Pitchers with 4+ RBIs (Sorry, Mets fans) September 23, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Academia, Baseball.Tags: Baseball, Cubs, Diamondbacks, economics, Felix Hernandez, Jason Marquis, Larry Christenson, Mets, Micah Owings, Pitchers batting, Research
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Last night, the Cubs’ Jason Marquis hit a rare grand slam. Even rarer is that Marquis was the starting pitcher and got the win. Still rarer: Marquis had one hit and 5 RBIs.
That raises the question: just how common an event is Jason’s productivity?
Silly bean counters September 7, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Baseball, economics, Research, sabermetrics
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I came across the Beane Count, invented by ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer, by accident. My first thought: “That’s crap. Just summing ranks doesn’t accomplish anything.” My second thought: “How can I prove this?”
My third through nth thoughts involved my standard method of creating a needlessly complex spreadsheet using data culled from ESPN.com. The results were quite surprising.
Wins Above Expectation (with a side of run differential) September 1, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Angels, Baseball, Blue Jays, Rays, Research, sabermetrics
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In continuing my thoughts about the Pythagorean Expectation from about a week ago, I took a look at the MLB standings for the period ending August 31, 2008. I played with the stats a little bit, since I haven’t really thought through the basis for most of them.
Today’s project: find Pythagorean expectations for each team, then find the difference between the actual and expected win percentages (“pythagorean difference”). Apply the pythagorean difference to the total number of games played to determine a team’s Wins Above Expectation by multiplying the total number of games by the pythagorean difference.
Practical application: none.
Discussion and numbers behind the cut.
Blue Jays hate Pythagoras. August 23, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Baseball, Blue Jays, economics
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The Toronto Blue Jays won another big one today, 11-0 over the visiting Boston Red Sox. It seemed to me that between that, the 14-3 destruction of the Yankees on Thursday, and last Sunday’s 15-4 route of Boston (again), the 11-run games might have been messing with the team’s statistical expectations. Sure enough, the big run totals are increasing the Blue Jays’ pythagorean expectation, with the difference between expected win percentage and actual win percentage being higher after the all-star break than before.
Numbers are behind the cut.
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