Statistics · Analytics · Data science
Independent, original MLB analysis built on public data and open, re-runnable code. Explainers, tutorials, and deep dives — with every statistic traced back to a real data pull, never invented.
The best regular-season team won 8 of the wild-card era's 31 World Series. The math says that's about right — and the median champion ranked fourth.
Seventeen seasons of game times from primary logs: the clock's 24-minute cliff, the drift already eating it, and the 42 minutes between MLB and Banana Ball's cap.
The 90-win rule is 3.7 wins out of date. Since the third wild card, the last seat has averaged 86.8 wins — and the 2026 AL is pacing to sell one for 81.
Every race against one yardstick — the 4.1 games luck can still move in 34: the AL owns all three live division races, and its last seat is held by a −41 team.
The clinch formula from scratch — why the +1, what makes it fall — plus all 18 live 2026 countdowns: the Rays' 25 baseball's smallest, the Orioles' 38 most alive.
Strip out intra-division games and the AL East is 237-195 vs everyone else — but the NL Central's +185 run differential is the stronger claim. A dated audit.
Teams that beat their Pythagorean record don't repeat it: residuals carry over at r=0.00 across 90 season pairs (2021-2024) — and each lucky win costs a win back.