I don't know why I care, but sometimes I do. Log over to ESPN and check the previews of the day's games and it's usually not more than a 60% likelihood of winning a game, unless it's, say, Santana vs. Washington and even that only yields a 69/31 split according to ESPN. I never seem to see them predicting a Philadelphia loss. I do mean never. What's more, the Phillies/Marlins game tonight? They're calling it 71/29 Phillies. I hardly think that's such a runaway game, not like it's some highly mismatched pitching matchup or anything. Remember, this is the Marlins team that started to run away with it with their 10-, 11-, 12-game or whatever it was winning streak last month before their crash.
Santana I think gives the Mets a bit more than a 69% shot tonight.
Situational Winning %'s
ESPN is my favorite site, I have it as my home page, and there's a lot of cool things to see over there. One of them is the Gamecast, which is like watching the game without really watching. As I've said before, it shows you the feild, the defenders, the current pitcher/batter and their respective stats, those players' splits according to the current situation, and a summary of each play in the game so far.
But one of the coolest features, I think, is the Accuscore Protexted winning percentages for each team. Basically the computer reviews every game from every team for as long as we have records to find identical situations, and then, based on the score, inning, # of outs, batting/pitching stats, and count generates a % chance that each team has of winning. So say the Mets are up 4-2 in the 6th inning, and you're ever wondering how good the Mets' chances are of winning are; it can tell you an exact %! Or if the Mets are down 3 in the 7th inning and its getting late and your debating whether or not to stay up for the rest of it, it will tell you how good a chance the Mets have of pulling off an improbably upset. It is constantly updating throughout the game, and I find it amazing how much it changes on even 1 pitch. So maybe a team trailing 3-1 in the 4th inning with 1 out and 2 men on, 1-1 count, and he watches a strike to make it a 1-2 count...that one seemingly irrelevant pitch can make a percentage change of like 4% sometimes, because w/2 strikes he is more prone to grounging into a double play and ending the rally. Just a cool feature I like to watch sometimes to give me some idea of how worried/excited I should be.
Chances Of Winning
Fortunately we got the win even though Santana was not nearly at his best. Almost any team playing the Nationals should have a 90% chance of winning. The Nats are that bad.
Haha
Yes, even though the worst of the worst manage a winning percentage of at least .300 (so your 10% thing was an exaggeration) I agree the Nats are pathetic.
One of my favorite non-Yogi Berra baseball quotes of all time came from, of all people, Ralph Nader. He was in DC campiagning for a spot on the National Debate alongside the Republican and Democrat candidates when he asked a reporter there why he was willing to cover Obama and McCain, but not him. The reporter andwered "Well, because you have no chance at winning". Nader replied "Well then why do you cover the Nationals?"
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