Marvelous Sounding Stats

On Thursday, during the Cleveland-New York playoff game, the excellent Matt Vasgersian and John Smoltz made a pretty big deal of a marvelous sounding statistic.

They pointed out that teams that win Game 1 of a five-game series win 72% of the series.

They were trying to amplify the obvious but essential fact that the winner of Game 1 in a five-game series …