In an effort to keep with the spirit of this blog, I included the methods used so others can learn. Feel free to skim to the results if that's all you want.
I did an unpublished version of some of these with NFL ratings last winter, and felt that some might translate over into baseball.
The spreadsheet I used is located here on Google drive for reference.
Biggest MLB Upsets in 2016 (so far) --- According to Elo
This is a simple analysis. The absolute value in Elo ratings was taken:
=ABS(Home Elo - Away Elo)And then a simple If/then filter was applied to runs scored to determine if the team with the lower rating won.
=IF(OR(AND(Runs Scored<Runs Allowed,Home Elo>Away Elo),AND(Runs Allowed>Runs Scored, Away Elo<Home Elo)),1,0)Or, in English:
- If one of these conditions are true
- A. Home team scored less points than away team AND home team was rated higher
- B. Away team scored less points than home team AND home team was rated lower
- THEN return a 1
- Else, return a 0
Then these results were sorted by the above condition, and then by the absolute difference of Elo ratings.
I highlighted the Cubs just to make a point. As mentioned above, I did the same thing last winter for NFL Elo ratings, and the results made much clearer sense. I think this highlights a major difference between the two sports. The sheer number of games played in baseball lends itself to being less of a surprise that the Cubs were a part of 9/10 of the top 10 upsets this season. Whereas the Patriots losing to the Dolphins last winter was a much bigger deal.
2016's "Boringist" Games
A similar analysis was done, but instead sorted by the higher rating team winning and a difference in runs using the formula:
=ABS(Runs - Runs Allowed)
This would give a list of "boring games", where the higher rated team won and by a lot of runs. One might think that the stands were rather empty for these.
2016's "Closest" Games
Here's the flipside, where I sorted on games with the lowest Elo difference, and that were only won by one run.
Best,
Bryce