Now is as good a time as any to say how big of a FiveThirtyEight fan I am. Nate Silver’s site publishes the best data-driven stories on the web (NY Times’ Upshot is another good one to check out if you’re interested, but it has a decidedly more economic bent). Silver and his colleagues do an amazing job of bring data to bear on any question they can think up, and lucky for me that often includes baseball. If you want to see what I mean, take a look at the pieces that they published in the last 24 hours:
The Complete History of the MLB, an interactive, Elo rating-based way to compare teams throughout baseball history.
2016 MLB Predictions (along with an explanation) also uses Elo, but this time to project the remainder of each team’s performance this season. A nice touch is that this one updates after each game.
FiveThirtyEight has gotten some real mileage out of using Elo ratings to compare basketball and football teams, but this looks like the biggest project they have tackled using the rating system, working with data going back over 100 years.
I plan on keeping my eyes on the 2016 predictions for the rest of the season, and I have already had a ton of fun going back and comparing teams from 100 years ago. So far, it looks like my own Pittsburgh Pirates still haven’t managed to reach their apogee of the turn of the 20th century, even with the recent run of competitive teams. Adding to my frustration, the damnable Chicago Cubs have the highest stock that they’ve had in decades. Everyone gets their moment in the sun, I suppose.
developingbio 