![]() ![]() Several teams like SEA and BAL in this particular simulation will win close to 40 games. These are the type of W/L records that one might see in a 2020 season. Here’s the final standings for one of the simulated 60-game seasons (again you can ignore the team names since the teams are randomly assigned to the team strengths): Each team plays 10 games against each team in its own division (total of 40 games), and then 4 games against each team in the other league same division (total of 20 games). Then I simulate all of the game results in the MLB’s proposed 60-game schedule.Note that team names are matched at random to these abilities, but I suppose we could attach names in a less-random fashion based on current Vegas odds. First I simulate 30 random numbers from a normal distribution with mean 0 and standard deviation 0.3 - these numbers will represent the abilities of the 30 teams.Using this Bradley Terry model, it is straightforward to use R to simulate a 2020 baseball season as follows. For the work here, I am going to assume that S = 0.3 which seems to reflect the level of MLB competition in recent seasons. We can actually fit this model and estimate the parameter S using game results data from a previous season. If the teams all have the same ability, then S would be equal to 0. The only parameter unknown in this model is S which reflects the level of competition of the MLB teams. If team C plays team D, then the probability that C defeats D is given by the probability Suppose the thirty MLB teams have unknown ability values, call them A1, …, A30, that are distributed according to a normal curve with mean 0 and standard deviation S. The Bradley-Terry model provides a popular and helpful way of modeling team competition. By running this simulation for 1000 seasons, we can learn about the association of a team’s ability with its performance and learn also how many games it will take for a team to make the playoffs. I apply a reasonable model called a Bradley-Terry random effects model for representing baseball competition. So that motivates this post where I speculate using a simulation what a 60-game regular season will look like. Bill James talked about this topic at a meeting at my school in 1992 ( here is a post with more detail) and I’ve written about this in different places.Īnyway, this topic is very relevant today since MLB is planning on a 60-game season for the 2020 season which is 63% shorter than the regular 162-game season. But if you carefully think what this means, you’ll learn that the winner of the World Series is likely not the team with the most talent. We’d like to think that the winner of the World Series is the “best team in baseball. ![]() This is one of my popular things to talk about - the nature of baseball competition. ![]()
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