{"id":3550,"date":"2010-10-06T20:49:36","date_gmt":"2010-10-07T02:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=3550"},"modified":"2010-10-06T20:49:36","modified_gmt":"2010-10-07T02:49:36","slug":"the-excitement-index-2010-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=3550","title":{"rendered":"The Excitement Index, 2010 Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, I developed a very simple system<\/a> for measuring how exciting a baseball post-season is. <\/p>\n

I wanted to check just how boring 2007 was turning out so I devised a quick and dirty way to rank the post-seasons. It works like this:<\/p>\n

Every game played gets 1 point.<\/p>\n

Each game get 0.2 extra points for a lead change or tie. So tonight the Sox led 1-0. The Tribe tied it. Then the Sox took the lead for good. 0.4 points. Now if the Tribe had scored a run in the 1st and another in the second, that would have been 0.4 points; but had they taken the lead with two in the 1st, that would have only been 0.2 points. The system rewards a little drawing out of the game.<\/p>\n

Extra innings or a last at-bat victory is worth an extra 0.5 points.
\nFinally, the game is credited with 1\/(margin of victory). So a 1-run game gets an extra point. A five-run game only gets 0.2 points.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arbitary, I know. It gives the same weight to an 18-inning game as a 10-inning game. It weights early rallies as much as late ones. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t account for runners left on base, which is why Game 7 of the 1991 World Series comes in at only 2.50. It weights an exciting game one as much as an exciting game seven. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care if a team has come back from being down 3-0.<\/p>\n

In other words, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quick and dirty.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not really looking to rank the greatest game in baseball history. What I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m looking for are series \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and post-seasons full of series \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that go the distance with lots of exciting close games. And I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the computer resources to do a more thorough job. This one can be calculated just by looking at the line score.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After tonight, I would add that it doesn’t take into account no-hitters.<\/p>\n

I’ve now expanded the database to go all the way back to 1976. A few highlights:<\/p>\n

  • To give you a sense of scale. The average games scores 1.9 points. The average 5-games series scores 7.2. The average 7-game series 10.8. The average modern post-season scores 60 points.<\/li>\n
  • The most exciting post-season in history was 2003, which came in at a whopping 74.1 points. You may remember this one as the year both the Red Sox and Cubs were five outs away from a pennant and blew it. Pro-rated, however, the 1991 post-season comes in slightly better (40.2 points pro-rated to 78.5). That was the year the Braves came from nowhere to take the Pirates and then the Twins to seven games.<\/li>\n
  • The most boring post-season, as I noted above, was 2007. Five series sweeps and a surprisingly dull 7-game ALCS. It game in at 47.6.<\/li>\n
  • The most exciting 7-game series was the 1991 World Series (17.2). As a survivor of that, who watched the greatest Cinderella team ever lose a 7-game heart-breaker, I can vouch for that one. Coming in second is the 2001 World Series (16.1).<\/li>\n
  • The dullest 7-game series was 1989’s blowout of San Francisco by Oakland in which the Giants never took a lead. It scored a pathetic 5.4.<\/li>\n
  • The most exciting 5-game series was 1980’s Philadelphia-Houston epic ALCS which featured four extra-inning game. At 13.5, it outdid most 7-game series.<\/li>\n
  • The most boring 5-gamer was St. Louis blowing out San Diego in the 2005 NLDS. There have been games that have scored better than the 3.9 the whole series did.<\/li>\n
  • The most-exciting game, at a whopping 4.1, was game two of the 1997 NLDS. Huh? That game featured 8 ties or lead changes and was won on a walk-off single by Moises Alou. I’m inclined to think this a quirk of the system. Even though game seven of the 2001 world series only score 3.3, I would give that the nod as the greatest game.<\/li>\n
  • There are many candidates for boring games. Technically, game seven of the 1996 NLCS scored the lowest (1.06). But the Braves’ 15-0 victory capped a comeback from a 1-3 series deficit. Game five of that series (a 14-0 blowout, 1.07 in the system) is another candidate, as is game one of the World Series that year. But I would probably go with game one of the 2005 ALDS (1.08), Chicago’s 14-2 blowout of Boston.<\/li>\n

    We’ll see how this season shapes up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A few years ago, I developed a very simple system for measuring how exciting a baseball post-season is. I wanted to check just how boring 2007 was turning out so I devised a quick and dirty way to rank the post-seasons. It works like this: Every game played gets 1 point. Each game get 0.2 … Continue reading The Excitement Index, 2010 Edition<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BzKF-Vg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3550"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3553,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550\/revisions\/3553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}