May 24, 2013

THT Essentials:
About Us
Contact Us
Our RSS Feeds
Our Stats Glossary
Reference Articles
THT Reports
 
Fangraphs Player Search:
 

Rich Barbieri
John Barten
Kyle Boddy
Brian Borawski
James Gentile
Matt Hunter
Frank Jackson
Chris Jaffe
Brad Johnson
Jason Linden
Dan Lependorf
Bruce Markusen
Jeff Moore
Greg Simons
Scott Spratt
Dave Studeman
Shane Tourtellotte
Steve Treder

And here's the full roster.
 

Now available


You can now purchase the Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2013, with 300 pages of great content. It's also available on Amazon and Kindle. Read more about it here.
 

THT's latest e-book


Third Base: The Crossroads is THT's new e-book, available for $3.99 from the Kindle store. The good news is that anyone can read a Kindle book, even on a PC. So enjoy the best from THT in a new format.
 

Most Recent Comments

It is inexcusable to release Jon Rauch (4)
And That Happened (8)
And That Happened (5)
20th anniversary: Blue Jays mascot ejected (3)
And That Happened (3)




Get your very own THT merchandise from our CafePress store. We've got baseball caps, t-shirts, coffee mugs and even wall clocks with the classy THT logo prominently displayed. Also, check out the THT Bookstore. Please support your favorite baseball site by purchasing something today.
 



Or you can search by:
Category
Month
Author
 


Creative Commons License
All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Roll mouse over date for entries
THT Live Calendar
<<
 May 2013
>>
S M T W T F S



1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31

Saturday, October 08, 2011

Our predictions (and yours)

Posted by THT Staff
Now that the Division Series are over—with each of the two NL series ending in dramatic fashion Friday—let's review how the Hardball Times' staff did and compare their picks to those of our readers contest entries.

Among our staff, Ben Pritchett—who was our winner for best predictions of which teams would make the playoffs—picked three of the Divsion Series winners correctly, as did Greg Simons. Nine people were right on two outcomes, eight picked only one correctly...and then there's Steve Treder. Poor Steve whiffed on all four series, but he can take comfort in the fact that his favorite team won the World Series last year.

Three of us have both our World Series entrants alive, 12 have one of them, and five are shut out from here on out. And exactly half of the 20 voters have their predicted World Series champion still in contention.

How does this stack up against our readers' picks? Well, three of you picked three Division Series out of four: Matthew Warden (Texas, Milwaukee and St. Louis), Trip Von Minden (Detroit, Texas, Milwaukee) and Eugene Douglas (Detroit, Texas, Milwaukee). One of them will win a 2012 Hardball Times Annual. Next tiebreaker: The League Championship Series.







Comments

Jeffrey Gross said...

Just shoot me now. I’m awful at predicting games/series. Don’t gamble on my recommendations!

Posted 10/09  at  02:11 AM
gdc said...

How many readers submitted picks?
2/20 staff have 3/4; 3/? readers do.  If totally random 1/16 should get all 4, but 0 of (20+?) did.

Posted 10/09  at  02:28 AM
Derek Ambrosino said...

GDC,

But, it’s not totally random, right? I mean totally randomly 1/2 would have picked the Seahawks to beat the Giants yesterday, but there was any wisdom in the totally random, the point spread wouldn’t have been 10 points. I assume a lot of the sharps cashed a Seahawks ticket yesterday, but even among those who won their bets, I doubt 10% of them would have bet the money line.

Sorry, don’t mean to bring this to football and gambling, but I think it’s a good way to illustrate the point.

What this does highlight, yet again, is the black swan effect. I mean, this is a horrible bastardization of Taleb’s actual point, but I’m speaking colloquially. Especially in a pool type environment prone to group think, a Cardinals pick is probably a good value play if there were real stakes here. But that’s because the dynamics of a pool are different, being “right” doesn’t really confer much of an advantage if 80% are on your side - it’s more of a do-over. But, being right when you’re in the minority is a huge advantage.

So, the question for something like this is whether you want to put together a bracket that you think will be most correct on an X out of Y percentage, or whether you want to put together a bracket that has a wider range out of outcome but perhaps a better chance of winning the whole thing. ...It’s the question of playing to place versus deciding that 2nd and last are the same thing.

This is the type of thinking that plays into home run pools, March Madness brackets, NFL suicide pools (sometimes), and even fantasy baseball in dribs and drabs.

Posted 10/10  at  12:22 PM
Greg Simons said...

Correction: Mat Kovach also picked three out of four Division Series correctly, missing on the Rays.  The final recap will reflect his brilliance.

Posted 10/10  at  01:59 PM
Page 1 of 1

Leave a comment:

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.