Does Divisional Play Lead to More Pennant Races?

Wayne Winston and Ashok Soni
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Wayne Winston: Indiana University
Ashok Soni: Indiana University

Management Science, 1982, vol. 28, issue 12, 1432-1440

Abstract: A "pennant race" occurs in a sports league if the top two teams in a league finish within m\bar games of each other. We develop an analytical model that can be used to predict the probability that a sports league will have a pennant race. The model is then tested on data from the last 50 major league baseball seasons and is shown to do a remarkable job of predicting the number of pennant races that actually occurred. Finally, we give conditions which ensure that dividing a league of 2n teams into 2n-team divisions will increase the expected number of pennant races. As a corollary to this result we prove that the divisional structure which maximizes the expected number of pennant races must contain no divisions with 4 or more teams.

Keywords: recreation/sports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1982
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:28:y:1982:i:12:p:1432-1440

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