Politics

In Baseball and Politics, The Lessons Of History Are True Until They Aren’t

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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Last night, the San Francisco Giants defied modern history by winning game 7 on the road against the Kansas City Royals. But if you were a gambler, you might well have put your money on KC. After all, the previous nine road teams had lost game 7. In fact, the road team hadn’t won a game 7 since 1979, when the Baltimore Orioles lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

And yet, it happened.

The lesson, I think, is that while some eye-popping statistics make for great trivia questions, they are otherwise meaningless. Just because there is a high correlation between the Redskins winning a home game and the incumbent president’s party holding the White House, doesn’t mean it’s any more or less likely to happen this time.

Correlations can be spurious, so while we should use statistics to help inform us, we must also be careful not to attribute meaning to random events. Sometimes it helps to increase your sample size. When it comes to game 7s, that’s the case. Though recent history seemed to bode well for KC, prior to 1979, the away team had won 13 of 16 game 7s.

What to make of this stunning reversal? It could mean that something big changed around 1979, or (more likely) that the law of averages just kicked in. When you look at which team won the last 25 game 7s, there’s not much of a discernible difference (in fact, it’s almost a flip of the coin).

Statistics can inform analysis, but it also helps to know a bit about the game. There are some sports where home field advantage seems very important. If you’re playing the Seahawks in Seattle, for example, they have a decided advantage. Baseball parks have unique dimensions, which could favor the home team. Additionally, the home team gets to bat last, which is a clear advantage. And yet, based on observation, home field advantage seems to mean very little in baseball. But that’s an anecdotal statement. Let’s look at the numbers.

Last year, Bleacher Report looked at the previous decade’s worth of postseason MLB games and found that “the team with home-field advantage won only 37 of those matchups, which translates to 51 percent overall. Basically, home field holds no advantage in baseball.”

So why am I devoting so much time to baseball? There’s a lesson here, and I suspect it transcends sports. In fact, I suspect we make some of these same mistakes with political analysis (or rather, punditry). I’m reminded of something I wrote recently:

“Well, the lessons of history are true until they aren’t. They said it was unlikely that three consecutive presidents would get two terms — especially when the public is so distrustful of institutions — and yet Obama got his. They said Virginia always elects a governor of the opposite party of the president, until Terry McAuliffe was elected on the heels of Obama’s re-election. They said that a majority leader hadn’t lost a primary since the 1890s…until it happened to Eric Cantor. And so on.”

 Life is full of maxims, and wisdom is knowing which ones to follow on any given occasion. Likewise, life is full of statistics, but wisdom is in discerning which ones are actually predictive.  Here’s famed baseball statistician Bill James, circa 1988:

“A statistician is concerned what baseball statistics ARE. I had no concern with what they are. I didn’t care, and I don’t care, whether Mike Schmidt hit .306 or .296 against left-handed pitching. I was concerned with what the statistics MEAN.”

So what’s the lesson? Whether we’re looking at elections or baseball games, we should be more skeptical of using history as a predictor of future events. The guy who drops staggering statistics always sounds smart, and often wins the debate. It is, after all, hard to argue with facts and history and numbers.

Or, as they say, lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Matt K. Lewis