Monday, October 17, 2016

"What are the odds?" That My Softball Team Makes the Co-Ed Novice League Playoff for 1st Place

The following is a shameless plug for my Clark County Co-Ed Novice softball team in league 480SBM04 - Adult Softball League Co-Ed Novice Mon, "Analyze This":

We're currently 1 game out of first place with the final two games of the season tonight, and if there's a tie for first, those teams involved enter a playoff for first in the league. I applied the MDS Model to our league to gauge the "true" win percentage for each team by runs scored/runs against (adjusted for strength of schedule):


RankHome TeamRFRAPyth
1We Are Here To Drink200800.842
2Bunting for Pitches181850.800
3Analyze This170870.773
4Comic Relief1421080.623
5Pitch Better Have My Money1011490.329
6Pitches Get Stitches721250.267
7Somerset Stephanie741460.224
8Bright Futures Pediatrics231830.022

Here's the scenario: we're playing "Pitch Better Have My Money" twice, with the top 2 teams in the league, "We Are Here to Drink" and "Bunting for Pitches" also playing twice. If "Bunting for Pitches" can win one or both of those games and we sweep our series, we'll be tied in first place and will head to the playoff. 

So I calculated the odds of this happening, since that scenario is very straight forward. Using our Pyth ratings to project win probabilities, we have an 87.41% chance of beating our opponent in each game (favored by 4.93 runs in each game, with a 76.40% shot to sweep them 2-0). 

There's a 67.18% chance "Bunting for Pitches" beats "We Are Here to Drink" either once (in which case we would face "We Are Here to Drink") or twice (in which case we would face "Bunting for Pitches"). 

Assuming the two series are independent gives 67.18% * 76.40% = 51.33% chance of making the playoff.

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