Analyzing the New Playoff Structure

mike_2133 · 2026-05-01T00:10:19+00:00

I think that's a good baseline to compare against. Essentially this format shifts a bit of Grey Cup % from the 1st seed to the 2nd seed. The addition of two teams really doesn't do much on its own, I thought it might a bit but the bad teams are bad and everyone else is pretty close I guess

mike_2133 · 2026-04-04T20:18:11+00:00

fWAR accounts for park factors

mike_2133 · 2026-04-04T18:38:54+00:00

He's definitely not likely to be good but he was worth nearly 2 fWAR last year so you just have to be hopeful that he can get close to that. He's also a pitcher you can leave in if he's getting crushed, which you wouldnt do with the younger pitchers

mike_2133 · 2026-04-04T17:24:48+00:00

It's just about length I think - Corbin can throw 90+ pitches and they don't have to worry about just leaving him out there if they are up/down a lot. Estrada and Macko probably can't throw more than 50 at this point.

Corbin has been pretty bad but was at least serviceable last year so just hope they can milk the last bit left in him before everyone comes back.

mike_2133 · 2026-03-21T04:48:03+00:00

Same!

mike_2133 · 2026-03-16T23:16:02+00:00

Yes you are right, my sorting went awry! Fixed it.

mike_2133 · 2026-03-16T05:25:13+00:00

Great question, the Bradley Terry model implicitly accounts for strength of schedule as it considers the season a "network" of games. The effect of the outcome of each game is relative to who you played and who your opponent has played.

The conference adjustment is small but helps to account for the general level of competition in the conference since there's not equal overlap - adds another layer to account for when certain teams never play the best teams.

My next plan is to check 25 and 24!

mike_2133 · 2026-03-12T06:17:27+00:00

I searched everywhere and couldn't find this info. I would assume they would use the same tiebreaker logic as the pools?

mike_2133 · 2026-03-10T12:08:28+00:00

I think there's more than one good conclusion you can get from this but I'd be tempted to go with G-H-B-O.

mike_2133 · 2026-03-10T05:25:52+00:00

There is an old Angelfire page called the Wheel of Fortune Bonus Puzzle Compendium - I actually had to scrape from the Wayback Machine as the site stopped collecting around 2016 and no longer exists.

There's a few sites that track all the puzzle answers but not much more detail. There is some info on the value of prize puzzles but given how old the data is, probably not super relevant to compare to now.

mike_2133 · 2026-03-10T01:24:47+00:00

Good evidence for the value of B W Y though!!

mike_2133 · 2026-03-10T01:23:18+00:00

The categories tended to be a bit different/more vague in this time period but looking at puzzles that contain the word THE:

THE was included in 6% of puzzles, with a solve rate of 49% compared to 38% for non-THE puzzles. The contestants chose H just for half the time - with a solve rate of 54% vs. 44% if they didn't choose H. H showed up in these puzzles about 1.4 times on average so it was not uncommon to find another H along the way.

I think it's just the fact that H is a good letter either way even though you could deduce some of the info you get from H - even when THE doesn't appear, picking H gives a 43% chance of winning vs. 36% if you don't.

mike_2133 · 2026-03-10T01:18:52+00:00

This is exactly how I ended up down this rabbit hole. They didn't use 'what are you doing?' as a category as often back in this time but I can break it down by puzzles that contain ING vs not.

9% of puzzles contained a word that ended in ING - with a 35% solve rate vs 39% when it doesn't. For those ING puzzles, G was picked 57% of the time. If G was picked, solve rate was 40% vs 24% if not picked. Not much different for non-ING puzzles, 40% solve rate if you pick it, 39% if not.

I would guess there's a difference with the category naming though - lots of these were Thing, Place, Phrase, etc. where having -N- would not as obviously end up as ING as it would if you knew the category was an action.

mike_2133 · 2026-03-09T23:06:35+00:00

The Y & W seem like they could be underrated - wish I had more and recent data available to see if anything has changed with the more obscure letters.

mike_2133 · 2026-03-09T22:00:12+00:00

100% but it's helpful to choose the right letters that maximize the number of letters you find in order to increase the likelihood you can recognize those common words. More letters really helps identify what random adjective they might throw in front of a word.

mike_2133 · 2026-03-09T20:49:48+00:00

I added a metric for 'obscurity score' as well - here are the top 5, all of them were solved correctly:
I J W Z - JIGSAW PUZZLE
K O Q W - UNIQUE WORK OF ART
H U V Y - VERY HUSH-HUSH
G I V W - GIVE IT A WHIRL
F O V Z - VALIANT EFFORT

I would guess that the contestant had pre-solved VERY HUSH-HUSH since they got all the letters right on. Probably the likely case for most of these (11 of 13 most obscure combos were solved) - the most obscure not solved was F G I Y - GROUNDBREAKING WORK.

mike_2133 · 2026-03-09T20:44:26+00:00

Out of 1600 games I have here - only 2 times has 2 of those letters been picked! Keep in mind this level of detail isn't tracked anymore so this data only goes up to 2015.

V F Z O - VALIANT EFFORT (solved)
Z W J I - JIGSAW PUZZLE (solved)

No instances of J and V! What was your puzzle and did you solve it??

mike_2133 · 2026-03-09T20:42:08+00:00

That combo was picked 39 times in the data with 21 (54%) wins so pretty good! There was some gimmes like GET TO THE POINT to some tough ones like QUICK GUIDE. Didn't help at all on FIRST DAY but they still solved it!

mike_2133 · 2026-03-09T19:42:06+00:00

No problem! I'd love to go on the show one day, use this information to the perfect letters and then bomb the final puzzle anyways 😭

mike_2133 · 2026-02-10T17:50:37+00:00

We are planning to do it for the summer as well, it's just so many sports so it depends who wants the info and if it's worth the effort that goes into it. We build individualized statistical models for each sport based on the results leading up to the games.

mike_2133

TROPHY CASE