When I posted in my "Oakland A's Team of Destiny" thread almost three weeks a go that my eyes told me that the Rangers were slumping and the A's could very well run us down, I was belittled by multiple posters claiming my "Recency Bias" was being displayed....that Sabermetrics, fWAR, WAR, BABIP, E=MC2, etc proved the Rangers would win the Division and the A's would only be a wild card.

Well, I hope this is a good lesson for all you Statistical elitists in the future....sometimes reality has to be accepted for what it reveals. Baseball is a funny game that can NEVER be concretely predicted by computers and formulas....sometimes momentum, slumps, players, managers, and other unseen factors DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE in the outcome of games and more importantly SEASONS.

Hey RFan...you told me and others two weeks ago that Baseball Prospectus said the A's only had a 21% chance of winning the Division and the Rangers had a 79% of clinching....thus, no need for any debate. How you feeling about all that Sabermetrics voodoo math you have been spouting for months?

I posted it there and I'll post it again..

21% chance is just that.. 21%. It's not 0. You act like just because BP said they had a 21% chance, they were done for and the Rangers have the division locked down for sure. That just means in every five scenarios, the A's clinched the division once. Unfortunately, we don't have five alternate realities. If the A's win tomorrow, then that just means the one unlucky scenario plays out and the other four don't.

Weatherman says there's a 20% chance of rain. Does that mean it won't rain? Absolutely not. It's like you're yelling at the meteorologist for being wrong because when you stepped outside, it rained.

If you won the lottery, would you suddenly think statistics is dumb to say your chances of winning were 1 in 170 million?

Improbable things happen, that's life.

Hell just think, we all were conceived from one egg out of like a hundred thousand, and one sperm from like 100 million. That's like a 1 in like 10E40 chance...

Anything is possible.

I don't consider myself a guru, but I'll tell you that if that's what you want to hear. That won't make it come true, though.

The Rangers, lately, have not been consistently playing like a team that will win a championship. They've looked great some days and awful on others. There's no telling how they'll do tomorrow. Or Friday.

The odds of things that happen overall don't mean much regarding one individual event.

Wonder what Oaklands WAR is?? LMAO

Wonder what Oaklands WAR is?? LMAO

With all due respect, go back to ESPN.com, please.

ESPN.com? That is the best reply you can come up with? Come on man, crunch the numbers and tell us what our percentage chance of winning tomorrow is so I don't have to sweat out the actual game!!

About 50% (maybe a little better). And if we lose tomorrow, then our chances of winning the wildcard game are about 50% (maybe a little better). So we have about a 75% chance of making it into the ALDS at this point (maybe a little better).

Either way. Life will go on. Maintain perspective. It's just baseball. I've been watching this game for a long time. One thing that I've learned is that pinning your hopes and dreams to the outcome of one baseball game is folly. I recommend that you just enjoy the ride.

This is exciting stuff we're about to witness tomorrow!

Yes "exciting" is the perfect word for blowing a 13-game lead over OAK and possibly being eliminated before the real playoffs even start

"It's just baseball". "Maintain perspective". This coming from geniuses that no doubt spend hours studying these meaningless numbers..........

Baseball is a probability game, not the work of psychics. There are too many variables at play. None of us claim that the SABR word is God, but it is a valuable tool in predicting events moving forward, whether you choose to sneeze at it or not.

And yeah, the fact of the matter is you're probably going to be called dumb if you're saying Oakland would make up 13 games in 3 months. That's just the way it is. The odds of it happening are incredibly minuscule, but crazy things happen. And, well, it happened.

Take last night's game for example. Twice the Rangers had runners on base and less than two outs, and both Mike Napoli and Josh Hamilton hit the ball about as hard as someone possibly can, and they went directly at infielders, one resulting in a double play and the other nearly turning into one.

The problem I have with you anti-saber people is that you don't even give it a chance. You don't look up what everyone is talking about to try to learn something new. Judging things you don't understand because you've never taken the time to understand them will bring you no love on this site.

I think you're being unfair to the statistical crowd. While everyone knows I disagree with some of the flawed ideas that they come up with, it is part of a discussion. Some people enjoy being behind home plate every game and keeping score. Some people enjoy drinking beer and yelling at the tv. Some people allways have the game on in the evenings and doing things while they watch. Others enjoy the statistics involved.

How other people enjoy the game is really not your concern as long as you can enjoy it the way you prefer to do so. Writing a flame post is really not becoming of you, RangerRed. I, too, saw with my eyes and have been telling all who would listen that we were done over a month ago-and got flamed for it. But meh, it is another person's opinion and it is kinda low-class to go back and blame the weatherman when he predicts 80% rain and you didn't get any.

Statistics show what has happened, and can be predictive-I don't think I have read any of the guys making "This shall happen" statements based on a given set of numbers. Let it go, take some medication and start thinking happy thoughts.

Don't feed the trolls.

Guys....I am a baseball fan, so therefore I LOVE all aspects of baseball talk....even Sabermetrics, it does make the game more interesting to discuss. But it seems a few take SABR too seriously, almost as if it were Gospel, I don't. I use it to help develop a general idea of how things are or will go, but don't take them that seriously. The games still have to be played and they are played by human beings with real emotions and those subject factors can never be concretely judged by computers or formulas.

Ignorance Gurus!!!! All will be OK tomorrow. Life will go on.

Most ridiculous comment ever made on this site - "Wonder what Oaklands WAR is?? LMAO"

Solid insult dude. Everyone's stumling at a loss of words now.

I know this is intended to be an insult, but it just shows that spending time discussing sports with you would be a useless waste of time. Like a little kid, plugging his ears, yelling "I CAN"T HEAR YOU, I CAN't HEAR YOU."

According to fangraphs right now, our win expectancy is 50%. I'll take it.

Crow:
Coming from you-I consider that a compliment.

Crow:
Coming from you-I consider that a compliment.

I think you're missing the point. SABR only points out what's probable, not what will happen. As we all know, what's probable doesn't always happen.

Statistics may say the probability of heads over tails is 50%. With your logic, you're saying just because you toss the coin 5 times and it was tails 4 times, the logic behind calculating a coin toss is invalid and you shouldn't treat the 50% seriously.

You're welcom B F. Glad to see it was well received.