The “God Plays Dice” blog has a nice little baseball-themed post built on the coincidence that a number of the teams in the postseason this year are from the same or at least neighboring markets — two from Los Angeles, a pair from San Francisco and Oakland, and another pair from Washington and Baltimore. It can’t be likely that this should happen much, but, how unlikely is it? Michael Lugo works it out in what’s probably the easiest way to do it.
The Major League Baseball postseason is starting just as I write this.
From the National League, we have Washington, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
From the American League, we have Baltimore, Kansas City, Detroit, Los Angeles (Anaheim), and Oakland.
These match up pretty well geographically, and this hasn’t gone unnoticed: see for example the New York Times blog post “the 2014 MLB playoffs have a neighborly feel” (apologies for not providing a link; I’m out of NYT views for the month, and I saw this back when I wasn’t); a couple mathematically inclined Facebook friends of mine have mentioned it as well.
In particular there are three pairs of “same-market” teams in here: Washington/Baltimore, Los Angeles/Los Angeles, San Francisco/Oakland. How likely is that?
(People have pointed out St. Louis/Kansas City as being both in Missouri, but that’s a bit more of a judgment call, and St. Louis…
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