Presidents of the United States of America at the Nationals Games

The presidents run races in between innings at the Nationals games in Washington, D.C.

They also throw t-shirts to the crowd.

I am sure after a game there presidents' approval ratings couldn't be higher!

Detroit Tigers to defeat New York Yankees later today.

At the hated Yankee Stadium to watch the Detroit Tigers defeat the hated New York Yankees.

How often does the winner of the third game win the World Series after a split first two games.

As I noticed searches landing on my earlier posts about World Series probabilities, I noticed that fans are asking "How often does the team that wins the third game of the World Series win the whole thing". From history that chance is 68%, from a simulation in which it assumed that either team has a 50% chance of winning a game it is 65%.

A better questions relates to the current situation going into tonight's World Series game. If the teams split the first two games, how often does the winner of the third game go on to win the series? In history, teams have split the first two games 50 out of 99 times, and the next team to win has gone on to win it all 35 of those games or 70% of the time. The simulations show a similar 50% of the trials have a split in the first two games, and 70% of those splits have the team that wins the third game willing the Series.

How often does the first team to win a game win the World Series if they lose the second game?

After last night's loss of the Phillies to the Yankees the World Series is tied one game to one game. I thought that I could update the information from yesterday on the probability that the team that wins the first game of the World Series wins the whole series.

Now the question is "What is the probability that the team that wins the first game of the series and loses the second wins the World Series?" A review of 100 years or so of World series data (plus looking at each series on wikipedia) shows that 50% of the time the teams in the World Series split the first two games. This provides our data set. 50% of the teams that won the first game and lose the second win the World Series.

That makes perfect sense, now the teams are one and one and each team has to win three games to win the whole thing. It becomes a best of five series. Simulations with 10,000 trials and assuming that the teams win 50% of the time confirm the historical trend. In 50% of the cases when the teams split the first two games, the winner of the first game goes on to win the World Series 50% of the time.

How often does the winner of the first game win the World Series

The Fox announcers off-handedly mentioned after the Phillies first game win that the team that won the first game of the World Series has gone on to win the Series in the past six years. I wondered if this was an interesting statistic or an obvious one. If you think about it, once a team wins one game of the series they only have to win three more games, where as there opponent must win four to win. Winning the first game has an inherent obvious advantage. Perhaps that stat isn't so interesting.

We can simulate a World Series by choosing a probability of winning a game, 50% seems a fair starting point, and then counting games. Once a team wins four games, perform no further game simulations for that series. Simulating 10,000 series allows the collection of some statistics and probabilities. For instance, the number of games in a series if the games are a toss up (one team wins 50% of the time) is shown in the chart below.

The exact result for how many games will occur in a World Series if each team wins 50% of the time is 4 games 1/8 of the time, 5 games 1/4 of the time and 6 and 7 games 5/16 of the time for both. This is a good check on our simulation.

The results from 100 years of World Series (including only best of seven series) closely parallels the simulations, with four game series slightly more common.

To answer the first question, 10,000 trials shows that if the games are a toss up the winner of the first game goes on to win the World Series 65.6% of the time. A glance back at almost 100 years of World Series, (eliminating ones that were not best of seven, and using wikipedia to see which team won first), shows that historically the first team to win wins the series 66% of the time. Perhaps that stat from Fox isn't so surprising.

Varying the probability that one team (say the National League team) wins from 50% lets the simulation explore the probability that the first team to win a game wins the series. Obviously if one team wins 100% of the time, they win the first game and the series. This is also the same as if one team wins 0% of the time, the other team wins the first game and the series. The middle result (50% probability of winning a game), reported above, is 65.6%. The plot below shows how this varies with the probability of the National League team winning. Given that the historical result is that the first team to win a game in the World Series wins the Series 66% of the time, it is reasonable to expect that the chance one or the other team would win a given World series game is close to 50%, or at least somewhere between 40% and 60%.

Finally the simulation reveals the number of games played, the series winner and the winner of the first game. The plot below shows that histogram.


Because the simulation is only 10,000 trials, the results here are probably plus or minus 0.5%.

Venn diagram of Baseball team names and origins

This fascinating diagram of Major League Baseball team names groups them together by type and origin.


There are more links with the origins of the team names at FlipFlopFlyBall.com. The name origin of "Phillies" is obvious, but did you know the Detroit Tigers are names after the Detroit Light Guard military unit, known as "The Tigers." So they are only named after an animal because what they were named for was named after an animal.

(via Neatorama, via Kottke)

In honor of MLB calling today 09/09/09 - Baseball Day - Current players with #9

Today is 09/09/09, and at 9:09 MLB has been giving away prizes to commermorate the day. In honor of the day, here are all of the players currently wearing #9 on their unforms according to wikipedia:

Michael Abrey, first baseman for the Baltimore Orioles
Gregg Zaun, catcher for the Tampa Bay Rays
Carlos Guillén, left fielder for the Detroit Tigers
David DeJesus, center fielder for the Kansas City Royals
Chone Figgins, third baseman for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
Jack Wilson, shortstop for the Seattle Mariners
Hank Blalock, first baseman for the Texas Rangers

Hunter Pence, right fielder for the Houston Astros
Omir Santos, catcher for the New York Mets
Miguel Cairo, infielder for the Philadelphia Phillies
Reed Johnson, outfielder for the Chicago Cubs
Hernán Iribarren, infielder for the Milwaukee Brewers
Gerado Parra, center fielder for Arizona Diamondbacks
Ian Sewart, infielder for Colorado Rockies
Juan Peirre, outfielder for the LA Dodgers

Just in case you need it for a triva question today.

Hey Detroit Tigers fans go vote for Brandon Inge to be at the All Star Game

Hey Detroit Tigers fans, Please go vote for Brandon Inge of the Detroit Tigers to go to the All Star Game at MLB.com (ballot is first headline on righthand side) - he deserves it. Voting ends Thursday at 4pm.

If you don't have a National League favorite, please stringly consider adding Shane Victorino of the Phillies on the National league side of your ballot.

Hey Phillies fans - All Star Game Final Vote Information

Hey Phillies fans, when you vote for Shane Victorino to be an All-Star at MLB.com, please add your vote for Brandon Inge on the American League side, he really deserves it. The voting ends Thursday at 4pm so please get those votes in now.

New iPod Touch - woo hoo!

My Father's Day gift this year was an iPod Touch for myself. Conveniently my iPod Nano click wheel had failed so I felt it was time for an upgrade. Apple gave me 10% off of the new iPod for recycling my old one, which was worth it since I won that one in a raffle a few yeays ago anyway.

The iPod Touch is still very new to me, but the first thing I did was try to load MLB at Bat 2009, and I got a notice that it needed the 3.0 software. How gutsy is it that I paid all of this money for the iPod and then to get the particular funtionality I needed I had to pay another $9.99 to upgrade to 3.0? Once I loaded MLB at Bat 2009 after the upggrade I was able to watch live streaming of the Detroit Tigers vs. St. Louis, how cool is that. The picture had nice resolution and the built in speaker was adequate, but it was even better with headphones. MLB at Bat 2009 also has all the scores, play-by-play, pitch-by-pitch, and audio both home and away for every game, but it was the video that drew me in. However it does cleverly figure out where you are so that it can obey blackout restrictions (cleverly is intended sarcastically, still can't watch what I want, when I want, where I want, on what I want). There will be two games a day.

I am sure that I have much more fun to go with this new IPod Touch. Streaming video was my favorite so far, but I also like that I can put all of those pictures of Linus on there to show people, since who prints out pictures anymore, its all digital now.

What are you favorite apps? Suggestions?

Detroit Tigers beat Baltimore Orioles on Saturday

It turns out that the Detroit Tigers did beat the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday (They also won today). here are some pictures from the game. The bets one would have been of me catching a foul ball because we were right behind home plate. However the guy sitting behind me caught my foul ball! I would have probably dropped it anyway.

Here is Jim Leyland and a coach looking at Everett's hand after he was hit by a pitch.


Leyland is my favorite coach, as much from when he coached the Pirates as for now coaching Detroit.

Ordonez and his crazy hair at bat.


Ordonez at second after his hit.

It was a good game and the weather was great after two really rainy nights. I picked the correct game to go to.

Baseball curve ball part skill part illusion

It turns out that while curve ball in baseball really does curve a bit due to aerodynamic forces and they way it is thrown, that there is an optical illusion component. Many players claim that a curve ball seems to suddenly break, more than the physical science would seem to indicate. Turns out that is due to the eye shifting between central vision and peripheral vision as the pitch reaches the batter. Researchers from
American University, USC, Dartmouth and the SUNY College of Optometry have put together and excellent application that lets you see the origin of the effect. Try it. When you look at the falling spinning ball head on it appears to fall straight when you look at it with your peripheral vision by staring to the right the ball seems to fall at an angle top the left. Switching between the two viewpoints makes it seem as if the falling ball jumps to the left.

It has been pointed out that curveballs really do curve (see also the essay "The Hell it Don't Curve" and this thesis) but in our Cartesian dualist influenced society it always has to be either-or instead of both. Seems that curveballs do curve and that an optical illusion enhances this effect. This simulation does not appear to be the first of its type. Here is one that focuses on the batter's point of view, and other POV's of your choice.

I would love to see this insight combined with high speed photography of curve balls to see if the comparison holds in real life as with the simulation (already done in the thesis above and elsewhere). Perhaps instead of just a regular baseball one could also use a ball painted half black and half white. Does that enhance the effect? What other variables could you change? I want a machine that throws baseballs with control to change the pitches every which way, a high speed camera and computer to capture the data (It exists). I can always design the experiments, and great minds think alike since much of this has been done, I just don't have the resources or time to follow through.

(via Neatorama's Upcoming Queue, via the Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest)