Okay, so yesterday I decided to dive into the stats for the Red Sox vs. Baltimore Orioles games. I wanted to see if I could figure out any, like, betting trends or just generally interesting stuff about their matchups. Here’s how it went down:
Digging for Data
First, I needed data. Lots of it. I started by just, you know, Googling around. I looked at a few different sports stats websites, I looked around for historical scores, team lineups, where the games were played – home or away, you know – and I put all that stuff into a giant spreadsheet. It was kind of a pain, honestly.
Cleaning Up the Mess
Of course, the data wasn’t perfect. Some sites had, like, different ways of listing things, or some scores were missing. One site might call a player “John Smith” and another “J. Smith,” that kind of thing. So, I spent a good chunk of time just cleaning everything up. Made sure all the dates were in the same format, all the player names were consistent, that sort of tedious stuff. Gotta have clean data, right?
Show Time: crunching numbers
Once I felt good about the data which I had just cleaned up, it was time to actually, you know, do something with it. Here’s some of things I did:
- Total Wins/Losses: I started simple. I just wanted to see the overall record between the two teams. How many times had the Red Sox won? How many times had the Orioles won?
- Home vs. Away: Then I checked if either team had a big advantage playing at home. Some teams are just way better in their own stadium.
- Runs Scored: I looked at the average runs scored by each team in their games. Were these usually high-scoring affairs, or more like defensive battles?
Finally, made a note and it’s done!
