Comments on: WS Preview: The Yankees Are Good

By: Jonathan Ullberg

Jonathan Ullberg — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:51:52 +0000

Dave, I’m pretty sure you are the only one who has written an article about this World Series and referenced the 2009 Houston Astros. Kudos. :)

By: Ed-pro

Ed-pro — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:57:09 +0000

You just answered your own argument….hitting a baseball is not a random act…and they are not independent….there is a good pitcher and good hitters and a field and many variables(rain? cold?)…that is why the example is a fair coin….”In the case of coin tossing, as a run of heads gets longer and longer, the likelihood that the coin is biased towards heads increases. If one flips a coin 21 times in a row and obtains 21 heads, one might rationally conclude a high probability of bias towards heads, and hence conclude that future flips of this coin are also highly likely to be heads.”

The inverse is again…..based on above…… no one is saying that the statement makes sense(since he did not give a valid rational reason) but had he said they will face colder weather, and better pitching so they will continue to fail…would you still say gamblers fallacy? NO! can one make an argument when flipping a fair coin? understand the difference?

By: BATTLETANK

BATTLETANK — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:49:45 +0000

after a rockies game..
werth, howard, lee, ibanez ,utley all got tested for steroids.

By: Christian Seehausen

Christian Seehausen — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:41:44 +0000

“The 26 point gap between the Yankees and Phillies in wOBA is essentially equal to the gap between the Phillies and the Astros.”

One thing to note: The Astros swept the Phillies in a four-game series during the regular season, and won the season series.

Baseball is a funny thing when you get down to small sample sizes. As we saw tonight, this should be an interesting series!

By: Jack Bauer

Jack Bauer — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:43:20 +0000

How many championships for the Yankees? 26? Am I the only one that is sick of this crap?? Go Phillies!

By: paris7

paris7 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:42:30 +0000

It was fun to read this post & thread after listening to the game, for sure! As the statisticians (properly) remind us, time and again – the whole point of players being expected to revert to the norm is that over a short sample size, anything can happen!

By: neuter_your_dogma

neuter_your_dogma — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:50:39 +0000

I guess Game One shows why they actually play the game. Go Phillies!

By: John

John — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:30:52 +0000

Don’t worry, Paul O’Neill has this broken down to a tee.

“Yanks in 4. The Phillies strike out too much.”

The Phillies struck out 1155 times this season — 12th in MLB. That’s with 189 K’s from the #9 hole.

By: Xavier

Xavier — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:03:59 +0000

Actually the first one is the Gambler’s Fallacy. The second one is the inverse Gambler’s Fallacy.

If you think that what happened in the Twins and Angel series is a better predictor of what’s going to happen in the World Series than everything else, you are falling prey to the belief that “the belief that if deviations from expected behaviour are observed in repeated independent trials of some random process then these deviations are likely to be evened out by opposite deviations in the future.”

Or, you know, the opposite.

By: Doug Lampert

Doug Lampert — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:03:35 +0000

Short series, don’t be shocked if either team wins.

The Nats took two out of three at Yankee stadium this year. That’s a fluke, but the Phils aren’t the Nats. Coolstandings gives the Philies a 39.3% chance of winning.

That’s bad, and the “real” odds may be worse given that the Yankees don’t need their full pitching staff (stupid off days), but it’s not a real shocker if a nearly 40% chance comes home or even a 20% chance, and I’m sure the Philies chances are better than 20%.