MLB Playoff Shutouts

One of the recurring themes in the Sacred Manuscript is how the markets react to a team after they've been on the receiving end of what John Cleese might call a 'damn good thrashing.'

While the sample size in playoffs is always going to be small with fewer games to begin with and shutouts fairly rare, nevertheless when a team is shoutout (fails to score) and loses by five or more runs in the MLB, the market typically discounts them in the next game.

I may have mentioned this in 2014 when the World Series provided a good example. The San Francisco Giants beat the Kansas City Royals 5-0 in Game 5. The Royals got revenge two days winning 10-0 before the newly vanquished team (this time the Giants) bounced back to win Game 7 and the World Series. 

With such a small sample size, it's not surprising that the p-value isn't significant but with a good premise behind it, this is an idea that may be worth watching and of course, it paid off on Monday night with the New York Mets bouncing back from a 0-9 loss in Game 1 with a 6-1 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 2. 

It's encouraging that the Run Line returns support the theory, but it appears that the 'damn good thrashing' theory only applies when teams are shutout. 

Scoring just the one run in a big loss, and there is no carryover to the next game, nor is the theory validated in regular season games. 

Someone at Betfair actually settled the market after three innings as a Dodgers win at a time when they were trailing 0-6, but they corrected the error and brought the market back in-play after I pointed this out to them on Twitter. Mistakes happen, but the response was immediate which was as impressive as settling the market incorrectly in the first place was unimpressive. 

Game three of this serious is later tonight