“Blog’s certainty system doesn’t award certainty points because they’re easy, it awards them because they’re hard.” — John F. Kennedy*

Last year’s Phillies over Rays prediction, based on formula below, was off the mark. But in other years system has proven pretty good at predicting playoffs.

System has changed a little at times over past five years, however, and hardly can be construed as consistent. But object of system has been constant: to uncover certainty in eight-team playoff scrum where randomness largely rules.

To earn a certainty point:

-A batter must have a minimum .295 BA, 30 HRs and 100 RBI

-A pitcher must have 10 more wins than losses and an ERA of 3.00 or less or more than 30 saves and an ERA of 3.00 or less

-A team can earn another certainty point if it has 54 or more home wins

That’s it. That’s the list.**

Going team-by-team this year, Blog uncovered a total of 15 certainty points.

That number is subtracted from 100 percent and remainder — 85 percent — is split eight ways and doled evenly as baseline score for each October team. This means certainty baseline for each 2011 playoff team is 10.63% (last year there were fewer certainty points and baseline was, therefore, higher. The fewer certainty points awarded, the more randomness ensues).

Here’s how Blog seeds playoffs based on certainty points [with total wins in brackets as seeding tiebreaker]:

1) Brewers (+4) — Braun, Fielder, Axford, 57 home wins [96 wins]
2) Tigers (+3) — Verlander, Valverde, Cabrera [95 wins]
3) Phillies (+2) — Halladay, Madson [102 wins]
4) Yankees (+2) — Sabathia, Rivera [97 wins]
5) Rangers (+2) — Beltre, Feliz [96 wins]
6) D’Backs (+2) — Kennedy, Putz [94 wins]
7) Rays (0) [91 wins]
8) Cardinals (0) [90 wins]

Here are your Division Series winners based on this formula:

Milwaukee over Arizona
Detroit over New York
Philadelphia over St. Louis
Texas over Tampa

And your World Series outcome:
Brewers over Tigers

* probably didn’t say this but he should have

** You could argue for awarding points for other stuff, but so far Blog hasn’t found anything truly compelling (suggestions welcome)

Blog is.

Image via MASN

So are Red Sox!

Wonder if this tiny small little taste will help Team in future?

Thursday morning pudate: Buck addressed above question during post game last night, saying “The proof’s in the pudding. It’s gotta be relentless. It probably starts tomorrow morning. (…) Let’s see it. That’s what I’d be saying if I were the fans.”

Blog of Team found NASA space junk!

Low orbit

Impact!
Images via MASN

Wait a sec. That’s just Mark Reynolds’ BOMB at Fenway from other night.

Never mind. Stand down.

Hello. Never mind on-base percentage. Billy Beane was just sort of like, kind of right. Anyway who cares? Blah blah blah with your margins. Looking forward to movie. Who plays Ray Durham? Who plays “the badger”?

Following image explains entire sports world in handy visual form. Baseball, hockey, skiing, quoits, all of it.

Image via MASN

Note to Team of Baltimore: Please make sure next year you adhere to formula practiced by guy on left, as opposed to guy on right.

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE YOU PALOOKAS.

PS. Also did you see Reimold’s laser beam home run last night? They say Boog Powell would hit those. Pitcher would have to duck and it would still go out. That can’t be bad sign for Noley Nole.

Losin’ hurts …

Image via YES

Doesn’t Blog know it!

It’s been a down year in Schadenfroide department, so we’ll take what little we can find.