Though I’m a Giants fan, I am now free to root for the Cubs to at least get into the WS.
With more series, you increase the chance that a good short-series team will win it all, but you decrease the chance that the best team will win. The latter should be obvious. As long as the best team doesn’t win 100% of short series, the probability that any specific team gets knocked out is one of the rounds increases with the number of rounds. As it’s a knock-out tournament, the best team doesn’t get a chance to come back once it’s eliminated.
No.
I believe you’re confusing criteria with desire.
I am not. I’m saying that experimental results beat untested hypotheses. Desire has nothing to do with it.
And you need to think more about the math of the other bit.
Sure. If we accept that there is such a thing as an abstractly “best” team, that loses the actual games.
Am i the only person who finds Harold Reynolds incredibly annoying as an announcer?
Noooo. He’s awful. I can’t stand him on MLB Network either. I keep hoping Brian Kenny will ninja chop him.
He is horrible. He finds one thing that he can obsess over and then he can’t let it go. He is ranting right now about a pick off move executed by a Dodger pitcher than he says is a balk. He is still bitching about it 15 minutes later.
Dude, you’ve made your point. STFU.
YES!!!
I wept.
Let’s Go Cubbies!
Wooohoooo!
Stupid double post. But how about Kershaw? The three games we win he started 2 and closed the third. He didn’t pitch like his normal world beating self but still.
I’m in LA. Congratulations to the Dodgers.
CUBS IN FOUR!!!
Go, cubbiewubbiewubbies…
Great game. Great series. I’m exhausted.
Go Dodgers!
Dag.
Go Cubs!!
I must be oddly single minded. I took it as given that TRUE happiness required both the Giants loss and the Dodgers victory. I was willing to celebrate in stages. 
Right there with ya!
(Sorry Cubs)
As a whole, maybe, but every individual teams takes a shot, so you don’t really notice it.
Let’s suppose you have eight imaginary playoff teams, three of whom are built for a short series. All eight teams are otherwise equally talented. So the odds starting with the LDS might look like this, the first three teams being the good-in-short-series teams:
Portland: 15%
Austin: 15%
Vancouver: 15%
(Chances of a Short Series Team Winning: 45%, 7.5% higher than chance)
San Juan: 11%
Orlando: 11%
Charlotte: 11%
Las Vegas: 11%
Brooklyn: 11%
(Chances of a Regular Season Type Team Winning: 55%)
Now let’s suppose baseball decided to have 16 playoff teams. Assume six are short-series built and ten aren’t. It now might go something like this:
Portland: 8%
Austin: 8%
Vancouver: 8%
Calgary: 8%
Memphis: 8%
Indianapolis: 8%
(Chances of a Short Series Team Winning: 48%, 11.5% higher than chance.)
San Juan: 5.2%
Orlando: 5.2%
Charlotte: 5.2%
Las Vegas: 5.2%
Brooklyn: 5.2%
Montreal: 5.2%
Oklahoma City: 5.2%
Monterrey: 5.2%
Sacramento: 5.2%
Columbus: 5.2%
(Total: 52%)
As you can see it maymarginally increase the chances a short series team will win, assuming we kind of keep aligning. But just random chance is going to make it really difficult to detect this trend. The playoffs would probably be more affected by injuries than they would by this affect - a team like Cleveland losing key parts of its pitching staff is probably at a greater disadvantage than a team not “built” the right way.
So, I bailed on an opportunity to buy a ticket to last night’s game largely because I would have had no way to get home (DC Metro has some serious issues). I think I’m glad I stayed home anyway. That was…some kind of stressful. I actually turned the game off during the eighth inning and followed on my phone instead because I couldn’t stand it. Went back to watching in the ninth.
Anyone tapped into betting lines able to say how heavily favored the Cubs are, particularly since the Dodgers’ rotation is completely effed for this series?
Also, in the year-plus since I’ve lived on the east coast, I already knew I hated regular season baseball schedules fro this side of the country. But since I have a vested interest in both LC series, and nearly every game starting at 8pm, I’m about to learn a whole new kind of pain.
Apparently the Cubs are “+140” to win the World Series and the Dodgers are “+450.” As I don’t bet on sports I have no real clue what those mean, but the article I read made it clear this was good for the Cubs.
Exposing my ignorance, but I think that means if you spent $100 betting on the Cubs and they won, you’d get $140 back. Someone will be along shortly to tell me how wrong I am about that.
This reminds me that during my most recent annual December pilgrimage to Vegas, I made my usual $10 bets on both the Dodgers and Indians to win their respective pennants. I think the Dodgers had 7/1 odds at the time, but the odds on the Indians were significantly lower. And I don’t know where either of those betting slips are at the moment. I think a search will be in order this weekend. Just in case…