Friday, October 28, 2011

Don't Worry Too Much Rangers Fans


One of the major story lines after last night's fantastic game is that it will be very difficult for Texas to comeback today from being one strike away from winning it all twice.

While I certainly don't think taking that kind of a loss would be easy but baseball more than just about any other sport is all about dealing with failure one day and putting it behind you to play on the next day. That is just the nature of the game.

History is also on their side with this one.

There have been 35 times where the World Series has gone to 7 games and the team that lost the day before has a record of 17 and 18. Yeah that isn't great but there have been some equally heartbreaking losses over that span where the next day the team that just suffered a defeat was still able to lift the Commissioner's Trophy.

If we take it a step further and look at what are the expect winning percentage compared to the actual winning percentage the same general pattern emerges. Using on my playoff predictor tool I plugged in every Game 7 match up in history and the expected winning percentage of teams that lost Game 6 was 52.5% the actual winning percentage was 48.6%.

I haven't figured out what my margin of error is with this tool but I would be pretty comfortable saying that this is pretty close to no meaningful carry over for winning Game 6.

When the team that lost Game 6 was favored to win in Game 7 their record is 12-8, when they are under dogs they are in trouble with a record of 5-10.

The playoff predictor gives a slight edge to the Rangers in Game 7 with a 52% chance of winning. So as hard as it was to watch for Rangers fans this game is far from decided.

Here are the full table with the odds and results:

Year
Odds of Winning
Win?
2002
46%
0
2001
47%
0
1997
47%
1
1991
47%
0
1987
50%
0
1986
50%
0
1985
55%
0
1982
47%
0
1979
46%
0
1975
57%
1
1973
39%
0
1972
40%
1
1971
57%
1
1968
68%
0
1967
55%
1
1965
61%
1
1964
53%
1
1962
44%
1
1960
60%
1
1958
47%
0
1957
50%
1
1956
50%
1
1955
46%
1
1952
61%
0
1947
50%
1
1946
48%
0
1945
59%
1
1940
53%
0
1934
53%
0
1931
54%
1
1926
67%
0
1925
50%
0
1924
53%
0
1912
56%
1
1909
77%
1
Average
52.5%
48.6%


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