Last night (September 4), Giancarlo Stanton hit his 53rd home run. Will he break Roger Maris’ record of 61? Using functions in my BA_predict package, I just simulated the predictive distribution of the number of home runs Stanton will hit in the remainder of the 2017 season. Here is a bar graph of the results:
I’ve shaded the bars corresponding to the event of Stanton hitting 9 or more home runs and breaking Maris’ record. I compute the predictive probability of this event to be 47 percent. So stayed tuned to the remainder of the season.
My weekly post is a bit delayed this week, but look forward to a post this week on the role of “luck” in the Pythagorean formula. I got to see Billy Hamilton in Cincinnati yesterday hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Brewers. It was a rare event but fun to watch.
Exploring Baseball Data with R 
You know that 61 is an AL record, not an NL record. Stanton can top Maris with 62, but he can’t break a record.
Correct, but I think Maris’s record is viewed as the home run record among “clean” players.