E-Score: entertaining baseball games and you
While watching the Red Sox-Yankees Series over the weekend, I got into an argument with one of my friends about whether these games were enjoyable or not (Red Sox fan) I was thinking, how do I quantify a baseball game’s entertainment value, mainly to prove him wrong. Since I don't recall ever seeing anything that measures how "good" or "entertaining" a game was, what I've done is develop a preliminary Entertainment Score for a baseball game, or an E-Score. The methodology I used was essentially Bill James’ pitcher Game Score rating. It's not the prettiest method but I wanted to use this mainly to figure out a way to rank the greatest baseball games, As I think that the 14 inning game on Friday was really entertaining, but wanted to see how it compared to other "great" games like the 2003 ALCS and such. I should note I envision E-Score being context and team-neutral, while I realize a lot of entertainment is derived from the context like standings and WC etc, I wanted to measure the quality of the game itself. (Like if you went to a PIT-KC game)
The issue I've run into is that after spending 30 or such minutes on google, it's kinda hard to find a list of "great" baseball games. I know there's a book that talks about the best 100 games and I'm stopping by the bookstore tomorrow, but I want some fairly recent games (like 1990+). So that's why I'm here, I've made a couple so far that I've found and off the top of my head but I was wondering if y'all had any favorite games or exciting games you remembered, and if you could share them, it would really, really help me figure out a way to rank the games.
Here's what I've got so far:
| Date | Away | Home | Game | Pit | Inn | Event | E-Score |
| 7/4/1985 | NYM | ATL | 192.2 | -63.1 | 114.0 | 0.0 | 243.1 |
| 1975 WS G6 | CIN | BOS | 110.6 | -7.7 | 73.5 | 20.0 | 196.4 |
| 1986 NLCS G6 | NYM | HOU | 103.9 | -18.0 | 95.5 | 5.0 | 186.4 |
| 8/7/2009 | BOS | NYY | 55.1 | -29.4 | 130.0 | 20.0 | 175.7 |
| 2003 ALCS G7 | BOS | NYY | 109.3 | -13.8 | 46.5 | 20.0 | 162.0 |
| Ryan No-No | TOR | TEX | 57.8 | 25.1 | 3.0 | 75.0 | 160.9 |
| 1968 WS G7 | DET | STL | 49.9 | 35.8 | 22.0 | 50.0 | 157.7 |
| 2001 WS G7 | NYY | ARZ | 77.1 | 13.3 | 39.5 | 20.0 | 149.9 |
| 8/9/2009 | BOS | NYY | 78.4 | 11.2 | 26.5 | 5.0 | 121.1 |
| 1982 WS G7 | MIL | STL | 72.6 | 16.3 | 21.0 | 5.0 | 114.9 |
| 2001 ALDS G3 | NYY | OAK | 40.2 | 24.8 | 32.5 | 5.0 | 102.5 |
| 8/6/2009 | BOS | NYY | 125.0 | -7.5 | -21.0 | 0.0 | 96.5 |
| 1955 WS G7 | BRO | NYY | 33.7 | 24.7 | 10.5 | 25.0 | 93.9 |
| 2003 NLDS G5 | CHC | ATL | 69.0 | 8.3 | 0.5 | 0.0 | 77.8 |
| 8/8/2009 | BOS | NYY | 54.4 | 9.3 | 6.0 | 0.0 | 69.7 |
| 2002 WS G7 | SF | LAA | 38.0 | 1.6 | 3.0 | 5.0 | 47.6 |
Thanks for your help in advance! And incidently, I developed the score way before I read this THT article while searching for best games. Don't know what it means, but I found it interesting.
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4 comments
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Comments
games where records are broken are entertaining
there should be a lot of those to get you started
"Gratuitous gesticulating together sounds even better"
This hardly compares
to World Series game 7s, but I was at this game recently. It was a fantastic 15 inning game that featured a bottom of the 9th rally, 2 guys being thrown out at the plate, great pitching performances, Manny Ramirez making a leaping catch to take away what appeared to be a homer (but actually would’ve hit the fence.) A fantastic ballgame. It didn’t hurt that the Cards ended up winning it but it would have to be considered a terrific game regardless of anyone’s rooting interest.
Cool.
How are the Pit and Event and Inn scores calculated?
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I've read about people using WPA to measure the quality of a game.
Some possibilities:
- Exciting back and forth games: total absolute changes in Win Probability Added
- Most even games: Average absolute difference from 50% WP (so smaller is “better”.)
- Most flip-floppy games: Number of times WP crosses 50%.
- Most dramatic flip-floppy games: the sum of the absolute distances of the highest/lowest WP point from 50% each time WP crosses 50%.
- Delayed big comeback: Lowest average WP for a team who ended up winning the game.
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