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Alternate Baseball Universes

Posted by kdawson on from the say-it-ain't-so-joe dept.

Jamie found a NYTimes op-ed by a grad student and a professor from Cornell, outlining some research they did into alternate baseball universes. The goal was to find out how unlikely in fact was Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, played out in the 1941 season. No one since has even come close to that record. The math guys ran simulations of the entire history of baseball from 1885 on — 10,000 of them. For each simulation they put each player up to the plate for each at-bat in each game in each year, just like it happened; and they rolled the dice on him, based on his actual hitting stats for that season. (Their algorithm sounds far simpler than whatever the Strat-O-Matic guys use.) The result: Joltin' Joe's record is not merely likely, it's basically a sure thing. Every alternate universe produced a streak of 39 games or better; one reached 109 games. Joe DiMaggio was not the likeliest player in the history of the game to accomplish the record, not by a long shot.

1 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If its so likely, they why hasn't it happened? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The early years tended to be batting competitions (in some ways like today's) rather than pitching competitions If by "early years", you mean 1920 and later, yeah.

    Otherwise, buddy, you're way off base.

    NL year-by-year stats.

    Look at those ERAs pre-1920. Before 1920, the ERA on the NL never significantly exceeded 3.00. After 1920, it never dropped below 3.3 or so, with the exception of a 2.99 in 1968, after which MLB made changes to the rules, amongst them lowering the acceptable height of the pitcher's mound.

    The time prior to 1920 was marked by pitchers such as Cy Young, Mordecai Brown, Walther Johnson, Ed Walsh, Christy Mathewson. You've probably heard of most of them.

    Here are the single-season MLB ERA leaders. Outside of Bob Gibson in the aforementioned 1968, you have to go all the way to Greg Maddux in 1994 at #48 all time to find a season after 1920 on the list. Barely 10 of the 100 lowest single-season ERAs in MLB history occurred after 1920. And that's only because Pedro Martinez in 2000 and Ron Guidry in 1978 tied with 9 others for #100 on the list. So only 8 of the best single-season ERAs happened after 1920.

    You need to research "dead ball era", and the response by baseball to "Black Sox". (Hint: just like the response to the 1994 strike, it involves the ball...)

    The fact that you got a +5 out of such a demonstrably incorrect post is a major indictment of the baseball knowledge of the Slashdot faithful.