Giants vs. Phillies: Projecting the Series

Giants and Phillies! The big match-up that both teams have been waiting for since the NLCS ended. Instead of doing a series preview I thought that I would try something a little bit different this time around and attempt to give the odds of what could happen in this series.

I have built my self a nice little tool that I hope will give us a rough estimation of how the probability of outcomes for this series, if you want an idea of how works look at the bottom. Without further rumblings, the results:

I ran two simulations, one based on a neutral field and the other that gives the home team a slight bump for home field advantage.

In both simulations the Phillies are favored to win the series. In the neutral simulation the Phillies are expected to win the series 58% of the time (16% sweep and 42% winning 2 out of 3) even though the Giants are slight favorites in games 1 and 2.

With the home field advantage factored in the Phillies are favored to win the series 62% of the time (18% sweep and 43% winning 2 out of 3). Game 1 becomes a toss up with the Phillies favored to win in the last 2 contests.

What kills the Giants in this projection is the Barry Zito start with his game heavily favored towards the Phillies with a expected winning percentage in that game of over 70%.

This should be an exciting match-up and hopefully we get 3 well played games and a series victory for the Giants.

How it works:

First determine runs allowed for each time by taking expected innings pitched for each starter (SP IP/ GS) and then multiple by SIERA per inning (SIERA/9). Then for bullpen runs allowed take 9 minus expected SP innings then multiple by the SIERA per inning of the bullpen.

For runs per game that is simply total runs scored divided by games.

To determine who wins odds of winning I derive the expected winning percentage of the team with that starter and bullpen combination using the pathageron expectation and then the log5 method for determine the odds for each team winning based on each team's winning percentage.

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The Odds of the Giants Going to the World Series

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Warning Math ahead.

I was a little nervous that the series is heading back to Philadelphia. One of the things that calms me down is to look at the numbers, and in this case the numbers look decent. Not as good as before the last game but much better then I would have first thought.

The Giants chance of winning one of the next 2 games is 65.7%. That is pretty dang good. It would be very nice to get those odds in Vegas on any table game.

The Giants chances of winning tonight are not great, only about 39.4%. They figure to surrender on average about 4.45 runs per game and only score 4 runs.

If it goes to tomorrow things look a little bit better. The Giants would figure to win about 43.4% of the time. They would give up 4.3 runs and score again 4 runs a game.

Even with these relatively low odds in each game the chance that they lose both is much smaller. To figure this out you multiply the expected loss percentage together and then subtract that number from 1. That gives you 0.6057 x 0.5653 which comes out to 0.3424 (the odds of losing both games) and if you take that number and subtract it from 1 you get 0.6573 or that the Giants still have a 65.7% chance of making the World Series.

Don't fall into irrational pessimism yet. There is time for that tomorrow. Go Giants!

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