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Comment by suzzer99 | Hacker News Reader

Each baseball game is so high variance that even a 5 or 7 game series is still largely a crap shoot. Unlike the NFL or NBA, any MLB team that makes the playoffs has a puncher's chance to with the title. It's one of the beauties of the game. (Unless you're a Dodgers fan.)

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This highlights one of the things I've always loved about baseball as a sport ... and always bugged the shit out of me about college football.

Why would a game of baseball be any more high variance than an NFL game?

On the face of it, NFL’s playoff of a single game deciding forward progress seems more high variance, rather than a best of x series.

Football also seems more high variance just due to the explosive, physical nature of the game.

I wonder what the stats say about lower seeds winning the tournament for MLB vs NFL playoffs.

https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/6/5/15740632/luck-skill-spor...

Why it’s so much harder to predict winners in hockey than basketball

The way I look at it is the Patriots in '85 had maybe a 1 in 10 chance to beat the Bears in the Super Bowl. And I think that's being charitable.

Meanwhile the best regular season team of my lifetime, the '01 Seattle Mariners, still only win maybe 75% to 80% of the time vs. the historically terrible 2024 White Sox.

Now put the '85 Bears against a historically inept team instead of one of the other best teams in the league that year. I'm not sure the '76 Buccaneers win 1 game out of 100.

It's just not possible to physically dominate a game in baseball the way it is in football.

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