On Wed, 14 May 2008 22:27:16 -0500, "ZBicyclist"
<ZBicyclist@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>M C Hamster wrote:
>> On 13 May 2008 09:53:02 -0500, M C Hamster
>> <davolson@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 12 May 2008 21:27:40 -0700, Blinky the Shark
>>> <no.spam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>
>>>> M C Hamster wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, 12 May 2008 20:00:20 -0700, Blinky the Shark
>>>>> <no.spam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Stats guys in the basebal booth rule.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm watching the Angels and the White Sox. Each team has a
>>>>>> player in the game whose last name starts with "Q". The Real
>>>>>> Stats Guy came up with this: no two players whose names begin
>>>>>> with "Q" have ever homered in the same major league game.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> BlinkyBonusPanel: A Cleveland player got an unassisted triple
>>>>>> play today. The last one was performed in 2007. I wonder if
>>>>>> this
>>>>>> indicates a trend, since in over a hundred years of major
>>>>>> league
>>>>>> ball today's was only the 14th. :) BonusBonus: Cleveland
>>>>>> also
>>>>>> had the first two, in 1909 and 1920. They are the alpha and
>>>>>> omega
>>>>>> of unassisted triple plays; but had none in between.
>>>>>
>>>>> The Stats guys must have sent it out over the national wire,
>>>>> because the Cubs announcer mentioned the same thing tonight
>>>>> (about
>>>>> the Cleveland triple plays).
>>>>
>>>> I got the the triple-play item from UPI online.
>>>>
>>>>> Here's the list. (Obviously not including tonight's.)
>>>>> http://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/feats8.shtml
>>>>>
>>>>> From it, the years they occurred (going backwards) are:
>>>>>
>>>>> 2008
>>>>> 2007
>>>>> 2003
>>>>> 2000
>>>>> 1994
>>>>> 1992
>>>>> 1968
>>>>> 1927
>>>>> 1927
>>>>> 1925
>>>>> 1923
>>>>> 1923
>>>>> 1920
>>>>> 1909
>>>>>
>>>>> It's quite astounding that only one occurred in the period from
>>>>> 1927 to 1992. I'm completely at a loss to explain this, or
>>>>> why
>>>>> the sudden increase in frequency since the 1990s. Unless it's
>>>>> steroids.
>>>>
>>>> Yeah, that's an amazing hole in the middle of the list, after
>>>> seven
>>>> in the 18-year span after the first one. The 1968-1992 gap is
>>>> noticeable, too.
>>>
>>> You can, in part, explain why they are more frequent now than
>>> they
>>> were prior to the 1961 baseball expansion of franchises, since
>>> there
>>> are simply many more games played each season now than then. But
>>> that
>>> doesn't explain the sudden reappearance of the unassisted triple
>>> play
>>> in 1992, and its continued appearance since then. And the
>>> question
>>> of the huge gap after 1927 remains unexplained.
>>
>> Since an unassisted triple play almost always (perhaps always, I'm
>> not
>> sure) involves 2 (or 3) men on base who are running on the pitch,
>> and
>> it appears that stolen base frequency was much higher in the early
>> 20th century (from 1900-1920, e.g.), that could explain the flurry
>> of
>> these in the early 1900s. They dropped off (well, more than that,
>> they went totally extinct) during the 1930-1990 era when base
>> stealing
>> was less prevalent, then picked up again with the much larger
>> number
>> of games being played plus perhaps a pickup in base stealing.
>>
>> This is more a theoretical construct than a strong data-based
>> analysis. A friend has said these data are right, but I haven't
>> really checked them myself.
>
>It's likely that something's going on.
>
>I simulated 2000 sequences of 108 years (1901 to 2008) and in 8 of
>them there's a gap as long as from 1927 to 1968. [boring details
>below]
>
Oh cool, I love simulations of baseball statistics.
>Baseball expansion hits in 1962 (?)
It was in 1961.
>with the move from 8 to 10 teams
>(Mets, Astros ...)
>
>Base stealing hits about the same time as expansion with Maury Wills
>stealing 104 in 1962. However, this is NOT break Ty Cobb's record of
>96 stolen bases because the number of games in the season had gone
>from 154 to 162, and Wills' 97th stolen base occurred after the
>154th game.
>
>Lou Brock then took up the mantle. Brock was traded from Cubs to the
>Cardinals in 1964 in one of the great trades of all time [snicker],
>and went on to steal 118 bases in 1974 -- breaking both Cobb's and
>Wills' records.
>
>Brock went on to market the Brockabrella:
>http://www.yardbarker.com/author/user_photo/9971
Wait. Where are the "boring details below"? I LOVE boring baseball
simulation details. Without seeing your simulations, though, if you
had to simulate 2000 seasons to produce just 8 examples of a 41-year
gap, that's highly improbable to have occurred by chance, only a 0.4%
probability. Then you have to add in the 24-year gap that followed
1968... it's the two consecutive gaps that is especially amazing. In
how many of the 2000 simulated seasons did you have no more than 1
occurrence in a 65-year period? I'm going to guess no more than 1.
Since we're talking random simulations of baseball seasons, here's an
old column that I posted here, that statistically quantified the
amazing futility of the Cubs (and White Sox). It is now outdated,
since the White Sox won in 2005. But the Cubs odds still basically
hold, and in fact are even greater now, 5 years hence.
************
AGAINST ALL ODDS, WHITE SOX, CUBS MAINTAIN MISERY
Eric Zorn, August 18, 2002
Chicago Tribune
It's hard being a baseball fan in Chicago. Frustrating. Torturous.
Disheartening. Demoralizing. Exasperating.
How hard? Sometimes, adjectives -- and expletives -- can't do the
whole job. We need to quantify our disappointment, put cold numbers
to the depths of our futility. And to do that, we turn to our old
friend, mathematics.
The Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908, we noted. The White
Sox haven't won it since 1917. Neither team has even made the World
Series since 1959. We wondered: What are the odds against this
happening?
Assume, for the sake of discussion, that instead of deciding the
champion****p on the field, Major League Baseball simply drew the name
of the World Series winner at random. Up until 1960, when there were
just 16 teams, we would have expected a World Series title in Chicago
every eight years or so.
That rate would have fallen off after expansion began in 1961. But
even since then, Chicago has been vastly, dramatically overdue, given
that over long periods of time in any pro s****t that strives for
parity even lovable losers will win it all once in a while.
Background: To calculate the odds of two random events occurring in a
row, multiply the odds of each occurrence. For instance, if you flip
one coin, the odds are 1 in 2, or 1/2, that it will be heads. But if
you flip two coins, the odds of both coming up heads are 1/2 times
1/2. This equals 1/2, or 4-1 against.
So in 1909 the odds that the Cubs would lose the
pull-the-winner-out-of-a-hat world Series were 15 in 16. Pretty high.
In 1910 the odds were the same. But multiply 15/16 times 15/16, as
above, and you get 225/256, or 14.1/16. Smaller odds, yet still
pretty high.
But as we keep on multiplying, year after year, the odds shrink. By
1925 the Cubs began defying them by continuing to lose. By now,
adjusting for expansion and 1994 when there was no World Series
because of a strike, the defiance has become sheer contempt. We
figure the odds are now 157-1 against the Cubs not having won since
1908.
The odds that any random National League team could fail to win the
pennant and a spot in the World Series from 1946 to 2002, as the Cubs
have also done, are still worse: 295-1 against.
But the true measure of the misery of the Chicago baseball fan is in
the astoni****ngly long odds against both teams failing for so many
years in a row. All other things being equal, the odds that neither
the Cubs nor the White Sox would have played in the Series since 1959,
when the Sox last appeared, are roughly 1400-1 against. The odds that
neither team would have won it since 1917, when the Sox beat the New
York Giants in six games, are slightly more than 10,000-1 against.
With math to show the way, what once appeared to be simply tediously
repetitive bad luck starts to look like a bona fide curse.
***
A followup letter based on this column:
Two other statistics that I take perverse pleasure in:
1. Between them, the Cubs and White Sox have lost 14 consecutive
post-season playoffs (the Cubs' 1998 tie-breaking win over the Giants
for the wild card doesn't count, because the league considers it as
part of the regular season). If my math is correct the odds against
losing 14 straight are 2 to the 14th power, or 16,384 to 1.
2. The Cubs' anti-dynasty: It has been 32 years (and counting) since
they had consecutive winning seasons. I don't know how to figure the
odds of that.
***
Another letter:
The Cubs alone are fodder for a sad tale of numbers -- the Sox losing
record, is, after all, a consolation factor rather than a compounding
factor to the misery of true Cubs fans.
As it happens I just happened to calculate the odds that a team would
endure 30 seasons without 2 consecutive winning seasons. Assume the a
priori odds are 1/2 per year, an unbiased assumption. The odds that a
team would have no 2-year winning streaks in any given 30 year
stretch? About 492-1.
****
(MY NOTE: The Cubs did, in fact, post consecutive winning seasons in
2003 and 2004.)
--
M C Hamster "Big Wheel Keep on Turning" -- Creedence Clearwater Revival
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