Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
But the issue isn't about defense, it is about the go ahead run in the bottom of the ninth ending the game. If the rules of baseball said the team behind ALWAYS gets one more chance to at least tie the score and keep the game going, then there would be no home field advantage - but as long as the lead run in the bottom of the 9th or later for the home team ends the game - that is an advantage.
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But you've just repeated the fallacious argument I cited, which threatens to turn the discussion into a Monty Python skit.
Since I'm one of the authors in the literature cited, my standard response is, "read the papers and see why your argument is wrong." Here's the executive summary: The correct argument is not based on whether you have the last chance to score, it's whether you have the "last chance" to *take action*. Actions which prevent runs are equally as important as actions that score runs in winning a game.
Two key observations:
(1) At the middle of the 9th inning, the visiting team will have had three more outs with which to score runs; therefore, it is more likely, other things being equal, they have the lead. It is equally valid (and crucial) to point out that the visiting team, when they have the lead in the bottom of the 9th, knows that all they have to do is to keep the home team from scoring the required number of runs.
(2) In the bottom of the 9th inning of a tie game, it is true that one run wins the game with certainty. However, in the top of the 9th, one run wins the game with very high probability. Suppose in some situation in the bottom of the 9th you think bunting is a good idea. Then, it turns out, it is almost always also a good idea in the top of the 9th in the same situation. It's a well-documented phenomenon that people psychologically overweight certainty events versus ones which are just very likely, which is probably part of the fallacy.
I'm interested in educating on the correct way to think about this problem (but read the papers, most of them are quite accessible), but I regret I won't have further interest in responding to messages which unthinkingly parrot the same incorrect arguments.