Saturday, March 08, 2008
The War of the Roses (Part 4 of an Ongoing Series)
If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm distracting myself from the vagaries of Health Economics and the trenchant, profound political "analysis" of the ProgLib Blogsphere—not to mention tomorrow's memorial—by going through the data from Coate (2008), available in PDF form here.*
I've found a minor mistake in the Coate data; at least two games allocated to the Chicago White Sox (AL) are actually Cubs games (NL). So the data presented below may have minor differences from the previous three posts.
One of the things about making a bet is that there are two possible motivations: one might be betting for a team, or one might be betting against the other team. So it might be worth looking (again, excluding bets involving the Reds) at which teams have large differentials (in both absolute and result basis). So, as a first run:
There is a difference between "0" and a blank in the above data. Using the example of the Atlanta Braves, Rose bet for the team 12 times: he won six and he lost six, leaving a net of zero (0).
By contrast, and following up to the issue raised in a previous post regarding his previous teams, there is NO indication in the data that he bet FOR the Montreal Expos, so there is a blank or null in that field.**
Also, in some cases, one might believe that a team has a significant advantage due to playing at home due, for instance, to the shape of the ballpark and the team developed to play in it.*** So, especially in the absence of other information, there might be a bet placed on a home team with such a park. Following is the bets on a general basis, broken down by league and home/road team being favored. (Again, the Reds are excluded.)
More ongoing.
*CREDIT UPDATE: Some data in this portion available from Baseball-Reference.com and/or Baseball Almanac.
**Similarly, he never bet against the Toronto Blue Jays, betting on them ten times during the period, winning seven and losing three for a net of +4. Other than the Canadian teams, all of the zeroes on the summary table indicate the net result of an even number of bets.
***There are teams that have had a significant advantage playing on the road, of course, but such advantages generally appear later in the season.
Labels: baseball, efficient markets, Rutgers
