Okay, so I’ve been messing around with MLB stats lately, and let me tell you, it’s a wild ride. I was trying to see if I could boost some player stats without really changing the game’s outcome. You know, just some harmless stat padding.
First off, I dove into a bunch of games, looking for those moments that were kind of, well, meaningless. You know the ones – where the game’s pretty much decided, but they keep playing. These are what some folks call “Meaningless Game-Situations” or MGS. I started picking out these spots in a bunch of games, marking down what was happening with the scores and all.
Then, I started tinkering. I’d take a player who was up at bat in one of these MGS moments and I added to his score. For example, if he had two hits, I changed it to three. The key was to do this without messing up the final score of the game. So, I’d adjust another player’s stats to balance things out. It was like a little puzzle, making sure everything added up at the end.
I also played around with pitching stats. I found that some pitchers are hitting really poorly, like .106 poor. So, I bumped up some of their batting averages in these meaningless situations. Again, I made sure the overall game results stayed the same. It’s all about appearances, right?
- Identify MGS: I found games where the outcome was already clear.
- Pick Players: I chose players who were performing in these MGS.
- Adjust Stats: I increased their hits, runs, or whatever, but only in these meaningless moments.
- Balance the Books: I tweaked other players’ stats to make sure the game’s final score didn’t change.
- Repeat: I did this for a bunch of games to see how much I could realistically pad the stats.
Here’s what I did, step-by-step:
The whole point of this was just to see if I could do it. And, well, you can. It got me thinking about how stats can tell different stories, depending on how you look at them. This little experiment showed me that you’ve got to be careful with numbers, they can be twisted to show what someone wants you to see. It’s not just in baseball, but everywhere. Stats are cool and all, but they’re not the whole story. You gotta understand what they’re really showing, and what they’re not.
By the way, I did all of this on my own time, for fun. This isn’t something you’d see in official MLB records. Just a little behind-the-scenes tinkering with numbers. It’s fascinating what you can do when you start playing around with data!
