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I'll go real slow for you ...

Posted By Brian B.

I'll try to respond to your various charges.

1)Brian, before you go asserting that someone (PB) is being untruthful, be careful of your
statistics.

Who asserted that anyone is being untruthful ? There has been a discussion on this forum where managers(I'm one of them) thought that the game was biased towards the visitors. I've tried to gather some data on it. As far as I know Mike & PB haven't said anything about this either way, so how could I be accusing him of being untruthful? The old CSN had a large home advantage and PB doesn't. Trying to figure out how PB is programmed isn't accusing anyone of anything.

2)Before you claim a PB bias towards visitors, you should explain this year's real
life playoffs. The home team did not win 60% of the first two games as you assert might be
normal. They did not win 50% or even 48%. The home team won only 36% of those
games. So, your analysis seems to indicate a bias towards the HOME team in
comparison to Real Life (48% versus 36%).

I expect your first reaction is that 5 wins and 9 losses is too few games to statistically
support any conclusion. The the truth is that 74 game, or however many you used, is also
too few.

You claim to be conversant in statistics so here's a multiple choice question. Which sample will yield a better result:
a) 14 games in this years playoffs
b) A study that includes thousands of games from several years

I'll take b), you're on your own.

I got the 52% number from Rob Neyers column; he has quoted it many times. He tends to do good work, so I choose to believe him. You can pick the 14 games sample if you like, but I'd rather not.

2)Your hypothesis is that a PB visiting team will defeat an equal home team more than 50%
of the time. You calculate that in 74 games, they won 52%. Your conclusion is not
supported. (If you flipped a coin 100 times and it came up heads 52 times, would you
conclude its a biased coin, or just that it happened to come up that way?)

My point is that there are many reasons why the home team should win more often : On the whole the higher ranked teams had better records, human manger for the bullpen, last licks, and it didn't happen . That's not a coin flip, which is a 50-50 chance, it's a situation where the variables are seemingly stacked one way and the results come out the other. Think about this: In PB there are always teams that win way more than in MLB. The Mariners won 116 games{yeah, I know, they lost in the playoffs} and people went ape. In PB that happens all the time. I'm in 3 leagues and and here are the leading teams win totals:

B8 - 117
F18 - 123,118,114
99T2 - 120,118,106,105

I haven't looked at every league, but every one I'm in has a few monster squads, much more so than MLB. Another reason to expect the home team to win more: the best teams are better than in the sample that yielded 52% home victories, quite often a lot better. So if you think this is a coin flip, I can't help you.

As far as a confidence interval, I don't know or care. Just try to read what I wrote, not say that I'm accusing anyone and apply a little logic to the situation.