Computers are better than humans at yet another thing: predicting sports results.

Designed and maintained by Joel Sokol, Paul Kyam and George Nemhauser, who are three Engineering Professors at the Georgia Institute of Technology, LRMC is set apart from other computer rankings systems in its method of determining the value of home court advantage. LRMC considers how much playing at home helps a team win rather than how many points playing on a home court is worth…

“Our system objectively measures each team’s performance in every game it plays, and mathematically balances all of those outcomes to determine an overall ranking.”

I guess it is able to predict results with 83 percent accuracy, which is currently better than any other machine or human. They should try hooking it up to the stock market.

Damnit, man. The Indians blew their best chance in 59 years. If they had won just one of the last three games against the Red Sox, I am sure they would have won the World Series. Especially after watching the Rockies get killed by Boston.
The Indians choked. Again.
It was so frustrating to watch the Red Sox completely crush the Rockies (after the Rockies crushed everyone else in the National League), when the Indians were up 3-1 against them.
Oh well.

Boston is done. Forget it. Cleveland is an unstoppable force. Don’t mess with Ohio, man - it is the heart of it all.
To give you an idea of how great Cleveland is doing with such a comparably small payroll, check out this list of team payrolls.
The three other teams from the American League who made it to the post season were the top three teams in order of payroll:

1 New York Yankees $194,663,079
2 Boston Red Sox $120,099,824
3 Los Angeles Angels $103,472,000

while Cleveland is way down at #25 with $56,031,500.
Now that’s value. I hear Warren Buffet has been buying up contracts at tradesports.com

Man, the Cleveland Indians crushed the Red Sox. I loved it. I was jumping up and down after Gutierrez’s homer in the 11th made it a 13-6 game. That must really be a blow to the Red Sox morale. And a nice boost to Cleveland as they head to Jacob’s field.
That’s one thing I love about this team this season - they bounce right back. And they bounce strongly. Nothing seems to keep them down for very long at all. Wedge is also a great manager.

Tradesports is betting that the Red Sox win tonight - they give a 60% chance.

And there is a bid in for 61.5 that the Red Sox will take the AL pennant:

While Cleveland is only at 38.6 - WTF?

I don’t get it. They had the exact same season record (which also happened to be the best in all of baseball). Why can you buy Cleveland contracts for only 39?
Easy money, man - I’m loading up. Time to plunge.

Man, I caught one of these in my house today. I smashed it and flushed it down the toilet. Scary stuff.
Maybe these are the same bugs that helped the Indians beat the Yankees in game #2.
I’m telling you - we are reaching the knee of the curve.

Go Tribe

I am breaking my self-imposed vow of silence this week in order to post about baseball. The Cleveland Indians, with the best record in baseball for 2007, are playing the New York Yankees tonight at 6:30.
Even though the Indians have a better record, they are 0-6 against the Yankees this season.
Tradesports says there is a 54% chance that the Yankees win:

And the market puts the odds of the Indians winning the World Series at 11%:

But the chart looks nice, doesn’t it? I’d buy it.