THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Game Theory in Football

A look at whether teams should pass more on 1st and ten, from Ben Alamar.

The key data for those who don’t want to read the whole thing is…

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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Making Sense of Win Expectancy and Stolen Bases

Rob McQuown has a good understanding of how to use the win expectancy table.  I wouldn’t go as low as “ to about .250-.260.” when you get to that part, maybe down to .270 as a guess.  And in THE BOOK, I do show how the breakeven point can be anywhere from 60% to 90% depending on the inning and score, so the adherence to the “average” breakeven point obviously should not be listened to.  The important takeaways from the articles are:
1 - Understand the context, don’t assume average
2 - You should be able to use some educated guesses to tweak the numbers to fit a particular context

Friday, October 06, 2006

Analyzing Manager Moves with THE BOOK

I loved the whole article.  The premise to the analysis:

On the other hand, any gambler going to Vegas to play blackjack will, if he or she is serious about winning, come equipped with a memorized cheat-sheet of when to take a hit and when to stand pat.  Should we expect anything less from the man in charge of a baseball team with a $70 million budget?  The odds we’re dealing with are small, but so is the house advantage in Vegas.  To beat the system, or the other team, is a matter of inches, or, precisely the issue at hand here: a few percentage points.  After all, that’s supposed to be the point of conventional baseball strategy in the first place--playing the percentages.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Speaking of having no clue as to the efficacy or wisdom of the sacrifice attempt…

This was written by Joe Sheehan in today’s BP.  Joe is a smart guy and a sabermetric writer.  When these guys write fluff pieces, do they turn into blithering idiots, with all due respect to Joe, who is also a nice guy?  O.K., I am being a little harsh, but these things really piss me off and I am getting too old to pull any punches.

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Tuesday, October 03, 2006

The Sac Bunt

http://www.tnr.com/blog/count

Nothing worse than arguing about the strategy of the bunt by using words like “Moneyball” to represent the sabermetric-viewpoint.  There’s a great set of charts by Dan Levitt along with the important series of disclaimers of not looking at averages but at the actual sequence of runners/batters, as well as a 50-page treatise by MGL in THE BOOK.  You need to immerse yourself in these two pieces of research, before writing about when to use and not use the bunt. 

Friday, August 25, 2006

The Shift

When Bonds was Bonds the shift probably did not hurt him all that much overall, or at least the decrease in production from the shift was but a mere drop in the bucket compared to his overall offensive production.

Now that he is no longer Bonds, I am beginning to wonder if the shift is really hurting his overall offensive value.

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Monday, August 21, 2006

Stupid Ballplayers?

If you have a lapse in judgement, is it enough to call you stupid?  So, we have the Braves game, with the resident power hitter, bunting in the ninth inning of a close game:

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Friday, August 11, 2006

Does Charlie Manuel know what he is doing?

Manuel insists on batting three lefties in a row, Dellucci, Utley, and Howard.

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Unusual Strategy

Last night in the bottom of the 14th inning, the Reds IBB’d Howard with runners on 1st and 2nd and no outs and the game tied.

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Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Pinch Hitting: No Bang Off The Bench?

Andy penned an article on pinch hitting at Baseball Prospectus:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5404

Friday, June 09, 2006

Walking Bonds with the Bases Loaded

Barry Bonds was intentionally walked with the bases loaded, a 2-run lead, in the bottom of the ninth, and 2 outs on May 28, 1998.  Was it a good play or not?

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