{"id":513,"date":"2012-09-21T17:09:56","date_gmt":"2012-09-22T00:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/?p=513"},"modified":"2012-09-21T17:25:04","modified_gmt":"2012-09-22T00:25:04","slug":"2012-abl-playoff-odds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mfooz.com\/bblog\/?p=513","title":{"rendered":"2012 ABL Playoff Odds"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was curious about the chances playoff teams have of getting to the Bambino Cup Finals and their chances of being crowned ABL champions. The playoff structure itself has a big impact, for example, the division champions have shorter roads to the cup. Of course, the relative strength of each team is very important, but how can that be measured?<\/p>\n

First, let’s consider the playoff structure in isolation. Assume that all playoff teams have equal strength. If that’s the case, then the chance of winning a game or a series is 50%, a coin flip. A division champ (C-Bay or Orlando) has to win two series, so they have to flip a coin twice and have it come up heads both times. That’s one chance in four, 25%. A team with a one-game showdown to get into the lower bracket (LBI or Manahawkin) has win four<\/em> series. The chance of having heads come up four times in a row is only one in 16, 6.25%. The probabilities of the 2012 playoff teams winning the ABL Championship under these conditions are shown in the table below.<\/p>\n

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Now let’s look at team strength: how to measure it, and how to use it to determine the probability of winning a game and a series. Bill James applied some statistics to the question of how to measure the probability of one team beating another in one game. He called it log5<\/a>, and it uses winning percentage to measure team strength. I’ll use the ABL regular-season winning percentages for this exercise.<\/p>\n

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The log5 method works for one game, but what about a best-of-five or best-of-seven series? Well, there are formulas<\/a> for that too. So now we can use these formulas to calculate the probabilities of teams reaching<\/em> the finals. Three pages of scratch paper later…<\/p>\n

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Quite a spread, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

One more series of calculations (and three more sheets of paper) gives the ultimate probabilities of teams getting their name on the hardware in 2012.<\/p>\n

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A superior winning percentage sure indicates a big advantage in the playoffs. Of course, this is simply a cold calculation based on only the playoff structure and the teams’ winning percentages. Among the factors this calculation does not<\/em> take into account are:<\/p>\n