Monday, December 06, 2010
The exciting games spreadsheet
Posted by Max MarchiIf you have read the articles on the most exciting baseball games (Part One—Part Two) you were probably expecting something to appear on THT Live. Here it is: my present for you.
Follow this link to a Google Spreadsheet that contains data for all the games played since 2006 (all of them should be available on MLB.tv). Download the spreadsheet to your hard drive and play with it.
What can you do with that? First go to the setting sheet and give a weight to each factor according to your preferences: you like a game with a big rally more than a 1-0 pitchers duel? Just assign a higher value to the rally factor than to the equilibrium factor. When you're done with the weighting go to the games sheet and sort it (in descending order) according to column G (Excitement Score). Now you have the games from the last five seasons ordered from most exciting to most boring.
Look for the memorable games played by your team and go watch them on the MLB.tv archive. But beware, the other team might be the ones rallying for the win!
After creating a baseball rendition of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper cover, Max began his baseball writing because he needed an excuse to show the picture. He wrote for an Italian audience for six years before making the jump to The Hardball Times. You can contact him by e-mail.