Monday, July 5, 2010

Rox Talk - Week 13

The Week That Was
A 5-2 week against the Padres and Giants. The Rox currently stand at 44-38. Five games back from division leading San Diego in third place. Currently 26-15 at home and 18-23 on the road, the Rox have outscored its opponents 385-348 (expected wins is 45 versus historical wins at 38). On pace for 87 wins with 761 runs scored and 688 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.11 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

At the half way point, the Rox sat at 43 - 38. Not a bad place to be but sitting in third place makes it a long road to climb. Thing you have to love about baseball is the unpredictably. I mean I will be honest I didn't even bother thinking about the Padres during the preseason. No one gave them any love and yet here they sit, sixteen games above .500. An amazing first half but can it continue? I am going to say yes because you don't play that kind of ball and just disappear. Will 86 wins make it?

Half Way Point
Back in March I provided an overview of 2010 projections comparing Bill James, Marcels, and CHONE. I added ZiPS later. Each of these projections provided at bats, plate appearances, run scored and wOBA for each hitter and innings pitched, runs allowed, and FIP for each pitcher. Taking each of these data points and averaging them I put together a projection for a Rox projected lineup. Since we passed the halfway game mark, we are approximately halfway through the season so how do the projections stack up to the real data (i.e. CarGo has scored 49 runs this year so far so he is projected to score 98).

The solid bar represents the average of the four projections and the red line is the 1st quarter pace while the blue line is the halfway pace. So above represents that CarGo is on pace for about 30 more runs then what the average projection had him before the start of the season. Obviously Hawpe's injury limited his time so his numbers are low and with Ianetta stuck in AAA he isn't scoring a lot of runs in the big leagues. Interesting to see Tulo still above his projection even though he is injured and all the Barmes haters can shut up and take notice that he has been offensively playing a lot better. The projections don't do the bench players much justice because they assume they will get a lot more starts and thus more runs. Based on this analysis the team is on pace to score 791 runs.
In addition to the hitters the above graph shows the runs allowed for the pitchers. With the pitching flux this year it is hard to get a real feel for what this staff is capable of. U-Ball continues to be amazing albeit more earth like. Hammel is doing well but Francis seems to be hitting a wall after a year off from pitching. Relief pitching seems to be settling in especially with Street back. Team is on pace to only allow 658 runs which would be a new team record. We shall see...

Based on projections the team is headed for about 94 wins but with other stats (WAR and wOBA/FIP) it would seem the Rox are only headed for about 83 wins. Little low to ensure a Wild Card or Division Title but still in the hunt!

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