skyking162

Looks like today is a link-a-thon. Here’s a cool thread discussing how well the lengths of pro sports seasons determine the best teams.

One way to look at the question is how often the better team wins a game.

• The more “events” in a game, the more likely that the better team will win.

A tennis match can have a few hundred points, while a baseball game averages about 80 plate appearances.

• The less that luck has an influence over each event, the more likely that the better team will win. Consider how many hockey goals are “flukes”.
• The more that top players can influence events, the more likely that the better team will win. Michael Jordan, anybody?

Another way to look at the question is how many games do you need to play in one sport to have as much information as X games in a different sport. Here’s a list of the number of games that are equivalent to a 162 game baseball season:

NFL: 28
NHL: 84
NBA: 33

The NHL season is on par with MLB, but the NFL season is about only half as long as baseball’s. Whereas 1 NFL game is played for 16 baseball games, it’s really only as informative as 8 baseball games. We shouldn’t put as much stock in NFL records as we do.

As for the NBA, jeez. Their season could be 60% shorter and still be as informative as a full MLB schedule. Did we really need to see the Bulls go 72-10 to know they were the best team in the league? Last place teams in basketball finish further out of first than do bad baseball teams. As somebody mentioned in the original thread, maybe basketball games should only last one half instead of two.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 8:08 pm and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.