Top games of the (short) week: Sept. 25-28
Alas, the end of the regular season is upon us. Here are the top five most exciting games from the season’s (short) last week, as determined by Max Marchi’s methodology.
date game stars 09-27 Reds @ Mets **** box score 09-28 Phillies @ Braves *** box score 09-25 Red Sox @ Yankees *** box score 09-26 Cardinals @ Astros * box score 09-28 Royals @ Twins * box score
Just when it looked like it was safe to crown the Sept. 4 Phillies-Marlins contest as the best game of the year, the Sept. 27 Reds-Mets contest—played on the second-to-last day of the regular season—beat it out for the title of 2011’s most exciting game.
Due to a correction, the Phillies-Marlins game was demoted from four to three stars, and the May 18th Yankees-Orioles contest took over second place after being promoted from three to four stars. Since 2009, only two games besides these two have earned a four-star rating.
In the Reds-Mets contest, Cincinnati tied New York at 4-4 in the top of the ninth on Juan Francisco’s two-out double and then pulled ahead in the 13th on Drew Stubbs’ sacrifice. The Mets lost shortly after, as they failed to capitalize on four Francisco Cordero walks in the bottom of the inning.
Now, the top five games of the month of September.
date game stars 09-27 Reds @ Mets **** box score 09-04 Phillies @ Marlins *** box score 09-24 Rockies @ Astros *** box score 09-28 Phillies @ Braves *** box score 09-25 Red Sox @ Yankees *** box score
Despite this week being only four days, it produced three of the month’s top five games. Three of the year’s top ten games were played in this month as well.
Check back soon for a breakdown of the year’s top five games and an in-depth look at the year’s top-ranked Sept. 27 Reds-Mets game.
Gerald – I was curious about that too, so I did some research on the scores that the factor analysis gave (explained in Max Marchi’s article that I link to at the top of the page) to the Rays game and came up with a couple reasons.
The importance of the game on the Rays and Red Sox seasons is not yet factored in to how the top games are determined. We are looking into adding this (via the CLI, or Championship Leverage Index – the end of Max’s article touches on this), since obviously the playoff implications made the game much more exciting and as a result it should be factored into the calculations.
Also, and more technically, the game scored highly on factor 1 and factor 2, or the ‘late game importance’ and ‘rally’ factors, but it scored low on factor 3, or ‘equilibrium.’ Since the game only became exciting in the last couple innings, rather than a consistent back-and-forth affair, it was penalized by the top game calculations. This is also something we might look into altering slightly, since it seems to downplay short but intense excitement in favor of long but less intense excitement. Like Max said in his article, this can be a matter of preference from person to person, so it is hard to quantify – but there may be room for improvement there anyway.
In the near future I’m going to do a more in-depth analysis of the top game itself and the top game calculation system in general as well, so hopefully that will help explain things too.
How does the Rays game 162 NOT make an appearance?!?!