Something Occurred To Me Last Night
The philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote one of the most famous articles in the philosophy of consciousness called “What is it like to be a bat?” He was talking about the mammalian bat, not the wooden one, and the point was that bats are so different than we are that the problem of knowing how bats think is pretty much hopeless. (I think the same logic applies to baseball bats, by the way.)
Every once in a while, I carry out a similar exercise, “What is it like to be a Mets fan?” The whole concept is so alien to me (even as I cherish the friendship of a number of these creatures) that I just think there are mysteries that can never be fully plumbed: the eternal optimism, the crushing defeats, the very rare successes to make it all seem random, the presence in the same ecosystem of an arrogant colossus and their churlish fans, all of it seems completely beyond my empathetic resources.
And then, last night around 11:30, I realized that Georgia Tech fans are the Mets fans of college football. Now I have something I can relate to, Metsies, and I feel your pain.
From Bats to Bots
Not here. Please, not here. Suffice it to say I will do what I need to do once I figure out what needs to be done if this becomes an issue. Meanwhile, to all bots: we like Austin Riley, too. We just don’t post meaningless crap about it.
Close Games
The two-game series against the Nationals broke a pretty long streak of close games. There is no generally accepted definition of “close game” other than “1-run games” which are a category often analyzed. At the request of long-time Braves Journaler (and new US resident) Timo, I did some looking at close games. Let me be clear: this isn’t his fault… he asked an innocent question: I’m the fool who wrote about it.
First, you have to avoid what we statisticians call base-rate fallacies: what is the distribution of run differences? Here’s the data:
| 1 run | 30% |
| 2 runs | 18% |
| 3 runs | 14% |
| 4 runs | 11% |
| 5 runs | 8% |
| 6+ runs | 19% |
That includes the dead ball era, though. What if we restrict to 2000 and later?
| 1 run | 28% |
| 2 runs | 18% |
| 3 runs | 14% |
| 4 runs | 12% |
| 5 runs | 8% |
| 6+ runs | 20% |
And for Atlanta this season?
| Wins | Losses | Total | |
| 1 run | 17% | 14% | 31% |
| 2 runs | 11% | 8% | 19% |
| 3 runs | 8% | 6% | 14% |
| 4 runs | 6% | 2% | 8% |
| 5 runs | 6% | 4% | 10% |
| 6+ runs | 10% | 7% | 17% |
So we shouldn’t be that surprised if a team runs off a string of 12 1- or 2-run games in a row. There are 30 teams, each playing 152 ten-game sequences: that’s 4,560 such sequences a year, so there ought to be one every couple of years. (Actually, that’s not taking account of the fact that every close game is a close game for two different teams, so the odds are actually a little higher. There are about 1.4 teams per year with 12 game streaks, and a little less than 1 team a year with a 13 game streak.)
With these base rates in mind, what are the records?
Consecutive wins by 1- or 2-runs
The record here, 9 wins in a row by 1 or 2 runs, belong to two dead ball era teams. The 1909 Pittsburgh Pirates won 9 straight by less than three runs from May 30th-June 8th.
That was matched by the 1916 St. Louis Browns, who from July 27th-August 3rd, won 9 games in a row by 1 or 2 runs. This was part of a pretty amazing 14 game win streak, given that they finished 79-75. And they weren’t particularly good that year in one-run games: 30-35.
Consecutive losses by 1- or 2-runs
The 1982 Mets lost 10 games in a row by 1- or 2-runs from August 18th-August 28th. That must have been fun. I’m enjoying it even today,
Consecutive games with a 1- or 2-run difference
The record here belongs to the 1968 Twins, who went 18 games in a row, from June 16th-June 30th in which every game was a 1- or 2-run game. They went 9-9 in those games.
Finally, we can narrow the definition of closeness to 1-run games and broaden it to include 3-run games.
Here are the results in a convenient table:
| 1-run games | |||
| Consecutive Wins | 7 | 1927 Cubs | |
| Consecutive Losses | 7 | 1919 Senators | |
| Consecutive Games | 11 | 1967 Reds | |
| 1- or 2- run games | |||
| Consecutive Wins | 9 | 1909 Pittsburgh, 1919 St. Louis Browns | |
| Consecutive Losses | 10 | 1982 Mets | |
| Consecutive Games | 18 | 1968 Twins | |
| 1-, 2- or 3-run games | |||
| Consecutive Wins | 13 | 1951 NY Giants | |
| Consecutive Losses | 10 | 1908 Senators, 1924 White Sox, 1939 Pirates, 1982 Cubs, 1982 Mets,2026 Marlins | |
| Consecutive Games | 26 | 1973 Expos |
Nothing to do now but wait
Pennant season.
Those Riley comments were spam. (They all had a meaningless URL in the commenter’s name, which is a classic tell.) I moderated them.
Something that not many people realize about bats, I think, is that they can be exceptionally adorable and as exhibit A I give you the spectacled flying fox of Australia: https://batsoc.org.au/
They’ve got puppy dog eyes and puppy dog personalities. My wife spent about a half hour on our honeymoon talking to one in a tree near us, and it was happily chattering back at her, giddy at the attention.
I don’t know what it’s like to be a bat, but I think I’d be able to stay married.
Yeah… There were actually 11 of them, and the spam filter caught most of them, but four got through, all from the same IP. I’m hoping this was just a moment of temporary nonvigilance from Aksimet — like Tech’s 4th quarter last night.
On the possible sentiency of baseball bats, was reading recently about Pete Browning, the original “Louisville Slugger” after whom the line of bats were named; he was apparently the first to request custom-made bats. He also apparently named his bats after figures from the Bible, and spoke to each of them individually, and believed that each of his bats had a set amount of hits in them, after which they’d need to be retired, and taken home to live with his mother.
He also apparently believed that staring into the sun strengthened his eyesight, so maybe he was ultimately trying to commune with animal-bats as well.
(Pete, incidentally, was also the uncle of Tod Browning, the pioneering early horror film director who made the 1931 version of “Dracula” with Bela Lugosi.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Browning#Personal_life
ububba: I can’t believe we’ve never discussed Mitch Hedberg.
Thank you for digging deep into close games, JonathanF
Welcome to Florida, Timo. If you haven’t already, I’m sure you’ll get to know I-95 – you’re only 70 miles or so from the Marlins stadium. When the Braves come to town, it’s one of the easiest places in MLB to get super-cheap, secondary-market tickets. Pretty weird stadium, but at least it’s indoors when it’s raining or blazing hot outside.
Re: Buzz vs. Neon
FWIW, it should be acknowledged that Tech got completely screwed out of a TD by an early whistle in the first half. Bad luck, sure, but really bad officiating…
That said, there’s a part of me that understands why Brent Key played it safe once he got in FG range to go up 13-7.
Imagining that Colorado offense going 75 yards in a minute with no timeouts seemed out of the question. By then, Colorado’s QB had to have been traumatized by his receivers’ inability to catch any pass beyond 5 yards. I mean, they had so many drops they quit passing the ball completely… until that last drive, which was almost inexplicable.
The Braves rescheduled Grant Holmes (pitching well of late) to start Game 4 of this series instead of Bryce Elder (has not pitched well of late).
I think RAJ ate his Wheaties this morning.
Recapped