Post Season Predictions Using The Bill James Formula
By Fred Owens
Oct 7, 2015; Pittsburgh, PA, USA; General view as the grounds crew prepares the field for the National League Wild Card playoff baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros at PNC Park. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
The NL
Here are the salient numbers.When we apply the numbers they suggest say the Cardinals should be hoping for a Pirate victory tonight.
While the Cardinals hold the best numbers i
n both scenarios
when facing the Pirates, the Cubs look to be harder for them to beat.
For LA fans the James formula looks pretty good too.
The AL
Here are the numbers for the AL.
(Double clicking the image should make it full size.)
Since the AL play-in game is past there are less options here, there are also not many surprises.
Toronto and Texas had the same number of shutoff so neither gets the points there. So It looks like Houston and Toronto in the ALCS
That’s a Wrap
I haven’t looked back over recent seasons to see how this would have worked but in the Seamheads post (2010) it correctly chose the Giants. However an accuracy of around 70% isn’t anything to make you call Pete Rose and lay a bet.
I found one board where a series of varying alternatives were offered such as just choosing the team with the best record – that came in at 46.8% but was before the fifth wildcard entered the picture. According to a writer on that board, when he first devised the formula, James ran it for every postseason series of the century. It produced 83 correct answers and 31 wrong ones.
It’s all a bit of fun really but an interesting side road for James to take. Perhaps he was bored one night as this was originated before the advent of computers and last update in 84 which is 30 years ago and computers weren’t all that swift back then either – I had a Commodore 64, still have it too.
I’ll follow up before the league championship series and let everyone know how it went. Enjoy the playoffs.