Another Long Season ...

Baseball is a lot like love: I’m not very good at it, and occasionally, I get fooled by the old “hidden ball” trick. Ok, that doesn't sound quite right ... let's start over: Baseball isn’t really like love at all, other than that the unbounded optimism that one has at the beginning is quickly dashed once it becomes painfully obvious, usually during the first week, that things aren’t going to end well.

Nevertheless, every spring I have high hopes, as I am one to see, upon encountering a woman whose brassiere is too large, the cups as half-full rather than half-empty (Thank you! Thank you! I’ll be here all week!), and I am enthused by the fact that my beloved World Champion (1948) Cleveland Indians are tied for in third (some might say they’re tied for last, but due to the alphabetic nature of how the standings are posted, they are ahead of both Detroit AND Minnesota, and would be even if they were listed in order of team name, rather than the city in which they play their home games. Suck it, Tigers and Twins!).

It is, of course, difficult, and perhaps even foolish, to predict the results of a full 162 game season on the basis of the first three; however, never let it be said that I let foolishness deter me from an exercise in statistical forecasting. I’ve used a simple second-order polynomial to project the results out through game six, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a reasonable modeling approach in this situation:

Above: Things are looking up!

As you can see, the Tribe will soon be scoring in excess of 80 runs per game, while their opponents (in this case, the hapless 0-3 Boston Red Sox) are on track to tally -20 in game six. Of course, one doesn’t need fancy-schmancy trending software to predict that. I mean, come on, it’s the goddamned Red Sox. Luckily for Cleveland, baseball has very little in common with love, for were I to continue with that metaphor, I’d probably have to guess that they may well never score again.

Ouch.