Mark Twain was fond of saying that there were three kinds of lies: “Lies, damn lies, and statistics.” He probably wasn’t referring to Major League Baseball when he said that, but it certainly can be applicable to the sport at times. While much of the national pastime can be quantified through the use of numbers-driven data, baseball stats sometimes don’t tell us the full story.

There are some great cases in point for this week’s baseball swarm. The MLB Swarm AI participants are given three sets of statistical data within each swarm: the won-loss records of the pitchers involved, their earned run averages, and the current last 10 games records for each respective clubs. Swarm participants obviously may bring other knowledge to bear on each prediction, statistical or otherwise. The way the swarm members decide to weight that informational data is often key to understanding the picks they make.

Tonight’s games present a number of statistical conundrums. For instance, there’s a great matchup in the desert tonight, pitting the Diamondbacks against the blazing-hot Dodgers. The swarm made the Dodgers a heavy-confidence favorite, even though the statistical lines for the two pitchers – Kenta Maeda of Los Angeles and Zack Godley for the Diamondbacks – favor Godley. But here’s the bit where statistics can mislead. Maeda had an ERA over 6.00 at the end of April, but since then he’s settled into a 2.77 ERA. Combine that with the Dodgers enjoying an historically successful run of wins, and you get a high-confidence pick by the swarm.

Every week during the MLB season, Unanimous A.I. will be conducting swarms to pick the outcomes of games. If you’d like to either join a swarm or just get the predictions weekly, click the button below.