Studeman: Are September games important?

September 20, 2012/in /by jpomrenke

From SABR member Dave Studeman at The Hardball Times on September 20, 2012:

Are September games important?

In a word, no. September games, on average, are less important than games in May, June and July. Here’s a table of the relative importance of games by month, from 2008:

Month     Game LI
Apr         0.47
May         0.63
Jun         0.70
Jul         0.64
Aug         0.46
Sep         0.43

As you can see, games (on average) were less critical in the last two months of the season. Now, there were some very important games in 2008, including two games of playoff intensity between the Twins and White Sox. There were a couple of division races, too.

Still, the criticality of those games was more than offset by the number of teams out of their division races, as well as the number of teams with comfortable leads. No drama for those teams; no critical games. On average, less intensity at the end of the season.

Read the full article here: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/are-september-games-important/

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Originally published: September 20, 2012. Last Updated: September 20, 2012.