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Thursday, October 09, 2008
By , 10:03 PM
OK, he’s not really a manager, but he certainly could be one. In fact, I think that he is as smart, knowledgeable, and experienced as most managers in baseball. Don’t get me wrong. I am not, by any means, touting his qualifications to be a good manager. Only that he seems to me to have to have the mindset of a typical manager. And I think that most baseball insiders would agree with me on that.
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Comments • 2008/10/10
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
winClass n next3 regr3 over500 reg500
0.378 26 0.458 0.451 19% 13%
0.429 157 0.478 0.472 35% 29%
0.476 265 0.489 0.490 45% 43%
0.522 311 0.507 0.509 57% 57%
0.571 144 0.530 0.528 70% 71%
0.617 39 0.572 0.547 95% 85%
From 1969-1971, the Expos had a .404 record. I put them in the “.400-.450” win class. (That’s an average of .429 for all the teams in that class, which is the second line in the chart, under the “winClass” column.) From 1972-1974, they had a .476 win%. That’s a close match to similar teams (actually, .478, under the “next3’ column). Teams in their win class (the .400-.450 win class) ended up with a 3-yr win% of over .500 35% of the time (that’s the “over500” column).
If we regress their win percentage 60% toward the mean, we end up with the reg3 column (that’s win% times .4 plus .3). As we can see, a pretty strong match, except for the really, really good teams. If we take their win%, times 3, minus 1, you get the reg500 column. Again, a decent match.
So, the 2006-08 Pirates, with a win% of .416, is expected from 2009-11 to have a .466 record, with a 25% chance of having at least a .500 record over those three years.
Now this is cool. Forget Dan Rather, Keith Olbermann, and whoever else Nate has met. Stephen Colbert? Guest-speaker to the President’s dinner? Wittiest man in America? A one-time presidential candidate? That’s really cool. Nate looked nervous, unlike his very calm demeanor with the other guys. Must be tough to be sparring with a comedian as sharp as Colbert. Colbert was pretty good to Nate. Nate had one good line where he tried to put a baseball analogy to the race for presidency, likening Obama to the Rays, that we’re in the 9th inning down by 2, and Palin was just picked off first base. Must feel great to make a funny guy like Colbert laugh.
Nate has Obama with an 89% win expectancy as of today. Bottom of the 9th, 1 out, down by 2 is a 96% chance of winning. Down by one though is a 90% chance. So, that’s where we are in the race. Bottom of the 9th, 1 out, down by 1 run, McCain batting, Obama pitching.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
UPDATE: Pujols wins. Poll question modified to select SECOND best player. Further information below.
Justin gives us a best-of-breed. He also applies my revised positional adjustments, which, as of today, are these:
+1.25 C
+0.75 SS
+0.25 2B/3B/CF
-0.75 LF/RF
-1.25 1B
-1.75 DH ... Should be -2.25, but then I add in 0.50 for the DH penalty of how hard it is to hit off the bench.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Nice list.
Bill James, in what will surely be an article to appear in the next Gold Mine, looks at the issue of whether the Power or Finesse pitchers perform better in the post-season. He does his typically enjoyable study of matched pairs, where he proceeds to select 100 power pitchers and 100 finesse pitchers (they match in a variety of ways, except in K and BB). They match up quite well in the categories he selected. He also notes:
But the power pitchers had averaged 183 strikeouts, 76 walks; the finesse pitchers had averaged 107 strikeouts, 57 walks. The two groups were nearly even in terms of home runs allowed (a few more for the power pitchers), but the finesse pitchers had given up, on average, 18 more hits. 18 more hits, 19 less walks, one less homer. . .the same results overall.
As you guys know, I’m big on simply doing K minus BB, per PA. And just looking at the bolded part, you can see that I think the two groups are biased. I responded:
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David compares THT, Chone, PECOTA, and ZiPS.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
By , 09:16 PM
Sometimes you can get an idea as to how well a manager actually “understands” the game. To wit:
Jerry Manuel says:
“You don’t see a lot of guys that have statistical numbers play well in these championship series,” Manuel said. “What you see is usually the little second baseman or somebody like that carries off the M.V.P. trophy that nobody expected him to do. That’s because he’s comfortable in playing that form of baseball, so therefore when the stage comes, it’s not a struggle for him.”
I pity the poor Met fans.
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Comments • 2008/10/09
Friday, October 03, 2008
Colin provides his data for easy access, along with his intro article.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
By , 07:04 PM
Here is an SI,com article by John Donovan (I don’t know who he is). In it, he says:
Still, there are smart ways to pick the teams that will fare best in the playoffs. Nate Silver and the hard-thinkers over at Baseball Prospectus have looked at tons of data and come up with a formula that identifies the three main characteristics of a successful playoff team. They are:
1. Pitchers that strike out batters.
2. A stud closer.
3. A good defense.
You might notice there’s no mention of home runs or the ability to squeeze a guy to second with one out against a left-hander. There’s not anything in there about crafty managers or experience or a versatile bench, either. Momentum? History? Don’t even bother. Speed? Pssh. Clutchness? Please, save it.
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Comments • 2008/10/06
Long-time reader Mike has his thesis posted on my site:
The home advantage has been consistently demonstrated across a number of sports, but conclusive evidence of the origin of the home advantage has yet to be found. One factor thought to contribute to the home advantage is familiarity; the home team is more familiar with their stadium and playing field and thus should have an advantage in competition. To isolate this variable, we compared the records of teams in their last year at a stadium, where familiarity should be high, with their records their first year in a new stadium, where familiarity should be low. Professional baseball, hockey, football, and basketball data from the four major U.S. leagues were examined. Results showed no differences in home winning percentage between a team’s high-familiarity season and its following low-familiarity season, suggesting that familiarity does not play a major role in the home advantage.
Here is my first stab at trying to describe Situational Wins. Please provide comments, especially as it pertains to readability. I will then make the necessary modifications, and I’ll submit it to THT for publication for the general public to consume.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Sweet.
(5)
Comments • 2008/10/02
•
Blogging
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Put your thoughts here on the games you are watching…
Reason? Sampling bias. Who are the players 6’5” and greater? And do they appear in both sets (aging)? You only have 10% of the sample, and so, much more likely for wild swings. Create 4 groups of 25% of the ballplayers, and I’d bet you get smooth results.
Pizza lays out the idea. As studes noted, we talked about this alot in the past.
What Brian suggests in the comments is the way I normally approach the problem, as the way Voros did it. Here are my aging patterns by these metrics.
I also echo Pizza’s position on where to put the HR. Sometimes I do it the way Pizza says it, and sometimes the way Voros says it. The fact of the matter is that you can construct two equally plausible scenarios.
There is an undeniable relationship between K, BB, and HR. There is also an undeniable relationship between HR and FB (and to a lesser extent LD). The only rigtht way to do it is to model this relationship. If for example you do it as Pizza proposes it, then you need to have an additional function on the HR/FB rate that includes the K and BB rate. If you do it as Voros proposes it, you need to include the FB rate to apply to the HR rate.
Colin gives us lots of data to consider.
It seems that this year’s Tony Pena, Jr is in the discussion.
His Situational Wins (aka WPA/LI) is -2.45 in only 235 PA, making it a rate of -7.3 wins per 162G. However, he was super clutch (for him), Ortiz-like. On Aug 10, in extra innings, he got an RBI single. That was his most high-leveraged at bat. In his next most high-leverage situation he faced, he got another RBI single on opening day. On June 12, in a tie game in late innings, he scored on a wild pitch. (Ok, that may have been lucky.) Anyway, the point is that with the game on the line, he went from being one of the worst hitters in the entire history of baseball, to simply being one of the worst hitters in baseball this year.
That’d be like someone who couldn’t score at a whorehouse, to becoming someone who managed to be able to speak to the girl next door. If that isn’t clutch, I don’t know what is.
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