I've been seeing people cite these CoolStandings.com graphs all over the damn place. Over at Geoff Baker's blog, USS Mariner: Your Mariner sources are all over this thing with the "the Mariners have only a 4% chance of making the playoffs" because CoolStandings says so.
CoolStandings is not cool. It's borderline useless.
Let's take a look at the AL "CoolStandings" from May 31st, 2006.
Ok, looks like they got the AL East pretty good. But check out the AL Central. According to "Cool Standings" Minnesota had less than a .1% chance of making the playoffs. But if you'll remember, Minnesota ended up with the 2nd-best record in the American League.
Check out the West--Texas? With an 83% chance of winning the division? Do you remember ever thinking that at any point last year, that the Rangers looked like a good shot to win the West? Of course not--everyone knew they'd fold, and they did. Oakland, given barely a 10% chance to win the division, won it.
There may be useful things in CoolStandings--their current standings gives the 22-29 Yankees a three-times-better chance of winning the division than 22-29 Tampa Bay...that makes sense to me.
But still--the Yankees with only a 1.5% chance of winning the division? That's a 66-1 chance. Ask yourself: if you were a bookie, would you offer those odds?
CoolStandings isn't going to tell who who's going to get hot, who's going to get hurt, who's going to get acquired, or really anything much more than what the standings would tell you. Want a more reliable indicator of how likely a team is to make it in October? Follow the money. Ask Vegas.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Everyone Just Cool Out with CoolStandings.com
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4 comments:
I agree to a certain extent, since it is only going off of performance to that point in the year and doesn't take anything else into account -- as Vegas does.
But I think it's useful in the sense that it can give you an idea of how what your team has done so far is impacting its chances of making the playoffs.
Oh, and there's an EASY explanation for the screwball AL West predictions: Coolstandings works off of Bill James' pythagorean theorum of runs for/runs against, and Texas was the only one on the positive side, so naturally any simulation would put them on top by a large margin.
Also pretty convenient that you left out the NL standings from May 31, 2006 -- pretty much had three of the four teams nailed except for San Diego/Arizona.
Besides, are you confident that this Mariners team is going to get markedly better at some point, through trade or otherwise, that makes the 13.6 percent figure grossly inaccurate?
I'm not sure I get your point...
Like anything other statistic, it's a tool. Based on what has happened thus far in the season, this is how likely a team is to make the playoffs. I don't think it's billed as anything more than a simple model to quickly gauge a team. (as Nuss points out the math isn't complicated.
I don't think the Bakers or the Zumstegs of the world have treated it any differently. In fact, Baker has specifically noted how 1 win could dramatically affect the "Cool Standings".
Good points, both. It's really not much different than saying, "if the season ended today..." which of course I do all the time. I guess it's sort of assigning a number value to that.
I'll say this though--if anyone wants to give me 66-1 odds on the Yankees winning the division, I'll take that bet.
I'm with you on that one.
By the way, the M's now have a 19 percent chance of making the playoffs, in case you were curious. ;-)
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