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We Crunched The Numbers On 2021’s Best (And Worst) Teams

As we look back on the highs and lows of 2021’s sports calendar, it’s tempting to crown certain teams as the best — or worst — in all of sports, not just their sport. That’s been difficult to do across the pro sports landscape … until now. We here at FiveThirtyEight made a concerted effort […]

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What Our New NHL Forecast Says About This Season

For years, readers have asked us to add NHL predictions to the host of forecasts we run here at FiveThirtyEight. And clearly, hockey’s absence wasn’t out of any aversion to the sport on our part — editor-in-chief Nate Silver, myself and many other writers here have been pretty obsessed with it, in fact. So after […]

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The Astros Are Good Again. That’s Complicating Their Story.

When the Houston Astros spent most of the 2020 regular season underperforming, it was tempting to see their struggles as proof that their sign-stealing system fueled the franchise’s recent rise. The official investigation into the scheme — which involved using video to decode opponents’ signs in real time, then transmitting the signs to batters via […]

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We Built A WNBA Prediction Model For The 2021 Season

When last we saw the WNBA’s best players on the court, the Seattle Storm were capping off their undefeated postseason with a championship sweep of the Las Vegas Aces in the league’s Bradenton, Florida-based bubble. The 2021 season, which tips off Friday, should be somewhat more normal than 2020 — the emotionally draining experience of […]

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