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October 21, 2007, 02:30 AM ET
The Worst of the Best?

by Nate Silver

Thus far, the average margin of victory in the Cleveland-Boston ALCS — inflated slightly by the Indians‘ piling on during extra innings in Game 2 — is 5.83 runs. As you might expect, it’s awfully unusual for a series to go the full seven games, but have so few close contests in between. Before this year, there had been 47 7-game series in postseason history, counting 1912 when the Red Sox beat the New York Giants 4-3 with one tied game, but not counting 1920 when the Indians beat the Brookyln Robins 5-2 in a best-of-9. The highest average margins of victory in those series are as follows:

Year	Series	Teams	G1	G2	G3	G4	G5	G6	G7	AVG MOV
1960	WS	PIT-NYY	2	13	10	1	3	12	1	6.00
1968	WS	DET-STL	4	7	4	10	2	12	3	6.00
2007	ALCS	BOS-CLE	7	7	2	4	5	10	??	5.83
1996	NLCS	ATL-STL	2	5	1	1	14	2	15	5.71
1982	WS	STL-MIL	10	1	4	2	2	12	3	4.86
1965	WS	LAD-MIN	6	4	4	5	7	4	2	4.57

If the margin of victory tomorrow night is at least 7 runs, the Indians and Red Sox will own a share of this record; if the margin is 8 runs or more, they’ll own it by themselves.

However, this metric is a little bit deceptive since it tends to overpunish blowout games. The 1960 World Series, for example, featured margins of 13, 12, and 10 runs — all of those games were won by the Yankees, incidentally — but also two 1-run games, a 2-run game, and a 3-run game, not to mention one of the most famous home runs in baseball history. The 1968 World Series, on the other hand, although generally remembered fondly, was a little bit of a clunker, with no 1-run games and just one 2-run game.

We can therefore define a gadget stat which I’ll call the Closeness Index (CI), which we will calculate as follows.

CI = SQRT(MOV-1)

That is, the Closeness Index is defined as the square root of the margin of victory (MOV) less one run — we subtract that one run because a baseball game can’t end in a tie. This formula puts a special premium on 1-run victories, while recognizing that there isn’t much difference between a 7-run victory and an 11-run victory. We then average the CI over each game in the series. A smaller CI means a closer series.

Thus far, the CI for this year’s ALCS is 2.11, which is the worst score of any 7-game series ever. The worst of the best according to the Closeness Index are as follows:

Year	Series	Teams	G1	G2	G3	G4	G5	G6	G7	CI
2007	ALCS	BOS-CLE	7	7	2	4	5	10	??	2.11
1968	WS	DET-STL	4	7	4	10	2	12	3	2.09
1965	WS	LAD-MIN	6	4	4	5	7	4	2	1.84
1960	WS	PIT-NYY	2	13	10	1	3	12	1	1.74
1987	WS	MIN-STL	9	4	2	5	2	6	2	1.69
1982	WS	STL-MIL	10	1	4	2	2	12	3	1.64

By way of comparison, here are the closest 7-game series of all time:

Year	Series	Teams	G1	G2	G3	G4	G5	G6	G7	CI
1972	WS	OAK-CIN	1	1	1	1	1	7	1	0.35
1975	WS	CIN-BOS	6	1	1	1	4	1	1	0.57
1924	WS	WSH-NYG	1	1	2	3	4	1	1	0.59
1991	WS	MIN-ATL	3	1	1	1	9	1	1	0.61
1912*	WS	BOS-NYG	1	1	2	1	3	7	1	0.69
* Excludes Tied Game

In the 1972 World Series, six of the seven contests were decided by exactly one run. Hopefully, we can borrow just a little bit of that mojo tomorrow night. Or, even better, we can take something from 1960, which if not for Bill Mazeroski’s home run would be all but forgotten. Let’s see … a scrappy, 23-year old second baseman who wasn’t known for his power? Maybe our man Dustin Pedroia has something up his sleeve.

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