World Series prediction

The 2011 World Series starts in a couple of days, and it's time for the pundits to come out and make their predictions.  Over on coolstandings.com they've posted their prediction for the World Series.  Here's a screenshot of their "smart" prediction:

(The "dumb" prediction is 50/50 for either team, so there's no point talking about that. And I've posted a screenshot, since their predictions are live and will change upon the outcome of the first game of the World Series. An example of the Monty Hall problem, in real life.)

To summarize:  Texas shows as having a 68.2% probability of winning the World Series.

I'm not sure of the details of their methodology, but we can use each team's regular season win/loss record to employ the "log5" approach to come up with our own prediction.  So I did that, and my first prediction is for a Texas victory (58% probability) -- and if pressed to predict the series length, it would be Texas in 6 games (17% of the outcomes are Texas 4-2).  Both probabilities are substantially lower than the coolstandings prediction.

But we can be a bit more sophisticated in our approach, using an adjusted win/loss percentage that employs a Bayesian adjustment to each team's final result.  (This is the same method I used back in May for the early season results -- after 162 games the impact of the prior is much reduced.) This changes Texas' winning percentage to 0.571, and St. Louis to 0.543.  (Google doc spreadsheet here.)  Using the log5 formula, this gives the Rangers a 0.538 edge over the Cardinals.

Working through the 7 game series, Texas' probability of winning the World Series is 56%.

And we can be still more clever, by considering the road/home splits of each team.

Team      W-L     %   posterior
-------- -----  ----  ---------
Texas    96-66  .593   .571
- home   52-29  .642   .591
- road   44-37  .543   .527


St Louis 90-72  .556   .543
- home   45-36  .556   .535
- road   45-36  .556   .535


The home-road splits improve things for the Cardinals, since they had a better home record than Texas' road record and thus become more likely to win a home game. As well, the Cardinals have home field advantage (but only on game 7 -- the Rangers have home field advantage in a 5-game series. But I digress.)  After using the home-road splits, Texas still remains the favorite, but the probability is down to 54%.

While my approaches still give Texas the biggest likelihood of victory, my estimates are less emphatic than the probabilities over at coolstandings.  Based on the characterizations used at coolstandings, my methods lie somewhere between "dumb" and "smart".  "Average intelligence", perhaps.

Tow Mater says "Rangers in 6. But I had the Phillies and the Brewers beating the Cardinals, too".

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On pace for a 162 win season!

Only at the beginning of the season would a four-game winning streak get you an article on S.I.

The probability of a true .500 team playing four games against other true .500 teams and winning them all is 6.25% -- or roughly 2 out of 30. In other words, at this point in the season we could realistically expect two teams to be at 4-0.  Once we consider that in real life teams are not so perfectly matched, thus raising the odds of the more powerful team being successful in all four games, the fact that there are three teams with 4-0 records (Orioles, Reds, and Rangers) isn't a surprise.

The only surprise in all of this is that the Orioles (widely touted to finish last in the A.L. East) swept the Rays in a three game series in Tampa Bay and then went on to beat the Tigers at home in their fourth game of the season. But then again, the probability of a .400 team going 4-0 against a .500* team is just under 3%.  Not very good odds, but something we would expect to see on occasion.

(Shout out to Tango, who raised the "on pace" problem a couple of days ago, and The Book readers who added various lucid and perceptive comments, including an XKCD cartoon. You can never go wrong using an XKCD cartoon to illustrate your point.)

Update: the New Utosky Bolshevik Show takes the Red Sox 0-3 start as its jumping off point for a post titled The Red Sox Aren't Doomed, demonstrating the same thing I did but with graphs and Python script.  Score one for the NUBS.

* Changed from ".600".  Comment #1 below was generated because of this typo; #2 is my detailed response.

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