Playoff Percentages

[BruisedCrew]

Now that the Brewers have mathematically clinched the division, maybe I can bring this up without the usual suspects concluding that I am "scared" of another team catching the Brewers.

Maybe Brock can comment on how secure a fan should feel when the projection sites give his favorite team a 95% chance of making the playoffs.

Fangraphs had the Twins playoff probability at 95.4% as recently as September 2.

Now the Twins are holding on to the final AL playoff spot by a half game over the Tigers, whose playoff percentage in mid August was 0.2%.

Even if the Tigers late surge falls short, it is another reminder that big turnarounds happen in baseball quite often. 

[Brewcrew82]

The obvious problem with this perspective is that by focusing on extreme outlier cases like the Twins (who are still more likely than not to make the postseason) or the 1995 Angels, you simultaneously ignore the vast majority of cases where teams with those sorts of playoff odds make the postseason (and with little difficulty). If you included all of those, it would align much closer to a 95% outcome. 

[brewerfan82]

• 2021-23 Teams with >90% chance of making the playoffs on 9/2: 19 of 20 made the playoffs (95%)
  In the 37.7% chance the Twins do not make it this year, that would bring the 2021-24 percentage of such teams making the playoffs down to 93.1%
• 2021-23 Teams with <1% chance of making the playoffs on 8/15: 0 of 35 made the playoffs (0%)
  In the 36.4% chance the Tigers make it this year, that would bring the 2021-24 percentage of such teams making the playoffs up to 2.2%

So yes, outliers happen, but it happens about as often as the playoff odds state they will.

[sveumrules]

Here is a little check-your-own work that Ben Clemens did back in September of 2021 on the FG Playoff Odds...

How Well Do Our Playoff Odds Work?

[Oxy]

If a fair wheel numbered 1 thru 20 is spun, there is a 100% chance that it will land on a number that only had a 5% chance of being landed on.

[BruisedCrew]

2 hours ago, Brewcrew82 said:

The obvious problem with this perspective is that by focusing on extreme outlier cases like the Twins (who are still more likely than not to make the postseason) or the 1995 Angels, you simultaneously ignore the vast majority of cases where teams with those sorts of playoff odds make the postseason (and with little difficulty). If you included all of those, it would align much closer to a 95% outcome. 

I have not ignored anything. As usual, you, and several others, are completely missing the main point I have always made about this.

That is that 95% is not 100%.

So, even if we accept that these percentages (made by the same people who projected the Brewers to win less than 80 games) are perfectly, mathematically accurate, having a 95% chance of winning a division or making the playoffs does not mean, as one poster on this board put it a few years ago, that the race is “statistically over”. That seemed to be a bastardization of the concept of margin of error in a statistical sampling.

I think the difference here is in how comfortable people are with a 5% chance of something they want very badly going haywire. 

The reason I hoped Brock would weigh in is to get a first hand perspective on how it feels to see a 95% chance drop to 60% in about 2 weeks. I suspect several of you would not be feeling that great if it was the Brewers in this position.

[sveumrules]

4 minutes ago, BruisedCrew said:

The reason I hoped Brock would weigh in is to get a first hand perspective on how it feels to see a 95% chance drop to 60% in about 2 weeks. I suspect several of you would not be feeling that great if it was the Brewers in this position.

Not a Twins fan personally, but if I were I probably wouldn't have had much faith in my team whose record is pretty much entirely propped up by a 12 W - 1 L record against the worst team ever.

[BruisedCrew]

3 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

Not a Twins fan personally, but if I were I probably wouldn't have had much faith in my team whose record is pretty much entirely propped up by a 12 W - 1 L record against the worst team ever.

Did the projections not recognize and account for that?

[Brewcrew82]

19 minutes ago, BruisedCrew said:

I have not ignored anything. As usual, you, and several others, are completely missing the main point I have always made about this.

 

That is that 95% is not 100%.

So, even if we accept that these percentages (made by the same people who projected the Brewers to win less than 80 games) are perfectly, mathematically accurate, having a 95% chance of winning a division or making the playoffs does not mean, as one poster on this board put it a few years ago, that the race is “statistically over”. That seemed to be a bastardization of the concept of margin of error in a statistical sampling.

I think the difference here is in how comfortable people are with a 5% chance of something they want very badly going haywire. 

The reason I hoped Brock would weigh in is to get a first hand perspective on how it feels to see a 95% chance drop to 60% in about 2 weeks. I suspect several of you would not be feeling that great if it was the Brewers in this position.

If the crux of your argument is that 95% is not 100%, then I don't think you're making as powerful an argument as you think you're making.......

And I have zero clue why you're attributing the "statistically over" comment to me or any of the others in this thread considering none of us made that statement. 

We simply choose to accept 95% for what it is and not tie ourselves into knots drumming up and worrying over doomsday scenarios with a scant chance of happening. Because, really, who wants to live life like that.

Nothing that's happening with the Twins right now changes that reality. 

[BruisedCrew]

2 minutes ago, Brewcrew82 said:

If the crux of your argument is that 95% is not 100%, then I don't think you're making as powerful an argument as you think you're making.......

And I have zero clue why you're attributing the "statistically over" to me or any of the others in this thread considering none of us made that statement.

We mostly just choose to accept 95% for what it is and not tie ourselves into knots drumming up doomsday scenarios with a scant chance of happening. Because, really, who wants to live life like that.

Nothing that's happening with the Twins right now changes that. 

There you go again with the hyperbole.

Saying in mid August that a race is not over does not mean that someone is tied up in knots over doomsday scenarios. It is simply a recognition that stuff happens and many of us have seen stuff happen to teams we root for. 

Maybe you should just let people feel how they feel and  express their thoughts instead of going outof your way to try to convince them they shouldn’t feel that way. 
 

 

[Oxy]

Just now, BruisedCrew said:

There you go again with the hyperbole.

Saying in mid August that a race is not over does not mean that someone is tied up in knots over doomsday scenarios. It is simply a recognition that stuff happens and many of us have seen stuff happen to teams we root for. 

Maybe you should just let people feel how they feel and  express their thoughts instead of going outof your way to try to convince them they shouldn’t feel that way. 
 

 

If this were a real-life scenario that had real world consequences, you are correct.  However, needlessly ADDING anxiety toward a time diversion/trivial hobby like sports fandom is not fun at all.

 

However, anybody who is a baseball fan clearly LOVES needless anxiety, as playoff baseball is basically a panic attack divided into 9 innings.

[Brewcrew82]

9 minutes ago, BruisedCrew said:

There you go again with the hyperbole.

Saying in mid August that a race is not over does not mean that someone is tied up in knots over doomsday scenarios. It is simply a recognition that stuff happens and many of us have seen stuff happen to teams we root for. 

Maybe you should just let people feel how they feel and  express their thoughts instead of going outof your way to try to convince them they shouldn’t feel that way. 
 

 

Hyperbole? You literally were bringing up the 1995 California Angels, aka the absolute worst collapse in baseball history, as late as a couple weeks ago in relation to the Brewers' position in the division. Give me a break. 

You can feel however you want, but others have the ability to redirect the conversation towards reality and the cold hard evidence.  

[BruisedCrew]

39 minutes ago, Brewcrew82 said:

Hyperbole? You literally were bringing up the 1995 California Angels, aka the absolute worst collapse in baseball history, as late as a couple weeks ago in relation to the Brewers' position in the division. Give me a break. 

You can feel however you want, but others have the ability to redirect the conversation towards reality and the cold hard evidence.  

I “literally” only brought up the Angels when you said it would be very hard to come up with an example. Then you got upset when I immediately gave you one. 

The reality and cold hard evidence is that a 95% chance of success means a 5% chance of something that most fans (most likely including you) would find very upsetting. So they don’t like to get too far ahead of themselves.

I have a pretty good idea what a 95% probability is. It’s about the same as the probability that any of my posts will receive one of those cute little thumbs down comments that you are so fond of. 

 

[dlk9s]

The Twins chances were always 50%. Either they make the playoffs or they don't.

[Brewcrew82]

1 hour ago, BruisedCrew said:

I “literally” only brought up the Angels when you said it would be very hard to come up with an example. Then you got upset when I immediately gave you one. 

The reality and cold hard evidence is that a 95% chance of success means a 5% chance of something that most fans (most likely including you) would find very upsetting. So they don’t like to get too far ahead of themselves.

I have a pretty good idea what a 95% probability is. It’s about the same as the probability that any of my posts will receive one of those cute little thumbs down comments that you are so fond of. 

 

I mean, that's a really cute retort but of your 49 total posts in the last week I've given you a "thumbs down" on 3 and all in this silly thread. So, the evidence continues to suggest you struggle with 95% probability (and that I'm not the only one with a bit of a hyperbole problem)....

Fact of the matter is most people don't twist themselves into knots over 5% probability outcomes (especially with something that's pure entertainment such as baseball), and it's absolutely not getting ahead of yourself to recognize and get excited over the overwhelming likelihood of the 95% event occurring in accordance with the sheer math. You've created a straw man that simply doesn't exist, in which people believe that 95%=100% good, 0% bad.

And we are under no obligation to validate against the evidence you choosing to fret over the doomsday 5% (less than 1 percent in the Brewers' case for the past month) scenario. 

[Team Canada]

2 hours ago, Oxy said:

If a fair wheel numbered 1 thru 20 is spun, there is a 100% chance that it will land on a number that only had a 5% chance of being landed on.

I can't tell if you're legitimately trying to equate that with this scenario or not.

[BruisedCrew]

2 hours ago, Oxy said:

If this were a real-life scenario that had real world consequences, you are correct.  However, needlessly ADDING anxiety toward a time diversion/trivial hobby like sports fandom is not fun at all.

 

However, anybody who is a baseball fan clearly LOVES needless anxiety, as playoff baseball is basically a panic attack divided into 9 innings.

Yeah, I suppose if people were told as they were boarding a plane that it had a 95% chance of reaching the destination safely they would take that 5% chance seriously.

But, in 1969 I knew people who were Cubs fans as they took a 9 1/2 game lead on August 14 and collapsed to finishing 8 games behind the Miracle Mets. I think some of them would have chosen the plane trip over that experience.

 

[markedman5]

Speaking only for me( obviously) when I read my team has a 95% chance of making the playoffs I feel good but until the magic number is zero I understand the people that have a little anxiety……..I have been there myself.

So I’m fine with people who are cautious with declaring something “ over” I just draw the line when caution turns to panic…….if I perceive that it does.

People can arrive at certainty in their own time……. not mine.

[owbc]

There is a dangerous desire in sports to extrapolate recent trends ("momentum") indefinitely into the future. Twins are currently struggling and the Tigers are as hot as the sun, but that means little to nothing about what will happen next. 

My rule of thumb for comebacks is that going from long odds to a tie means you've made it halfway there.

The Twins still are statistically 1 game up due to tiebreaks, so the odds are still 60/40 in their favor. If the Tigers get it to 50/50, then they have successfully gotten "halfway" from <1% to 100%.

The fun part about the final week of the MLB season, however, is that you can easily gain 20% in a day with the right set of results. 

[BruisedCrew]

10 hours ago, owbc said:

There is a dangerous desire in sports to extrapolate recent trends ("momentum") indefinitely into the future. Twins are currently struggling and the Tigers are as hot as the sun, but that means little to nothing about what will happen next. 

My rule of thumb for comebacks is that going from long odds to a tie means you've made it halfway there.

The Twins still are statistically 1 game up due to tiebreaks, so the odds are still 60/40 in their favor. If the Tigers get it to 50/50, then they have successfully gotten "halfway" from <1% to 100%.

The fun part about the final week of the MLB season, however, is that you can easily gain 20% in a day with the right set of results. 

That’s looking at it from a detached perspective. 

But from the standpoint of an avid fan, that 60% chance that the Twins have doesn’t feel the same as if the race had been that close all along. 

When my team has a big lead in a game or a season long race, I can feel confident, but I don’t want to see that lead shrink significantly. So, when a 95% chance drops to 50%, that creates an uncomfortable feeling that I’d prefer to avoid. 

I think as a fan I retain the attitude I had when I played competitive sports. When you have a significant lead that isn’t a time to get comfortable and let up. Once the lead slips it might be hard to get the momentum and upper hand back. 

 

 

[owbc]

5 hours ago, BruisedCrew said:

That’s looking at it from a detached perspective. 

But from the standpoint of an avid fan, that 60% chance that the Twins have doesn’t feel the same as if the race had been that close all along. 

When my team has a big lead in a game or a season long race, I can feel confident, but I don’t want to see that lead shrink significantly. So, when a 95% chance drops to 50%, that creates an uncomfortable feeling that I’d prefer to avoid. 

I think as a fan I retain the attitude I had when I played competitive sports. When you have a significant lead that isn’t a time to get comfortable and let up. Once the lead slips it might be hard to get the momentum and upper hand back. 

 

 

And that’s totally fair, going from a 19/20 chance to a 1/2 coin toss is a rough slide.

The good news for the Twins is that the odds are better than the vibes. They are winning games and losing close ones. They should be able to get luckier with 1-run games and hope the Tigers come down from their unsustainable hot streak before the season is over — except that we’re in small sample territory now so crazy stuff like the Mariners stealing that spot isn’t completely out of the realm of possibilities…one team goes 3-0 this weekend and the others go 1-2 and the race could completely flip. 

 

[BruisedCrew]

3 hours ago, owbc said:

And that’s totally fair, going from a 19/20 chance to a 1/2 coin toss is a rough slide.

The good news for the Twins is that the odds are better than the vibes. They are winning games and losing close ones. They should be able to get luckier with 1-run games and hope the Tigers come down from their unsustainable hot streak before the season is over — except that we’re in small sample territory now so crazy stuff like the Mariners stealing that spot isn’t completely out of the realm of possibilities…one team goes 3-0 this weekend and the others go 1-2 and the race could completely flip. 

 

The Tigers-Orioles series this weekend will be interesting. The Orioles have been struggling and are still trying to lock up their own playoff position.

The Tigers last two series are against the Rays and the historically terrible White Sox so they will have an opportunity to finish strong.