A fan of the Yankees, Red Sox, and large sample sizes.

 
Barry Bonds for Dummies

Ok, I'm starting to come to grips with the fact that there are tons of people out there who just don't get the value of a walk. You want RBIs. And Runs. And HRs. How pushy. Let's do something just for the fun of it. It's not really a solid analysis, but maybe those folks who don't pay attention to solid analysis will take something away from this.

Let's remove walks from the Barry-Pujols debate. For every walk, we'll let each of them have another at-bat.

Barry: 364 AB + 143 BB + 9 HBP = 516 PAs
Pujols: 551 AB + 70 BB + 10 HBP = 631 PAs

So let's give Barry 516 ABs and Pujols 631 ABs and pro-rate the rest of their stats:

Barry: .118 HR/AB * 516 ABs = 61 HRs
Pujols: .076 HR/AB * 631 ABs = 48 HRs

(For every 2 homeruns Pujols hits, Barry hits 3. Wow.)

Barry: .288 R/AB * 516 ABs = 149 Runs
Pujols: .234 R/AB * 631 ABs = 148 Runs

Barry: .236 RBI/AB * 516 ABs = 121 RBIs
Pujols: .223 RBI/AB * 631 ABs = 141 RBIs

Ok, so Barry has 13 more HRs than Pujols, the same number of Runs, and 20 less RBIs... in 115 less at-bats!!! Yes, that's a point in Barry's FAVOR in this discussion. Because even if you let a scrub take those 115 at-bats, he'll still create some runs for your team.

Posted by Sky at 6:32 PM | 0 comments

 
My Peoria League Strat Team

So far I've resisted writing much about my Strat-o-Matic baseball teams. I'm not resisting any more.

Through 74 games, the Schuykill Kings in the 12 team Peoria SOM League are currently sitting in second place in their division, 2 games behind first place. The good news is that the Kings also have the second best record in the entire league, so if winning the division doesn't quite work out, I should have a good shot at the Wild Card.

Since the 2003 MLB season is starting to wind down, I've started to think about my keeper list for next year. We all get to keep 16 players, more if we want to sacrifice draft picks - which generally isn't worth it. Here are the definite keepers:

Brian Giles
Vlad Guerrero
Hank Blalock
Mike Lowell
Edgar Martinez
David Ortiz

Kevin Millwood
Josh Beckett
Guillermo Mota

Other options to round out the 16 include:
Erubiel Durazo
Derrek Lee
Richard Hidalgo
Austin Kearns
Junior Spivey
Jason Larue

Eddie Guardado
Joe Borowski

Borowski and Guardado are great, but closers with 65 IP are overrated in my opinion. Ideally, I'd like to trade one or both for a starting pitcher of draft pick. Stud hitters are way more consistent than stud pitchers, which is why my strategy is to stock up on stud hitters, keep them year to year, and scramble for pitching in the draft - both studs in the early rounds, and load up on sleepers for the following year in the later rounds.

Last year, my pitching prospects included a bunch of scrubs that didn't pan out, except for Beckett, and I guess Suppan until he crashed. I just missed out on Kevin Brown, though.

Going into next year, I'll have my outfield set with Giles, Vlad, and a Kearns/Hidalgo combo in center. 3B will be absolutely stocked with Lowell and Blalock - I may try to move Lowell, however. I'd only play him against lefties since I have Blalock, and I'd much rather have a stud starter than 150 PAs from Lowell. I'd have nothing in the middle infield except Spivey to play second against lefties. 1B would be a platoon of Derrek Lee and David Ortiz. Edgar Martinez would play all games except when normal righties were on the mound - hopefully I can draft another all-hit, no-field type. Catcher's wide open - maybe Larue against righties, but that's a really weak keeper.

Pitching-wise, I'll have 200 IP from Millwood, but he's having an off year. He's probably even below average in an all-star Strat league. 125 IP from Beckett's nice, but that leaves me needing another 675 IP - 3.5 starters minimum. Mota and his 100+ IP at a 1.75 ERA is awesome. The key to relief pitching is finding the guys with quality and quantity so you don't have to use up tons of roster spots for relief pitchers with 50 IP. I like to keep those spots for prospects. Borowski and Guardado are nice, but again, hopefully I'll find someone else who values them more than me. If I can get a 200 IP, 3.00 ERA starter for both of them, I'd jump at it. Assuming I can get that, here's what I'll be lacking going into the draft:

- a SS platoon
- a 2B against righties
- a lefty DH/1B that kill righties
- a catcher platoon
- 2.5 starters
- 400 relief IP, with one guy that has a 3 or 4 closer rating. this should be about 5-6 guys.

Out of 9 offensive positions, I have two positions without platoons - LF and RF. That leaves 9 pitching spots on the 25 man roster. 5 for starters and 4 for relievers. That's plenty. I just have to make sure I rotate my 6/7 relievers each month so they all get used up. A coupld months I'll have to send down Vlad or Giles since they won't have enough PAs to play the whole season, and that'll leave me with another platoon in LF or RF, most likely cutting my starters down to 4 or my relievers down to 3. If I can fill SS, 2B, CF, or C with a full-timer, that'd be wonderful.

I'll keep you posted on how things go this year, and I'm happy knowing I'll be in the running again next year.

Posted by Sky at 3:20 PM | 0 comments

 
Fantasy Football Strategy

I'm not a big fantasy football fan, for a number of reasons. Football just doesn't quite do it for me like baseball does, number one. But more than that, the fantasy football format is a little weak. Head to head total points makes the game take a huge amount of luck, and the skill part doesn't involve much game theory or math (which I think some people like, but not me).

I have found one application of math, though. And much of the credit should go to Bob Lung over at RotoJunkie who came up with the idea. I just came up with the proof.

His theory is basically this: if you're going to win a head to head, 16 game schedule, you need to score an above average number of points for the whole year. Given that fact, you're better off with a consistent-scoring team, than a team that scores a wildly fluctuating number of points. Bob calls it his "Consisten Games Theory." Go read his articles if you want applications of it. Or read on, if you want the proof...

Take two teams, A and B. A's weekly average is Ma points and B's is Mb. A's standard deviation is Sa, while B's is Sb. We need to find the probability that a random point from distribution A is greater than a point in distribution B. One "easy" way to do this is to create a new distribution, A-B.

Mean of A-B is the difference of the means = Ma-Mb
SD of A-B is the square root of the sum of the variances = sqrt((Sa)^2+(Sb)^2)

So, in the new distribution, A beats B if A-B is greater than zero. We need to find the z-score for a random point in A-B. The z-score is:

(Ma-Mb)/sqrt((Sa)^2+(Sb)^2)

What does this mean? Well, assuming team A averages more points than team B, the z-score will be positive, yielding a win probability greater than .500. The greater the differences, the greater the z-score, which makes sense. But also notice that as Sa decrease, the denominator decreases, making the z-score larger. Thus, a lower standard deviation for team A (a team that we're assuming will already be over .500) will raise its expected winning percentage. High scoring teams are good. Consistently high scoring teams are better.

How much better? I've done some preliminary research, and so far the results aren't very significant. So, for now, don't worry about it. But, Bob, your theory is sound.

Posted by Sky at 11:43 AM | 0 comments