There are a lot of ways to answer the question in the title. I settled on three here:
- What's the most common score for a team?
- What's the most common score for two teams in a game?
- What's the most common margin of victory for a game?
For the data set, I used all MLB games from 2009 - 2018 (taken from https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/).
Most common score for a team is found by collecting each team's score from each game. It is not normally distributed as you can see below:
The stats are:
- Mode (most frequent) - 3
- Median (middle value) - 4
- Average (one you think of...sum divided by count) - 4.4
Most common score for two teams in a game is found by collecting both teams' scores from each game and treating a pair of scores as a single value. The distribution of those is below:
Nothing really interesting jumped out here. 1-score games are most common, but that isn't shocking. Since 2, 3, and 4 were the most common scores above, it's no shock that 3-2 and 4-3 were the most common outcomes.
Nothing really interesting jumped out here. 1-score games are most common, but that isn't shocking. Since 2, 3, and 4 were the most common scores above, it's no shock that 3-2 and 4-3 were the most common outcomes.
Most common margin of victory is found by calculating the difference between the two scores in each game. For this analysis, I used 'home - away', so positive means home team won and negative means away team won. Here's the distribution:
This is the most interesting plot to me. The massive spike at +1 indicates that the home team winning by 1 is by far the most common outcome. Why is that? I don't know for certain, but there are two reasonable explanations that come to mind:
- No matter what happens outside of a home run, if the home team scores in the 9th inning of a game, they can only win by 1. For example, if the bases are loaded and the batter hits a triple, 3 runs should score but only 1 does by rule. Thus, many games that would be home team wins of more than +1 end up as +1. (credit to Ben Ethier for pointing this out)
- The home team can theoretically be more strategic in the bottom of the 9th. I don't know enough about baseball to know how this plays out, but the away team doesn't know how many runs they need to score. Say the game is tied. Away team has a runner on third in the top of the 9th with 1 out. They could sacrifice bunt to score, but is 1 run enough? The home team doesn't have to question this. If tied, sacrifice bunt and win. If down by 12, don't.
Finally...there appears to be a slight home-field advantage in baseball. You can see it pretty clearly in the margin of victory plot. For stats...while the median for both home and away is 4 runs and the mode is 3 runs, the average for home teams is 4.44 runs vs 4.28 runs for the away team. This resulted in the home team winning ~54% of the time.
And that's it. There's probably a lot of cool stuff to do with this type of data so I'll likely do more baseball posts in the future.
Very spanking post and I see a good many data table with analytical information has been depicted on this page which has really made the post high qualitative. I can also add here safety play zones that are working very relentlessly for its users. / 안전놀이터 , 메이저놀이터 or 안전놀이터
ReplyDeleteDespite the fact that England is the origin of cricket the game has increased colossal notoriety over the globe for the sheer energy and drawing in scene joined in it. Ipl 2020 schedule
ReplyDeleteYou have done a great job. I will definitely dig it and personally recommend to my friends. I am confident they will be benefited from this site. 우리카지노
ReplyDeleteWho the fuck is Truth Williams?
ReplyDeleteIf you don"t mind proceed with this extraordinary work and I anticipate a greater amount of your magnificent blog entries. baseball contest ideas
ReplyDeleteT20 World Cup 2021 Schedule, All Teams, Host, Time Table, Venue can be checked on this page. Get T20 World cup schedule 2021 from this page. The T20 World cup was to be organized by the ICC from 18 October to 15 November 2020. But due to the continuous escalation of the Covid pandemic, it was temporarily postponed. Sports lovers were deeply saddened by this decision of ICC.
ReplyDeleteT20 WC Live Streaming, All Teams Squad, Time Table and Venuw can be checked on our site. Get T20 WC Live Updates from our page without any VPN etc.
ReplyDeleteIf you have an interest in Cricket, then you must be need to check T20 World Cup 2021 Schedule
ReplyDeletegreat post...thanks for sharing....ICC T20 World Cup 2021 Official Schedule
ReplyDeleteThere was no surprise when Pakistan captain, Sarfraz Ahmed, won the toss and elected to bat first under the scorching Dubai sun in the first test against Australia.
ReplyDeletenokia
Are you a new poker player?우리카지노 계열
ReplyDeleteIs it an addiction like cocaine or heroin?spbo handicap
ReplyDeletelove it incredible infinix
ReplyDeleteI want to to thank you for this good read!! I definitely enjoyed every little bit of it. I’ve got you book-marked to look at new stuff you post… 메이저토토사이트
ReplyDeleteHello there, I recently found your site each The search engines little in search of like kind of educative aid also ones enlighten beholds incredibly exceptional in my opinion. How Many Innings In High School Baseball
ReplyDeleteHello there, I recently found your site each The search engines little in search of like kind of educative aid also ones enlighten beholds incredibly exceptional in my opinion.
ReplyDeletefinance flow