Sunday, April 10, 2011
Top games: March 31 to April 9
Posted by Max MarchiRemember the best-games-ever series of articles which ran during the past offseason? In December, the series ranked games from 1974 to 2010 according to their "excitement factor." In the ensuing weeks postseason games (LDS, LCS, World Series) and series were also ranked.
All the hard work of ranking the games from best to worst leaned on the shoulders of an algorithm which shuffles Win Expectancy and Leverage Index data in several ways (please refer to the original articles for the detailed explanations).
With a week (and then some) of the 2011 season already in the books, it's time to acknowledge the most exciting games played so far.
Here they are:
date game stars 04-08 Rockies @ Pirates *** 04-09 Blue Jays @ Angels *** 04-05 White Sox @ Royals ** 04-05 Nationals @ Marlins ** 04-07 Astros @ Reds *
Games are assigned a number of stars ranging from one to five, where five stars indicates one of the best games ever, four denotes a potential best-of-the-decade contest, three marks duels that have a chance at ranking as season-best, two tags matches you can expect to watch at least once a month, and finally the lone star is assigned to the remaining games.
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.
Here are links to Fangraphs accounts of the two three-star games:
http://www.fangraphs.com/wins.aspx?date=2011-04-08&team=Pirates&dh=0&season=2011
http://www.fangraphs.com/wins.aspx?date=2011-04-09&team=Angels&dh=0&season=2011