generically titled baseball stuff with dionysum

week 10 rotating league name

2010-06-21T20:49:00.000-04:00

Rules updates first:

By a margin of 5-2 with 5 abstaining, we're keeping Net SB. The 6 hitting categories next year will be the same as this year (R, HR, RBI, NSB, -K, OBP).

This week we'll vote on pitching changes.

Not sure what are alternatives are, so I'll put out a yes or no poll for switching K/9 back to K and instituting a 5GS minimum to qualify for pitching categories.

Voting on those will close next week, at which point we can vote on whether a weekly acquisition limit is necessary to prevent pitcher streaming, whether a rule that just says "no pitcher streaming" is adequate, or whether we're okay with streaming so no rules against it.

On to analysis - which I largely phoned in this week and still got them up late, stupid work to do at work:

Below is real simple weekly wins chart. A W means you had more W than L that week, a T means W=L that week. A more refined approach might look at 5-6-1 like a tie, but that's more work, so you get the simple.

Jay Hey and Pawn Sho are on the Just Win Baby track, with Blazing not far behind. Half the league has won and lost roughly half their games, with a few ties thrown in for good measure. It looks like Van Ho managed to build up a nice early lead, but has been slipping a bit as of late. Of course, there are 3 teams on the bottom that have not been doing so well.

Here's another table:

Left column are the number of possible Wins or ties in a given matchup. Middle column shows how many times a team ended a week with that many W, right column shows the same for ties. Important note is that each matchup is counted twice in both columns (a 9-3 end result counts toward both the 9 and the 3), and the ties are counted twice (so there's been 33 matchups that resulted in 1 tie for each team).

5 and 7 wins are the most common (which makes some sense since they complement each other). I'm surprised by the amount of 9's and 2's. Also, we haven't had more than 3 ties, which is not surprising since it is very difficult to tie a rate category.

week 11 Brew Plop Mid Season Review

2010-06-21T10:07:00.000-04:00

I've paid precious little attention to baseball over the last week plus because of the world cup. I suppose the fantasy baseball gods have noticed this and decided to chastise me. I'm not going to give in to them for at least another week though, so that's probably good news for whoever it is I'm playing this week.

In the meantime, I'll mention that we're halfway through the regular season, which largely means that flukes are now trends and that those with large leads have to be very bad to get out of contention and vice versa for those teams not doing well.

Here's something to look at:

What you see here are two different looks at weekly wins.

The first set of columns gives weekly W, L, and T and looks strictly at whether the # of wins on the week was greater than, less than, or equal to the # of losses.

Burt and Edit are leading the pack here with 8 weekly wins a piece (Edit with only 1 weekly loss after stealing a couple of ties). The only other team with wins the majority of the first 11 weeks is the surprising Hopslayer.
Moonshine has an even weekly record at 4-4-3 and Censored is just 1 week away from a winning record.

The second set of columns also gives W, L, or T, but in this case the measure is greater than 7 W (big win), greater than 7 L (big loss), or between 5-7 wins inclusive.
This stat could also be called "Burt kills everyone". More often than not, Reynolds has come away with more than 8 W on the week. Of Edit's 8 weekly wins, only half have been of the large, convincing variety. Moonshine seems to have gone binary for his wins, as all 4 of his weekly wins were also big wins.
I believe I may be challenging Lebron's Unicorn's 2009 title of "most mediocre" with only 1 big win and 1 big loss, but 9 close matches (which have mostly been close losses, unfortunately).

The Dunbars get the unfortunate distinction of lay-down losers, as all 7 of their weekly losses have been of the big variety. The Buhls may have more weekly losses, overall, but it appears that many of those have been relatively close.

With the exception of Moonshine who has lost or tied every close week, and it appears that most of the close weeks have evened out. That is, if you split the number of close weeks for each team equally between W and L, you end up with very close to the overall W-L record.

I may or may not do more this week, since it is the halfway mark. If anyone has anything they [i]want[/i] to see for the mid-season review, do it and I'll post it up here (or tell me about it and I might do it myself).

week 10 recap brew plop

2010-06-21T10:04:00.002-04:00

It's a good thing it's World Cup time, cause I feel like baseball is quitting on me.

I fully plan on ranting out and out and calling it a "video update" later. For now, here's some stuff (earlier than usual, because I'm awake).

First up, regular year-to-date Roto rankings (10 points for the best, 1 for worst, 120 possible)

Jon and I clearly have the best two offenses, while there is a 5-way battle for the "eh" of the worst offensive side (everyone under 30 points).
Pitching-wise, it's Buten and Bartha up front (but not quite in that order) and Max, Kevin and Matt rearing up the rear.

Overall, Jon and I are stupidly evenly matched and that's... the topic of the rant I keep promising in video form.

So because I have that awesome ranking, but still managed to lose this week, I decided to look at it a different way... NORMALIZED.

Quick caveats (I think the same ones as I had the last time I used normalized scores): All averages are averages of averages or something like that, so they are not properly weighted. Also, the standardized scores do help sort out a small difference between the 5th and 7th player in a category, but they probably overstate a dominated category (since you can only win a category point once in a week, no matter how far ahead you are).

If you want to see the full chart and each team's tendencies, click here:

Anyway, the interesting things, to me at least:
1) Jon's hitting is even better than regular roto shows, which is from being exceptional in 3 cats and good/decent in the others.
2) Jon's pitching appears to suck, because he's nailing down HA and BB, but giving up W and K and only slightly better than average in ERA and Saves.
3) Bobby's pitching is really, really good.
4) Bobby's pitching is unbelievably good because his ERA is so much better than anyone else's, which seems unsustainable.
5) Scott's lefties are below average in every hitting category.
6) Bartha's shiners are below average in every hitting category except -K's, but they are a much greater liability than the Lefties offense, which gets most of its bad from terrible R.
7) Bartha's pitching is very good.
8) Kevin's pitching has been the worst combination of bad counters and worse rates.
9) Matt is very average thanks to a offense that has woken up and a pitching staff that hasn't.
10) Mike (again) is an average team in that both his hitting and pitching are very close to average.
11) Mike and Matt are both very susceptible to luck, including who they are facing that week.
12) I don't think I've mentioned Geoff in this post yet, but the only thing I can come up with for him is that he's the top of the lowest tier, according to normalized roto scores.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ1XkvUQiHU[/yt]

Brew Plop week 9 recap

2010-06-07T09:35:00.001-04:00

I'll walk you through The Journey of Week 9: The Analysis (worst movie title ever)

I started off looking at expected wins again, mostly because Jon likes them and he kind of killed the league this week.

Couple of notes: Max had a good week, but it would have been better had he not faced Mike would should have had an okay week. Kevin took a couple extra wins from Matt, mostly because Matt's fantasy team was drained because of a bike ride from Dayton to Cincinnati (congrats on the real life, Matt). Jon should have had an ordinary week and Geoff should have had a bad one, but luck rolled in and made it epically good/bad depending on your rooting interests.

Then I devised the theory that this week was an unusually bad week for hitting. Decided to see how this week matched up to the overall average (including week 9's numbers, which isn't technically the way to do this right, but it's free non-useful fantasy analysis, so deal). Also, to not go crazy, ERA and BA are both averages of averages, so they are not correctly weighted.

I looked at 3 variations of averages. Team's week 9 versus their own average, Team's week 9 versus league average, then team's own average versus league average.
To test my theory, I looked at hitting and pitching separately.

The table shows the number of categories (out of 12 categories for 10 teams, so 120 possibilities) where a team's number was better than the comparison (including accounting for the 4 negative categories).

So overall, this week was slightly better than an average week, but that was driven by pitching being better than hitting. Hitting itself was slightly down this week, though probably not much more than average.

In an effort to save some space, I will link the two team breakdowns I came up with to get the above summary.

First, here is each team's better than average matrix:

Second, here is each team's average and the overall averages for each category:

If you want to read this post with those two large tables visible, that's how I'll post it over at my fantasy blog/archive of these league updates.

Brew Plop week 8 recap

2010-06-01T09:26:00.001-04:00

Can't remember that Mondays are Mondays if I have them off.

Here's the laziest entry I've done to date, it's just another look at the running best and worst weekly scores:

I'm glad that the Dunbars managed to have the best and worst Runs. I'm also glad that the Elbows managed 16 HR in week 7, but only 19 Runs in week 8.

I'm less glad for the 5 IP Hops vs Edit matchup that produced a 0.000 tie in ERA. With that matchup, we can officially start discussing fixes for next season. The goal will be to value SP and RP equally. Thinking we'll have to have a min IP and probably change Hits Allowed to Batting average against. Feel free to discuss below.

Rotating league name week 8 recap

2010-06-01T09:19:00.000-04:00

I was busy Memorial day weekend and though the public has spoken, Shane hasn't come up with anything I can put up here.

Here's your lazy Tuesday morning update of the best and worst of us:

Since I last updated this after week 5, 15 of 24 possible achievements have been met or exceeded. Notably, every hitting category best has been claimed in the last two weeks. Perhaps my personal favorites are Jay Hey setting the worst BAA record in week 7, then rebounding to set the best in week 8 and A-Fraud setting the worst for ERA while his hitters set the best OBP. I can only assume that his hitters were also facing his pitchers (and refuse to do anything to back up that claim like look at the week's box score).

On an entirely different note, A-Rod gets a lot of flack on a regular basis (often rightly so), however this weekend he showed genuine class after lining a double off Indians P David Huff's head. There are many more important events than occasionally showing class, but I felt compelled to remark on this particular incident.

Rotating League Name Week 7 recap

2010-06-01T09:09:00.000-04:00

Since Shane wasn't the big winner this week, I decided to not keep the running tally of weekly bests and worsts. Ever. For this week. And last week.

What you see here is how a team can expect to finish a week given their past performance in each category. What I did was figure out how many weeks (out of 7) a team won, lost, or tied a particular category, then figured out your winning percentage for that category alone (using the same methods as ESPN, where T= .5W +.5L). What you see below is how each team did in each category. If a team won 60% or more of the time, they can expect to win that category each week. Less than 40% and they can expect to lose. Anywhere in between and it's a toss up from week to week.

I used this green color because it's very ugly.

Of note is that there are 4 categories that have been won 100% of the time. Hunt's Wins and Bartha's BB, SV, and K/9. Given this, it is a surprise that Bartha is not doing even better. Also, there's only 1 team that hasn't won a category and that's Corley's RBI, or rather, his lack there of. There's a whole lot of ugly for some people and it's never good when you have several "assumed loss" categories but few "assumed win" to go with it. The take away from this is that you can probably predict at the beginning of a week which categories a team will take and which are toss ups for that particular week.

Speaking of predictions, last week I used some method I don't remember (I think using YTD stats) to predict the outcome of each matchup. Here's how that went:

Well the prediction machine (notice how they are no longer my predictions, but the machine's) had a decent go of it. Only 1 upset (based on overall standings) was predicted. That matchup ended in a tie. Of the other 5 where the computer chalked, 3 were wins and 2 were upsets. As one of the upsets had 3 ties (and actually had the correct number of wins for Streeter's team), and the other upset was my team winning instead of losing, I'm fairly happy with the results. As expected, the results were only barely better than a coin flip.

Let me know if there's some kind of breakdown you want to do and I'll be happy to post it. Barring that, feel free to send along ideas for me to do.

2010-05-25T09:50:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-25T09:48:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-24T10:09:00.000-04:00

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.

rotating league name week 5 recap

2010-05-17T13:59:00.001-04:00

Far too involved league analysis:

Couldn't decide what I wanted to do for this week's update, so I just did way too much for way too little.

The table below shows expected win values next to actual win totals and the difference between the two.

Here's how we got there. I found the average values and standard deviations for each category. I then classified each weekly category result and assigned that result a point value (high outlier +2, above average +1, below average 0, low outlier -2). I figured you had a reasonable expectation to win a category by being above average in it, with bonuses/punishment for extreme showings. I'm pretty sure I treated negative categories correctly. If you're at all interested, I used 1.75sd for the outlier break, because there were very few above the standard 1.96. I then added up all those categories and weeks and got an expected points total (451), which I then scaled to the number of possible wins (360 to this point). The actual total of wins is lower than 360 due to ties.

Anyway, here's the result:

A negative difference means based on your teams performance, your team would have fared better against an average team than against the teams it actually faced. The biggest caveats are that this is actually less precise than the other way I did expected wins, as this assumes an on/off for winning or not, while the other rates your chance to win a category given others' performance. (old way explained here). This way was slightly easier to look at the season as a whole though, instead of just one week. It also helps show how much luck and opponent can affect the standings.

And since Shane is still kicking names and taking ass, here's the ongoing best (with a new best and worst from week 5):

Brew Plop Week 5

2010-05-17T09:18:00.001-04:00

Griping it up:

Because I lost epically to my fantasy nemesis (that's right, it's gotten that bad after this loss and last years final), I had time to stew and think of several ways to make myself feel better.

First up, a new thing I hadn't though much of until this weekend:

Through week 5 in our league, there have been 1561 runs scored and 1436 RBI compared to 2060 hitter's strikeouts (only 1710 pitching K's thanks to the minimalist style of several). Since there have been more -K than either R or RBI, it would seem that a "good week" would be one where you had more R or RBI than -K. Likewise, since there are more R and RBI combined than K (by a lot), a "bad week" would be one where your hitter's strike out more than those two stats combined.

The above table shows the number of weeks a team had more R or RBI than -K. It also shows a negative count of how many times a team had less combined RBI and R than -K. At the bottom of the table, you see the average, min and max number of wins had when having a "good week" or a "bad week", as narrowly defined for this post.

There are nine instances of good R week. In six of those instances, the team managed 7 or more wins (win totals of 6,5, and 3-my terrible week 5- were the others). There are also nine instances of good RBI week. In five of those, the team won 8 or more, but the remaining four were just okay (6,5,5,3-see above).

There are 13 total "good weeks", meaning that there were 5 weeks where a team was good in both R and RBI. Those five weeks resulted in win totals of 10 (dalek), 8 (edit), 8 (unicorn elbow), 8 (hops), and 3 (who do you think). In general, if you have a double good week, you win the week. It also appears that R is a better indicator than RBI for how well your team might do.

On the flip side are "bad weeks", which seem to be more straight forward. If you have a "bad week", your team will most likely win only 4 games.

Because Jon asked for it (and I'm still feeling sorry for myself), here are week 5's expected wins compared to actual.

Of note, I also tried incorporating in ties this time (by counting each tie as half a win), but it didn't change the overall picture by much.

Not a lot to comment on that doesn't make me feel angry and bitter. Interesting though to see when the match-up projects less than 12 wins, who picks up the extras (Dunbars and Reynolds this week).

Lastly, here's a longer term view of the expected wins.

Lots of fluctuations here that you can sort through for yourself. All the same caveats apply to this as to regular roto rankings (i.e., doesn't adjust for extreme weeks, no account for punting a category).

Video updated: My glasses were falling down and I look kinda wonky. I'll try to get someone better to do it next time.

rotating league name week 4 update

2010-05-10T13:23:00.000-04:00

Here's a couple of things for ya:

First up, how would your team being doing in a roto league:
Congrats to the Ninjas on their earned run-less week.

Also congrats to the Frauds for having the most wins this week.

Here's the link to the full standings:

Not a lot of surprises (to me at least). The JayHeys would take the biggest tumble in the rankings, but that seems to be due in part to a strategy that seems to focus on dominating a few categories and just being competitive in several others (to pick off wins in weeks where the opponent is also weak in a stat). Correct me if I'm wrong there VH2.

Also interesting is that the 4 highest rankings from pitching come from closer heavy, starter heavy and balanced teams.

Since Shane is still kicking butt and taking names, here's his requested running best and worst total:

Notice we set 3 best's this week, but also 5 worsts (on top of tying the 0 saves mark again). Also notice I purposely show the record as Labia Skull and another as Brown Fang.

brew plop week 4

2010-05-10T09:21:00.001-04:00

Here's the number of wins each team had after the first 4 weeks each season:

Here's some caveats first: For those who don't know, the first year of this league, we had 16 teams. We redrafted completely from year 1 to 2 and dropped 6 teams, so there's no comparables for the newly managed teams. Obviously, the two teams with new owners (marked in gray) won't have the same strategies as the teams they took over.

I adjusted for # of win inflation since we're not working on a system based on 12 categories/wins instead of 10. I also ignored losses/ties for simplicity.

Here are my initial thoughts on the through 4 weeks records:
1) The team with the best record after 4 weeks also had the best record at the end of the season
1a) but in previous two seasons, the team with the best record after four weeks was well ahead of the 2nd place team, which does not appear to be the case this year
2) The Lefties have made slow starts an annual occurence
2a) they've also made the playoffs every year
3) The Bulls are better when they don't draft the best (remaining) Indians from 1997 in 2008
4) Hopslayer is off to his best start ever, by far
5) The Dunbars are not off to their best start ever
6) I can't decide whether to refer to a team as a group (plural) or as a singular entity
7) my start to last season was pretty darned good (8-2 for 3 weeks, then a 5-5)

Still more to follow (at least the video).

Update: No more to come, here's the video recap:

Hoopslayer. Classic

rotating league name week 3cap

2010-05-03T14:12:00.001-04:00

Congrats to Streeter on managing the last team to tie. Let's see how long he can put up wins and losses without being just mediocre!

I might do more later, but here's the updated weekly best.

[link]http://lh4.ggpht.com/_yL5evi7KW4k/S9WLPYnBBSI/AAAAAAAAE1c/i-hv01wsOBw/week%203%20best%20summary.JPG[/link]

Interesting that the Deranged Detroit Junkies managed to set 3 new worsts and 1 new best all in the same week. Also interesting because the team managed to barely strike out while setting a new low in OBP.

Brew Plop 4cap

2010-05-03T09:08:00.001-04:00

Standard "if this were Roto" scoring

[image]http://lh5.ggpht.com/_yL5evi7KW4k/S9WIWWRuSyI/AAAAAAAAE1Y/wmZcP9WtLts/week%203%20roto%20summary.JPG[/image]

I'll point out that the top 2 spots get their points completely differently (Burt is all or nothing, Daleks are decent everywhere. Same can be said for the bottom two, who experience the same thing (except more nothing and less all, or replace decent with less than adequate).

Also of note is the first 10 win (and first 2 win) weeks. Thanks Max for having no offense except steals.

I will post the full roto table on my blog later (probably later today). I wouldn't mind posting it in some sortable form instead of pictures. If you have tips for doing that in HTML (or blogspot shortcuts) let me know.
Update (2): [link]http://dionysum.blogspot.com/2010/04/brew-plop-expanded-week-3-roto.html[/link] There's the link to the full table. Let me know if you have a preference in the "large image file" vs "somewhat unreadable but exportable table" full results battle.
Update: Instead of doing that, I made the league's first video recap. Check it out.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA7fXWBy_8E[/yt]
If you are capable/interested I highly recommend that different people do something like this each week.

Brew Plop expanded week 3 roto standings

2010-04-26T21:02:00.003-04:00

I think this may actually be the table instead of just a picture of the table. Now you too can download and sort if you feel like.

Rotating League Name Week 2

2010-04-26T08:47:00.002-04:00

I think I figured out why Shane wanted a running total of the weekly high scores. Congrats to him (and condolences to Rod Beck) on the first 12 category sweep in league history.

[link]http://lh4.ggpht.com/_yL5evi7KW4k/S8xZDZVKgsI/AAAAAAAAE0s/5er_gF-PJuU/s912/bestthrough2.JPG[/link]

I think my favorite discovery of this process is that the Van Super's have the best and worst in runs, while the Brooklyn's have the best and worst in wins, in only two weeks.

I also added this:

[link]http://lh4.ggpht.com/_yL5evi7KW4k/S8xeWLXnfmI/AAAAAAAAE00/T_ayJD21DeA/week2expectedwins.JPG[/link]

To get the expected wins, I summed the probability that you would win any particular category this week given the rest of the scores this week. For instance, if you had the highest amount of HR this week (13), you would win that category in 11 of 11 possible matchups.

What I see are two major standouts and a personal gripe. Shane was going to do well against anyone this week, but did even better than expected, while the Handlebars had an average week that netted nothing. The four worst teams this week played each other, so the Kids and Obamers got luckly to win some games. On the other hand, Brownie and I played each other and both came out with not so much to show for it.

Brew Plop through 2

2010-04-26T08:28:00.001-04:00

Well, we mostly survived the week where half the MLBPA hit 4 HRs a piece.

The goal of today is to answer two questions: First, how would I have done against other teams.

Bam, drop an apple on his

[link]http://lh4.ggpht.com/_yL5evi7KW4k/S8xPtilJxkI/AAAAAAAAE0k/GWxZpLmLCn0/week2expectedwins.JPG[/link]

First, the methodology - I sorted through the weekly score and ranked each team based on how many teams they would beat (not tie) that week with that score (i.e., if you're tops, you get a 9, if you're tied with the second best score, you get a 7, if you're the lowest you get a zero). Added those scores up for all 12 categories then divided by 9. In essence, created a probability chart for each category.

There's quite a bit of rounding error, but I vagued that away (that is ignored it) by not accounting for ties at all.

It appears that most teams did about as well as they could expect. The former Tots and I both got a little hosed because we had two relatively strong teams going against each other. The Unicorns picked up a little something extra because their strengths and weaknesses largely match the Lefties, who got out muscled in a few categories.

There's more there that is interesting, but I won't force too many explanations on it.

The second question of the week is who have been the best and worst performers thus far. I'll try to update this list semi-regularly throughout the season. Burt appears all over this list, evidently due to his all or nothing strategy (and extreme lifestyle).

[link]http://lh6.ggpht.com/_yL5evi7KW4k/S8xPuI-B4jI/AAAAAAAAE0o/awGGoOPRnn4/s720/bestthrough2weeks.JPG[/link]

Rotating League Name Week 1 results

2010-04-19T09:22:00.001-04:00

are not good for me, any way you slice it.

There were 3 9-3-0 blow outs this week and only 1 particularly close matchup (Brooklyn v Obama 6-5-1).

To get a better sense of how your team did compared to the league, instead of just the 1 person you played, here's a table of normalized categories.

The (too large to read, but but easier to read if you open it in its own window) table shows several things. In red are the outliers for each category (negatives are good for negative categories). The most important parts are really what your overall normalized rank was and in how many categories you were above average in week 1. The Crown Royals appear to be the tough luck losers as having scores that were above average in 9 of 12 categories netted only 3 wins. My team appears to have properly failed.

Brew Plop

2010-04-19T08:39:00.001-04:00

Congrats on making it through 1 week.
Interestingly enough, the matchups are the same this year as last year, but with rather different results
Eric vs Kevin: This time 5-5-2, last year 8-2-0
Scott vs Bobby: 5-6-1, 3-6-1
Mike vs Max (Jared): 6-4-2, 3-6-1
Steve (Dave) vs Matt: 8-4-0, 6-3-1
Jon vs Geoff: 9-3-0, 4-5-1

By my quick estimation, the only thing that was about the same was Matt's loss.

Anyway, here's some other stuff.

Because I didn't feel like doing regular roto scores, I instead came up with the summary statistics (average, median, mode, st dev) for each category through 1 week. I used that to normalize each category, then added up the results (or subtracted when appropriate). What you (hopefully) see above is the rankings based on the summed normalized scores. This is a long way of getting at how your team is doing overall, instead of looking at just how your team did versus the team you were placed against. Enjoy

For more on standardized scores, including a category by category table: [link]http://dionysum.blogspot.com/2010/04/week-1-results-brew-plop.html[/link]

Week 1 results (Brew Plop)

2010-04-12T08:23:00.003-04:00

Above are the normalized scores for each team and category. The number represents how far above or below average a team is in a specific category. For negative categories (Hitter's K, HA, BB, ERA), where lower is better, a team is better off being below average. The total score is derived by adding the positive categories and subtracting the negative categories.
The red highlights show the two outliers of the sample (which is only a sample of 10, so none of this is particularly significant). The Dunbars were unable to score runs and about the only thing the Bulls did well was not give up runs.

Rotating League Name Draft Analysis

2010-04-08T09:28:00.002-04:00

Here's a load of draft analysis since we don't have any weekly results to speak of just yet.

The leftmost columns show the total and average ESPN value for each roster as of whenever it was I copied it (same as the last table). Some wide variation here, from Obama loves my team almost getting even money to the Ninjas overspending quite a bit. The caveat here is that ESPN values are for standard scoring leagues, so it is entirely possible to have spent the "right" amount on a player who isn't particularly beneficial with our scoring or "overpaid" for someone who fits our criteria quite well.

Overall, we as a league got $214 of value from our $260, meaning we spent 21% more per pick that ESPN recommended. This is not entirely surprising as we spent our money on 21 players instead of the 25 in ESPN standard leagues (19% difference there).

The second set of columns show how many players on each roster were overspent for, underspent for, then over- or underspent by more than $4. If they don't add up to 21, that's because a team had one or more players at the exact ESPN value.

If I get the time, I'll post each teams biggest reach and best deal later this week.

Update: I made time

Most of the overspent guys are who you would expect (except for me overspending on Mike Gonzalez, how dumb am I?). The underspent appear to mostly be veterans who the ESPN list liked, but that no one saw much upside on for a keeper league.

Note: If anyone else does this kind of obsessive tinkering with the league numbers, let me know and I'll be sure to throw it up here.

Drafting Analysis

2010-03-25T19:28:00.004-04:00

The above picture shows the more useful set of draft information, as has 3 measures of the expected value of each teams roster (six if you count the sums separately from the averages, even though they tell you the same thing) (12 if you count the sums, averages, actual numbers and rankings all as separate, but that might be dumb).

The 2009 player rater shows what ESPN says a player did last year. Obviously players that didn't play last year got zero's, so all the prospects really bring down the average. Even worse, several players who came in, did poorly, then went to the DL all year ended up with negative numbers. The former blithe tots maxed this out, while moon shine has the lowest values (probably because of Liriano's way negative).

Second column shows the ESPN dollar value. Last year's champ leads the dollar values and again Moonshine is at the bottom (a running theme for this table). I doubted whether to even put positional rankings in, since the rankings for pitchers completely skew the other numbers. I figured the rest of the table was not particularly useful, so might as well add quantity.

Part 2 is mostly draft analysis. The big issue with all of this is the keepers. Didn't really matter which 4 keepers you had in what order, they were randomly assigned. It might even out a bit since it happened to everyone, but without putting too much thought into it, it seems like it flaws the rest. I also had to assign values to non-drafted players (since it was rosters as of this week, after people made changes already). I gave all non-drafted players a value of 201 (ESPN gives undrafted players 260 or 261 since their standard leagues pick that many players).

Anyway, here's the rest of the flawed rest. The first two columns show the number of players that were taken for each roster either before or after their average draft position (ADP). The 2nd two columns show how many players on each roster were taken more than 10 spots before or after their ADP. The Bulls again had the least reached for players (thanks auto-draft bot) and the most late round picks (again, thanks draft bot). Those unicorns had 10 players (of a roster of 20), that were reaches (thanks homer calls!). The limber lefties evidently couldn't wait for players, as they had only 3 later bloomers.

Almost all of this means nothing, but here it is for you anyway.

Post Draft Roto Rankings

2010-03-25T19:25:00.002-04:00

I'm hoping to get something or things up about post-draft rosters and such before the season starts. It may well happen.
update: It did.
This is less than analysis but it took some doing.
[image][/image][link]http://lh4.ggpht.com/_yL5evi7KW4k/S6kigkCMlpI/AAAAAAAAEww/73VJBaRG4Ao/BP%20Preseason%20Roto.JPG[/link]

I took the preseason ESPN 2010 predictions and took the average per player on your roster. Note this is highly inaccurate because it assumes that the bench spots play all the time, which cannot happen. Also, all the rate categories are averages of averages, so it doesn't take into account expected AB or innings pitched.

It should give you a decent idea of what categories you have the players to expect to win versus which opponents.

Best of the Best of the Worst

2009-09-11T16:46:00.010-04:00

Alright, I was able to come up with an easier way to look at the best and worst category weeks ever than just scrolling through 22 pages of scores, so here's the result.

So the average category is little different from the roto ranks presented earlier this week. The Best and Worst are whats interesting to me here. Should probably have accounted for the all-star week for all the counting categories, but, you can probably assume that a good chunk of the worsts are from that week.

I'll break it down by category.

Runs:
Best Best: by Burt and Chaos
Best Range: 41 to 48.
Worst Worst: Chaos
Worst Range: 11 to 19.

Best and Worst by the same team. Crazy. Not a lot of disparity.

HR:
Best Best: Barry Jive
Best Range: 12-18
Worst Worst: LLL and Dunbars
Worst Range: 1- 7

Tots worst was 5? Man, they should have done better in this league. I mean, HRs mean Rs and RBI. He must be terrible at this. And somehow I missed that the Bulls always have at least 7 HRs. Man, that's formidable.

RBI:
Best Best: Barry Jive
Best Range: 38-56
Worst Worst: Wangdoodles
Worst Range: 7-18

Best had a huge range with 3 people over 50, 6 in the 40's and 1 under 40. A bunch of teams had worsts around 11-14. The Bulls again kicked everyone's worst ass with 18. 7 RBI for the Doodles? Really?

SB:
Best Best: Burt Reynolds
Best Range:7-18
Worst Worst: 0 - 2
Worst Range: Several at zero (BJ, FU, FD, OC, TS)

Stolen bases, along with saves, tend to be a flightly category with crazy week to week fluxuations. 3 of the 5 teams in the playoffs have a weekly best of less than 10.

AVG:
Best Best: Wangdoodles
Best Range: .317 to .365
Worst Worst: Limber Lesbian Lefties
Worst Range: .197 to .247

The Wangs worst was only about .050 lower than average, while the Lefties were about .100 left.

K:
Best Best: Who the hell you think
Best Range: 52-95
Worst Worst: Organized Chaos
Worst Range: 13 - 33

I am more than a little shocked that Burt had the 2nd worst worst K week. Also, the BJ's and Dunbars worst was 33, which I partially attribute to both of us checking our teams and rotating in starters on a daily basis.

W:
Best Best: Burt
Best Range: 5-10
Worst Worst: FU, OC, and WW
Worst Range: 0-2

I'm surprised I never topped 5 wins in a week. Only Burt had a worst as high as 2, everyone besides the 3 worst worsts listed had a week with 1 win. 1 stupid win.

SV
Best Best: Burt
Best Range: 4 - 13
Worst Worst: BT, FU, LLL, OC, WW
Worst Range: 0 -2

Half the dang league has had a week without a save. Speaks to the randomness of saves and the value of having at least a closer or two in head to head leagues (you'll play at least 4 of those 5).

ERA
Best Best: Dunbars
Best Range: 2.686 to .923
Worst Worst: Fairyland Unicorns
Worst Range: 7.412 to 5.211

Not a lot to say here, except there's some extreme variation from high to low (and from average to either extreme). Also, the lowest worst ERA belongs to the Reynolds, so I make the leap of logic that the sheer totals of pitching were able to mitigate some of the extremely bad performances of any one or 12 pitchers.

WHIP
Best Best: Chaos
Best Range: .761 to 1.094
Worst Worst: Wangdoodles
Worst Range: 1.839 to 1.527

As WHIP is not the easiest category to visualize, I'm having trouble figuring out if there wasn't a lot of variation or if there was a crapload of it and I just don't get it. I don't feel like standardizing the numbers to find out. That's all I'm saying about this category, so no analysis.

Best Wins by Amount:
10: Bulls and Barry
9: Burt, Uni, Dunbars, Limber
8: Tots
7: Chaos and Doodles
6: Selleck

I had not to this point realized that the Sellecks best week resulted in barely winning. That's bad. Real bad.

Least Wins by Amount:
3: Burt
2: Dunbars, Bulls
1: BJ, FU, LLL
0: BT, OC, TS, WW

The worst the Burts ever did in wins was half of the best the other staches ever achieved.

I'll ignore losses because its mostly the opposite of wins.

Ties: The best line just shows the most ties you ever had a week.

Most ties ever by amount:
3: LLL, OC, WW
2: BT, BR, FU, FD, HB, TS
1: Barry Jive

I don't know why I was allergic to ties this season, but apparently I repelled them like sweater vests to pretty girls.

Here's a roto of just the teams best best in each category:

Not a lot of surprises here except that both OC and the Doodles both had some crazy good weeks in one category at a time, thus jumping them up in these roto rankings.

And here's a roto of the worsts.

This, along with the above look at each category, leads me to the idea that the Bulls have been the most consistent team this year. Even his bad weeks weren't ever uncompetitive. As I said a post ago, Burt and Barry were both pretty consistently good, but have had hot and cold streaks.

All this is another way of showing that the Unicorns are never, ever, great, sometimes terrible but they still have a good chance of winning the league.

~~I'll write about this later, but I wanted to get these pics up.~~

Brew Plop Weekly Wins

2009-09-10T13:01:00.002-04:00

Alright, here's the weekly wins numbers I was able to whip together for my lunch break.

What you see is the division standings if we used winner take all scoring instead of 10 individual games per week. The W-L-T columns were based solely on whether your win total for the week was greater, less than or equal to your loss total (so 5-5-0 is a tie, but 5-4-1 is not).

Next is the winning percentage from this reality, then your actual winning percentage, and lastly a + or - to indicate whether you would have been better or worse off for that time period using the winner take all system.

Not surprisingly, everyone who ended up with winning records for the year would have done better with the winner take all while everyone with losing records would have done worse. There was more nuance in the first half, as the Sellecks and Wangdoodles would have done better and the Bulls and Unicorns would have been worse. All told though, the rankings would remain the same.

Barry Jive and the those Limber Lefties both managed a half a season where they won 8 of 11 games. To put that in perspective, 3 teams were unable to win 8 weeks of the full season of 22, with another just hitting that mark. Organized Chaos managed a league low 1 weekly win for the second half of the season, which, may or may not be a large factor in the OC having the overall league high of 16 losses (next closest were the Sellecks with 13, so OC wins losses in a landslide).

Four teams (Bulls, FU, Reynolds and LLL) had better second halfs than first, while the other five teams had worse (though the Dunbars had almost exactly the same half twice).

More Brew Plop Summaries

2009-09-10T09:11:00.007-04:00

Alright, this chart is probably way too large to view in a blog, but you wanted it and you got it. (You should be able to click on it to view it in a new window, or find your own way to do the same thing).

The chart above shows the percentage of time a team won a particular category in both the first half, second half, and total.

At the end of each line is my subjective W-L-T based on your percentages (I think I went 44-56 is a tie), followed by your actual winning percentage for that time period.

Let's go team by team:

Barry Jive: The first half of the season, I locked up R, HR, and RBI at the expense of steals. In the second half, I cooled off a bit as now I have toss ups in R, HR, and SB, but still win RBI more than I lose. My pitching, especially starters, were better in the second half. Overall, the only category I didn't have much chance in was SB at the beginning, but that has changed going into the playoffs.

Tom Selleck: Went from as much good as bad with a few toss ups in the first half to mostly bad in the second (something about a daughter or something, I'm just saying that extra kids never seemed to deter Bobby). Basically, Pujols won HRs for the lesser staches, and that was the bright point.

Limber Lesbian Lefties: Improved in nearly every category in the second half of the season, which resulted in edging into the playoffs with little wiggle room. Second half was as dominant as just about anyone and has a chance to make a good playoff run, unlike his Angels if they have to play the Red Sox in the first round again.

Burt Reynolds: The offense was as terrible as pitching was plentiful in the first half, but something clicked in the second half that made the greater stache more competitive in the hitting categories. The second half winning percentage was the second best half in the league, partly because of destroying the top two teams head-to-head. Not sure how it happened, but even with the streaming, the team traded complete dominance of the counting pitching stats in the first half, for just strong showings, but added relevance in the average pitching stats.

Fairyland Unicorns: As average in the second half as the first. This team basically defines "just good enough". Not a single dominant category, but I guess always being competitive in all 10 categories wins you some games.

Wangdoodles: Without changing the roster, the team went from dominant in SB to losing most weeks. On the flip side, the power categories went from awful to just bad. Did manage not to win saves once (did tie 0-0 once, which is something).

Organized Chaos: One of the two team names seems to describe this team better than the other, but I can't figure out exactly which. This team was... bad, and then got worse, as more and more of the "contributors" left the playing field without losing their spot in the starting roster.

Fighting Dunbars: Gained SB in the second half, but lost R, RBI, and AVG in the process. On the flip side, improved in every pitching category in the second half, to the point where he was a favorite for those five each week. Behind the Lesbians, perhaps the biggest turn around from 1st to 2nd half. Ran out of time, but made a serious run at the playoffs near the end.

Blithe Tots: Informed me that love would die if I didn't post more analysis. Hard to see exactly what happened besides falling off the cooling coattails of Raul Ibanez. Wasn't much worse in the second half, but all the toss ups seemed to go the other guys way. Managed to lose a playoff spot with just a few weeks to go, before making a last ditch failed effort to claw his back in. I changed his name on the league page, because I actually prefer Blithe Tots to the alternative.

Hackensack Bulls: There may be no Einar Diaz, but this team was probably the most consistently good. While BJ and the Burt both had more dominant half seasons, his winning percentage was the 2nd best in both periods, so that explains how he ended up with the big numbers. The offense was great in both halves, though he somehow swapped a tossup in average for almost dominance in SB. The pitching went from 4 of 5 tossups to only 2 of 5 tossups, which probably helped create the season long hot streak.

Up next is probably weekly wins. We'll see.

Brew Plop Final Regular Season Analysis

2009-09-07T18:57:00.004-04:00

I'll put a bit of prose here, but mostly, there will be a lot of graphs outlining different ways of looking at the 2nd set of regular season final standings (no analysis from last year).

First are the normals:

Nothing all that surprising here, as the standings haven't changed drastically since the Bulls caught and passed the Uptown Five after 17-18 weeks.

The one flip-flop in the standings comes in the 2-3 spots because the ranks I'm using don't account for divisions. Burt Reynolds won the Lager division handily, but remains 4.5 games behind the Bulls for the 2nd best regular season record.

Not sure if this means anything, but the team with the best record in the league has the least number of ties (6) while the 2nd best team has the most ties (17).

There's an extreme drop-off after the #7 Dunbars, as no team was ahead of the next more than the Dunbars over the Wangdoodles (18). In fact, no other team was 10 behind the next best team.

With 10 wins a week and 22 weeks, I count 220 possible wins. Of the 10 teams, 3 won more than half the possible games, a 4th won exactly half of the possible games and another 2 won more games than they lost. Only one team made it to a .600 winning percentage and only one team managed to have less than a .400 winning percentage.

Next up, the "what would our league look like in Roto mode" standings:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2608/3897634301_2243c9f4bc_o.jpg

Reynolds would win the roto standings, though its recognizable that the standings are largely skewed by the starting pitching streaming. The Bulls are probably the most balanced team, at least of the contenders. The Dunbars would make huge leaps up in the standings, and again, somehow, the Unicorns would fall from their charmed existence.

Number of Categories the Team is in the overall top 3 for:

BR: 6

HB: 5

BJ: 5

FD: 1

LLL: 4

BT: 3

WW: 4

FU: 0

OC: 2

TS: 0

Put this way, its most surprising that the Unicorns made the playoffs and somewhat surprising that the Wangdoodles did not. However, that would ignore a whole lot of other important factors like, you know, having players playing and not a bunch of DLers.

I say F**K YOU Jobu

2009-07-31T18:43:00.004-04:00

So, I've tried to write a lot this in blog, at least before my personal big move. In the last few months, I've spent most of my writing on baseball time preparing updates for the fantasy leagues I manage, which I find much more interesting as of late (perhaps because I'm doing well in those leagues and the teams I follow are, um, not doing as well in the real standings). It has been just over a month since my last entry and there's a good chance this will be the last post.

I knew when the Indians traded Cliff Lee there was a chance that Victor would go next. I decided to deny the inevitable and think that saving money on Cliff Lee would give the Indians enough money to pay Victor Martinez after the 2010 season (or perhaps an extension before the start of the 2010 season).

Trading Martinez was, on a gut level reaction, the last straw for me. Being a roaming fan, I have to make an active effort to watch Indians games, which I have still done despite the Indians being no where near contention. That is largely over, and I have, more than once, asked friends for advice about changing allegiances. The truth is, I no longer have a regional connection to Cleveland, and I spent a lot longer time period in Cincinnati. I have always followed the Reds, but not nearly with the same passion and attention that I have followed the Indians over the last 9-10 years. I never felt like a bandwagon fan in following the Indians because it was mostly based on where I was in life and the availability of Indians information. Not to mention, I started following the Indians in the first season they missed the playoffs in several years. I've only seen the Indians in the playoffs twice, once for a cup of coffee in 2001 and a great run in 2007, which now seems like ages too far away.

In those years, I've enjoyed seeing players develop and rooting for new faces, but at this point, the rebuilding is just too much for too little gain. I watched 6 years of rebuilding result in one good season, and I don't think I should expect this rebuilding effort to have any greater level of success.

In short, I spent the most on Indians apparel and such within the last year that I ever have and the same can be said for the amount of money spent on Indians related items for me. Which is even sadder for me, because I would feel stupid bothering and stupider for having put any money, much less time and interest, into the team and its well being.

I've watched as my brother's adopted team, the Red Sox, has won two world series, one at the direct expense of the Tribe. I have made several (I was going to say countless, but that's not true as the count is either 4 or 5) bets with my brother on the head to head matchups between the Red Sox and the Indians and each time I have come out for the worse. Just a few days back, I told my brother, who has often referred to the Indians as the Red Sox's farm team, that I would never forgive him if the Sox traded for Martinez. My brother assured me that wouldn't happen. I said I knew, meaning that I would eventually forgive him, but he assured me that the trade was unlikely to go through.

A few days later and I can't blame my brother, so I don't. I can come close, as he's more upset about his favorite player on the Sox, Varitek, then overjoyed at getting my favorite player. I don't blame him and at this point it would be worthless to blame him (I guess at any point really). What I am, however, is completely uninterested in the Indians for at least the rest of this year, which I've never been before the end of September. Not only that, I'm not sure that I will gain any interest in the next season, as the GM of the Indians, Mark Shapiro, has already publically stated that the Indians are unlikely to contend in 2010 and have only a remote possibility for 2011.

So if I ignore the team for a season and a half, what reason would I have to come back?

If anyone still checks this, write some suggestions on other teams I should follow and why.

Team Salaries

2009-06-24T08:17:00.008-04:00

Finally taking a look at current team salary estimates.

First, here's a graph of the projected team salaries.

There are some surprises here (to me at least). Everyone knows that the Yankees are the highest in salaries, but I was surprised to find the Red Sox a lowly 4th. I suspected the Mets were up there, but didn't realize how high the Cubs payroll had gotten.

On the low end, I am amazed by how extremely low the Marlins total remains. 8 of the players on their 25 man roster are making the league minimum ($400,00) and another 7 are making less than $1 million.

Beyond that, The Padres remain quite low as well, especially considering Jake Peavey makes $11 mill and Brian Giles makes $9 mill. Add in Chris Young at over $4 and you have half the payroll in 3 players.

For a point of reference, the Yankees paid about $34 million in luxury tax in 2005, or just $3 million less than the Marlins actual payroll this year. This year, the Yankees are likely to be the only team over the "luxury" cap of $162 million. As the evil empire has broken the cap more than 3 years, they get charged the max rate of 40%. I believe that is on just the portion over the cap. If so, the Yankers can expect to pay another $16 million this year.

I digress, since I mean this as a scathing indictment on the Marlins, not the Yankees (who I will talk about later). MLB has a revenue sharing system of some sort, but they haven't released numbers on how much is shared and where it comes from or where it goes since 2006 (2007 numbers were partially leaked, but not readily available).

At that point in time, the lowest teams (Marlins and Rays w/Devil) were receiving over $30 million. Assuming that number has gone up or at least stayed the same, than the highest paying teams are paying no less than 80% of the Marlins payroll. Why doesn't this franchise work? I know they've won two world series, but they have no fan base, which is that much worse considering they have won two world series in a little over the past decade.

Anyway...

Since I have been obsessed with normalizing things lately, I converted the salaries to z-scores and made a graph to see if the salary structure resembles a normal or bell curve.

Overall, there is a somewhat normal shape to the payroll distribution with a few expections near the very top and mid to bottom. The Yankees are an extreme upward outlier, which is no surprise. Their z-score is 3.4, nearly double the next team's score (Mets at 1.77). In the current situation, the Yankees are the only technical outlier, but there seems to be a bigger issue. While the Yankees stick way the hell out there, it is not easy to notice the other teams creeping up. I figured the crazy high outlier was pulling the entire curve to the right, but it turns out that the Yankees are not the only actor here.

The Mets and Cubs are not outliers when the Yankees are in the calculation. If you either take the Yankees out of the equation completely, or give them a average payroll around $80 million, then the Mets (extremely) and Cubs (barely) become the outliers.

There are no negative outliers in either case, but I believe this is because there are a 3 teams (Pirates, Padres and Marlins) under the $50 million mark that are grouped within $12 million of each other though they remain at least $12 million under the next tier.

Looking back at the top, the differences between the almost top tier (Tigers are #5 overall at $115) and the next teams are much higher yet no where near each other. The Red Sox at #4 are $16 higher, the Cubs are at #13 higher than the Sox, the Mets are another $13 above the Cubbies and again, the Yankees are an astounding (to beat a dead something) $54 million higher than the Mets.

The difference from 1-5 is over $85 million, which is the larger than the difference from 5-30. Ignore the Yanks for a moment and look at the difference between 2-5 ($32). Take the same difference below 5 and you end up at 14 . Take $32 off again and you go from 14 all the way to 27.

I do not mean to say who is right and who is wrong (yet, that will be another post). But the differences here are almost unfathomable.

Especially given that when I regressed payroll versus number of wins, it only explained about 10% of the difference between winning and losing, with no real clear cut correlation between money and wins.

More on Standardized Scores

2009-06-22T08:47:00.004-04:00

(click for full pic, its a wide one)

Thought I would keep looking at standardized scores, so here is the would be standardized scores for another one of my fantasy leagues, this one a head-to-head league.

So, as discussed below, I standardized the point totals within each category to see what would happen. A lot of the standings remain unchanged, but 2 teams would move much higher in the standings while 1 team would plummet.

As highlighted in green, there are 5 relative outliers (anything higher than an absolute value of 1.96). It is interesting that all 5 outliers are negative (remembering that ERA and WHIP are reverse categories, so the best teams are below average in those categories).

An extreme difference lies between the top two teams (above average in 9 of 10 categories) and the bottom team (below average in all 10 categories). It is truly amazing that the Pawn Shop Ninjas are so far above average in all five offensive categories as well as strikeouts and wins.

Well, I'm an idiot

2009-06-19T12:47:00.004-04:00

So, in my last post I did some work with standardizing scores. I'll leave it up because I'm an idiot.

When I was adding up standardized scores, I didn't take into account negative categories, where lower is better than higher (Losses, ERA, WHIP) so my rankings got all switched around.

I started playing with this idea because the (wrong) results were pretty cool and caught my mistake today.

Here are the same tables from the last post in their corrent form. (Again, click links to see the full pic).

Basically there was no movement in the standings except a few people who were close in the standings would flip. Whoopity-do!

Also, my all Steals, no pitching idea would flop horribly.

The no pitching would actually not be the horrible part. Because there are 3 negative categories in the league, I would be on the good side of an outlier for those, but would be on the bad side for the three positive categories (W, K, SV). If I dropped my pitching stats to 0 in the above league, I would have a +.86 combined z-score for pitching as opposed to the -.75 I currently have. The overall swing would be 1.61 or so and would jump me from 6th to 4th.

On the hitting front though, any gains in SB, even if I managed a standardized score over 3, would be more than counteracted by losses in RBI and HR, not to mention the OPS we use in that league.

What a failure of a day and post.

Standardized Scores

2009-06-17T13:45:00.007-04:00

So, the past few weeks I've been mathing up the couple of fantasy leagues I manage. Mostly, I've been converting weekly head-to-head play results into rotisserie league scores. In the league I've been in the longest, we are already rotisserie, so converting to head-to-head isn't all that easy or informative so I didn't do it. What I did think about was the ranking system.

In most rotisserie leagues, your accumulation of a certain stat is ranked against your peers. You are then assigned a number to go along with that rank, but the current system does not account for incremental changes at all. In a ten team league, the person with the best whatever gets 10 points and the next gets 9. If doesn't matter if the person in first is ahead of the next place by 1 run or 200 runs, they can only get 1 more point than the second place person.

I decided to look at what would happen if you gave out points based on standardized (z-scores) instead of ranks and here are the full results (click pic to see full pic).

And here are the much more managable summary results (no individual categories) (again click for full somewhat readable table).

First, it is amazing how much movement there would end up being in the standings. The current 5th place team rises, and convincingly, to first. The 1st and 3rd place teams both plummet. I suppose this means those dropping a lot may be winning several categories by a little and losing a few others by a lot. It could also mean that they are tanking a few categories along with other teams. If 3 or 4 teams give up on saves, then only 1 team appears at the true bottom of the rankings and gets 1 point, the others would get 2-4 points and not suffer than much from the tanked category.

On the other hand, if a category was particularly close and bunched together, someone may suffer and get a low ranking despite being close to the league average or even the league leaders. In the standardized system, they wouldn't lose many points and wouldn't be anchored trailing slightly in a tight race.

There's a lot of stuff to this system, and I find it pretty fascinating. One interesting note is that of the 100 possible spots (10 categories by 10 teams), I only caught 3 that would be considered outliers (past + or - 1.96) and all 3 were averages and not pure numbers. That is to say, based on the number of times per something else and not just the total result.

It would be interesting to see a league run this was for a season to see how you could exploit the system. I think if I were playing in this league, I would make a go at drafting an all steals offense and not even play a pitcher.

If you could get enough steals, your players would probably stay near average in runs and batting average. The gain from being so far above in steals would most likely more than make up for what you lose in HR and RBI.

As for the pitching, by giving up on wins, K's and saves, you'll be a low outlier. But first, you'll drag the overall average way down making you less of an outlier. Second, if you have a 0.00 ERA and WHIP, not to mention 0 losses in this league, you're likely to lead those categories by at least as much as you lose the stats.

Of course, all of that would be for not if someone else used the same strategy. Or would it?

NL- West

2009-06-17T09:16:00.003-04:00

NL West

I was dead wrong about the Diamondbacks, but the rest I got right. Dodgers are playing very well.

Still, nobody cares about the NL West.

NL Central

2009-06-17T09:04:00.003-04:00

The NL Central is the most interesting division in baseball for me. No team has been great, but no team has been awful either.

Lots of change from May, but a lot of that is based on the snap shot day I randomly took. The reality is that the top 2 are very close, the next two are really close and the bottom 2 are very close. Only 5.5 games separate top from bottom and 5 of the 6 teams have postive run differentials (a couple of just over even). Only the Astros look like they have been outwinning their play by staying near .500 despite a -38 run differential.

I still think that the Cubs have the potential to take over the division if any of their hitters start regressing back up to the mean. They should also get a shot in the arm from Aramis coming back and are likely to make some splash trade.

NL- East

2009-06-17T08:56:00.003-04:00

NL East

Phillie remains the only impressive team in this division. The Marlins were a flash in the pan to open the season, but immediately after the last standings update fell off completely. I can see the Braves making a run if they make some good trades, but otherwise it will be the Mets chasing the Phillies until September.

It's worth noting that the Phillies, with their terrible starting pitching and closer, are playing way better than expected right now . The Mets are on the other side, playing well under their talent. For what its worth, people who believe in team chemistry have plenty of ammunition here as the Phillies appear to be riding the high of a championship while the Mets are expecting to collapse like they have the previous two years. Not sure if it is my proximity to NYC or actual general thought, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Mets pull a 2004 Red Sox and trade one of their faces for the right pieces. If I had to guess, I would say Reyes is more likely to be traded than either Beltran or Wright, especially as Wright seems to be the hope of the future.

Standings- AL West

2009-06-17T08:51:00.002-04:00

AL West

Looks like the Mariners are in the same boat as the Blue Jays in falling back to Earth after a strong start. If I was rooting for my predictions, I would mention that how the Texas pitching reacts to the long summer heat remains to be seen. Without my predictions, I would now guess that there is a dogfight between the Angels and Rangers for the division with Seattle hanging around close enough to make a move if the other teams falter. Angels have been making a strong move very recently though.

Standings- AL Central

2009-06-17T08:46:00.002-04:00

AL Central has completely kicked around both since May and my initial predictions. Not even a good trend here other than bad baseball in general.

Somehow I have 2 and 4 right, but have completely missed on 1, 3 and 5. The good news for the bottom half is that none of the teams are playing extremely well. The bad news for 4 of the 5 teams is that it looks like the wildcard will not be coming from the AL Central. Despite my initial thoughts, it looks like the AL Central has a better chance of being the division that others complain about as not worthy of a playoff spot instead of the division that others fear to play.

Mid-June Standings Look - AL East

2009-06-17T08:39:00.004-04:00

Here's an almost mid-season look at the standings vs my predictions. I'll do separate posts for each division to make putting up the picks easier.

AL East

Well, the only difference in the standings since early May is that the Blue Jays have fallen back into the pack. Two points of interest: 1) The top 4 teams all have run differentials over +30. Only the Orioles have a negative run differential and they remain the only AL East team under .500. Worth noting that while the Rays and Jays are tied at 5 games back, the Rays have the AL's best run differential at +75.

You could be an air hostess in the 60's

2009-06-04T20:39:00.002-04:00

Adrian Gonzalez

He is nothing less than a freaking beast. 1st in NL in homeruns. Top 5 in Runs and RBI. Any team would be lucky to have him.

Standings notes:

4 of 5 teams in the AL East are better than .500.

4 of 5 teams in the AL Central are under .500.

Dodgers led the majors in wins regardless of Manny playing. In fact, the Dodgers have the largest margin of games between first and second in a division (9 games as of this writing). The other 5 divisions have less than 3.5 games between first and second.

The Rays have a +48 run differential, but have only managed to play .500 ball to date. This is perhaps because the Rays have scored the most runs in the majors.

The Braves, Giants and Angels all have winning records despite letting more runs score than they have scored.

The Twins and Pirates have scored more runs than they've allowed, but have losing records.

Obligatory Indians note: The Indians are 4th in runs scored, but tied for last in runs allowed.

Why Inter-league Play Makes Sense

2009-05-23T09:59:00.004-04:00

I am of a mixed mind about the inclusion of inter-league play and find the usual arguments about some teams being at a disadvantage rather banal. Sure it might not seem fair for one team to face the tougher teams in an opposing division while some other team gets the dredges, but that happens all over the schedule. Besides this, there are always NL teams playing with themselves because of the fair more imbalanced 14 AL teams to 16 NL teams. When you have 4 divisions with 5 teams but 1 division with 4 and another with 6, things are wrong. When you have teams playing 18 teams against the teams in their division, but only 6 against other intra-league and 6 against their inter-league rival, things are wronger. Anyway, I don't mind the games because there is so much other crap that is wrong that the inter-league part seems trivial.

What I have heard spouted this year is how successful interleague play is despite fan, player and manager complaints. What I have yet to hear is an actual satisfactory explanation for this. With this in mind, I came up with my own plausible theory.

Being an out of region fan means taking advantage of every opportunity to see the teams I follow. Because I choose not to get the MLB package, I can't see every game all the time, but I can see the games where my team plays the local team(s). I believe the boost in attendance for inter-league games comes from the displaced fan. I know my brother has rarely been as excited as last year when his favorite team (Red Sox) came to visit the hometown Reds. In fact, he made it to all 3 games of the series. I think this happens all over. There's a good chance I'll be visiting a friend in Washington and will end up at the Red Sox-Nationals game this summer. It is not because the Red Sox-Nationals matchup is intriguing. It is solely because the friend I'm visiting is a Sox fan and will take advantage of seeing the team in his new hometown park. The out of region fan is the main reason that MLB keeps seeing gate revenue spikes and it seems to me to be a smart move financially.

All of the matchups that get listed as the reason that inter-league sucks are matchups between low attendance teams or, at the least, poorly playing teams. The worst thing that happens to those matchup gate revenues is that they stay the same. For the season ticket holder, they are going to the games regardless of the matchup. Same with the most casual fans, who tend to plan their games based on the date or the opportunity, not on the visiting team. As more and more teams see gate spikes for the most favored nations (Yanks, Sox, Dodgers), they realized that if they put something novel out there, there's a chance they will reach a market that they would not have otherwise. At worst, the teams see their usual attendance. At best, they get a spike from the displaced fan.

Less Hate Here

2009-05-23T09:56:00.002-04:00

Despite the disheartening loss I described earlier, the Indians came back to take the following two games from the Royals and win a series outright for only the 2nd time this season. It is amazing that it took a colossal collapse to prevent the Indians from sweeping the series. Good times.

I hate baseball

2009-05-20T09:55:00.003-04:00

So there are times when it is really convenient that I can sometimes pick up the local Cleveland broadcast on my car radio. Last night, for instance, I tuned in just in time for the bottom of the 9th in a game the Indians were leading 5-2. I was able to hear the collossal collapse of "closer" Kerry Wood, who gave up homer, homer, walk, triple, walk-off sac fly to kill everything good in my soul.

League Leaders- AL edition

2009-05-16T14:08:00.003-04:00

Continued league leaders

AL Hitters
Batting Average (I know I don't like it, but...)
Victor Martinez .400
Miguel Cabrera .378
Adam Jones .370

Yes, I only included this category because I love Victor.

At Bats
Aaron Hill 167
Vernon Wells 160
Alex Rios 158

No coincidence that all 3 are Blue Jays and the BJ's currently lead the majors in offense.

Runs
Adam Jones 35
Marco Scutaro 34
Nick Markakis 34
Brian Roberts 31
Jason Bay 31

3 of the top 5 are Orioles, but the orange birds remain last in the AL East. Could be because they have given up the most runs.

Hits
Victor Martinez 58
Aaron Hill 58

Nobody else above 50.

RBI
Evan Longoria 46
Jason Bay 38
3 others tied at 33

Longoria has been a Yankee and Red Sox killer this season, but has also been a steady producer everywhere. Only included Bay because I think he's my brother's new favorite player. Bay won him a beer from me in the Red Sox Indians-Series.

Stolen Bases
Carl Crawford 24 (0 caught)
Jacoby Ellsbury 16 (4 caught)
Chone Figgins 15 (2 caught)
Bobby Abreu 13 (0 caught)
BJ Upton 11 (2 caught)

Crazy to see Abreu running again, since he doesn't seem to like to do that in the outfield. Of course the lead is Crawford who is single handedly winning the steals category for me in 2 of 3 leagues. More importantly, he's stolen more bases on his own than 16 other MLB teams (9 AL teams).

Extra Base Hits
Longoria 27
48 hits total (11 HR, 16 Doubles). I suppose this has something to do with his really high RBI. Over half his hits are better than singles. Awesome.

Hit by Pitch
Carlos Quentin 8
Kelly Shoppach 8

Get on base any way you can.

AL Pitchers
Roy Halladay 61 (8 starts)
Zach Greinke 60 (8 starts)

Both are averaging well into the 8th inning and doing so with impressive results.

Strikeouts
Justin Verlander 69
Zach Greinke 65

If I was doing both leagues at once, I would point out that both league leaders have the intials J.V. (Javier Vasquez leads the NL with 67K).

Losses
Cliff Lee 5
Jose Contreras 5

Lee's ERA 3.00, Contreras's ERA 8.19

Saves
Brian Fuentes 9
Frank Francisco 9
Jonathan Papelbon 9

Frankie Frank has yet to give up a run this year, but looks to be out for a bit due to nagging injury. Of these 3, only Fuentes has blown a save (2 actually).

Complete Games
Greinke 4

Only 13 pitchers have thrown complete games and only 4 have thrown more than 1 this season. It's Greinkes's Cy Young to lose at this point.

Wild Pitch
Scott Kazmir 6
Gavin Floyd 4
AJ Burnett 4

Not much to say here. I'll end this post now.

Wright Stuff

2009-05-15T11:35:00.003-04:00

Of course moments after I wrote that Wright was in the caught stealing more than successful attempts he goes out and steals 4 bases, taking him out of the category completely. Got to love baseball.

League Leaders

2009-05-14T20:51:00.002-04:00

Thought I would just post the top few players for some stats to date. This post is NL leaders only.

NL Hitting
RBI
Pujols 35
Cantu 33
Fielder 32

I will point out that all 3 names are pretty awesome for various reasons. Poop joke, the reply "Can too", and the irony of a huge 1B being named for something he's only okay at.

Runs
Pujols 33
Soriano 30

Hits
Ryan Zimmerman 51
Orlando Hudson 50

I like hits better than batting average. Because the number of hits is cooler. Try to defy that logic.

Triples
Matt Kemp 4
I certainly would not have guessed it was Kemp. Also wouldn't have guessed that 22 other National Leaguers have at least 2 triples.

More caught stealing than stolen bases (SB/CS)
David Wright (5/6)
Elijah Dukes (2/6)
Troy Tulowitzki (2/3)
Joey Gathright (1/2)
Adam Rosales (0/2)
Chris Dickerson (0/2)

There's a bunch of others that are 0 for 1.

There are 30 NL'ers who average more than 4 pitches seen per plate appearance.

Total Extra Base Hits
20 each by Raul Ibanez, Alfonso Soriano, and Ryan Zimmerman

Hit by Pitch
Chase Utley 6
Jason Kendell 5
Ryan Braun 5

Would never guess that I would see Kendall on a list with Utley and Braun.

Ground Into Double Play (or inning killer)
Andre Ethier 10 (in 36 games)
Geovany Soto 9 (in 28 games)
Ryan Zimmerman 8 (in 33 games)

I guess I should be less surprised that there are a bunch of decent players on this list because that means their teammates are getting on base in front of them.

NL Pitching
Strike Outs
Peavy 61
Santana 60
Lincecum 58
Javier Vazquez 57 (didn't expect that)

Losses
Doug Davis 5 (Glad he beat the thyroid cancer of a year ago. Not a joke, am really glad for him)
Peavy 5
Ian Snell 5
7 guys with 4 Losses, but the one of biggest note is Dan Haren, who has an ERA of 2.09. The rest of the 4 loss guys range from 4.73 to 5.79

Wins
5 guys with 5, but the best is Bronson Arroyo who has an ERA of 7.02.

Holds (cause everyone loves these)
Carlos Marmol 10 (3 saves)
JJ Putz 8 (another great name)
Jason Motte 7 (was supposed to be a closer, but apparently is a holder)

More to come from the AL.

More on the unsungs

2009-05-11T12:44:00.003-04:00

Long time ago, I meant to point out how awesome www.baseball-refernce.com is and I again missed my chance with the Conchords post.

One of my favorite features of baseball-reference is the similarity scores it assigns to each player. It finds other players with similar stats playing the same position at the players age.

For Sanchez, there's not a lot of good ones, with the only ones I knew immediately being Robinson Cano, Alex Cintron, and Johnny Estrada. Funny though that many people know Cano, despite his rather awful 2008, and so few still know Sanchez.

For Markakis though, the list is far more interesting. The direct comparisons include current players Juan Riveria, Andre Ethier, Kevin Youkilis, Rocco Baldelli (who the guest kid announcer on NESN called Baldy last week), and Cliff Lee. What? On further inspection, the Cliff Lee mentioned is not the reigning Cy Young Winner, it is actually a ballplayer from 1920's.

On Markakis's similar through age 24, he's got some good career prospects, as it lists the likes of Vernon Wells, Ellis Burks (one of my personal favorites), and Carlos Beltran. If he can pull off the production of any one of them, you'd have to want him on your team long-term.

You could be a part time model

2009-05-09T10:12:00.003-04:00

Decided just now to start a Flight of the Conchords based running post.

The most beautiful girl in the room can either be the best player on a terrible or unsung team. It can also be the best performance by a player on a losing team.

For the latter, let's start with Cliff Lee's Friday night. 8 innings, 1 run, and the loss because the Indians couldn't muster a run against Justin Verlander.

Here's some great or good players on bad or untalked about teams:

Nick Markakis, OF Baltimore Orioles
31 R (1st in AL), 29 RBI (4th in AL), .342 BA
If he played for 3 of the 4 other teams in the AL East, he would be an all-star. In Baltimore, he's mostly forgotten about except in fantasy circles.

Freddy Sanchez, 2B Pittsburgh Pirates
.301 career batting average. Never an RBI machine, but he's scored over 70 R in each of his last 3 seasons. Keeps coming out and hitting no matter than the Pirates have lost 90 some games every year he's been with them.

Med Mania

2009-05-09T09:59:00.002-04:00

Generally, I don't care too much about performance enhancing drug stories and try not to say much about them (which is easy when I never write blog entries). However, with all the hoopla surrounding Manny's 50 game suspension, I think there's an angle that's been missed.

Manny indicated that he's been tested many times since 2003, the year, evidently, that steroids were invented. Other things Manny has done since 2003:

Won 2 World Series with the Red Sox.
Hit a crap-ton of doubles and singles (and several home runs).
Asked to be traded from Boston on roughly 9 separate occasions (at least one of which was during the World Series).
Turned down a $45 million contract before eventually "winning" by signing... a $45 million contract.
Turned a bunch of doubles into singles and singles into ground outs by walking down to first.

So here's my thought. Does anyone else think that Manny may have intentionally took a small about of a banned substance so he could sit out for 50 games and do whatever it is he does when he's not playing baseball?

I can't shake the thought. I think he took a weird drug, in a small amount. And then reminded us that he could have passed the drug test if he had wanted. I mean, what does Manny actually want? He wanted a huge payday from the Dodgers because it was more like Cleveland than Boston (still confused on that). He wants to play when it matters. He does not like playing every day. So the way to keep himself fresh was either to sit down and walk out grounders and complain on the bench about something.

Or... Take a pill and get a month and a half off.

Predictions Revisited

2009-05-04T17:21:00.005-04:00

I'm planning something cool (read math related and not really cool for people who don't do math in their spare time) for this week regarding end of season results based on April records, but that's actual content and takes time. In the mean time, enjoy my terrible, terrible predictions from before the season.

AL East (Average Spots Off = 2)
Preseason Picks 5/4 Morning
Yankees Blue Jays
Rays Red Sox
Red Sox Yankees
Orioles Rays
Blue Jays Orioles

How bad are my predictions looking? Well, I thought that Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays would be battling it out. However, the Blue Jays are one of two teams that are in the opposite position of my prediction (last to first or first to last). Of the 6 divisions, my average spots off here were the second highest only to:

AL Central (Average Spots Off = 2.4)
Preseason Picks 5/4 Morning
Indians Royals
Twins Tigers
Tigers White Sox
Royals Twins
White Sox Indians

The Indians were my other complete mis-pick, but hey, at least I knew it was a homer call. What I really didn't expect was for the non-Indians in the central to all be within 2 games of each other.

AL West (Average Spots Off = 1)
Preseason Picks 5/4 Morning
Angels Mariners
Mariners Rangers
Rangers Angels
Athletics Athletics

The AL West was the best by my made up, completely meaningless metric of average spots off. I believe this is at least partially affect by there only being 4 spots, so less possible deviation. Basically, the Angels are underperforming to my expectations, but the rest of the order remains the same.

NL East (Average Spots Off = 1.2)
Preseason Picks 5/4 Morning
Mets Marlins
Phillies Phillies
Braves Braves
Marlins Mets
Nationals Nationals

Despite my made up metric (mmmmmmmm), the NL East looks the best for me, as 3 of 5 are in the right position with the Mets and Marlins just flipping spots. I'll take it.

NL Central (Average Spots Off = 1.7)
Preseason Picks 5/4 Morning
Cubs Cardinals
Brewers Reds
Reds Cubs
Cardinals Brewers
Astros Pirates
Pirates Astros

Opposite issue of the AL West where the number is probably inflated because of the presence of 6 teams instead of the normal 5. The only real surprise here are the Cardinals strutting (though I suppose the Cubs underperforming is the second part of that).

NL West (Average Spots Off = 1.2)
Preseason Picks 5/4 Morning
Diamondbacks Dodgers
Dodgers Giants
Giants Diamondbacks
Rockies Padres
Padres Rockies

No one cares about the NL West.

In summation: Overall, I was an average of 1.6 spots off, which sounds small except being off by 1.6 of 5 means I was closer to being 2 spots off than correctly guessing or being 1 spot off.

# of spots off # of teams
0 4
1 12
2 8
3 4
4 2

If I randomly selected each teams placement, while ignoring every other teams placement, I would have a 20% chance of guessing the placement correctly. To this point, I have correctly predicted 4 of 30 teams, or .13%. Not good. However, if you include the teams that are 1 spot off (and I do because it makes me feel better) then I predicted 16 of 30, 53%. Not bad.

Assuming there could be ties (which is possible, sort of), then I could randomly get the place of every team in a division 0.032% of the time. The math here doesn't really work, but I'll leave it to someone else to point out why.

The hits keep on coming...

2009-04-28T19:53:00.002-04:00

but the blog posts don't.

Sorry for the one of you who check this still. A little busy with life for the last couple of weeks.

Things that have happened in baseball since the last post:

Um... Well I'm not sure, that's why I haven't really posted. I seem to remember the Indians scoring 22 runs against the Yankees in a game, but only splitting the series 2-2.

The last time I wrote, it looked like the Sox weren't going anywhere, but now they've run off 11 wins in row (hopefully not 12 or I owe my brother a sixer of New England local beer the next time I go back).

Interesting things I've looked at in the last few minutes:

The Pirates are over .500 and have 5 shutouts on the year. The first time someone mentioned this to me I assumed they were shutout 5 times, which seemed low for the Pirates. After a quick check though, they have indeed won 5 games where their opponents have scored zero runs.

Moments ago, the Marlins were everyone's hot team to rent another championship because they were 11-1. Now they are 11-8 and people can't run fast enough.

The Giants are averaging 3.6 runs a game, which is lowest in the majors. The Blue Jays are at just about 6 a game.

I've heard at least 12 different pronunciations of Asdrubal.

More to come at the end of the month, since that's my arbitrary 1/6 season marker.

Great Plays

2009-04-12T22:12:00.002-04:00

Just saw Cubs Outfielder Reed Johnson rob Prince Fielder of a Home Run and was yelling in excitement about a game with relatively little impact on me (though I wouldn't have been able to tie in Wins in one of the 3 fantasy leagues I'm in). Very classy of Prince Fielder to tip his cap to the great play instead of doing something else or nothing at all.

It got me to thinking about the most exciting and somewhat rare plays in baseball.

I'm not going to rank them right now, but here are some of the cooler things I've seen and would like to one day witness in person.

First, the Reds hit into a triple play today. I'm always interested in them and always calling for them at inappropriate times (2 outs already, no one on base, etc.). I would settle for seeing any variety of triple play in person, but would love to see someone turn an unassisted triple play, like so.

I've seen several grand slams in my lifetime, so they don't seem all that rare to me. However, I will make note that the last ballgame I went to with my grandfather (Reds at Devil Rays in interleague play) marked the first slam I saw in person as well as the first time for my grandfather, despite his 60+ years of additional viewing experience.

I always like seeing plays that involve extreme amounts of speed, especially legged out triples with no errors and any variety of inside the park homer.

Someday it would be great to witness a real sloppy no-hitter (errors and walks all over the place, but still technically a pitching gem). Certainly, seeing anyone pitch a perfect game would be outstanding, but I doubt I make it to one in my lifetime (or after my lifetime for that matter, in fact after my lifetime I may have a slightly lower chance of seeing a perfect game).

Anyone else witnessed something weird or really want to see something on the diamond before they go?

In the things I never thought I'd see category, I saw Oliver Perez and Jamie Moyer throw a pitchers duel last summer at Shea. Not sure it fits the things I'd want to see, but certainly makes the list of things I never thought I would see.

More Predictions (probably last of the new season)

2009-04-12T08:45:00.004-04:00

Time for some final predictions.

First, I'm thinking Angels over Diamondbacks in the World Series. A West coast finale is Bud Seligs nightmare, so I think its a go.

MVP

AL Evan Longoria

There's so much hype about him as an uberplayer, so I think he makes the transition from touted prospect to top end producer. His name and story, combined with another playoff appearance (or at least a run) are enough to put him over the edge.

Honorable mentions: I don't think any one Yankee gets enough support to win it this year, but based on the writer love shoved towards Texeiria in the pre-season, he'll get some votes if he has a decent season. Josh Hamilton has a shot if the Rangers win some games. Dark Horse candidates are the Orioles outfielders, at least Adam Jones or Markakis.

Favorites are the fantasy favorites Han-Ram or Pujols, but I don't think either of their team wins enough games for them to get a fair shot at the trophy. I think it comes down to either Manny or David Wright, with the writers liking Wright's style more than Manny.

Honorable mentions: I wouldn't be surprised if K-Rod gets some attention if he keeps the Mets in the division lead down the stretch. I'm sure some Phillies will get some votes here too. Dark horse candidate is Adam Dunn if the Nationals win anything and he doesn't get traded to the AL.

Cy Young

Not CC, and not Cliff Lee. I'm going out on a limb to say that Felix Hernandez is healthly all season and leads the league in K's and is top 10 in ERA. Only thing haunting his canidacy is a lack of wins, but I think around 18 is enough. Other strong canidate is Halladay, who is the fall back when all other pitchers aren't outstanding.

Lots of options here really. No reason to think that Lincecum, Brandon Webb, or Santana can't repeat here, but I'm more interested to see whether Carpenter can come back into it. If it's not Carpenter, I'm thinking that Dan Haren will finally put everything and lock this down.

Rookie of the Year and more madness to follow.

Interesting Story Titles

2009-04-09T09:19:00.003-04:00

Here's a sampling of story titles, that run from cliche to cliche to hilarious cliche, from around the mlb.com team sites:

"Tribe can't escape early hole in Texas"

"Moehler digs too deep a hole for Astros"

"Long balls do in Litsch"

"Gallardo makes history off Unit"

"Veal resilient in face of unusual outing"

"Wang has tough time in return for Yanks"

I won't lie. I was hoping for more of these, but I think this is not a bad list for the first week of the season.

NL East

2009-04-06T22:34:00.002-04:00

This is the most interesting division that I don't care all that much about.

Order first:

Mets
Phillies
Braves
Marlins
Nationals

Now the explanation:

Mets: They beat the Reds today 2-1.

Also, they have 2 closers compared to the 1 of last year. They lost 13 games by 2 or less runs after August 1st last year. If they won even 3 of those, they are tied for the division lead with the Phillies. Because of the meltdown of the last 2 years, people forget how good this team is. I think they put it together and win the division for the first time since all the way back in 2006. Big questions are how Delgado starts the season, how much impact Daniel Murphy has, and/or what the heck to do with Sheffield.

Phillies: The opposite of the Mets, they have gotten very lucky to even make the playoffs the last two years. Myers, Moyer, and Park do not a consistent, healthy rotation make, but I think the massive bats keep the Phillies in the playoff race throughout the season.

Braves: The Braves are loaded with young(er) talent with a pleasant mix of veterans thrown in. My guess is that this year is the year they relearn how to win close games (after some trial and error) and make a push at the leaders and playoffs before falling to just over .500. I am already more interested in how good the 2010 Braves might be, which often leads to a surprise breakout season a year early. Question is where will their pitching come from?

Marlins: There's something missing from the team and it might just be marketing. I don't see them making it over 80 wins and part of the reason must be that I can't see a face of the franchise truly emerging. Han-Ram is a fantasy stud and might be the best player in the NL not named Pujols, but he still isn't happy about being in a town that doesn't seem to appreciate baseball (2 titles in 12 years or not). The Marlins are what the current Braves could be in 2-3 years. That is, they are full of guys who used to have limitless potential until someone found their limit. Uggla, Hermida, and Cantu all continue to be adequate enough to keep their jobs, but not good enough to carry the team further. Big question is can anyone name a Marlins pitcher without looking? Alternate question is whether Maybin lives up the hype and breaks out this year.

Nationals: Now that Bobby Bowden has stopped trying to make the team a bizarro Cincinnati, the team can start to recover. I love seeing Kearns and Dunn in the same outfield again, but I doubt that anyone or anything other than Dunn makes the Nationals relevant this year. I also think that Dunn further contributes to the team when he is traded in late May for a bunch of prospects.

OPENING

2009-04-06T12:39:00.002-04:00

Very excited to hear the first few games of the year today at work. I just purchased the MLB.com app that lets me listen to the radio commentary which I sure hope works.

Interesting things to me right now:

I hope Aaron Harang pitches a complete game shutout with about 14k's to show he's back.

The Indians are starting the first game of the season with two catchers in the line-up. Victor will get the nod at 1B, while Shoppach will be squatting behind the plate. Seems odd since there's an off-day tomorrow and Victor can always use the extra day of rest after playing catcher.

Hoping to get the final division (NL East) prediction out this evening. Besides interesting tidbits (tidbit tidbit tidbit) from the games themselves, I will also try to get the playoff scenarios and individual award winner predictions out this week.

NL West

2009-04-06T07:36:00.004-04:00

Late to the game, but still hitting it before the season actually starts. Lets talk about the division that no one really cares about, the NL West.

First, the order:

Diamondbacks

Dodgers

Giants

Rockies

Padres

Next, we'll explain in reverse order:

Padres: Their first two starters are great or good (Peavy and Young), but there's no lineup there whatsoever. Of note is that 3 of their 8 starters are former Indian farmhands (Kouzmanoff, Giles, Gerut).

Rockies: I just don't see the pitching to make a good run at the division here. Also, the lineup is very similar the to miracle team of two seasons ago, but it took extremly high performances by all of them to squeak out a playoff appearance (not to mention a collapse by the rest of the NL). Big question is when are Helton and Atkins going to hit the bottom? If they can hold off age for one more year, the mountains have a shot at .500, if not, I see the team notching wins in the high 70's.

Giants: I think everything goes right for the Giants and they finish with about 85 wins. If this team was transported back 5 years, I would like any rotation with Zito and the Big Unit (Johnson), not to mention seeing Randy Winn in his prime. All the positions and pitching will be at least adequate and I think that leads to a 3rd place finish in the West. Two questions are whether Zito or Johnson can muster another dominate season (No for Zito, average for Johnson) and how either Sandoval or Ishikawa or both might break out this year.

Dodgers: Their lineup with a productive Manny is impressive, but any team who relies on Kuroda and Wolf to anchor the lineup can't possibly win the division, can it?

Diamondbacks: Their lineup is the class of the NL West or Central, and their rotation is set with Webb and Haren baring injuries to either. I'm guessing that the majority of their young hitters put it together this year and make a run deep into the playoffs. Look for them to top 93 wins and take the division.

AL East

2009-04-02T17:27:00.002-04:00

I was going to save this for last, but after seeing those other predictions, I suppose it is time.

Order first

Yankees
Rays
Red Sox
Orioles
Blue Jays

Yankees: This is not so much a prediction based on the roster as it currently stands. I believe there will be significant changes, especially as the DL, I mean outfield, sorts itself out. There are lots of pitchers there that are above average. Not only that, there are lots of other pitchers whose contracts are up in a year or two that will almost inevitably be traded mid-season to the Yankees. I can't imagine that Cashman will let it work out that the only seasons over a 10-15 year period where the Yankees don't make the playoffs are the last season in the old stadium and the first season in the new.

Rays: They didn't change their lineup or rotation all that much, but they now know how to handle themselves. With a young lineup, aging a year should only help, not to mention a full season out of Longoria and a resurging Carl Crawford. Big question is whether David Price can come out the minors and flame-throw.

Red Sox: Getting older when you're already kind of old does not make you better. The starting rotation could be great, or it could be 800 years old and realize it. Wakefield is done sometime soon if not already. You can't expect a full season out of either Penny or Smoltz, in fact they will be lucky to have a combined 35 starts between the two. Ped, Youk, and Ellsbury are great players for years to come. I don't believe in Drew and really never have, I think Bay has a decent year but is on the decline and I don't see how Lowell continues to defy age and injury.

Orioles: Don't ask me why, because I don't have a good answer. There's too much hitting there to not win some games and their pitching might be adequate. Everyone says that Wieters will come into the league and take off, and I'm inclined to believe that he will be good on offense and calling the game.

Blue Jays: They've been almost there for several seasons now, but they have made the mistake of trying to get better by getting older (naturally and through free agency). They have to break down sometime and I think it is this year despite Halladay continuing to be the best pitcher that only gets talked about when people want to talk about a pitcher who isn't talked about enough.

Idiots

2009-04-02T09:03:00.003-04:00

I check NYTimes.com about once an hour at work. Keeping up with current events is part of my job so this is excusable for me. When I drift over to the sports and auto pages, I know I am pushing my luck. Today, I read this piece on AL predictions from Tyler Kepner of the NYTimes Bats blog.

As the title might indicate, I disagree with the gentlemen's assessment. First, he admits that he picked the Mariners to make the playoffs last year. That's not such a terrible admission considering it was a relatively trendy pick this time last year. What bugs me is that he doesn't learn from his mistakes. First, he picks the Yankees to win their division, a homer call which I'm fine with. But then he picks the Red Sox over the Rays despite the Rays getting better in the offseason and the Red Sox buying and getting older.

The real transgressions though are that he puts the Mariners last again to spite them or himself for their epic collapse last year. Law of averages says that the Mariners can't have all the bad breaks they did last year. In fact, the team is almost the same as the over-hyped team of a year ago.

Second transgression is picking the Royals to win the AL Central. This is exactly the same thing as picking the Mariners to win the West last year and for some reason he doesn't get this.

Certainly, it doesn't help that the guy picks the Indians to finish last based completely on the fact that they signed my friend SW's relative by marriage, Carl Pavano. Why would a team finish last because they signed a former flash in the pan pitcher to a low-risk incentive laden deal? Also, there were another 4 guys who didn't make the rotation would could all step in as a starter. At least when I do my predictions, I take a few minutes to check out a depth chart.

Also, the A's will finish last because they signed Giambi.

Regardless, I'm pretty sure I'm more informed than this random Yankees fan who happens to write for a high-profile publication. I'll stand behind this enough to say that if his standings are closer to the final standings than mine, I will buy and wear a Yankees hat for a week before donating it to some poor sap of a Yankees fan friend of mine (or charity, but I don't want to do that to the homeless or poor).

AL West

2009-04-01T22:29:00.002-04:00

Jumping around to the AL West solely because I'm tired and there's only 4 teams in the division.

Standings order first:

Angels
Mariners
Rangers
Athletics

Angels: Despite changing cities without changing ballparks, the Angels have finished 1st in the division 4 of the last 5 seasons with over 90 wins in each of those seasons. There only off season they finished 2nd with 88 wins, so there's not many surprises here. They will miss Teixeiriaia's production, but they still have a collection of 35 outfield/1B/DH guys to fill in basically anywhere. Their starting pitching is banged up now, but I think they will be fine in the long run. In fact, a little extra prep and rest now may make for a strong finish in the late months of the season. Big question is how their bullpen deals with the loss of K-Rod and fits in behind Fuentes.

Mariners: This is a sleeper pick, but I think the Mariners will finish the season just over .500 because they have a decent combination of slick defenders (Franklin Gutierrez, Ichiro, Beltre) and swing and miss bashers (Junior, Branyan to a lesser extent). I don't think their pitching is spectacular if healthy, but I don't think it loses a lot of games for them this year.

Rangers: Milwood, Padilla, Benson, McCarthy. With the exception of McCarthy, their starters were being described as has-beens 5-6 years ago. McCarthy, at this point, seems to have become a much hyped never was. Kinsler and Hamilton are stud hitters that are only helped by hitting in a hitters park. Chris Davis will have a break out year, but the rest of the lineup needs work. No one will find out how good the bullpen is, because it is likely to rarely matter.

Athletics: When I looked at the teams, I thought I would be putting the A's in the 2nd spot as a sleeper instead of the Mariners. Then I looked at the A's depth chart, which reads like a highlight of the all the things that are wrong with the other AL West teams' rosters. There are a couple of starters (Duchscherer, Eveland) that may find their groove this year, but other than that it is a showcase of terrible. After Matt Holliday (who will be traded by the middle of the June), the offense peak (pimple) is either Orlando Cabrera (who I still can't believe couldn't find a real job this offseason) or Jason Giambi. The best they can hope for is putting at least half their roster on the DL to check out what talent they have in the minors.

NL Central

2009-03-31T16:51:00.004-04:00

So my weekend break became basically a week and a half off. That shouldn't happen over the summer as there will actually be baseball that counts being played.

To get things going again, lets talk about the NL Central. Here are my predictions:

Nothing ground breaking here, but I think the Cubs will win the NL Central again. I'm not sure that Dempster repeats his outstanding season, but the starting pitchers are either consistent, or at least flashes of great (Zambrano). D. Lee isn't getting any younger, nor is Aramis Ramirez, but their lineup is consistent throughout. The biggest question mark may well be how Fukudome and Soto deal with leaving the sleeper status because of their breakout 2008 seasons. The only other major question is whether the game board (Milton Bradley) is able to just rake, or whether he continues to be a head case (see being traded from Cleveland because of a fight with Wedge, blowing out his knee while arguing a call at first).

The rest of the Central is much closer than it should be. First the order

Cubs

Brewers
Reds
Cardinals
Astros

Pirates

The Brewers have a hearty lineup (good for NL standards, a little light compared to most AL teams). I think they are able to finish the season above .500 based on slugging and speed, but lack of pitching and pitching depth leads to missing the playoffs.

The Reds might be another year off, because of their overall youth. The big question I have about the team is whether or not they will cast off their swing for the fences image and go with the speed they have all around. I know they play in a bandbox, but I think the team as currently built would have more success hitting singles and stealing bases and letting the homers come to them. If they continue to use the Dunn 3 outcome philosophy (homer, walk, strikeout), then I will have overestimated their record and place. If they focus on their good to great rotation and hit just enough, the can make a run at the Brewers for 2nd, possibly for a wildcard spot (assuming some great breaks along the way).

Cardinals: Without Pujols, they are 5th or 6th in the division, with him, they are in the mix for anywhere from 2-4th. There's Pujols and a bunch of other guys who are either past their prime, waiting for a prime, or Ryan Ludwick (who will not repeat his awesome 2008, but will continue to look productive because he will be the 2nd best hitter on his team). The big question is how Carpenter finally comes back. If he can be a staff ace again, maybe the rest of the rotation feels less pressure and performs adequately to the tune of a .500 record. I don't see it though and expect to see them in the 70 - 75 wins area.

Astros: I should have them higher, and I can think of a lot of reasons to have them higher, but in the end, I have them finishing 5th. Their starters after Oswalt are decent, though not great (I'm not completely on the Wandy Rodriguez bandwagon). But their lineup seems to be Berkman, Carlos Lee, and a bunch of players who are known for what they might do (Pence, Bourn) or what they used to do (Tejada). Nothing great here, lots of adequate and in a 6 team division, that translates to a low finish.

The Pirates are the clear scum of the division. Enough said about that.

I would be very surprised if the wild card comes out of this division because I see very little separation between teams 2-4, maybe even 1-5. And unlike other divisions that gravitate towards being very good (AL East, AL Central) or bottom feeders (NL West), this division is all huddled around 81-81.

auction draft live (ish) blog

2009-03-27T18:28:00.007-04:00

6:30 Signed in just after 6 for a 7pm draft. Only person there until 6:15 and only 2 of 10 up until this point. I have the 3rd nomination, which doesn't mean all that much. Since I'm in a league with lots of native northeasters, I'll probably throw out some Yankees and Red Sox to let others overpay for the first 3-4 rounds.

7:30 Things are going very fast. I've stayed out, except for paying a lot for Grady Sizemore and Miguel Cabrera (accident, was trying to bid up, but that's alright). I'm probably done for a half hour until players drop back in the $10-20 range

8:30 Every player is going fast, but the draft is not. Somehow, though I usually put off getting pitching, I have 3 hitters and 6 of 9 pitchers already.

9:30 Halfway through now (pick wise). I have less than $3 a player left. I actually threw out Cleveland's recently named 5th starter hoping to get a $1 pick, but two other people bid because they were confused. That works too.

Later: I just got a bunch of players I may not want for $1. For the last 6 rounds, I had the highest available max bid at $6 and never spent over $2. Still not sure why someone over bid me on Shoppach, Hafner, and Pavano...

Update: By popular demand, the final roster:

C
Kelly Shoppach

1B
Miguel Cabrera

2B
Brandon Phillips

3B
Mark DeRosa

SS
Asdrubal Cabrera

2B/SS
Felipe Lopez

1B/3B
Joey Votto

LF
Carl Crawford

CF
Grady Sizemore

RF
Josh Hamilton

UTIL
Ben Francisco

Bench
Shin-Soo Choo

Bench
Cameron Maybin

Bench
Jeff Keppinger

Bench
Edwin Encarnacion

P
Mariano Rivera

P
Dan Haren

P
Roy Oswalt

P
Cliff Lee

P
Brian Wilson

P
Francisco Rodriguez

P
Fausto Carmona

P
Kevin Gregg

P
Chris Ray

Bench
Wandy Rodriguez

Draft the 3rd

2009-03-27T07:34:00.002-04:00

Tonight is my final baseball draft of the season (barring me deciding to join some random mid-season league, which seems unlikely).

Tonight's is an auction draft in the league I've played in the longest. There are ten of us in the league and we've tweaked the 6x6 status a little each season. This season, we decided to start over from scratch rather than making people deal with the good and bad from our inaugural season. I think that, in order to make up for not posting for a week, I will attempt to live blog some of the oddities and rarities that happen during the auction process. If you're around tonight (Friday) after 7 and want to give me advice, I suggest you give the advice then find something useful to do, like knitting.

Stay tuned and see what happens.

If you're not big market you're small market

2009-03-24T17:42:00.002-04:00

I told Eric I'd fill in and write something while he was gone this past weekend. But I suck and couldn't come up with anything coherent when I tried. Now I have an hour and a half gap between tutoring sessions because someone is sick, so I will fill some of that time with baseball rambling.

First, your WBC update. Japan won a 10 inning thriller against Korea. I watched none of this game, but it did seem like a good game when I watched the highlights. It featured a close, low scoring game with Korea tying things up in the bottom of the ninth and then Ichiro hitting a two-run go-ahead hit with 2 outs in the top of the tenth. From what I read the crowd and players were into the game. So it seems the WBC is a great idea for every country except ours.

Now, this blog is going to have a distinct bias against teams like the Yankees. This is because everyone hates the Yankees if they don't like the Yankees. And Eric, being a native Ohioianese person, does not like the Yankees. But the truth is all these people are just jealous. They make arguments like the Yankees' massive payroll destroys competitive balance and creates insane prices for free agents. But look at the teams that have played in the World Series for the last ten years and you'll see teams from all markets and all different size payrolls.

What really bothers people is that the Yankees are always in the mix. They don't have rebuilding years. I never sit through a year or two where my team sucks after being good, like the Indians. Or a decade or two like the Reds. But you know what? That's because the owner isn't a cheap bastard like some of these owners. The Yankees are consistently at or near the top in percentage of revenue put back into payroll. For example, in 2007 the Yankees put 58% of revenue back into payroll. This was the most of any team. The Indians were 24th at 34%. Add to this that baseball has revenue sharing. So really the Yankees are putting some of their revenue into your team too. Or maybe just into your owner's pocket because he's a cheap bastard. The point is, stop crying. You should be happy I get to watch a team that is competitive every year. Also, we have Jeter.

Quick hits before I leave

2009-03-19T13:24:00.002-04:00

USA won an actual 9 inning game with a walkoff in the 9th. Maybe people will pay attention now. USA plays the winner of Japan v Korea on Sunday. Venezuela plays the loser on Saturday with the championship on Monday night.

I'll be out of blogging distance most of the weekend because of the first (annual?) Hopsanddrunken, a beer tour I'm going on with my brother and a bunch of friends. Filling in for a few posts will be a couple of friends of mine who are the primary readers of this fledgling venture.

When I get back, I'll start tackling the non-AL Central predictions and write more about spring training.

List of great signings/trades for Jon

2009-03-18T09:28:00.002-04:00

Great Yankees since 2000.

I'm leaving out nostalgia signings (Clemens, Tino, Wells)

Jose Molina

Jason Giambi

Johnny Damon

Wilson Betemit

Ivan Rodriguez

Shelley Duncan

Richie Sexson

Sidney Ponson

Carl Pavano

Kyle Farnsworth

LaTroy Hawkins

Kei Igawa

Doug Mientkiewicz

Josh Phelps

Randy Johnson

Gary Sheffield

Ruben Sierra

Matt Lawton

Kevin Brown

Jaret Wright

Al Leiter

Tony Clark

Enrique Wilson (Fat Omar)

Jose Contreras (Dice-K lite I)

John Olerud

Travis Lee

Javier Vazquez

Esteban Loaiza

Robin Ventura

David Dellucci (terrible for so many different teams)

Drew Henson (how's the football career going?)

Jeff Weaver

Jesse Orosco (at age 46)

Jose Canseco

USA Redeemed?

2009-03-18T07:46:00.002-04:00

Well, I guess I have to take back all my talk of how stupid the tournament setup is. No wait, I don't. It just so happens that the USA was on the good side of the stupid set up. So many situations like this already, but USA advances and eliminates Puerto Rico in a walk off 6-5 game just days after PR handed it to the yanks in an embarrassing mercy rule game. I guess I'm less angry about it because the American's advance, but I don't know how much.

Watch out, or don't, for the same situation when Japan plays Cuba tonight at 11:00pm. Japan beat Cuba a couple of days ago, so look for Cuba to squeak by to the semi's by about a run.

WBC part something

2009-03-16T23:01:00.005-04:00

As I watch the end of the (play-in?) game between Ven and PR, I find myself actually enjoying the game. It's at 2-0, which means they may actually play all 9 innings (Bottom 8th, 2 outs runners on 1 &2). I have committed myself to watching the end of this game, even though as I write they taking out the Venezuelan pitcher in favor of K-Rod, despite the fact that there is a 2-1 count on the current batter (Felipe Lopez).

This is good baseball, or at least better than the revolving door of minor leaguers in spring games. I like it so much, I wouldn't mind watching another game, or at least part of it, but wait... I can't watch the elimination game between Cuba and Mexico. I can't because it won't be on my tv and I won't be paying money to stream it online. Even if I wanted to pay the money to watch it live, the game doesn't start until 11:00pm eastern. I know that's still early in San Diego where the game is being played, but that's not where I live. It's also not where a lot of people who might watch the game and/or make the game profitable to air live. When I happen to catch a few innings, I generally like what I see, but when I go further, I am just too frustrated with how poorly this is planned and marketed to seek out these games. Anyone else feeling the pain? Maybe I'm wrong and this is awesome and I'm just missing it. Holler at your boy.

UPDATE: Looks like the right move my Ven, as K-Rod struck out Lopez, even though he only threw 2 strike (3 total pitches in the 8th, and is now poised to close out the 9th).

UPDATE IN CAPS BUT LONGER: Good ending to the game. I think my favorite part was a situation where K-Rod struck out utility man and my former new best friend Alex Cora looking. Steve Phillips (I think it was SP, as it was stupid and someone said it, so I think I'm safe to assume it was SP) said something to the effect of "K-Zone says it all, perfectly painted on the outside corner, perfectly called by the umpire" but then they actually showed the K-Zone and the pitch was no less than 4-6 inches outside. Not touching a line, not actually all that close on the slow mo replay (though it did look like a strike in real time). Somehow Phillips decided to say the only things that didn't make sense based on the actual replay. I'm adding "employing Steve Phillips, or someone who sounds like him and also makes dumb comments" to things that bad about this year's WBC. Anyway, good ending to the game and now the US gets a second shot at PR.

More WBC (I'm ready for the MLB season to start)

2009-03-16T17:37:00.002-04:00

USA won against, and eliminated the best story of the WBC thus far, Holland. The US squad will go on to play the loser of Puerto Rico v Venezuela, as detailed below.

Another interesting Sunday development was in Pool 1, where the Asian teams (Korea and Japan) both knocked down the Latin teams (Mexico and Cuba). This means that in the second game of this pool, Mex and Cuba will be playing for the 2nd time, this time for elimination instead of a letter pool championship. If anyone cares, Cuba knocked Mexico off 16-4 in a 7 inning mercy rule came before, so it should work out that Mexico wins and advances by 1 run.

On the other end, Japan and Korea will now play each other for the 3rd time, with Japan blowing out Korea in game 1, and Korea squeaking by Japan in the letter pool championship game. Hopefully, this relatively meaningless iteration will also result in an boring, error-ridden, extra-innings affair too.

If the USA loses in the WBC and no one is around to watch, does it still count as a loss?

2009-03-14T22:56:00.004-04:00

USA lost in a terrible way (10 run mercy rule after 7 innings) to Puerto Rico. Venezeula beat the Netherlands in the other pool 2 (we've switched to numbers now) game.

What this means is that in order to advance, USA must beat the Netherlands on Sunday night, then beat the loser of the pool 2 winners game (PR vs Venezuela). This is a little odd, because if the US wins, they will go on to try to knock off either of the two teams they have already played. The could play Venezuela, who they beat once in their first round pool, then lost to in the pool champion game, or the could play Puerto Rico, who they just lost to in a game ended on the mercy rule.

As much as I want to like this event, I hope it goes away for four years and comes back something more like a tournament and less like a drunk guys dance card.

Here's what the first two rounds could/should be:

Round 1: 4 team pools. Every team plays the other 4 in the pool. The two teams with the most wins advance. Ties are decided by head-to-head record and then by run differential. There is no mercy rule, nor should there be, so teams have full games to rack up runs.

Round 2-3: Teams are reseeded based on number of wins and number of runs scored (or runs allowed, whichever). Teams should not be likely to replay teams they already played in the first round unless their performance dictates that it happens. This round, and the next, will not be round robin, but instead be a best of 3 series between two teams. Double header on day 1, single game the following day if necessary. Round 3 (quarterfinals) starts using the round two seedings and winners.

Semis and Finals are also both best of 3 series, instead of fluky best of 5-9 innings.

Bud, how hard would this be to pull of? The joy here would be actually piting teams against each other and using strategy to get by. Currently, the system seems to (here's the numbered list of the post): 1) focus on the novelty of seeing teams play a bunch of other teams, 2) Give losing teams the chance to play and beat the team they already lost to with much higher stakes, and 3) suck.

WBC Updates

2009-03-12T23:43:00.003-04:00

Cuba is beating Mexico in the 6th inning.

Also, the WBC is still worthless up to this point. Here's hoping for a decent 2nd round.

UPDATE: Several seconds later, Cuba is still beating Mexico. More importantly, my trade immediately following the beer based league draft was accepted (getting Bonds, giving Mesa).

UPDATED UPDATE: Cuba scored a bunch in the bottom of the 7th to seal the win and made a meaningless game finish a couple of innings early. This was unlike the UConn-Syracuse Big East Tournament game that I caught the end of, and all 6 over times.

World Baseball Flacid

2009-03-11T22:17:00.004-04:00

Everyone loves naughty sounding titles.

Here's all the WBC news you don't care that much about:

Dominican Republic was beaten twice by the Netherlands and eliminated. One can only assume that this is A-Rod's fault.

There's a bigger beef with the classic set-up, namely that DR had a chance to eliminate Netherlands even though they already played them. It's fortunate that the Netherlands won and made this point somewhat moot, but how stupid is it that you can beat a team once and still be ousted by them in the first round.

Same can be said for the determination of the first round "pool winner." In pool C, USA beat Venezuela 15-6 in the first meeting, but lost to them 5-3 in the pool deciding game and so come in as the 2nd seed from the pool. Let's think about this... or not, let's think less about this and just look at the obvious problems. I like numbered lists, so here's the list with numbers:

1) USA won its first two games and thus earned a game off. Who needs a game off after two games? Besides, there are all kinds of stipulations from the MLB clubs that a player has to rest for one game. If you make them play a third game, the MLB players could rest and get that out of the way there, if you don't play the third game, they have to rest in pool winner game. Stupid.

2) USA played Venezuela twice with an aggregate score of 20-9. Yet somehow Venezuela won the pool.

3) USA didn't even play Italy.

It's not just a USA bias, Japan got hosed worse than USA. Here's the list of hosing:

1) Japan also won its first two games and earned a day off.

2) Japan played Korea twice with an aggregate score of 14-3. Yet somehow Korea won the pool.

3) Japan didn't even play Taipei.

4) This is basically back to number 2 but I was digging the symmetry. So, Japan won its first game against Korea 14-2. That's bad. What's worse is that it was called on the mercy rule in the 7th inning. So the game where Japan was having its way with Korea got called early. This means that Japan lost the chance to knock around more Korean pitchers that would have possibly then been unavailable for the second meeting. At least the Japanese players would have gotten the chance to see more Korean pitchers and have a better chance against them. It is not like the Korean win was impressive, it was a 1-0 error fest (baserunning faux-pas mostly).

Back to the DR vs Hothlanders oddities. One good thing out of pool D is that Puerto Rico beat Holland twice to win the pool (8-1 aggregate). The bad is what could have happened.

Holland played 4 games in a pool with 3 other pool members, but somehow played DR twice and PR twice and never played Panama. That's stupid on its own. Worse though is that the Netherlands beat DR in their first meeting (3-2), but then had to play another 10 inning game before either team scored again.

In fact, if you combine the two games between DR and Holland, you would see a 20 inning stink-fest. Holland scored 3 runs in the first inning, then didn't score again until the bottom of the 20th inning and somehow won two games. DR scored in the 4th, 5th, and 20th innings, but only scored one run in each of those (1 run on a solo home run by Miguel Tejhghda). This is not good or entertaining baseball.

Maybe I'm a soccer freak, but why is there not an easier way to play this tournament? Why not have all 4 teams in a pool play each other? Why do some teams play 3 games and some play 4? Why is the advantage of locking up a spot in the second round taking a game completely off instead of getting the top seed in the pool?

At least the seeding is so bad that it might not affect anything.

Predictions (part 1 - AL Central,)

2009-03-10T22:01:00.005-04:00

Over the course of spring training, I will attempt to predict the final standings in each division around the bigs. I may or may not throw in some individual award winners along with playoff scenarios, we'll see. I'll start with what I know best, the AL central. This means, of course, that I will probably completely miss on these predictions.

White Sox (5th): The current depth chart is a collection of the very old, the very young, and a big closer. Even if the Cuban Missile (Ramirez) and Quentin both improve on their impressive last season, the rest of the team has gotten older and more achy. Buehrle somehow runs under the radar as a high-level starter, but after that its a bunch of guys fighting for the 3-4 spots in a good rotation. My guess is they sucumb to the same cycle as the Indians and Tigers 2007 (good) then 2008 (bad) and finish in last place in the central.

Royals (4th): All of their prospects have career years. Unfortunately, all of their prospects lost prospect status at least 3 years ago and their career years are the definition of major league ordinary. Luckily their banner year puts them at not-last in the division two years running.

Tigers (3rd): They should have solid line-up, but the same was said last year. I expect that Verlander will bounce back a bit this year and settle in as a 12-15 win pitcher. The kitties need Bonderman to get past the non-baseball injuries enough to eat some innings. Galarraga can go one of two ways, that being good or bad (amazing analysis there). In the second half last year his ERA was a run higher than the first half. One of two things happened: 1) He tired out at the end of his rookie season, partly because he was hurling for a team in last place, or 2) He was deceptive before people faced him and was hittable afterwards. I'm betting on the second and I think the injury bug hits the rest of the team just enough to keep them from challenging for the division title.

Twins (2nd): The Twins are typically the poster-boy for mid- or small-market teams. Over the last 6 seasons, they've won between 79 and 96 wins with only one losing season (2007). I have no idea how they won the games they did with the pitchers they had (other than Joe Nathan who is amazing). Somehow, though, they will win their 86-89 games. They are as stable as any team in the bigs, but that puts them in the low-risk, low-reward territory. Their lineup should improve if healthy, but their pitching has to take a small step back leading to a second year of just falling short of the playoffs.

Indians (1st): This is first and foremost a complete homer call, lest there be some ambiguity. But here are the reasons that the Indians can and should win the division:
1) The starting pitching is just above mediocre, but in the AL Central, that's good enough. It helps that the Indians have the pitching depth to plan on Pavano being hurt and taking what they can get from Anthony Reyes. Cliff Lee will certainly step back from his first half last year, but his splits showed that he actually faired better against teams he faced multiple times last year (except the Tigers). No reason to think he goes away completely and likewise, Carmona has to bounce back from a disappointing 2008.
2) Besides Lee last year, the pitching was only okay after Sabathia was traded but somehow the club roared back to finish the season at .500. If the team can finish .500 after trading an ace and getting no production from its 3-hitter (Hafner) and very little from its 4 hitter (VICTOR), then they should be the class of the division if they get anything from those two men.
3) Go Tribe!
4) As far as I can tell, all of their players this year play at least 13 positions on the field. Not only that, but their utility players this year should be picked based on ability to play the game instead of trying to save face on a "can't miss" prospect. Mix the two and you have a good chance of staying healthy and productive.
5) No one cares about David Delucci. He played a lot early last year in the hopes that he would be good enough to dump on someone else in a trade. This year, I expect him to fair decently as a situational hitter or be unceremoniusly given the boot by the end of May.
6) Go Tribe!

WBC

2009-03-08T16:51:00.003-04:00

Alright, still nothing in depth here, but I have caught parts of several games now.

For now, the US is 1-0 and playing a second game to make it to the next round tonight (Sunday) at 8pm. Game will be shown on ESPN.

The other major news is that Dominican Republic, a team very similar the US team, lost to someone (who cares who, really?). Since the first round is double elimination, they have to win two more games to move on.

Japan is playing Korea again Monday night, which is strange since Japan is already through by virtue of beating Korea 14-2 on Saturday. I guess the two teams that have 2 wins then have a play off to determine the pool winner for the seeding in the next round.

Contrary to my rant before, apparently someone is interneting video from all the games live. Oddly enough the site running this service is worldbaseballclassic.com so go and enjoy, or at least go and be amazed.

Math and Baseball

2009-03-07T00:01:00.002-05:00

In 2007, when the Indians beat the Yankees and lost in game seven to the Red Sox (I think I might still owe my brother some northeast beer from that series), I remember thinking how much higher both of those teams payrolls were than the Indians. While the Yanks ($195M+) were outspending the universe, the Red Sox ($144M) weren't far behind, and the Indians ($62M) were lower than middle of the pack. When it came down to it, the Sox won 1 more game than the Indians through the ALCS. That means that extra win in game 7 of the ALCS needed to be worth at least $82M for Boston, the organization, to feel satisfied. Now, perhaps the Sox made their money back since they then went out to sweep the Rockies ($54M+) and win the World Series. However, the question remains how much is a win worth and how much does it cost to get a win?

Well, there's an interesting article on The Baseball Analysts about that very topic. The article asks first whether all wins cost the same, but I don't think so and neither does the article. A team of people making just the major league minimum starts of at a salary of $10M (25 men times the 2009 league minimum of $400,000). Even a team of all rookies making minimum will win some games, as the worst teams in the history of the 162 game schedule win at least 50 some games with most teams winning no less than 62, as a 100 loss season is somewhat rare. This means to me that the first 60-some wins and $10 mill of payroll are givens and shouldn't be included in the calculation.

The article goes on to fit a polynomial curve to their information and gets slightly better results in explaining wins (now close to 50% instead of 40% of a win is explained by payroll). I would guess that the results would get better if they started at the base levels suggested above (maybe I'll even calculate this when I'm feeling very bored).

Beyond my concerns in starting point, the numbers tell us something that is relatively well known: money doesn't necessarily buy championships. However, the article doesn't look at several important aspects including:

1) Does money buy playoff appearances?

I'm not sure of the answer of this one, but I'll look it up in the next few days and see what I can find out. My gut feeling is that teams with above average payrolls have a better chance of making the playoffs, but there may or may not be long term trends that prove my gut.

If money buys playoff appearances, then the money is better spent than it might first appear as playoffs mean more games, which means more gate. Not to mention making the playoffs means more excitement about late season games which should lead to yet more revenue.

2) Because of the unbalanced schedule, the money per win is highly affected by the behavior of other teams in your division, league, and, to some extend, immediate geographical location.

I'll answer this if I ever put facts and effort in.

3) Are the teams worried about something else besides winning?

Money, money, money. In the NBA, the Clippers are rather notorius for being more interested in profits than competitiveness. It might not work everywhere, but I am sure there are similar MLB teams.

4) Is there a viscous cycle in spending?

Let's assume that the biggest bump in money comes from making the playoffs and not winning the WS (a big assumption, but I can't imagine the team that wins the WS makes that much more than the team that loses in the same series). So, making the playoffs one year brings in extra revenue. Despite the fact that only one team can win every year, the teams that came close but didn't win it all are more motivated to spend to get over the hump the following year. Those teams' GM's say "hey, look at all this money we could have spent to win" and go out looking to spend money so they can win and make more money. Same thing could happen with teams that almost make the playoffs, since their revenues raise in the playoff race. Teams that win spend more, and need to spend more than the more they already spent to get more competitive.

Of course, the bottom feeders are in the opposite position where they don't make much money because they don't do all that well. The next year, they try to cut their losses on expensive players and, at best, go into rebuilding mode where they rely on inexpensive young players. In most cases, they hit some payroll floor where they can't spend any less and still fill a 25 man roster.

So the trick is how to break the cycle if it does indeed exist. The breaks come in a few ways, such as many players having career/breakout years (2008 Rays) or new management, or a new stadium that shoves new money into the system that needs to be spent.

Wonder what this means for 2009... I'll follow up with at least two of the following: 1) the Yankees still kill competitive balance regardless of luxury tax and revenue sharing, 2) actual facts and figures to back up my thoughts here, 3) predictions for the 2009 season.

World Baseball Classic

2009-03-06T18:30:00.002-05:00

So I'll admit I haven't seen much of the WBC just yet, but I plan on watching as it moves along. To this point, I've seen the last few innings of a couple of games that were airing over Mike & Mike on ESPN2 and both of those games were long-odds shutouts.

Here is a good impassioned article by Jayson Stark on ESPN about how this needs to mean more to USA players and fans alike.

The points I want to make as it gets started:
1) How do you name something a "classic"? Maybe I'm missing something, but there's no nostalgia involved here so it seems forced. Why not tournament or cup or trophy?

2) I can completely understand by US players are underwhelmed at the prospect of playing more games with and against many of the same people they already play against for an extra month.

3) If you're trying to get American viewers, how about not having the initial few games at ungodly early hours? Like I said earlier, I stumbled on a couple of games in the morning, but couldn't bring myself to wake up at 4:30am to catch the game.

4) Why not find a good way to show the games via the internet? I had mixed results watching NCAA men's basketball online last year, but the point is that it was available if I wanted it, even if I wanted to watch during work.

As I'm about to leave, I'll finish here. I hope to have more WBC content up tomorrow.

1 Draft Down

2009-03-05T22:31:00.002-05:00

So I made it through one draft. Basically, I tend to go with drafts and see what happens, despite a lot of preparation. In this case, I ended up getting a lot of scarce, top tier or just below position players, then a bunch of mediocre starting pitchers. Don't know what it means just yet, but I like my chances to win at least half my matchups.

actual baseball content

2009-03-05T19:58:00.002-05:00

What is a month worth?

This comes up because of the A-Rod injury/injury scare. Instead of being an arguable 1-3 fantasy pick, he's been dropped by ESPN below a 30th pick (that's round 4! in some leagues).

The baseball season is 6 months long, plus another year or two of post season (though baseball fits in lots of games over a few weeks whereas basketball fits in a few games over a few months of post season). In any case, for fantasy baseball, all you care about is the regular season, so a month is worth 1/6th a season. So is it worth taking a player you know will miss the first month?

First, the player has to be exceptional. If you take the players normal stats and look at 5/6 of them, most first rounders will continue to be worth that elite tag. Maybe not first rounders anymore, but certainly 2nd, or 3rd.

Second, just because he's hurt now doesn't excuse him from future injury. If anything, being hurt now seems to set a bad precedent that the player may re-aggravate (I'll look around and see if I can't find some evidence to this point).

Third, I'm trying to work out whether taking a player that starts out on the DL is better for head to head or rotisserie leagues. Losing a early rounder (especially 1-2) has a potential to sink a season in head to head leagues. If you lose your first several matchups, you could be so far behind that the player's comeback is inconsequential. Although, if you're able to tread water for those first 4-5 matchups, the elite player you get back can be a terrific boost. On the other hand, in a rotisserie league, you can't catch back up for lost production. So the big question is, can you find some slug on the waiver wire that can give you about average production for the time your elite is gone.

I imagine you should be able to find a decent replacement, so drafting a player you know is coming back may well be worth it.

This is more important when you think of all the injured or otherwise delayed players that get passed over (Pujols, Longoria last year, Chase Utley this year?).

I suppose if I had drafted 3 days ago and ended up with A-Rod, I would wince immediately when I heard the news, but other than that I think having the excuse to have already taken a huge producing 3B would be fine. As long as he comes back...

And the baseball reformatting begins

2009-03-05T19:53:00.003-05:00

So, at this point in my life, I am actively participating in 3 fantasy baseball leagues of varying types (league managing two of them). Also, though I'm a native Ohioan, I'm living on the east coast so I have to really work to get my Indians and Reds content. In doing so I tend to pick up a bunch of interesting information about baseball in general and plan on sharing the stuff I actually like here. I'm also hoping that this might serve as a sounding board for others random thoughts on baseball.

Thrown in there will be musings on other things I enjoy, such as beer, biking, and other b words.