Far too busy reading Lost forums (and doing work) at work this morning. I'll post something later. Unless I'm dead, or have some other malady.

Update: Eating or walking at lunch is for losers.

Back to the old category wins (by popular request according to the survey).
So here's the skinny, I calculated the number of weeks out of 7 a team won (or tied) a category. I then calculated the winning percentage for that category, using the same method as ESPN for our standings (Ties count as half a win and half a loss). Then, I figured out which categories you've locked down for Wins (60% or over), which you stumble through for Losses (40% or less), with the middle counting for tossups. Those numbers proved rather arbitrary, but if you said a team had to have 6 or 7 out of 7 (or lost the same), this analysis doesn't do all that much. Anyway, I took the number you bomb and the number you nail and calculated a win percentage, which doesn't mean much since there are a lot of tossups. The actual number of expected W or L is more indicative of success (as seen by Jon's 6 expected wins every week and his brother's 1).



I assume you can figure out which team is which (it made it a lot easier to calculate using Excel, so you're stuck with it).

For full results on each team/category see below.


I'll probably go through these in more detail in a video recap (assuming it happens this week). Of note, the only sure thing (100% or 0%) on the hitting side thus far is the Dunbars winning SB. I'm a little sad that the schedule thus far has already taken out any potential 100% v 100% matchups. Also, since thus far 3-5 people are using the same pitching strategy, Bobby doesn't have 100% in 3 categories thus far this year. Thus far.

Update: This is a video that you can watch with your eyes.

Rotating League Name week 6 recap

Chapter 6: In which I crap my pants

Whenever I listen to audio books, I always want the old Brit speaking to say that title. Anyway, here's stuff you might care about.

Decided to see how well overall performance can predict weekly performance in a given matchup, so here's a picture of what I found:




The numbers shown for each week 6 matchup shows how many categories were won by the team with the better overall numbers through week 5. That is, if team A had more RBI year-to-date than team B, and team A beat team B in RBI, that got scored a 1 or W for prediction. If either the YTD or matchup ended in a tie, it was scored a .5 (used the same rules as our standings as ties counting half a win and half a loss).

Of note is the Kid-Pawn matchup where every single hitting category went against the past performance (4-2 Bartha, instead of 2-4). At the same time, every pitching category in that matchup went exactly according to the past (though Bartha almost blew it trying to chase Saves history - which incidentally was the only best/worst change from last week, so I'm not bothering to update it this week).

At the bottom of the picture are measures of how well YTD predicted this week's outcome. I actually ran the figures using the current data (through week 6) first because: 1) I thought it would be easier and 2) I forgot that I had the cumulative stats through week 5 handy in the same spreadsheet.

In general, the predictive power based on this one small subset was somewhat better than just flat out guessing (.500). As you might expect (or maybe not, who am I to know what you expect?), adding this week's cumulative stats produces better overall guess, but not that much better than before. The pitching categories seem to follow form a little closer, and so are more predictive (the hitting categories were dead even). I believe this is partly because the league is set up with extreme hitting strategies (this year at least) and because the presence of several rate-based categories means that one good or bad week is more mitigated than in the counting stats. Indeed, when I separated out the rate categories, they were correct 2/3 of the time, versus around 52% each for the positive and negative (and net) counters.

So, after showing that the predictive power is potentially a problem (I mean limited, but I was on a roll), I decided the best way to use this information would be to make predictions for the next week. Here that is:


Yes, I'm going out on a limb and saying that these scores will be closer to correct overall than just picking 6-6-0 for each matchup. Depending on whether this is true, there may or may not be an update on this next week.

My bold predictions (or those of this system I'm using if they are far off) include 4 out of 6 matchups ending 5-7. Shown in gray, there's only one predicted upset (Rod Beck's Counting). If nothing else, this little exercise allows me time to sit around thinking of (good?) ways to combine team names.

brew plop week 6

Dog Days of May:

I'm not going to actually reference the title, as it really only serves as a way of showing that I changed this weeks post.

Bringing back the weekly wins stat. If you don't remember, a weekly win is what would happen if each week was winner take all, so a score of 1-0-0 instead of some numbers that add up to 12.



An even half of the league has 3 wins out of 6 possible to date. It seems like there are quite a few more ties this year than in years past, perhaps because of the scoring changes. I imagine that if you included relatively close scores (i.e., 6-5-1), the number of ties would go even further up. In fact, the number of almost ties (two losses at 5-6-1-) helps explain the oddity that the Shiners are 4th overall in the standings, but have more weekly losses than wins.

But here's yet more evidence that the league is rather competitive top to bottom (excepting maybe the Lefties, who look about as bad as most lefty-lefty match-ups).

And because you asked for it (after I told you to want it), here is the updated weekly bests and worsts:


I'll point that out the best and worst HR weeks were actually in the same match-up (though the Hoopster matched the worst in week 6).

For the bad Wins and Saves, there are so many 0 occurrences I didn't bother to list the weeks, but instead listed the culprits and how many times they "achieved" the feat.

Video to come later.