Baseball’s Unlikely Regular Season Finish

A great piece by Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight on how unlikely the events of the last day of the Major League Baseball season actually were. Below is just a sample:

The following is not mathematically rigorous, since the events of yesterday evening were contingent upon one another in various ways. But just for fun, let’s put all of them together in sequence:

  • The Red Sox had just a 0.3 percent chance of failing to make the playoffs on Sept. 3.
  • The Rays had just a 0.3 percent chance of coming back after trailing 7-0 with two innings to play.
  • The Red Sox had only about a 2 percent chance of losing their game against Baltimore, when the Orioles were down to their last strike.
  • The Rays had about a 2 percent chance of winning in the bottom of the 9th, with Johnson also down to his last strike.

Multiply those four probabilities together, and you get a combined probability of about one chance in 278 million of all these events coming together in quite this way.

MLB Over/Under Results

As the Major League Baseball regular season wrapped up last night, here’s a quick look of the Over/Under predictions from earlier in the year and the results for them now. I’ll try to find a list of O/U numbers for the entire league and will link it with an update when I do find it.

There were plenty of close calls including the Mets (80.5) finished the year at 79 wins, the Nationals (70.5) finished with 69, Yankees (95.5) fell just short at 95 and the Tigers (80.5) were the only one of these four which was on the over side at 81 wins.

Here is a set of 3 competitive O/U results:

Ayaz Wins Losses 2
Mets O 80.5 79 83 0
San Francisco O 81.5 92 70 1
Angels O 83.5 80 82 0
Philadelphia U 92.5 97 65 0
Washington O 70.5 69 93 0
Yankees U 95.5 95 67 1
Faraz Wins Losses 2
Detroit U 80.5 81 81 0
Minnesota O 83.5 94 68 1
Tampa Bay U 89.5 96 66 0
Cubs O 82.5 75 87 0
Philadelphia O 92.5 97 65 1
Toronto U 70.5 85 77 0
Mike Wins Losses 4
San Francisco O 81.5 92 70 1
Seattle O 83.5 61 101 0
Washington O 70.5 69 93 0
Boston U 94.5 89 73 1
Angels U 83.5 80 82 1
Cleveland U 74.5 69 93 1
Faraz Wins Losses 3
Detroit U 80.5 81 81 0
Minnesota O 83.5 94 68 1
Philadelphia O 92.5 97 65 1
Anaheim O 83.5 80 82 0
Baltimore O 74.5 66 96 0
Pittsburgh U 69.5 57 105 1
Faraz Wins Losses 3
Mets O 80.5 79 83 0
Minnesota O 83.5 94 68 1
San Francisco O 81.5 92 70 1
Angels O 83.5 80 82 0
Cleveland U 74.5 69 93 1
Washington O 70.5 69 93 0
Cindy Wins Losses 4
Boston U 94.5 89 73 1
Baltimore U 74.5 66 96 1
Pittsburgh O 69.5 57 105 0
Philadelphia O 92.5 97 65 1
White Sox U 82.5 88 74 0
Seattle U 83.5 61 101 1

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