Additional World Series article

If you are following the World Series, here are some articles based on a combination of quant research on concepts of sports psychology by Carlton Chin, of Adamah Capital, and Jay Granat, of StayIntheZone.com (for our book, "Who Will Win the Big Game?").

___

SF fans may prefer the NY Times article -- since the article (which focuses on the numbers) leans to the Giants...

http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/which-team-has-world-series-winning-characteristics/

Texas fans may prefer this article, by my co-author, who goes for the softer "psychological" factors.

http://www.northjersey.com/community/family/reflections/105965198_Who_wins_the_World_Series_.html

For purposes of this blog's records, the "official" prediction for the World Series will remain the Giants (the original pre-World Series-published article in the NY Times) -- based on our "quant facts."

Happy Halloween!

Championship Traits that Win World Series

Please check out our article on the World Series featuring the Texas Rangers and the San Francisco Giants.


Excerpt:

After analyzing the championship games or series of the N.F.L., N.B.A., Major League Baseball and N.H.L., and the major finals in golf and tennis, we identified 50 championships characteristics in our book, “Who Will Win the Big Game? A Psychological and Mathematical Method.”

... these championship characteristics were identified by looking at World Series results, so let’s review the factors again in analyzing the World Series matchup between the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers.
_____________
Click here for the article:
http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/which-team-has-world-series-winning-characteristics/

Carlton Chin, co-founder of Adamah Capital, an alternative investment manager specializing in managed futures (with George Parr) -- and Jay Granat, founder of StayInTheZone.com, are authors of "Who Will Win the Big Game? A Psychological & Mathematical Method." They have previously written about the N.B.A. finals, the N.F.L. playoffs, and the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament for the New York Times.

Excerpt from Book Review

"The authors come from a point of view not normally addressed by, say, the general manager of a baseball team. In particular, the saber metric people have statistics and ideas that should help win a lot of baseball games during the regular season -- but do those same rules apply during the World Series? Apparently not! It is well known that not all wins are the same - the champions are not the team with the best regular season record - but the ones that win the important games. And it is this issue the authors address - specifically, what traits should one have to win championships. Indeed, this is a question more traditional statistics ignore and now it seems there is a way to address this important question."

"Who Will Win the Big Game?" by Jay Granat, PhD and Carlton Chin, CFA.

MLB Championship Series

Our predictions for baseball's Divisional Series brought the performance down to a still-respectable 16-9 record for major sporting events over the past year (for our book's research/blog). Not bad for sports psychology factors that are sometimes overlooked (and sometimes selects underdogs).

We used the following factors for our New York Times analysis:

• Pitching leadership (top of the starting rotation),
• Consistency factor (batting average),
• Minimizing errors (defense).

Based on these factors, our quant facts predict that the Yankees will meet the Phillies in the World Series.

Who Will Win the Baseball Playoffs?

Here's an excerpt and summary of some analysis I did for the New York Times:

After analyzing the championship games or series of the N.F.L., N.B.A., N.H.L. and Major League Baseball, and the major finals in golf and tennis, we identified 50 championships characteristics in our book, “Who Will Win the Big Game? A Psychological and Mathematical Method.” Here we use this research to take a look at the matchups for this year’s baseball playoffs.

Summary

Some of the sports psychology factors produced interesting results -- predicting underdogs to advance:

• The article predicts that the Reds, with their offense, and namely their "consistent" offense (league-leading batting average, in particular) will beat the Phillies.
• The sports psychology factors also point to Tampa Bay, the New York yankees, and Atlanta (another underdog) to win their series.
• The article predicts that the Reds will meet the Yankees in the World Series.

More text:

http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/which-teams-have-the-traits-of-a-champion/

http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/677712-carlton-chin-cfa/99203-who-will-win-the-baseball-playoffs?source=new_post

Prediction Update

We'll have information soon on the baseball playoffs. First, we thought we would recap the performance of our blog's performance since we started posting results related to our book's research.

With the World Cup and the US Open (Men's Tennis), our results are now 15-6. It is noteworthy, that the sport psychology factors oftentimes "key in" on less popular statistics, so that underdogs are sometimes selected.