Misplaced Pages

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80-687: The Division Series was implemented in 1981 as a one-off tournament because of a midseason strike , with the first place teams before the strike taking on the teams in first place after the strike. In 1981, a split-season format forced the first ever divisional playoff series, in which the Montreal Expos won the Eastern Division series over the Philadelphia Phillies in five games while in the Western Division,

160-636: A $ 700,000 advance. Silver was invited to be a speaker at TED 2009 in February 2009, and keynote speaker at the 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference (March 2009). While maintaining his FiveThirtyEight.com website, in January 2009 Silver began a monthly feature column, "The Data", in Esquire as well as contributed occasional articles to other media such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal . He also tried his luck in

240-536: A New Blueprint for Winning , Baseball Between the Numbers , and It Ain't Over 'til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book . He contributed articles about baseball to ESPN.com , Sports Illustrated , Slate , the New York Sun , and The New York Times . Silver wrote more than 200 articles for Baseball Prospectus . PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm)

320-615: A New Orleans airport when the idea of FiveThirtyEight.com came to him. 'I was just frustrated with the analysis. ... I saw a lot of discussion about strategy that was not all that sophisticated, especially when it came to quantitative things like polls and demographics'". His forecasts of the 2008 United States presidential primary elections drew considerable attention, including being cited by The New York Times op-ed columnist Bill Kristol . On March 7, 2008, while still writing as "Poblano", Silver established his own blog, FiveThirtyEight.com . Often colloquially referred to as just 538,

400-596: A Republican pickup of 54 seats in the House of Representatives; the GOP won 63 seats. Of the 37 gubernatorial races, FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted the winner of 36. Although throughout 2011 Silver devoted a lot of attention on his blog to the 2012 Republican party primaries, his first effort to handicap the 2012 presidential general election appeared as the cover story in The New York Times Magazine

480-450: A broad set of skills and experience in methods that fall under the rubric of data journalism. These include statistical analysis, but also data visualization, computer programming and data-literate reporting. So in addition to written stories, we'll have interactive graphics and features. Within a couple of months we'll launch a podcast, and we'll be collaborating with ESPN Films and Grantland to produce original documentary films. In 2018,

560-407: A combination of electoral history, demographics, and polling. Silver eventually published detailed forecasts and analyses of the results for all three sets of elections. He correctly predicted the winner in 34 of the 37 contested Senate races. His 2010 congressional mid-term predictions were not as accurate as those made in 2008, but were still within the reported confidence interval . Silver predicted

640-432: A division rival win both halves. On August 20, Major League Baseball revised the rules so that if a team won both halves of the season, it would face the second season runner-up instead. Facing a playoff no matter their finish in the second half, the first-half winners lacked incentive (as opposed to the minor leagues , where if the same team did win both halves it was given a bye into the next round) to repeat, and finished

720-583: A full-court press" to keep Silver at The Times and that "for Abramson, Silver was a tentpole attraction for her favorite subject, national politics, and brought the kind of buzz she thought valuable", but the company's CEO and President Mark Thompson "confirmed that keeping Silver was not at the top of his agenda." The article stated that "the major reason Silver left was because he felt it was Thompson who had not committed to building his franchise. The mixed signals from Thompson and Abramson—his lack of enthusiasm for committing resources to Silver, her desire to keep

800-445: A guide to how the given current player is likely to perform in the future. Unlike most other such systems, PECOTA also calculates a range of probable performance levels rather than a single predicted value on a given measure such as earned run average or batting average . PECOTA projections were first published by Baseball Prospectus in the 2003 edition of its annual book as well as online by BaseballProspectus.com. Silver produced

880-538: A job I didn't like". While employed at KPMG, Silver continued to nurture his lifelong interest in baseball and statistics, and on the side he began to work on his PECOTA system for projecting player performance and careers. He quit his job at KPMG in April 2004 and for a time earned his living mainly by playing online poker . According to Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff , over a three-year period Silver earned $ 400,000 from online poker. In 2003, Silver became

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960-531: A low one) and the arbitrator has to choose one number or the other and nothing in between. So, since the owners kept paying more and more to mediocre players, the averages kept going up and the arbitrators looked at the averages and usually went with the player's number, which raised the average some more." He cited as an example of this trend Ed Farmer , an "okay player" who got his salary raised from $ 70,000 in 1980 to $ 495,000 in 1981 after an arbitrator sided with him. "The averages keep climbing." Palmer also noted

1040-504: A macro-level skepticism, rather than saying this poll is good or this poll is evil,' he says. And in four [years], he might be even more macro, as he turns his forecasting talents to other fields. 'I'm 97 percent sure that the FiveThirtyEight model will exist in 2016,' he says, 'but it could be someone else who's running it or licensing it.'" During the last year of FiveThirtyEight ' s license to The New York Times, it drew

1120-475: A major star—frustrated Silver and his lawyer." When FiveThirtyEight was relaunched under Disney's ESPN on March 17, 2014, Silver outlined the scope of topics that would be covered under the rubric of "data journalism": We've expanded our staff from two full-time journalists to 20 and counting. Few of them will focus on politics exclusively; instead, our coverage will span five major subject areas — politics, economics, science, life and sports. Our team also has

1200-494: A new Soccer Power Index (SPi), designed by Nate Silver, for predicting the outcome of the 2010 FIFA World Cup . He published a post-mortem after the tournament, comparing his predictions to those of alternative rating systems. In April 2010, in an assignment for New York magazine, Silver created a quantitative index of "The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York". On June 3, 2010, Silver announced on FiveThirtyEight In

1280-548: A prelude to play resuming on August 10. The National League beat the American League 5–4. When play resumed, attendance dropped in 17 of 24 cities and television ratings slumped sharply. Despite the disgruntled fans, the All-Star Game, which was played on a Sunday instead of the usual Tuesday, had its largest attendance (72,086), due to the large seating capacity of Municipal Stadium. Due to the two-month strike,

1360-581: A proficiency in math from a young age. According to journalist William Hageman, "Silver caught the baseball bug when he was 6.... It was 1984, the year the Detroit Tigers won the World Series . The Tigers became his team and baseball his sport. And if there's anything that goes hand in glove with baseball, it's numbers, another of Silver's childhood interests ("It's always more interesting to apply it to batting averages than algebra class")". As

1440-432: A proposal to share all of its private polling with Silver. After signing a confidentiality agreement, Silver was granted access to hundreds of polls the campaign had conducted. Shortly after FiveThirtyEight relocated to The New York Times , Silver introduced his prediction models for the 2010 elections to the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and state governorships. Each of these models relied initially on

1520-440: A student at East Lansing High School , Silver won first place in the state of Michigan in the 49th annual John S. Knight Scholarship Contest for senior high school debaters in 1996. Silver first showed his journalism skills as a writer and opinion page editor for The Portrait , East Lansing High School's student newspaper, from 1993–1996. In 2000, Silver graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from

1600-409: A system for tracking polls and forecasting the outcome of the 2008 general election. At the same time, he continued making forecasts of the 2008 Democratic primary elections . That several of his forecasts based on demographic analysis proved to be substantially more accurate than those of the professional pollsters gained visibility and professional credibility for "Poblano", the pseudonym that Silver

1680-480: A very large volume of online traffic to the paper: The Times does not release traffic figures, but a spokesperson said yesterday that Silver's blog provided a significant—and significantly growing, over the past year—percentage of Times pageviews. This fall, visits to the Times' political coverage (including FiveThirtyEight) have increased, both absolutely and as a percentage of site visits. But FiveThirtyEight's growth

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1760-416: A writer for Baseball Prospectus (BP), after having sold PECOTA to BP in return for a partnership interest. After resigning from KPMG in 2004, he took the position of Executive Vice-President, later renamed Managing Partner of BP. Silver further developed PECOTA and wrote a weekly column under the heading "Lies, Damned Lies". He applied sabermetric techniques to a broad range of topics including forecasting

1840-405: A year prior to the election: "Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election". Accompanying the online release of this article, Silver also published "Choose Obama's Re-Election Adventure", an interactive toy that allowed readers to predict the outcome of the election based on their assumptions about three variables: President Obama's favorability ratings, the rate of GDP growth, and how conservative

1920-447: Is a statistical system that projects the future performance of hitters and pitchers. It is designed primarily for two users: fans interested in fantasy baseball , and professionals in the baseball business trying to predict the performance and valuation of major league players. Unlike most other baseball projection systems, PECOTA relies on matching a given current player to a set of "comparable" players whose past performance can serve as

2000-573: Is for you to decide. I have tried to disclose as much about my methodology as possible". Shortly after the November 4 election, ESPN writer Jim Caple observed, "Forget Cole Hamels and the Phillies . No one in baseball had a more impressive fall than Nate Silver.... [R]ight now Silver is exhausted. He barely slept the last couple weeks of the campaign—'By the end, it was full-time plus'—and for that matter, he says he couldn't have kept it up had

2080-489: Is staggering: where earlier this year, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of politics visits included a stop at FiveThirtyEight, last week that figure was 71 percent. But Silver's blog has buoyed more than just the politics coverage, becoming a significant traffic-driver for the site as a whole. Earlier this year, approximately 1 percent of visits to the New York Times included FiveThirtyEight. Last week, that number

2160-643: The 2009 World Series of Poker . The success of his FiveThirtyEight.com blog marked the effective end of Silver's career as baseball analyst, though he continued to devote some attention to sports statistics and sports economics in his blog. In March 2009, he stepped down as Managing Partner of Baseball Prospectus and handed over responsibility for producing future PECOTA projections to other Baseball Prospectus staff members. In April 2009, he appeared as an analyst on ESPN's Baseball Tonight . After March 2009, he published only two "Lies, Damned Lies" columns on BaseballProspectus.com. In November 2009, ESPN introduced

2240-700: The COVID-19 pandemic . Eight teams qualified from the National League: the top two teams in each division plus the next two best records among the remaining teams. These eight teams played a best-of-three-game series to determine placement in the NLDS. The regular format returned for the 2021 season. As of 2021, the Atlanta Braves have currently played in the most NL division series with seventeen appearances. The St. Louis Cardinals have currently won

2320-460: The FAQ on his website: "My state [Illinois] has non-partisan registration, so I am not registered as anything. I vote for Democratic candidates the majority of the time (though by no means always). This year, I have been a supporter of Barack Obama". With respect to the impartiality of his electoral projections, Silver stated, "Are [my] results biased toward [my] preferred candidates? I hope not, but that

2400-738: The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Houston Astros , also in five games (the Astros were members of the National League until 2012). In 1994, it was returned permanently when Major League Baseball (MLB) restructured each league into three divisions, but with a different format than in 1981. Each of the division winners, along with one wild card team, qualify for the Division Series. Despite being planned for

2480-475: The MLBPA , MLB has decided to allow the team with the best record in the league that wins the All-Star Game to choose whether to use the seven-day schedule (1-2-off-3-4-off-5) or the eight-day schedule (1-off-2-off-3-4-off-5). The team only gets to choose the schedule; the opponent is still determined by win–loss records. Initially, the best-of-5 series played in a 2–3 format, with the first two games set at home for

National League Division Series - Misplaced Pages Continue

2560-667: The Major League Baseball Players Association voted unanimously to strike on May 29 due to the unresolved issue of free agent compensation. The deadline was extended briefly, however, after the Players' Association's unfair labor complaint was heard by the National Labor Relations Board . The strike was called in response to the owners wanting to win back the prerogatives over the players. The owners had already lost at

2640-643: The Sunday Magazine . The partnership agreement, which is structured as a license, has a term of three years. The New York Times "FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus" commenced on August 25, 2010, with the publication of "New Forecast Shows Democrats Losing 6 to 7 Senate Seats". From that date the blog focused almost exclusively on forecasting the outcomes of the 2010 U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives elections as well as state gubernatorial contests. Silver's Times Sunday Magazine feature first appeared on November 19, 2010, under

2720-718: The University of Chicago . He also wrote for the Chicago Weekly News and the Chicago Maroon . He spent his third year at the London School of Economics . After college graduation in 2000, Silver worked for three and a half years as a transfer pricing consultant with KPMG in Chicago. When asked in 2009, "What is your biggest regret in life?" Silver responded, "Spending four years of my life at

2800-553: The Walt Disney Company ) announced that it had acquired ownership of the FiveThirtyEight website and brand, and that "Silver will serve as editor-in-chief of the site and will build a team of journalists, editors, analysts and contributors in the coming months." The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote of Silver's decision to leave for ESPN: I don't think Nate Silver ever really fit into

2880-491: The Wild Card Series between the top two wild card teams in one matchup, and the divisional winner with the second best winning percentage hosts the winner of the other Wild Card Series between the lowest-seeded divisional winner and the lowest-seeded wild card team. (From 2012 to 2021, the wild card team was assigned to play the divisional winner with the best winning percentage in the regular season in one series, and

2960-499: The 1994 season, the post-season was cancelled that year due to the 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike . In 1995, the first season to feature a division series, the Eastern Division champion Atlanta Braves defeated the wild card Colorado Rockies three games to one, while the Central Division champion Cincinnati Reds defeated the Western Division champion Los Angeles Dodgers in a three-game sweep. From 1994 to 2011,

3040-523: The 2016 G.O.P. primary seems almost certain to be epic." In late November 2012, Times executive editor Jill Abramson declared her wish to keep Silver and his blog: "We would love to have Nate continue to be part of the New York Times family, and to expand on what he does", she said. "We know he began in sports anyway, so it is not an exclusively political product. I am excited to talk to Nate when he finishes his book tour about ways to expand that kind of reporting." On July 22, 2013, ESPN (a subsidiary of

3120-563: The 2–2–1 format starting the next season, 2013 . In the sortable table below, teams are ordered first by number of wins, then by number of appearances, and finally by year of first appearance. In the "Season(s)" column, bold years indicate winning appearances. NOTE: With the Houston Astros move to the American League at the conclusion of the 2012 season, the Braves vs. Astros series is not currently possible. 1981 Major League Baseball strike The 1981 Major League Baseball strike

3200-481: The National League that season—and thus would have won their divisions under normal circumstances. The Cardinals received some vindication the following year when they won the World Series ; the Reds did not make the postseason again until 1990 , when they won the franchise's most recent World Series title. In contrast to the Reds' and Cardinals' bad luck, the defending American League champion Kansas City Royals made

3280-487: The National League wild card, their first postseason berth since winning the American League East Division title in 1982 before switching leagues in 1998 . Milwaukee had competed in an American League Division Series in the strike-shortened 1981 season . The NLDS is a best-of-five series where the divisional winner with the best winning percentage in the regular season hosts the winner of

National League Division Series - Misplaced Pages Continue

3360-460: The PECOTA forecasts for each Major League Baseball season from 2003 through 2009. On November 1, 2007, while still employed by Baseball Prospectus, Silver began publishing a diary under the pseudonym "Poblano" on the progressive political blog Daily Kos . Silver set out to analyze quantitative aspects of the political game to enlighten a broader audience. Silver reports that "he was stranded in

3440-537: The Republican opponent would be. This analysis stimulated a lot of critical discussion. While publishing numerous stories on the Republican primary elections, in mid-February 2012 Silver reprised and updated his previous Magazine story with another one, "What Obama Should Do Next". This story painted a more optimistic picture of President Obama's re-election chances. A companion article on his FiveThirtyEight blog, "The Fundamentals Now Favor Obama", explained how

3520-833: The Times culture and I think he was aware of that. He was, in a word, disruptive. Much like the Brad Pitt character in the movie " Moneyball " disrupted the old model of how to scout baseball players, Nate disrupted the traditional model of how to cover politics. She added, "A number of traditional and well-respected Times journalists disliked his work." Later, Sullivan wrote in The Times that "I don't feel so good about not being able to investigate every complaint from every individual reader fully, or about making some misjudgments in individual posts — my Nate Silver commentary, among others, has probably been off-base...". New York magazine reported that executive editor Jill Abramson "put on

3600-706: The Walt Disney Company transferred the FiveThirtyEight site from the ESPN division to the ABC News division. In April 2023, amid widespread layoffs at Disney and ABC affecting FiveThirtyEight, Silver announced that his contract with ABC would not be extended. After Silver's departure in May, a smaller FiveThirtyEight continues to operate under the data analytics division of ABC News. In March 2008, Silver established his blog FiveThirtyEight.com, in which he developed

3680-413: The bargaining table and in the courts on the issue of the free agency draft. At issue during the seven-week-long negotiations was the owners demanding compensation for losing a free agent player to another team. The compensation in question was a player who was selected from the signing team's roster (not including 12 "protected" players). The players maintained that any form of compensation would undermine

3760-583: The campaign lasted two days longer. Plus, he has his Baseball Prospectus duties. 'We write our [ Baseball Prospectus 2009 ] book from now through the first of the year,' [Silver] said. 'I have a week to relax and then it gets just as busy again. In February 2009 I will just have to find an island in the Caribbean and throw my BlackBerry in the ocean'". Later in November 2008, Silver signed a contract with Penguin Group USA to write two books, reportedly for

3840-540: The heading "Go Figure". It was later titled "Acts of Mild Subversion". While blogging for The Times, Silver also worked on his book about prediction, which was published in September 2012. At that time, Silver began to drop hints that after 2012 he would turn his attention to matters other than detailed statistical forecasting of elections. As reported in New York magazine: " 'I view my role now as providing more of

3920-421: The league more playoff revenue) seemed to cheapen the results of the regular season. As first proposed, if a team won its division in both halves of the season, then it would play the team with the second best record overall (first and second half). An Orioles fan, J. Thomas Codd, pointed out, the arrangement would give a team with a good overall record an incentive to lose games against the first-half winner to help

4000-562: The lower seed team and the last three for the higher seed. Since 1998 , the series has followed a 2–2–1 format, where the higher seed team plays at home in Games 1 and 2, the lower seed plays at home in Game 3 and Game 4 (if necessary), and if a Game 5 is needed, the teams return to the higher seed's field. When MLB added a second wild card team in 2012 , the Division Series re-adopted the 2–3 format due to scheduling conflicts. However, it reverted to

4080-493: The middle of the regular season . The two sides reached an agreement on July 31, and play resumed on August 9 with the All-Star Game , with regular season play resuming one day later. An estimated US$ 146 million was lost in player salaries, ticket sales, broadcast revenues, and concession revenues. The players lost $ 4 million a week in salaries while the owners suffered a total loss of $ 72 million. The executive board of

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4160-562: The most NL division series, winning eleven of the fourteen series in which they have played. The Pittsburgh Pirates (who finished with a losing record from 1993 to 2012) were the last team to make their first appearance in the NL division series, making their debut in 2013 after winning the 2013 National League Wild Card Game . In 2008 , the Milwaukee Brewers became the first team to play in division series in both leagues when they won

4240-506: The near future, the blog will "re-launch" under a NYTimes.com domain. It will retain its own identity (akin to other Times blogs like DealBook ), but will be organized under the News:Politics section. Once this occurs, content will no longer be posted at FiveThirtyEight.com on an ongoing basis, and the blog will re-direct to the new URL . In addition, I will be contributing content to the print edition of The New York Times , and to

4320-546: The negotiations were so bitter that when a settlement was finally reached, Players Association representative Marvin Miller and the owners' negotiator Ray Grebey refused to pose with each other for the traditional "peace ceremony" photograph. Major League Baseball resumed on August 9 with the All-Star Game in Cleveland's Municipal Stadium . The All-Star Game, which was originally scheduled to be held on July 14, now served as

4400-443: The other two division winners met in the other series. From 1998 to 2011, if the wild-card team and the division winner with the best record were from the same division, the wild-card team played the division winner with the second-best record, and the remaining two division leaders played each other.) The two series winners move on to the best-of-seven NLCS. According to Nate Silver , the advent of this playoff series, and especially of

4480-511: The outcomes in 49 of 50 states in the 2008 U.S. presidential election . His subsequent models predicted the outcome of the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections with high accuracy. Although he gave Donald Trump , the eventual winner, a 28.6% chance of victory in the 2016 presidential election , this was a higher estimate than any other scientific forecast. Much of Silver's approach can be characterized by using statistical models to understand complex social systems such as professional sports,

4560-482: The owners tried to create an equitable solution. So on August 6, the owners decided to split the 1981 season into two halves, with the first-place teams from each half in each division (or a wild card team if the same club won both halves) meeting in a best-of-five divisional playoff series (this playoff round, known as the Division Series was only used this season; it was not until 13 years later in 1994 that

4640-416: The owners' desire to save money. "They said they just didn't have any more money...fast-forward thirteen years and the highest paid players in the game, guys like Cal Ripken Jr. and Kirby Puckett , are now making $ 6 million a year. Ten times what I made. Where do you suppose the owners who didn't have any more money got that extra $ 5 million? Lotto?" He faulted both sides for the strike. "The players said it

4720-402: The owners, it hurt the players, but mostly it hurt the game. Eventually, the game recovered. But it's like a player. Every time he's injured, it's harder to come back." Nate Silver Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, writer and poker player who analyzes baseball , basketball and elections . He is the founder of FiveThirtyEight and held

4800-551: The performance of individual players, the economics of baseball, metrics for the valuation of players, and developing an Elo rating system for Major League baseball. Between 2003 and 2009, Silver co-authored the Baseball Prospectus annual book of Major League Baseball forecasts, as well as other books, including Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created

4880-736: The popularity of political platforms and elections. Silver was born in East Lansing, Michigan , to Sally (née Thrun), a community activist , and Brian David Silver, a former chair of the political science department at Michigan State University . Silver's mother's family was of English and German descent. His maternal great-grandfather, Harmon Lewis, was president of the Alcoa Steamship Company, Inc. Silver's father's family includes two uncles— Leon Silver and Caswell Silver —who were distinguished geologists. Silver has described himself as " half-Jewish ". Silver showed

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4960-403: The position of editor-in-chief there, along with being a special correspondent for ABC News until May 2023. Since departing FiveThirtyEight , Silver has been publishing on his Substack blog Silver Bulletin and serves as an advisor to Polymarket . Silver was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time in 2009 after his election forecasting model correctly predicted

5040-507: The postseason despite owning the fourth-best full-season record in their division and posting a losing record overall (50–53). Notably, the format allowed the second-half National League East champion Montreal Expos to make the playoffs, the only time the Expos franchise made the postseason in its 36-year stay in Montreal and its only postseason appearance of any kind until 2012 , long after

5120-466: The round became permanent in MLB [it was first played in 1995, as the 1994 season ended prematurely because of another strike], when the league introduced the three-division format). The four survivors then played in the best-of-five League Championship Series . It was the first time that Major League Baseball used a split-season format since 1892. The split-season idea as put into practice (although garnering

5200-546: The second half of the season with a composite record of only three games above .500. Tommy John of the AL East –winning Yankees stated, "With the first-half divisional 'title' wrapped up, we lost our intensity." To make matters worse, the Cincinnati Reds ( National League West ) and St. Louis Cardinals ( National League East ) each failed to make the playoffs, even though they had the two best full-season records in

5280-436: The strike. On July 31, 1981, a compromise was reached. In the settlement, teams that lost a "premium" free agent could be compensated by drawing from a pool of players left unprotected from all of the clubs rather than just the signing club. Players agree to restricting free agency to players with six or more years of major league service. The settlement gave the owners a limited victory on the compensation issue. Reportedly,

5360-692: The team became the Washington Nationals . Ironically, the next time there was a significant players' strike , 13 years later in 1994, the Expos were the team most hurt by the season's abrupt end. The Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates ended up playing the fewest games of any team at 102. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Giants played the most at 111. Most teams finished with anywhere between 106 and 109 games. Palmer summed it up thusly: "The strike of 1981 lasted fifty-one days. It hurt

5440-496: The value of free agency. Although the strike was called by the players, many sportswriters and even fans placed most of the blame on the owners. Sports Illustrated reflected this particular opinion with the cover headline "Strike! The Walkout the Owners Provoked." One of the reasons the owners doled out such hefty contracts from 1978 to 1981 (43 players each negotiated contracts worth over $ 1 million during this period)

5520-617: The website takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college . On May 30, 2008, Poblano revealed his identity to FiveThirtyEight.com readers. On June 1, 2008, Silver published a two-page op-ed in the New York Post outlining the rationale underlying his focus on the statistical aspects of politics. He first appeared on national television on CNN 's American Morning on June 13, 2008. Silver described his partisan orientation as follows in

5600-486: The website's popularity] started to really take off. It's pretty nonlinear, once you get one mention in the mainstream media, other people [quickly follow suit]". As a CNET reporter wrote on election eve, "Even though Silver launched the site as recently as March, its straightforward approach, daring predictions, and short but impressive track record has put it on the map of political sites to follow." Silver's final 2008 presidential election forecast accurately predicted

5680-439: The wild card was given to the team in the National League with the best overall record that was not a division champion. Beginning with the 2012 season , a second wild card team was added, and the two wild card teams play a single-game playoff to determine which team would play in the NLDS. For the 2020 Major League Baseball season only, there was an expanded playoff format, owing to an abbreviated 60-game regular season due to

5760-406: The wild card, has caused teams to focus more on "getting to the playoffs" rather than "winning the pennant" as the primary goal of the regular season. From 2012 to 2021, the wild card team that advances to the Division Series was to face the number 1 seed, regardless whether or not they are in the same division. The two series winners move on to the best-of-seven NLCS. Beginning with the 2022 season,

5840-410: The wild-card team, which never receives the home-field advantage. Beginning in 2003, MLB has implemented a new rule to give the team with the best regular season record from the league that wins the All-Star Game a slightly greater advantage. In order to spread out the Division Series games for broadcast purposes, the two NLDS series follow one of two off-day schedules. Starting in 2007, after consulting

5920-417: The winner between the lowest-ranked division winner and lowest-ranked wild card team faces the #2 seed division winner in the Division Series, while the 4 v. 5 wild card winner faces the #1 seed, as there is no reseeding even if the 6 seed wild card advances. Home-field advantage goes to the team with the better regular season record (or head-to-head record if there is a tie between two or more teams), except for

6000-583: The winner of 49 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia , missing only the prediction for Indiana. As his model predicted, the races in Missouri and North Carolina were particularly close. He also correctly predicted the winners of every U.S. Senate race. The accuracy of his predictions won him further acclaim, including abroad, and added to his reputation as a leading political prognosticator. Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign signed off on

6080-467: Was 13 percent. Yesterday, it was 20 percent. That is, one in five visitors to the sixth-most-trafficked U.S. news site took a look at Silver's blog. In an online chat session a week after the 2012 election Silver commented: "As tempting as it might be to pull a Jim Brown / Sandy Koufax and just mic-drop /retire from elections forecasting, I expect that we'll be making forecasts in 2014 and 2016. Midterm elections can be dreadfully boring, unfortunately. But

6160-524: Was about freedom. The owners said it was about fairness. The bottom line was it was about the bottom line." Reporters used Strat-O-Matic to simulate the delayed 1981 All-Star game inside Cleveland Stadium , with the scoreboard displaying the game's progress; the Strat-O-Matic set went to the Baseball Hall of Fame . Some newspapers used Strat-O-Matic to simulate other canceled games during

6240-401: Was that they were afraid of losing disgruntled stars in the free agency reentry draft. So the owners paid their players the so-called new going rate in order to keep them from going elsewhere. Jim Palmer observed the impact of arbitrators on the strike. "They [the owners] wanted an end to binding arbitration where the player picks a salary number (a high one) and the owners pick a number (yes,

6320-556: Was the first work stoppage in Major League Baseball since the 1972 Major League Baseball strike that resulted in regular season games being cancelled. Overall, it was the fourth work stoppage since 1972, but actions in 1973, 1976, and 1980 did not result in any regular season games being cancelled. The strike began on June 12 and forced the cancellation of 713 games (or 38 percent of the Major League schedule) in

6400-515: Was then using. After the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on May 6, the popularity of FiveThirtyEight.com surged. Silver recalls the scenario: "I know the polls show it's really tight in NC, but we think Obama is going to win by thirteen, fourteen points, and he did. ... Any time you make a prediction like that people give you probably too much credit for it.... But after that [Silver's and

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