Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
September 27, 2004
Ichiro Odds

Ichiro Suzuki had 1 hit yesterday as the Mariners continue to spoil the playoff hopes of the AL West teams. Their 9-0 victory yesterday prevented Texas from gaining ground on Oakland. The following probabilities are based on Ichiro getting 31 more AB in 7 games.

Chance of 258 HitsBased on 2004Based on Career
Probability of Breaking Record.974.940
95% Confidence, Low End66
95% Confidence, High End1716

As the number of trials go down, the confidence ranges are starting to merge. The mid point is about 11 more hits, so unless he sits after breaking the record, it appears he'll break it by a good amount.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:15 AM | Records | TrackBack (0)
Comments

I know it's not your job to teach us all probability, but it would be educational if you could explain to us how you worked this table out...

Posted by: Hudson at September 27, 2004 05:56 PM

Now there's a good idea.

Also, I think I'd be safe in betting that this record is never going to be approached again. Start throwing rocks, now, folks. :)

Posted by: Linkmeister at September 27, 2004 09:35 PM

After last night's game Ichiro needed 7 hits in 7 games.

My friend and I figured out a couple different methods of finding these probabilities.

1) Take all the consecutive 7 game periods this season, and for each of them, find the number of hits Ichiro has had in them. Ichiro has at least 7 hits in 132 of 148 of these 7-game periods. This puts the probability around 89% .

2) Sum the probability of each breakdown of 7 game period that would add up to less than 7 hits (the probability of Ichiro getting 7 0-hit games plus the probality of Ichiro getting 6 0-hit games and 1 1-hit game plus the probability of Ichiro getting 5 1-hit games and 2 0-hit games, etc.) This puts the probability very high. I haven't actually finished that calculation yet, but it looks like it will end up around 98-99% .

The huge difference between the two methods (and perhaps between Pinto's method and my first method), is that method 1) accounts for Ichiro's streakiness, while method 2) assumes a random distribution of games.

Posted by: Will Levine at September 27, 2004 10:32 PM

Anyone remember the idiot Scott Miller's article about Ichiro last week that caused a little controversy? Here is his response.

http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/story/7714382

I, like many others, sended him an e-mail about it, appearantly I wasn't good enough to make him cry about it.

Scott Miller, you're the idiot of the month! and no, I'm not a nobel prize winner.

Posted by: Frank at September 28, 2004 04:12 PM