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Baseball

The MLB Coin-Flipping Contest

What are the chances that wild-card teams will make it to the World Series and win?
One anomaly this year is that Seattle didn’t qualify for the playoffs even though it had a better record than the Central Division winner, Minnesota. Read More ›
Baseball fans and crowd cheering in stadium and watching the game in ballpark. Happy people enjoying a match and sport event in arena. Friends watching ballgame live.

The World Series: What the Luck?

Who will win the World Series? I don’t know, but I do know that baseball is the quintessential game of luck

Think about it. Line drives hit right at fielders, mis-hit balls dying in the infield. Fly balls barely caught and barely missed. Balls called strikes and strikes called balls. Even the best batters make twice as many outs as hits. Even the best teams lose more than a third of their games. This season, the Houston Astros had the highest win percentage (66.0%) in baseball, yet they lost two out of six games to Baltimore, which only won a third of their games—not because Baltimore was the better team, but because Baltimore was the luckier team in those two games. The Astros are one of the 10 best teams this season (along with the Yankees, Tampa Bay, Minnesota, Cleveland, Oakland, Read More ›