This is a Cowherd-esque analogy. Just awful.

Hey, I seem to recall mentioning this when he first said it a week or two ago!

I'd rather be a golfer anyways.

Fair enough. Why?

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You do realize that's because the higher number of games lowers variance, right?

Ripping on someone for saying something like that is a much bigger sign of low intelligence.

This also is mostly due to the number of games.

FWIW, football players spend more time "working" than baseball players.

Between the 'voluntary' mini-camps, training sessions, training camps, preseasons, and 6 day week practices, etc. They pretty much work full weeks from July-January, and then the offseason required stuff from Mar-Jun.

Baseball players work from Feb-October at most, but you have to factor in that their isn't any practices, and the average gameday is showing up to the park at 4:30 for a 7:30 game....whereas a football player starts his regular practice day in 8am meetings, 10am film sessions, and 1pm practice on the field, etc. etc.

All said, if you made them punch a clock, I'm guessing football players put in way, way more hours.

This isn't right. Well it's right, but it doesn't mean anything. More games is less variance, but that doesn't mean NFL overall has less variance than MLB, because the nature of the games is different. (Joe Shmoe might go 3-4 against Roy Halladay, but a bad offensive line against a good defense is gonna do bad every time. Football is a lot more about being stronger and faster, it rewards things that have no element of variance, whereas in baseball you might hit one off the end of the bat and watch it fall in just the right place and etc., and you need a lot of samples for it to mean anything.)

If you hypothetically ran a 162 game football season, I think you'd still have your 140-22 teams. I mean, I probably feel like I could predict regular season NFL division winners as easily or easier than MLB. So I don't think football has more variance overall.

Not sure I follow. Are you suggesting the Sklansky Has a low IQ?

isnt the most popular sport in the world (european football) also the most capitalistic?

im an american who doesnt know much but i always hear of teams loaning players out for a bunch of money and all that weird stuff we dont do here...i mean the same teams are the best year in and year out and it doesnt do too bad




amirite

Just using the first two teams that come to mind and without datamining 10 year stretches of older dynastys, the Patriots have won 122 of their last 162 regular season games, and the Colts have won the 117.

No baseball team has won that many games over the course of a single regular season.

Could you explain? Not sure what exactly you're drawing from this data.

Kind of the exact point I was going to make. Comparing a zero-sum game to a positive sum game is the problem.

I was supporting your point. The first two current teams I could think of won more games over a 162 game stretch than any baseball team has in an entire season ever. And there are tons more 162 game stretches by NFL teams with more wins.

And that's not even mentioning the fluctuating talent over those 10-years. For example, the Indy stretch includes a bad 6-10 team.

If the 16-0 Pats play a 162 game season with the same core over the course of a single year, if it were theoretically possible without horribad injuries or wear/tear, they easily win 150+ games.

That's just not happening in baseball ever.

Not to nit-pick... But, considering the league's propensity to effectively adjust game plans given time, I'll disagree... Maybe 135-27.

Just look how teams started catching up to them as the year wore on, including Baltimore (who really beat them), Philly and the first Giants game.

There's way less "variance" in football obv

No. Didn't say anything like that.

Well, in football you get to play the best player you have at the most important position every game. This has a little something to do with decreased variance.

2001 Seattle Mariners AL 116 46

Mind you, I'm sure that there probably is going to be a higher record disparity in football overall due to some of the reasons mentioned, but it's not going to be nearly as much as you see in one season of football due to the tiny number of games.

So the all time record in baseball is still behind ~8% of the current teams in football? I think you are proving the opposite point.

The football season has way more variance than the baseball season.

not on a per game basis

Not necessarily -- a lot of those better records in NFL could be because of running hot.

But anyway, even if the edges between teams are smaller in MLB than the NFL that doesn't mean that the variance is larger in MLB. The variance doesn't have anything to do with the edge. The Packers and the Steelers might be a coinflip to win but the variance associated with that game if played 1000 times isn't necessarily any different than if the Packers played the Steelers' second string.