A baseball math question. (Paging Joe B.)
I have this amazing friend named Joe. He and his brother love baseball and invented their own “game.” Its played with dice and numbers and statistics and they play whole seasons and have kept records that would make your fantasy rotisserie league look like crap. its absolutely insanely cool. I’ve known Joe for years and we spent several years in college hangin out and I always begged him into explaining it and he would say..”Uhm its very complicated and its really involved…It would take too long.” But I persist and finally he starts explaining…
And suddenly my mind starts doing the JD-from-scrubs-homer-simpson
-fantasy-cloud-over-my-head-thingy
…And I’m lost. So I say all that to say this. Joe is just an amazing person and even though we see each other rarely now, I know he reads my blog and checks in. I miss him. So this blog is for him because tonight my mind is rolling with this question that I KNOW he would know.
OK Heres the scenario. Your watching a game and a guy makes an amazing play to end the inning. His team then comes up to bat, and as a baseball fan, we always note that, sure enough, the guy who just made the great play is now the first one up. And sure enough, he hits a home run. “It figures”
Well the other night I’m listening to the red sox game on the radio. Guy makes a great play. Sure enough he leads off the next inning…But the announcers say the following
Joe: “How many times have we seen it, The guy that makes the great catch leads off the next inning”
Dave: “Yup. Really what are the odds?”
Joe: “Well…One in Nine.”
My Question is. Is that correct? And if not, What ARE the odds?
I suck at math…and I know that our announcer Joe Castiglione was just talkin…But I wanna know. I mean its 1 in 9 that the ball is hit to you but its also 1 in 9 that you’d be at bat…But the odds that both happen back to back are…
Well like I said I went to summer school for math.
Please help in the comment section so we can all learn.
BTW if you are reading this and you are NOT joe…feel free to enlighten us. Its a free for all.
Joe B. says:
Take away the ‘great play’ element and just consider the odds of the same guy making the inning-ending play AND leading off. It’s always 1 in 9 … or is it?
If a guy — let’s call him Coco — has ALREADY made the play to end the top of the inning, the odds are indeed 1 in 9 that Coco’s leading off the bottom of the inning, which is good, because he’s starting to heat up at the plate. But now I’m going to get both annoying and confusing.
But you might think that, if Coco’s standing in center with two outs, the odds of the next ball being hit to him AND him leading off the bottom of the frame are 1 in 9 squared, or 1 in 81. I was going to post that … but then I started thinking, we already KNOW who’s leading off the bottom half, right? It is a known quantity, not a 1 in 9 chance. So reverse your thinking: the best way to see the problem would be, what are the odds that whoever’s leading off the bottom half will make the inning-ending play to end the top half?
For example, if Drew’s leading off the bottom half, there’s a 1 in 9 chance of the final out of the top half heading his way, right? And if Youk’s leading off the home half, there’s a 1 in 9 chance of the ball being hit to HIM, right?
Well, no. It’s never EXACTLY 1 in 9. That’s because you have to factor in strikeouts, and also the fact that not every position has equal odds at fielding the next batted ball. I’m sure the shortstop gets more chances than the catcher, and the pitcher’s hardly ever allowed to field anything in the air. And these odds change depending on the type of pitcher (sinkerballers get more grounders) and the type of hitter he’s facing (Papi doesn’t fly out to left very often).
Or we could just say 1 in 9 and go the hell to bed.
I miss you too. We have full minor leagues now, by the way.
June 23rd, 2007 at 5:44 am