The Chicago Cubs won the biggest contest in baseball Wednesday night for the first time since 1908, an outcome that the most famous data journalism website said was more improbable than Donald Trump winning the White House just this Sunday.
The Cubs won the World Series in the seventh and final game, in the Cleveland Indians’ own Progressive Field. Cubs beat the Indians 8 to 7 runs, in the 10th inning after a rain delay.
Going into Sunday, the team was down 3 to 1 games, leading FiveThirtyEight.com sports number cruncher Rob Arthur to speculate that they were probably doomed.
“With a 2-1 World Series deficit and home-field advantage slipping away, the Cubs needed this game,” Arthur wrote.
“Instead, the Indians soundly defeated the Cubs 7-2 on Saturday night in Game 4, silencing the normally raucous Wrigley crowd and drastically decreasing Chicago’s chance of taking home the championship.”
Going into Sunday’s Cubs comeback game, Arthur rated their “total chance of winning the Series at a measly 15 percent.”
That statistical sliver of hope, he reminded the website’s highly numerate readers, is “a smaller chance than FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast model currently gives Donald Trump to win the White House.”
The site’s forecast model, put together by founder and celebrity number cruncher Nate Silver, currently has Trump’s chances at 32.2 percent. But, as the Cubs’ improbable Wednesday victory shows, anything can happen.
