Nate Silver Turns His Eye To the American League 50
Lasrick writes "Nate Silver is at it again. This time, instead of the presidential election, he's focusing on the baseball's Most Valuable Player race for the American league. It's a race that embodies the split among baseball fans between those who think of it from a mathematical perspective (the Moneyball generation) and those who prefer the traditional, feel-of-the-game perspective. Here's a quote: 'On Thursday, the American League will announce the recipient of its Most Valuable Player award. The winner is likely to be Miguel Cabrera, the Detroit Tigers star who won the league’s triple crown by leading in batting average (.330), home runs (44) and runs batted in (139). It might seem as if these statistics make Cabrera, the first triple crown winner in either league since 1967, a shoo-in for the M.V.P. But most statistically minded fans would prefer that it go to another player, Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels.'"
this is actually more his home turf (Score:5, Informative)
He first got well-known doing statistics-based baseball analysis (aka sabermetrics [wikipedia.org]), and only moved into politics later.
Re:Start placing bets ... (Score:4, Informative)
He is not making a prediction on who WILL win the MVP. He is making a case for who he thinks SHOULD be the MVP, based on his analysis of statistics. However, the MVP is not awarded based on his analysis of statistics, it is awarded by a vote of the baseball writers, who may have different MVP criteria than he does.
In the presidential race he predicted who would (not should) win. Here he is saying who should (not will) win.