20101104

Biggest WS Surprises?

Interesting article at Sports Illustrated about the unlikelihood of the Giants championship. It makes for interesting reading, but I would do the numbers a little differently. Instead of using rankings, I would use percentage of number one in each category. So if the 2007 Red Sox had 2/3s the payroll of the Yankees, they would compare as 66 instead of 2. Then the lower the sum of the three categories, the less likely the championship.

This would allow showing additional unlikelihood of, say, the 2001 Diamondbacks, who had only 85% of the pythagorean wins of the Mariners. It would also not make some championship seem less likely because a given team (like, say, the 2003 Marlins were 12th for pythagorean record (actually tied for 12th), but they were only three wins out of 9th, or 2006 Cardinals who were 14th, but only three wins behind #8).

But it's still a neat exercise.

No comments:

Post a Comment