Lajoie in 1901. 2015's highest batting average in the major leagues was .338, and it was .341 the year before; even an average of .360 or better is now rare (only happened eight times since the year 2000). And overall team performance is affected in the same way. The 1906 Chicago Cubs own the best win percentage in major-league history at .763 (116 wins out of 152 games played). That year the worst team (the Boston Americans, predecessors of today's Boston Red Sox) went 49-105, a win percentage of .318. Last year (2015) the best win percentage was .617 while the worst was .389. Only four major-league teams failed to win at least 70 games last year, and over half managed to win at least 81 games (81-81 being an even .500 win percentage with the season now 162 games long), while at the top there were seven teams with at least 90 wins, and four of them had at least 95 wins.

supercanuck 11y ago

Yes, injuries are usually attributed to bad luck and can impact a season mightily

mwhite 11y ago

Enough of it's luck that it's unlikely that a team would go undefeated for half of a season, but it's also the fact that it's hard to get a team with only the best players; most teams have a mixture of player ability. If you put the best major league team in the minor leagues they'd probably have a 90%+ winning percentage. (Highest MLB season winning percentage is 76%, longest winning streak is 26 games out of 162, including a tie.)

daveguy 11y ago
Two additional points. 1) The mixture of player ability is mostly due to cost penalties for paying players a higher salary (although Yankees just pay it). Not as distributed as (american) football, but still distributed. 2) Note the longest winning streak is 26 games out of 162... out of 162. Longest basketball streak is 33 games (not enough for an undefeated 82 game season). The ability to have a 162 game streak that starts on game one and lasts through the baseball season is essentially impossible. It is possible to have an undefeated season in american football where the season is 16 games (but it is rare -- hasn't happened since pre-NFL 1937, 1948). Baseball has an order of magnitude more games per season. EDIT: I knew that wasn't right (that's what I get for haphazardly scanning Wikipedia for facts). A couple others since recently 2007 Patriots and 1972 Dolphins also had undefeated seasons in NFL. Still rare, and still a fraction of the number of games. Point is: luck is only part of it, no matter the sport staying undefeated is difficult -- especially for a season when season means 162 games! Thanks for pointing out the mistake everyone. Sorry for the confusion!
- tomlor 11y ago
  2007 Patriots went 16-0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_England_Patriots_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_England_Patriots_seas...
  - datawrangler 11y ago
    The 1972 Dolphins went 14-0 and also won the Super Bowl [1].
    - cubano 11y ago
      They actually went 17-0 and won the Super Bowl.
      - datawrangler 11y ago
        I know--I was only counting the regular season. :)
  - datawrangler 11y ago
    Can't seem to edit on iPhone client, but here's the link I meant to post. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Miami_Dolphins_season https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Miami_Dolphins_season

cortesoft 11y ago

Yes, there is a lot of luck. For one thing, the gap between very bad players and very good players is fairly small in an absolute sense; for example, a player who gets a hit 25% of the time would have trouble staying in the league, but a player who gets a hit 30% of the time has a good chance of being an all-star. A 5% increase in your success rate separates the very worst players from the very best. There is a great saying about baseball: Every team is going to win 54 games and every team is going to lose 54 games; it is what you do with the other 54 games that counts. (There are 162 games in a season)

kriro 11y ago
Isn't a 20% skill difference pretty meaningful in most endeavors? Maybe not the difference between unemployment and rock star but being 20% better at sales for example can be quite lucrative.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  Your 20% is a relative difference, not an absolute difference. The difference between hitting 0.5% of pitches and 0.6% of pitches isn't meaningful at all despite being the same relative difference.
  - kriro 11y ago
    The league wide batting average in the MLB was .253 in 2013 (first Google result, I'm assuming it doesn't vary all that much between seasons). While you are correct that hitting 0.6% compared to 0.5% doesn't mean much the numbers I responded to were meaningful in an MLB context (.250 vs. .300) so I think it's justified to use relative differences. In fact I think it's more insightful than using absolute numbers. Speaking of a 5% increase in that context is confusing (at least to me :D) when in reality the skill is roughly 20% above league average. A programmer who is 20% above average will certainly command a premium as will a salesperson.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago

mmanfrin 11y ago

No, but everyone has bad days, and the players are all human. A small error can lead to points which can change the outcome of the game.

umanwizard 11y ago

Practically everything in the world more complex than basic physics is non-deterministic, especially who wins games of skill. Things occur or don't occur with probabilities. Even if you have a 95% chance of winning each game (unrealistic IMO), the probability of winning 81 games in a row is under 2%. This is less apparent in other sports than in baseball, not because the outcomes of those games are more deterministic, but because fewer games are played per season.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
closed 11y ago
You are a bayesian analysis with strong priors on the chance of winning. I'm not objecting to your critique (as I don't know much about sports), I just keep thinking of P(data | model).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- umanwizard 11y ago
  Well, there is no sport or other organized competitive activity I can think of where the best in the world beats the second best in the world more than 95% of the time.
  - largote 11y ago
    Maybe sprinting?
    - markeroon 11y ago
      Good call. 800m-10km track races too.
    - umanwizard 11y ago
      Good point. I'd guess that's true of stuff like weightlifting also. These sports that are about pushing your body as far as it can go in one dimension are a lot simpler and "purer" than a team game with lots of moving parts like baseball.

ericdykstra 11y ago

Off the top of my head, here's a list of reasons that may tip the scale of an outcome in favor of the worse overall team in a baseball contest, whether luck or other factors. (the first two are by far the most important, and are in general order of how much variability each factors to a game): - sequencing (3 walks, 3 strikeouts, and a home run in an inning can end with 1 or 4 runs depending on sequencing) - ball-in-play luck (batters have little-to-no control over whether their line drive finds a glove for an out or a gap for a double) - pitcher/hitter matchups favoring one team or another - other luck over a single game (2+ errors in a game, 3+ home runs in a game, etc) that are well above the average for any team, but any team will have many of these games over the course of a season - umpire strike zone favoring one team's pitchers - umpire calls consistency - park/weather favoring one team's players If you need any explanation on any of these I'd be happy to provide it. I'll add more if I think of them, but this should give you a pretty good idea of why the best teams in baseball usually end up with a less than 60% win record.

ubernostrum 11y ago

cortesoft is on track by pointing out how small the gaps are (in absolute terms) between bad, average, good and very good in baseball. And just as importantly, the gaps have been shrinking. Stephen Jay Gould famously wrote about this in explaining why we don't see .400 batting averages anymore (that's a hit 4 out of every 10 times a player bats; it last happened in the major leagues in 1941). The average major-league player of today is significantly better than the average player of seventy years ago, so there are fewer opportunities for the best player in the league to take advantage of large numbers of truly-outmatched opponents and achieve inflated performance numbers. The highest batting average in the modern era of baseball is .426 by Nap Lajoie in 1901. 2015's highest batting average in the major leagues was .338, and it was .341 the year before; even an average of .360 or better is now rare (only happened eight times since the year 2000). And overall team performance is affected in the same way. The 1906 Chicago Cubs own the best win percentage in major-league history at .763 (116 wins out of 152 games played). That year the worst team (the Boston Americans, predecessors of today's Boston Red Sox) went 49-105, a win percentage of .318. Last year (2015) the best win percentage was .617 while the worst was .389. Only four major-league teams failed to win at least 70 games last year, and over half managed to win at least 81 games (81-81 being an even .500 win percentage with the season now 162 games long), while at the top there were seven teams with at least 90 wins, and four of them had at least 95 wins.