MLB 10: The Show predicts a Giants win in the World Series

MLB 10: The Show, which is pretty much universally accepted as the most sophisticated baseball simulation game on the market, favors a victory for the San Francisco Giants in the World Series. The perennial baseball championship begins tonight.MLB 10predicts a tally in Texas's win column, but then projects a downhill fall as San Francisco picks up steam.

The robust simulationpredicts quite anail-biting Series. The best-of-seven tournament will go through all seven matches, and the Giants will only barely edge out with a run in an extra inning on the final night.


Above: It may be a hyper realistic baseball game, but can it actually predict a World Series winner?

Here's the full breakdown of how the World Series will play out, if it were playedby The Show:

Game 1: Texas 10, San Francisco 3
Game 2: San Francisco 9, Texas 1
Game 3: San Francisco 7, Texas 5
Game 4: San Francisco 6, Texas 3
Game 5: Texas 4, San Francisco 3
Game 6: Texas 4, San Francisco 2 (10 innings)
Game 7: San Francisco 1, Texas 0 (10 innings)

The simulation was performed using the game's intensely detailed player-by-player statistics, which are updated with a fine-tooth comb every year.

In addition to seeing how the teams played against each other in an AI-controlled match, Sony also projected individual team player stats. Under its simulation, Giants outfielder Pat Burrell would take the MVP honors with four home runs and 11 RBIs during the Series. Buster Posey and Matt Cain would also be standout players.

On the Texas Rangers side, Cliff Lee, Josh Hamilton, and Elvis Andrus would all give valiant and noteworthy contributions to their team's three-of-seven victories.

It's fun to see a simulation of the World Series try to predict the outcome, but don't start calling your bookies just yet. Sony also tried the same thing during last year's World Series. Here's how its predictions matched up to the real outcomes:

You could have flipped a coin to predict each game's winner and gotten better results. Of the seven World Series games, MLB 09 predicted the outcome correctly less than 50% of the time, and as a result picked the wrong team to win it all.

So we'll see how the simulation stacks up this year. But honestly, when was the last time you saw a clobbering defeat of 9-1 in the World Series like Sony predicts for this year's Game 2?

Below is the video of this year's simulation:

Oct 27, 2010