Harvard Sports Analysis Collective

I just came across an article that was written on RBIMagazine.com about a month ago, predicting that the Rays wouldn’t win the division because they have been lucky this season, while the Red Sox have been unlucky.  The writer uses the Bill James Pythagorean Win/Loss formula, a formula widely known in the baseball statistics community and even beyond at this point, to show this.

It’s an interesting read, though in my opinion has a bit too much overconfidence that a team leading the division with a month to go (by 4.5 games) would lose its supremacy, despite what the formula says (I know, it’s too bad I am posting this now and now 30 days ago, but I feel that a much better prediction would have been that, given the way the luck has gone, the Red Sox will probably close the gap, but still are in a tough position to take the division).  In any case, I still encourage people to read it, as it’s also a way to learn about Bill James’ formula (if you don’t know it thoroughly already), and see a few numbers crunched that were derived from real world situations.

ps- not that the result is THAT important, since one has no control over the outcome, only over his prediction methodology and logic, but the Rays ended up winning the division by 2 games.

 Click Here To Read.

 Thoughts?

Jason is a sophomore living in Currier House. He is most interested in basketball, football and baseball, and his work is used by an NBA team. He is majoring in Statistics.