Roy Halladay's Perfect Game May 30, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: baseball-reference.com, Braden's perfect game, Dallas Braden, Halladay's perfect game, Perfect Games, Roy Halladay
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Just what the Doctor ordered.
Andy at Baseball-Reference.com has an interesting blog entry about Doc’s perfect game. Roy Halladay was 0-3 in the game with two strikeouts, threw 115 pitches to 27 batters, and had a 98 Game Score.
Compared to Dallas Braden, Doc was much, much more likely to achieve this. Halladay’s opposing OBP is a miniscule 
Interestingly, the last 3 perfect games have all had Florida teams as the victim.
How Useful is the Pythagorean Expectation? May 18, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: baseball-reference.com, one-game playoffs, Pythagorean expectation, wins above expectation
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The Pythagorean expectation is a method used to approximate how many wins a baseball team “should” have based on its offense (runs scored) and its defense (runs allowed). As the linked article points out, there are some problems with the formula. As far as I’m concerned, the most useful application of an expected win percentage is to compare teams that are otherwise similar. Let’s say, for example, that I have two teams that have identical records and I want to predict which team will win an upcoming series. In that case, an expected win percentage would be useful to indicate which team has more firepower over time.
What’s the perfect way to test this? One-game playoffs. Behind the cut, I have the results of some number-crunching I did to test whether the Pythagorean expectation generates useful results.
Cy Young gives me a headache. January 15, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Baseball, baseball-reference.com, Bill James, Cy Young predictor, economics, Eric Gagne, linear regression, R, Rob Neyer, sabermetrics, Tim Lincecum, Weighted saves, Weighted shutouts
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As usual, I’ve started my yearly struggle against a Cy Young predictor. Bill James and Rob Neyer’s predictor (which I’ve preserved for posterity here) did a pretty poor job this year, having predicted the wrong winner in both leagues and even getting the order very wrong compared to the actual results. Inside, I’d like to share some of my pain, since I can’t seem to do much better.
K-Rod, Castillo, and Externalities June 17, 2009
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: baseball-reference.com, Economics haiku, errors, externalities, K-Rod, Luis Castillo, Mets
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On Friday, Luis Castillo committed an error in the bottom of the 9th inning with a one-run lead, two men on base, and two men out. The error was such that had Castillo made the play cleanly, the game would have ended with Francisco Rodriguez notching a save; however, Castillo’s error was directly responsible for two unearned runs scoring, giving Frankie a loss instead of a save.
The question: How much money does Castillo owe Rodriguez? I have a pretty good estimate.
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