Monday, March 31, 2008
Opening Day
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
MLB Opening Day
AL Playoff Teams
Red Sox, Yankees, Tigers, and Angels
NL Playoff Teams
Dodgers, Roxs, Brewers, and Mets
World Series
Soxs and Roxs Part II!
Baseball quote
"A baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day"
Monday, March 24, 2008
Rox Talk - Weather?
Games | HR | Rate | Temp | Wind Speed | |
April | 13 | 18 | 1.38 | 62 | 10 |
May 70td> | 14 | 26 | 1.86 | 70 | 8 |
June | 12 | 31 | 2.58 | 79 | 8 |
July | 12 | 32 | 2.67 | 87 | 7 |
August | 14 | 38 | 2.71 | 82 | 6 |
September | 17 | 39 | 2.29 | 75 | 7 |
And finally wind direction?
Interesting it seems low wind speed good and wind out of right field.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Roxs Lineups
My projected 2008 Lineup:
Taveras
Tulo
Helton
Holliday
Atkins
Hawpe
Nix
Torrealba
Pitcher (OBP last year was .199 and SLG of .166)
Using 2008 ZiPS the above lineup scores 4.929 runs per game (or 798 runs) while an optimized lineup would score 5.029 runs per game (or 815 runs). The optimized lineup would be:
Helton
Hawpe
Tulo
Holliday
Atkins
Nix
Torrealba
Pitcher
Taveras
Using 2008 PECOTA's the original lineup gives you 5.164 runs per game (or 837 runs) while an optimized lineup would give 5.259 runs per game (or 852 runs). The optimized line up would be:
Helton
Holliday
Tulo
Hawpe
Atkins
Torrealba
Taveras
Nix
Pitcher
Using 2008 Bill James' projections the original lineup gives 5.167 runs per game (or 837 runs) and an optimized lineup would give 5.273 runs per game (or 854 runs).
Using 2008 Chone's projections the original lineup gives 5.138 runs per game (or 832 runs) and an optimized lineup would give 5.228 runs per game (or 847 runs).
So there you have it. In my earlier projections based on runs scored, I found a spread of 823 - 829 runs so these numbers were a bit higher; 826 for established lineup versus 843 for an optimized lineup. It will be interesting to see how things shape up this year. Finally wouldn't it be great to see Helton batting first and Hurdle bust tradition? Maybe in Bizarro world!
Monday, March 10, 2008
Runners on Base?
AVERAGE | G | PA | AB | R | H+BB | HBP+RE | LOB |
April | 26 | 40 | 34 | 4 | 13 | 1 | 8 |
May | 28 | 38 | 34 | 4 | 12 | 1 | 7 |
June | 27 | 40 | 36 | 6 | 14 | 1 | 8 |
July | 24 | 39 | 34 | 6 | 13 | 1 | 7 |
August | 29 | 41 | 36 | 6 | 14 | 1 | 8 |
Sept | 29 | 41 | 36 | 6 | 14 | 1 | 8 |
I then plotted the running percentage of a few of these factors versus projected wins just to see which number means most to a teams wins. Again the number that wowed me was that Left on Base per Plate Appearance (blue line above) which indicates that on average the Roxs pretty much consistently left 8 runners on throughout the season. Almost no change.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Season Prediction
"...based on this little exercise it looks like LA has the early club house lead. They had a bunch of good acquisitions in Andrew Jones and possibly a full season of Schmidt. The unknown factor is the Japanese pitcher Kuroda. San Diego has a lot of offensive holes to fill with losing Cameron, Giles, and Bradley and trying to make this up with Iguchi, Hairston, and Edmonds (who is old!). Haren doesn't solve Arizona's offensive woes (although their young players should start to hit being a year older). What about our Roxs? Well with full seasons from Jimenez and possibly Morales along with a year older Hirsh the pitching should stay fine. The only real hole is 2B. Can Nix get 8 - 12 Win Shares this year (to make up for Matsui's 14)? I think the Roxs will be fine even with the rivals additions."
So what does all this mean? Well a pretty good spread of wins from a low of 77 to high of 93. The average was 84 wins and doing a 95% confidence on the data (take this with a grain of salt since we only have 3 - 5 data points) and based on the projection data the Roxs have a 95% of winning between 82 and 87 games!
Obviously a lot of assumptions are in this calculation. In 2007 the Roxs scored 860 runs and yet none of the normalized projections reach this level for 2008. The big reason for this is the unknown 2B factor. Matsui scored 84 runs last year and Nix is only projected to be in the 50s. In addition with a stabilized line-up with Tulo's pop for an entire season, my hope is the Roxs can score more than 860 runs (the highest total ever is 2000 when the Roxs scored 968 runs!). Unfortunately if the offensive is a bit conservative then the pitching assumptions are probably a bit aggressive. Last year was the best pitching year in franchise history with only 758 runs given up. This was a testament to a good bullpen especially with losing 3/5ths of the pitching staff. If the pitchers can stay healthy then the skies the limit but can we really have as great of a bullpen this year?
So I predict an 85 win season with the Roxs finishing in second to the Dodgers. The D-backs will be neck and neck with the Roxs all year and will finish third with Padres and Giants finishing 4th and 5th in the division.