THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Psst… wanna work for MLB.com?

Tell ‘em you “heard it from Tango”.  Don’t know if it’ll help, but it can’t hurt:

Stats Stringer Score MLB games from the press box.
Sports Reporter Cover live MLB games across the country as well as MLB news off the field.
Pitch f/x Operator Track every pitch for television, Internet and stadium video production.

(Hat tip: PizzaCutter)

Friday, November 14, 2008

Help a high school student with his Black Sox paper

Post your email in the comments area:

I am a middle school gifted teacher in St. Louis, MO and my students are currently doing an independent project on a topic of their choosing.  One of my students wanted to study the Black Sox scandal.  One of the requirements is that they perform an expert interview of three questions.  I was wondering if you would be able to put me in touch with someone that would be able to help with this.  Thank you and keep up the good work.

Poll: How do you like your Regular Season games?

Regular season games ONLY.  Five questions:

Question #1:

Question #2:

Question #3:

Question #4:

Question #5:

BDB Database

Colin goes through it step by step. 

At some point, the BDB, RetroSQL, GameDay, and PITCHf/x databases will all be linked together.  I suspect we can work toward that some time in 2009.

HR Derby to determine winner?

Whenever there is talk of having a tie-breaker for baseball, someone invariably says “might as well do it by HR derby then”.  In hockey, the most tense moment for me as a hockey fan was the 94 Olympics where Peter Forsberg scored perhaps the greatest goal ever.  And here are the top shootout goals in the NHL.  Fans go nuts, just crazy for this.  And the difference between a shootout and the HR derby is that breakaways and penalty shots are a part of hockey.  An exciting part of hockey.  The HR derby has nothing at all to do with baseball.

This is why I applaud the international baseball rules to have a tie-breaker by starting with men on base.  Having runners on base is exactly baseball.

***

In baseball, they used to use one, maybe two pitchers, per game per team.  Now, the average is four.  Do we REALLY want to see those middle reliever guys?  Really?  Really, really?  7-innings.

I know, blasphemy.  But, other than the playoffs, how often do you guys actually watch a full 9-inning game at home?

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Will MGL’s head explode?

Here you go:

...whether you witnessed the greatest single-season job of managing in baseball history. Scoff, if you like. Bring up sacrifice bunts, bullpen management and pinch-hitters, if you must. Just understand, the job Maddon did this season was shocking, to say the least. It was historic, to say the most.

Gameday Database

Courtesy of derigaz2, and found on the wiki.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Will the real Chipper Jones please stand up?

Back when Chipper was hitting .420, Nate Silver gave him a 13% chance of hitting .400.  He based that on Chipper being a true .348 hitter.  I used Bayes to come up with him being a true .321 hitter.  Marcel, at the start of the season, forecasted him to be a true .307 hitter.

From the point when we all made our bets…
.348 Nate Silver
.330 Marcel (includes using 2008-to-date of Jun 11 performance)
.321 Tango (via Bayes, using only 2008-to-date of Jun 11 performance)
.307 Marcel (excluding any 2008 performance)
...this is what Chipper Jones did: he went 68 for 220, for a .309 batting average.  Seeing that a .3072 batting average on 220 AB gives you 67.6 hits, which we get to round to 68 hits, the dumb monkey nailed Chipper’s batting average perfectly.

Chalk up another win…

(Not that it really means anything.  After all, as we bore witness, anything can happen in 219 AB, and so, anything could have happened in 220 AB.  92 hits here, or 68 hits there, all from the same guy just months apart, is not a big deal.)

Replacement Level using Forecasted players

Rally Monkey gives us some good work.  Here are my thoughts:

Read More

Post-season experience matters?

Apparently, it does:

But while a team’s record did not have much of an effect on its odds of winning a postseason series, its advantage in experience did. A team that had, on average, one more year worth of postseason experience than its counterpart, is expected to win their post-season series 54.2 percent of the time, which is nothing to scoff at.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Vote: How much for CC?

Just as we did last year for ARod, let’s see what you guys think CC will sign for.  (Thanks to Will for the reminder.)

Igor Larionov, newest HOFer - Cross between Ichiro, Curt Flood and Jackie Robinson

“In the ‘80s, he was arguably the best center in the world.”
-- Wayne Gretzky

Here are some interesting stories about Igor Larionov:
ESPN/Lebrun: Larionov meeting Gretzky
Globe/Duhatschek: similar meeting with a bit extra details
Fox/Strachan:more of the same, with a funny anecdote about game plans on ice
NHL.com/Juice: family history, including Gulag stories.

Best performances of 2008

Sky gives us his list.  It is probably closest to how I would have done it.  Personally, I would have included Chone’s and the Fans Scouting Report for fielding.  It looks like the “Off” column is a combination of offense and replacement level, with offense including park adjustments.  Here’s what might be better:
Hit Run Park League Repl Pos Fld

This way, if someone disagrees with the Park valuation, he can easily change that, without throwing everything out.  As it stands, it’s not readily apparent what the park adjustment is for Holliday or Mauer.  How much did Beltran get for his running game?  Don’t like it?  Change that part, leave the rest as-is.

Also, I’m not sure if the Off uses the correct run value for the out.  Since Sky is a regular here, I’ll presume he did it right.

Those nitpicky things aside, a great presentation, and an excellent series overall.

Resetting Bretty Myers

Great stuff from Josh on the changes in Brett Myers.  It’s scouting information like this that will let you separate the signal from the noise.  We need more scouting information like this…

Monday, November 10, 2008

Ball the vote

Dave Cameron is asking for your support.  He’s currently leading the next votegetter 2:1, so it would be supercool if he won this thing.  So, go vote already.

Saturday, November 08, 2008

The Fielding Bible Voters

This is who they are.  I am there only as the trustee of the Fans Scouting Report.  I simply report whatever the Fans say (my sole input is for the pitchers).  Anyway, so how good are these voters anyway?  I tried a couple of ways.  Here’s what I’ve come up with (ignoring all pitcher voting):

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Marcel 2009 - Not yet

I’ve been getting a few of these emails, so I’ll just address it here.  The official Marcels will be published on the Marcel home page on my site, and an announcement will be made on my blog here.  I will get them out within one week of the Baseball Databank publishing the 2008 data.  However, if it’s not forthcoming, I will create my own dataset, and will then generate the Marcels.

There are other people who have taken the underpinnings, and perhaps the entirety, of the Marcel system.  While I have no problem with that, neither have I validated the work, and therefore, I can’t give you a thumbs up or down on them.

The FairTax and other “flat tax” schemes in lieu of income and payroll taxes

This is definitely not a sports post, so beware.  It is long too.

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On the lighter side…

As the “California Prop 8” thread dies a slow death, I came across this article about “Oxford researchers who compiled a top 10 list of annoying words and phrases.” Here is the link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/debates/3394545/Oxford-compiles-list-of-top-ten-irritating-phrases.html

I think these “Oxford researchers” need to get their noses out of their spread sheets!  I don’t know about you, but I don’t find many of their expressions annoying at all, and I could probably easily think of 10 more that are a lot more annoying than their “top 10” list.  Maybe they think differently in England, or maybe I’m all wet.  Here is their list (one thing - I probably use 8 out of 10 - maybe that’s why I don’t think they are too annoying - what is that, “personal use bias?"):

The top ten most irritating phrases:

1 - At the end of the day

2 - Fairly unique

3 - I personally

4 - At this moment in time

5 - With all due respect

6 - Absolutely

7 - It’s a nightmare

8 - Shouldn’t of

9 - 24/7

10 - It’s not rocket science

You guys have any you want to add to their list?  Or better yet, to replace their really bad list.

Friday, November 07, 2008

Pinto’s PMR

Follow along as Pinto releases his PMR data, day-by-day, through his archive page.

I prefer looking at “Actual minus Predicted”. I think Pinto took our suggestion to show that in the past, but, he doesn’t show it at the moment.  Among others: Utley is +28, Polanco +18, Phillips +13, Cabrera +11, Ellis +8, Scutaro +7, ODawg +6, Weeks +2, Pedroia +2… Iwamura -23.

Scutaro is also +16 as SS, and mate Eckstein is -15.  So, that confirms MGL and Dewan.  I must believe that there’s something going on here.  Is Eckstein’s suckitude making Scutaro look better than he is with the park adjustment?  Are the Jays pitchers giving easier to field balls?  Is he always behind Halladay?  Something.