Rox Talk - Week 24

The Week That Was

A 3-3 week against the Padres and Dodgers. The Rox currently stand at 82-67. One and half games back from division leading San Francisco in third place and three and half games behind in the Wild Card chase. Currently 51-24 at home and 31-43 on the road, the Rox have outscored its opponents 727-646 (expected wins is 83 versus historical wins at 71). On pace for 89 wins with 790 runs scored and 702 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.13 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

Would have been nice to win one more against the Padres especially at home. This is the second time this year the Rox could have moved ahead or tied with them in the standings but failed to do so (last game before the All Star break). After another week of battling, the Rox still find themselves in third place. Guess the positive in all this is that teams aren't gunning for us but the negative is that at this time we still need to leapfrog two teams to win the division and two teams for the Wild Card. In the Wild Card, the Phillies and Braves are battling each other this week so it would help us if the Phillies just sweep the Braves and allow the Wild Card to come out of the NL West. Padres still seem to be struggling while the Giants continue with dominant pitching and some suspect hitting. Of course the Rox hitting is keeping the team afloat while our pitching is struggling.

Two weeks ago it was CarGo, this past week was Tulo, when might a pitcher step up and stake a claim that we deserve a playoff berth? Hard to describe what Tulo has been doing in the past 15 games. He hit 14 homers putting him in the same sentence has Bonds and Belle. His September barrage, if it holds up and the Rox sneak into the playoffs could annoit Tulo MVP of the League. I'd imagine though, because of this team's makeup, both Tulo and even Ubaldo would much rather be in the playoffs then gain any individual superlatives (although Tulo would prefer a Gold Glove award).

So two weeks to go, 13 games in all, with this weekend probably determining the eventual winner. Let's assume Rox take care of business in Arizona (Tues-Thurs) and maybe hoping the Dodgers help us out with the Padres and the Cubs taking a couple against the Giants. That makes the Giants/Rox series this weekend potentially huge! Earlier today on the Dan Patrick show he commented on the convoluted playoff scenarios if the division ends in a three way tie. Because the Rox have won the season series against the Padres and currently own the series against the Giants, the Rox would have first choice of what to do. They could either elect to have two home play in games or choose to travel to winner of the first play in game winner! How crazy would that be!

Attendance Win Games?
In a related article to my thesis of why I am a terrible fan it would suggest that perhaps my attendance, even though I can't stand it, does relate to my team victories! In an academic paper the author suggests that a one standard deviation increase in attendance results in a 4% increase in the likelihood of a home team win and that increasing attendance by 48% a home team's run differential would increase by one run (data collected from 1996 - 2005).

I did my own analysis from 2006 - 2010. Spreadsheet below shows the hard data. Graph follows. The graph shows the winning percentage difference.

The grey bars is Rox away winning percentage. Rox tend to win more on the road when the crowd is less than 35,000 people. While at home (purple bars), Rox tend to win more when the crowd is above 25,000 although for some reason it becomes nullified when the crowd hits 30,000 - 45,000. Amazing to see how poorly Rox play at home when the crowd is less than 20.000. Moral of the story is go to the game (even if your like me and feel you are the curse!)