We can both agree that Bartolo Colon will never hit an inside-the-park home run, right? Well, there’s a better chance of that than me or you ever winning the Powerball.
If you bought a Powerball ticket, you probably already have that $1.5 billion jackpot spent. I hope you’re not too optimistic, though, because MLB’s Cut4 compared the chances of winning the Powerball to Bartolo Colon hitting an inside-the-parker and the odds aren’t in your favor.
Bartolo is more likely to hit an inside-the-parker than you are to win the #Powerball: https://t.co/cf22wQGDRU pic.twitter.com/lZOFnUCtVW
— Cut4 (@Cut4) January 13, 2016
Here’s how Cut4 justified these odds:
1 in 160 home runs are inside-the-parkers. Based on his speed score, we can expect that one of every 2,350 Bartolo Colon home runs to be of the inside-the-park variety. Just one per 4,000 plate appearances seems to be the limit for how, uh … unlucky a player can be at hitting home runs. That gives Bartolo a give-or-take 1-in-9.6 million shot to hit an inside-the-parker at any random PA. But, if we consider his actual number of career PAs, there’s approximately a 1-in-39,662 chance that he’ll bring us more joy than $1.5 billion ever could by getting that inside-the-park home run.
It’s OK, nothing can stop you from dreaming about both of these things happening.
