To answer Old Mans question......and go off on a stats tangent

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When the 4th or 5th place team reaches the final they will more often play the better 3rd place team than the worse 6th place team.
So on average they are playing a stronger range of teams. (more 3rds than 6ths)

When a 6th place team reaches the final they will be playing a much weaker range, an average of 4th and 5th place teams. (on average weaker than the team they have just beaten)

I don't find these scenarios that useful because there are cases where a team matches up well vs an opponent but doesn't match up as well vs the rest of the division.
You can often see this in certain betting lines.

The bottom line is better teams (who do better over 46 games) tend to do better in the playoffs.
That's why I called out all the 25% bulls**t spouted by Wagner and the shlubz at the pinkun a few weeks ago.

You would think that professional athletes, coaches and pundits would be amazing at Sport betting yet they are terrible.
Every world class sports bettor I know is a stats nerd
( the correct stats, not stupidity like xG) and is amazing at analyzing stats. Knowing which stats actually mean something.

So why is xG a s**tty stat.....
Because it tells us what we already know.

Better teams/players will outperform xG their whole careers (Messi)
Shitty players/Teams will under perform xG

But......we already have the League table to tell us this!

How do we predict a matchup between say 10th place vs 16th place. (at home)
xG doesn't help. Other more useful stats do.

I have no interest in a stat that doesn't predict anything (or anything we already know)
Its also subjective which is another story all together.

Posted By: usacanary, May 4, 01:31:27