Would You Rather Face a Streaking Team or a Slumping Team?

Fans, broadcasters and writers often talk about momentum within a game or over the course of several games.  A Tigers fan might get concerned, for example, if his favorite team is playing a game against an Indians team which had just won five games in a row.  The thought is that the momentum of a five game winning streak could carry into the next game giving the Indians an advantage.  On the other hand, the Tigers fan might be more confident if the Indians had just lost five games in a row.

A few months ago, I looked at the effect of a walk-off win/loss on the following game.  One might expect a walk-off win to create momentum and make a team more likely to win the next game.  Conversely, a demoralizing walk-off loss might cause a team to perform poorly in the next game.  Using 19 years of Retrosheet.org data, I found no correlation between walk off wins/losses and wins/losses in games after walk offs.  Teams simply performed at the same level in the game after the walk off as they did in ordinary games. 

I recently did a similar study of teams on winning and losing streaks.  Using retrosheet data from 1995-2013, I found 87,860 sets of five consecutive games followed by a sixth game.  Table 1 below shows that there were 3,400 instances of a team losing five consecutive games, 14,158 times when they went 1-4, etc.

Table 1: Record in Game 6 after a Five-game Set

Five-game Record	N	Game 6 win%
0-5	3,400	45.5
1-4	14,158	46.3
2-3	26,197	49.6
3-2	26,578	51.3
4-1	14,315	52.2
5-0	3,212	53.9

 

We can see that the better a team performed in the five-game set, the more likely they were to win game six.  For example, teams that went 0-5 won 45.5% of the time in the sixth game.  On the other hand teams which went 5-0 won 53.9% of game sixes.  So, at first glance, it looks as if winning streaks create momentum that carries into the next game.

We need to be careful here though.  You can't directly compare teams that lose five games in a row with teams that win five games in a row.  Teams that lose five games in succession tend to be inferior to those that win five in succession and thus are more likely to lose game six regardless of momentum.  The teams losing five in a row won 46.2% of their other games during the year which was similar to the their game six winning percentage of 45.5%.  Moreover, teams winning five in a row won 53.2% of their other games which again was close to their 53.9% winning percentage in game sixes.  The full results are shown in Table 2 below.

Table 2: Record in Game 6 Versus Overall Record

Five-game Record	Overall Win%	Game 6 win%
0-5	46.2	45.5
1-4	47.8	46.3
2-3	49.3	49.6
3-2	50.8	51.3
4-1	52.1	52.2
5-0	53.2	53.9

 

So, it appears that five-game losing and winning streaks did not cause teams to perform any differently than usual in the sixth game.  Instead, their performance in game six was similar to their overall record throughout the season.  To be more sure, I also looked at teams with three game losing/winning streaks and seven game losing/winning streaks and the results were similar to those in Table 2.

So, the next time the Tigers face a hot or cold team, it is probably better to look at the overall record of their opponent rather than worry about their short-term streaks.   

The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by
Retrosheet.  Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at "www.retrosheet.org"