More Notes On National Pastime 13s And 14s
The Puzzle Continues
More Notes On National Pastime 13s And 14s
I haven’t quite had the time to look at every possible explanation for the strange doings of 13s and 14s in National Pastime.
However, I have noticed a few odd things. Here are a few things I’ve discovered.
The Team Question
I haven’t actually gotten to this part yet in my analysis. I guess I should put out a spoiler alert.
We know that Clifford Van Beek assigned error numbers based on the number of errors each team gave up in real life.
The idea is that the batters for teams that gave up fewer errors would have more error play result numbers. Similarly, teams that gave up a lot of errors in real life would have fewer error play result numbers. This was a very primitive attempt at differentiating error totals without actually creating an error system.
We’ll look at that in more detail later. However, it does make you wonder whether Van Beek might have done something similar with strikeout and walk totals.
Let’s see if this pattern holds for either 13s or 14s.
Team Strikeouts In National Pastime
I’ll make this simple. Here’s a list of the numbers of 13s for each team in National Pastime, from lowest to highest. The next column has the batting strikeouts for each team; the column after that has the pitching strikeouts for each team.
Can you see any pattern here? I can’t.
Seriously — I can’t see any pattern here at all. There is no correlation. These numbers simply have nothing to do with each other.
That tells me that the decisions to assign 13s to hitters is based on something different than team statistics. We also know that the decision was likely not based on individual hitter statistics, since there seems to be so much noise in the data.
Team Walks In National Pastime
Let’s take a similar look at walks.
You can’t make a case here. These numbers have nothing to do with each other. Again, something else is going on here.
Won-Loss Percentage
The other idea I had is that won-loss percentage might have something to do with it.
Again, there’s simply no pattern here. The Phillies and the Cardinals were on opposite ends of the standings, and yet had almost the same number of 13s and 14s. In fact, the Phillies had three more 13s.
I’m not sure what the answer is here. I do know, however, what it’s not.