The splits are ugly.  Everyone's heard about that.

Using home/road splits for sOPS+, we can see who's contributing the most to the difference:

 

 

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A link to the original article: Raul Ibanez great start comes with steroid speculation

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OK first a few points/disclaimers/etc.:

1. My knowlege of statistics is limited in comparison to many of the people on this site- I had been wondering about this for a while and doing this gave me something to do while watching the phillies spring training game. I'm posting this mainly to get feedback from those on here who know more than me- not to convince people to think something or other about the phillies playoff chances, so please be reasonable and don't be a dick if you disagree.
2. When I say something "probably" will happen, I mean that the chance of this something happening is greater than 50%.
3. When I say k= the average chance of winning over n years I'm aware that since C(n) isn't linear, average isn't what will give you exact answers, but I believe the difference between the simple average and what would make it exact is negligible enough to where my main points are still valid, so i kept it as a simple average for simplicities sake.

Here we go, For a long time, I had been wondering about this subject, but recently I was reading THE TEAM TO REPEAT? fanpost and read this:

With all of the guys we have locked down for the next few years I whole heartedly believe we can have nice runs the next 3 years, not that we will necessarily win a WS every year, but we should get at least 1 more.

I had heard lots of similar things said and was a little pessimistic as to their accuracy, and so i did some work and this is what I found:

FOR the Phillies to "probably" win a WS in atleast one of the next 3 years, they would need to average at the least a 20.63% chance of winning the WS over the next 3 years.

Since it is VERY UNLIKELY that the Phillies will have a chance of winning the WS that averages greater than 20% for the next 3 years, The Phillies PROBABLY WILL NOT win a WS in the next 3 years.

 

My Reasoning/Proof:

To judge the accuracy of this claim, I tried to mathematically model the chance C of winning atleast one WS over the next n years, and came up with this-

The chance "C(n)" of the phillies winning a WS in "n" years can be modeled as C(n)= 1- (1- k)^n, where k = average chance the phillies have of winning a WS for each of the n years (see disclaimer 3)

So, using the equation above, the previous statement (the chance the phillies have of winning a world series over the next 3 years is greater than 50%) can also be written as C(3) > .50.

Now we can solve for k to find what the average chance each year would have to be for this statement to be true.  Plugging 3 in for n and .50 in for C(n), we find that k > .2063

 

So for the previous statement to be true, thus for it to be probable that the Phillies win a WS in the next 3 years, the Phillies average chance of winning (k) over the next 3 years must be greater than 20.63%. (Which we've already ruled highly unlikely).

 

So, It will probably take the Phillies longer than 3 years to win another WS.

 

 

This brings up an interesting question, though-

How many more years must go by before the Phillies "probably" will have won another WS?

Using the same formula as before, we plug in .50 for C(n) again and a variety of reasonable values for k and solve for n:

For example:

If k = 10% (or .1), n= 6.578 rounded up = 7 years. 

So- If we (the phillies) have an average chance of 10% of winning the WS over n years, it will take 7 years for our chances of winning atleast one WS to be greater than 50%.

 

The problem with trying to estimate exactly how long it will take for the Phillies to probably win atleast one WS is that any k value that I (or anyone) gives is going to be disputed.

SO, rather than me telling you what I think a good k value for the Phillies will be, I'll let you make the decision. 

Here is a list of k (and their corresponding n) values- You can complete the following paragraph to complete your estimate:

The Phillies will average a ___% chance, so it will be ___ long years until the Phillies will have probably won another WS.

3.33% (or 1 in 30) chance = 20.45 years

5% chance = 13.51 years


7% chance = 9.55 years


10% chance = 6.58 years


12% chance = 5.42 years


15% chance = 4.27 years


17% chance = 3.72 years


20% chance = 3.10 years

Note: Keep in mind that since there are 30 mlb teams, if all the teams had equal chances of winning, it would take 20.45 years for a team to probably have won a WS.
Thanks for bearing with my boring-math-textbook-esque writing abilities and any feedback.

Poll

How long do you think it will probably be until the Phillies win again?

46%

I don't care what you say.. They'll probably win it again in the next 3 years

23 votes

24%

4-9 seems right to me

12 votes

28%

10+.. Flags fly forever

14 votes

49 votes | Poll has closed