Tangotiger Blog

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Simple HOF prediction system

?1. Start with Ryan Thibs data.

2. Figure out the gap between non-public and public votes in 2015 and apply to 2016.  For new guys, make a reasonable estimate.  I set Junior at -4%, and the others at 0%.

3. Apply that gap to 2016 data of public ballots.

4. Figure the weighted average.

Here are the results.  You can of course spend more time trying to refine this, look at past history on these players, and on historical data.  The below is your starting point, the Marcel-version.

97% Ken Griffey Jr.
81% Mike Piazza
75% Jeff Bagwell
70% Tim Raines
65% Trevor Hoffman
50% Curt Schilling
49% Alan Trammell
48% Edgar Martinez
46% Roger Clemens
46% Mike Mussina
46% Barry Bonds
39% Lee Smith
20% Fred McGriff
18% Larry Walker
16% Mark McGwire
15% Jeff Kent
11% Sammy Sosa
10% Gary Sheffield
9% Billy Wagner
6% Nomar Garciaparra
2% Jim Edmonds
1% Garret Anderson

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Fighting for Mike Mussina into the HOF

?The hidden story of the 2016 ballot is the fight to get Mike Mussina the support for the HOF.  Thanks to the tireless work of Ryan Thibs, we learn that Mussina has some powerful support.

Last year, the BBWAA who made their ballots available to the public had Mussina with 30% yes votes.  For those who did not release their ballots, the support was only 16%.  That gap was third largest in 2015, beat barely by Curt Schilling (who the writers seem to hate), and... Pedro?  Yes, apparently those who didn't vote for Pedro were too ashamed to admit it.

Anyway, ,this year, Mussina is showing the largest jump of all players between 2015 and 2016.  Of the public ballots anyway.  The real interesting thing will be to see if the private ballots are going to also jump, or, for some reason, the gap between public and private will widen even further than the already wide gap.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

If Fans filled out their HOF ballots 10-deep, what would the results look like?

?Using the results from the head-to-head matchups from the Straight Arrow readers, I can come up with the odds of any one player beating any other player.  For example, on a one-man only ballot, Bonds would get 58% of the votes, Junior would get 11%, Clemens would get 9%, Raines+Bagwell+Piazza would get 9%, and everyone else would get 14%.  And no one gets voted in.  On a two-man ballot, Bonds would get 88%, and Junior would get 27%.   You'd need to get to a 5-man-must ballot for Junior to get elected: Bonds appears on every ballots, while Junior appears on 79% of the ballots.  With a 6-man ballot, Clemens makes it.

When every ballot must list 10 names, this is what happens:

100%    Barry Bonds

100%    Ken Griffey

100%    Roger Clemens

81%    Jeff Bagwell

81%    Tim Raines

80%    Mike Piazza

58%    Curt Schilling

55%    Mike Mussina

48%    Edgar Martinez

43%    Alan Trammell

41%    Larry Walker

39%    Mark McGwire

31%    Gary Sheffield

28%    Sammy Sosa

25%    Jim Edmonds

21%    Jeff Kent

21%    Fred McGriff

16%    Trevor Hoffman

12%    Nomar Garciaparra

11%    Billy Wagner

8%    Lee Smith

Six players get elected.  Now, this is a good argument AGAINST filling out your ballot.  But, since we know there are plenty of voters that don't fill out their ballot, then this becomes part of gamesmanship, to undo the damage of others who have light ballots.  According to the fans, Bonds is such an overwhelming candidate, that you need to list 5 players to elect 2, and 6 to elect 3.  That really ends up becoming the minimum of any ballot, to list six candidates, to counteract part of the vote-splitting effect.

Friday, December 11, 2015

Hall of Fame, Head-to-Head

This is the fourth year I’ve run this, and I’ve been running this kind of project since 2010.  You will be given two players from the current Hall-of-Fame ballot, and you choose the player that you think had the more outstanding career.  That’s it.  You try again and again, and I compile all the results.  Have fun!

http://www.tangotiger.net/hall/

Piazza-not-Bagwell v Bagwell-not-Piazza voters

?Terrific piece by Sam, as he goes inside the minds of the BBWAA voters.  Love this stuff.

Sunday, December 06, 2015

Who will get the Johnson, Pedro, Smoltz, Biggio votes?

?As we learned last year, there's a relationship between the quality of players removed from a ballot, and how those votes get redistributed.  There are 3.65 votes that went to players who were voted in, or dropped off in the last ballot.  About half of that is going to be taken by the new guys (Junior, Hoffman, Edmonds, Wagner, et al).  So, there's about 1.8 or so votes per ballot that are "lost".  Based on the above research, this means 1 vote per ballot will go to the returnees.

There's 4.75 votes that went to players returning onto the ballot, meaning that they will now get 5.75 votes, an increase of 20%, or an increase of around .06 votes per player.

On top of that however, we're looking at "the purge" (voters no longer eligible), who we have learned were predisposed to have fewer players per ballot than the remaining votes.  That will give each player an extra .03 votes per player, say another 0.6 votes per ballot.

All in all, we're looking at returnees jumping by around .10 votes per ballot each, with a total of around 8.2 players per ballot.

Looks like my instincts with BBWAA and Trevor Hoffman are very wrong

?After 29 public ballots, here are the counts and here was my ordinal prior. My point values are the x-axis and the current voting is the y-axis.  All the players are within one "range" of my prior... except for Hoffman, who I had lumped in with Wagner and Nomar, and you could have made a case to lump in with Kent and McGriff, or as high as Lee Smith.  But he is currently tracking at the Raines level, ahead of Mussina+Schilling, and behind Bagwell+Piazza.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

How would the BBWAA electorate of today have voted for the Cy Young in the past?

?As we have learned, while the BBWAA electorate have a wide view, as a group, their view is very narrow.  Basically, they all dance around a central point, where their random wide views get cancelled out when 30 of them get together.  The 2015 voting is just the latest proof.

I'm going to pick out some years in the past, just to see how they would have done.  Let's start in 2005, since that's the last year that the voters worshipped at the altar of Wins.  If you need a reminder of what happened in the NL, Clemens led the league with a 1.87 ERA, but managed only 2 first place votes.  Ahead of him were Carpenter and Willis.  The predictor is fairly simple: if you lead in ERA and wins, you get the Cy.  If there's no one that leads in both, we go to the Cy Young points.  Clemens had 93 points, followed by Willis (88) Carpenter (87) and Pettitte (86), with Oswalt the only other contender (80).  So, the voters got all 5 names right, but they had the order wrong, notably Clemens.

In 1985, Dave Stieb led the AL in ERA with a 14-13 record, and received either a single 2nd place vote or 2 third place votes.  The Cy went to Bret Saberhagen in his magical year, with 23 of 28 1st place votes to go with his 20-6, 2.87 record.  Stieb and his 265 IP had 90 Cy Young points, followed by Blyleven and his 294 innings had 81 points, and then Saberhagen 79 points and 235 innings.  His partner-in-crime Liebrandt had 76 points with similar innings.  Stieb's teammate Doyle Alexander finished ahead of Stieb in Cy Young voting, despite an ERA that was 1 run worse.  It doesn't pass the sniff test, I agree.  Still, it deserves some scrutiny.

How about 1966, when there was only one Cy Young for MLB, instead of the two conference setup we have since 1967?  Koufax was unanimous, and with, I think, a one-player ballot, was the only pitcher listed altogether.  Koufax did run away with it, with 158 points to Marichal's 125 and Bunning 117 (Gibson had 108).  In the AL, it was Jim Kaat and 105 points and no one else was close.

Would love to see an aspiring saberist take these and more on.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Who had the worst MVP ballot?

?This is a simple method.  We can make it more complicated (and I have an idea there), but let's make it simple for now.  This is what you have to ask:

1. Was the leading votegetter placed on the voter's top 2 spots on the ballot?
2. Were the top 2 votegetters placed on the voter's top 3 spots on the ballot?
3. Were the top 3 votegetters placed on the voter's top 6 spots on the ballot?
4. Were the top 4 votegetters placed on the voter's top 10 spots on the ballot?
5. Did the voter's #1 player place in the top 2 among the final tally?
6. Did the voter's #2 player place in the top 3 among the final tally?
7. Did the voter's #3 player place in the top 6 among the final tally?
8. Did the voter's #4 player place in the top 10 among the final tally?

Do that for every voter.  If the voter gets a "yes" to every question, then he's off the hook.  If a voter gets a "no" to every question, then that's an egregious ballot.

Figure out which voter had the most "no".  Whoever had the most no likely had the worst MVP ballot.  Go, aspiring saberist.

And thank you to the BBWAA for publishing the AL and NL ballots, and making this exercise possible.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Arrieta v Greinke v Kershaw

?Based on the 30 ballots submitted, if we drop everyone other than Arrieta and Greinke, this is how they ranked:

18 Arrieta

12 Greinke

If we drop everyone except Arrieta and Kershaw:

27 Arrieta

3 Kershaw

If we drop everyone except Kershaw and Greinke:

25 Greinke

5 Kershaw

So, Kershaw was clearly knocked out by the other 2, and it was simply a two-man race.  When you sample 30 voters, and one pitcher is favored 18-12 that clearly shows that it could have gone either way given some other group of 30 voters.

***

What happens if we knock out these three pitchers? 

Cole ends up with 15 1st place votes and 8 2nd place votes.  Scherzer ends up with 13 and 6.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Initial Scoring system for HOF ballots 2016

20    Ken Griffey

17    Mike Piazza

13    Jeff Bagwell

13    Tim Raines

10    Curt Schilling

10    Roger Clemens

10    Barry Bonds

7    Lee Smith

7    Edgar Martinez

7    Alan Trammell

7    Mike Mussina

4    Jeff Kent

4    Fred McGriff

4    Larry Walker

4    Gary Sheffield

4    Mark McGwire

4    Jim Edmonds

2    Sammy Sosa

2    Nomar Garciaparra

2    Trevor Hoffman

2    Billy Wagner

1    Jason Kendall

1    Troy Glaus

Monday, October 05, 2015

Cy Young 2015 - Final Predictions

?We've been yapping about this for several weeks now.  So, here we go:

1. Keuchel
2. Price
3. Gray
4. Sale
5. Archer

***

1. Arrieta
2. Greinke
3. Kershaw
4. Cole
5. Scherzer

Sunday, October 04, 2015

MVP Nebula

?MVP debate summarized in two lines by Ben:

A leaderboard brooks no argument, but “value” is amorphous enough to support any opinion; facts can be refuted, but feelings can’t be killed. And so we build our MVP arguments like a grade-schooler begins a book report: by citing the dictionary definition of a word we saw in the title.

Saturday, October 03, 2015

Cy Young - Keuchel and Arrieta will be the BBWAA winners

Keuchel did exactly what he needed to do! His 2 wins ahead is worth 2 points, and losing the ERA title by the slimmest of margins is worth less than negative 1 point.  Still, probably need the tiebreaker. Overall in Cy Young points, Keuchel is ahead of Price by 3 points:

http://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/CyYoungTracker.py

Keuchel will get the Cy.

Sale is the one that really jumped, not only breaking up his jam with Felix for 5th, but getting into a tie with Archer for 4th.  That one will be too close to call between Archer and Sale.  Gray gets 3rd.

***

Arrieta did more than he needed to do.  Being 4 wins ahead is worth 4 points, and being behind but close in ERA is worth almost 2 negative points.  We need the tiebreaker, and his IP and K lead is simply too much for Greinke, being ahead by over 10 points. 

Greinke ahead of Kershaw in W and ERA is all he needed to seal the deal for 2nd place. Same reasoning between Cole and Bumgarner, and Cole gets 4th place and MadBum 5th.

***

As a reminder, all the above has nothing to do with how I would vote, but rather how I was able to model the voting patterns of the BBWAA since 2006.

I should also note that I was wrong last year with Kluber and Felix.  Such is the perils of either overfitting, or the changing landscape of the voter base and its evolution.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

How the BBWAA will (almost) vote for the 2015 Cy Young

?Barring an extreme game between now and the end of season, this is how the Cy Young will go:

• NL: 1. Arrieta 2. Greinke 3. Kershaw 4. Cole 5. Bumgarner
• AL: 1/2 Keuchel/Price 3. Gray 4. Archer 5/6 Sale/Felix

Between Keuchel and Price, it's whoever has the best next-and-last start.  The tie-breaker will be the last start.  It's that simple.

Between Sale and Felix, since Felix is shutdown, all Sale has to do is pitch 6 innings and give up 2 ER or less and either get a W or get 10 K.  If he pitches 5 and allows 4 ER, gets the L, then Felix gets it.  Somewhere in between, and it might be close.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Arrieta v Greinke: Felix v Kluber, Part II

?In the 2014 AL race, Felix got off to a great start, had his streak, and seemed to be the inevitable winner.  Until Kluber's surge put him in the running.  Kluber ended up with 3 more wins than Felix (and 3 more losses, but that seemed to be irrelevant), as well as an ERA that was 31 points worse than Felix.  The voters needed a secondary stat to go to, and found it with Kluber being ahead of Felix with 21 strikeouts.

In the 2015 NL race, Greinke got off to a great start, had his streak, and seemed to be the inevitable winner.  Until Arrieta's surge put him in the running.  Arrieta has 3 more wins than Greinke (and 3 more losses which will likely be deemed irrelevant) but an ERA that is 14 points worse than Greinke.  The voters will gravitate toward a secondary stat and will find it with 37 more strikeouts than Greinke.

Kluber ended up with the Cy Young, on the strength of 17 1st place votes over 13 for Felix.  It will therefore be interesting to see how consistent the NL voters of 2015 will be to the AL voters of 2014.  Based solely on the voting for the AL 2014, we should expect 20 1st place votes for Arrieta and 10 for Greinke.

But, when you sample 30 voters from a pool of hundreds, anything can happen.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Which reliever will finish highest in Cy Young, and how high will he finish?

?Mixed in the top 5 in WPA (a metric that is not that useful for SP, but is pretty useful for RP) are the three NL Cy contenders, plus Pirates relievers Melancon and Watson, with a combined 90 shutdowns and only 8 meltdowns.  But given that all Cy ballots will have Greinke, Kershaw, and Arrieta on them, that leaves only two spots, one of which will likely go to their mate Gerrit Cole on virtually every ballot.  Bumgarner is going to get the majority of the other spot, leaving very few scraps for the other SP.  Indeed, how many ballots spots will relievers get in all?  Four or five if even that's too high?  There's just not enough room to make their mark, and I can't see a voter put in both Cole and a Pirates reliever.  Rosenthal is the other choice in the NL, but would a voter put him over mates Wacha or Martinez?  So, a decent chance of no relievers getting any NL Cy love.

Over in the AL, there's a bit more room, with Betances, Davis and Tolleson likely to get a one or three ballots each.  So, I'm guessing the reliever that will finish the highest will be from the AL, and Wade Davis and his shiny (so far) 0.99 ERA will look exciting.  I'm guessing he'll be 7th overall among all AL pitchers.

Which is why seeing the James/Neyer Cy Young predictor at ESPN should be updated.  Notwithstanding that NOBODY at ESPN cares enough to update the programming code so that David Price and his two teams can be merged into one so he actually appears on the leaderboard, the Cy Young voter simply does not recognize relievers anywhere close to the way they used to.  It shouldn't take Bill James or Rob Neyer to say that it should be updated for ESPN to get it updated.

Felix Sale

?Felix Hernandez has pitched 201.2 innings and allowed 180 hits, 55 of which were for extra bases.  So has Chris Sale done exactly that. 

One of them has been assigned 78 earned runs, and the other 79.  One of them has allowed 22 HR and the other 23.  One of them has faced 826 batters and the other has faced 827.

Felix has been assigned an 18-9 record, while Sale is 12-11, even though both received 4 runs of support from their offense. 

My expectation of the BBWAA voter mindset is that they will see through the W-L record and give them each down-ballot votes, enough that one of them will finish fifth and the other sixth.  All that's left is to figure out who will finish ahead of whom.

Friday, September 25, 2015

Cy Young, down to the homeplate strech

?In a head-to-head of Arrieta and Kershaw, Arrieta is the overwhelming favorite for the Cy, using the past mindset of the BBWAA voters.  Between Greinke and Kershaw, again an overwhelming favorite for Greinke.  This is because the BBWAA has decided that if a pitcher leads in both ERA and Wins, then that pitcher will finish ahead in the voting.  This is why Kershaw is destinted to finish third.  That leaves us with Arrieta and his current 2 win lead against Greinke and his 0.23 current ERA lead (the equivalent of 5 runs).  That requires the tie-breaker, using the simple system of IP/2 - ER + W + K/10.  And Arrieta leads by 3 points.  Very very close, but Arrieta has now taken over the lead as the favorite for the Cy Young.  The odds are now 75% Arrieta, 25% Greinke.

With Kershaw a lock for 3rd place, that leaves us with Bumgarner as the slight favorite to finish 4th over Cole.  No one else is close.  Sorry, Max. 

Over in the AL we have only Price and Keuchel as contenders.  Much like with Greinke and Arrieta, but even closer, Price has a slight edge in ERA (by 4 runs) while Keuchel has a 1 win edge.  Going to the tiebreaker, and Price has the slight edge.  So, it's 75/25 odds for Price over Keuchel.  Archer controls his destiny in finishing 3rd over Gray.  The interesting battle will be between Sale (the Max Scherzer of the AL) and Felix for 5th place.  As long as Sale can finish ahead of Felix in ERA, then Sale's huge K lead will take him to 5th.  Otherwise, Felix will take it over Sale.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Cy Young, three starts to go

?With just about every pitcher having three starts to go, there's little margin for error for the guys in the NL.

Over in the AL, it would need a bad game from Price, and no bad games from Keuchel, to put Keuchel on top.  That's about 20% likely to happen.  So, Price has an 80% chance of taking the Cy.  If Gray can keep the W and ERA lead over Archer, he'll end up third.  Otherwise, Archer will get third.  Fifth place will be very interesting. It's between Sale and Felix.  Felix has the big lead in W, and Sale has the slight lead in ERA.  If Felix takes over the lead, Felix will finish 5th.  Otherwise, Sale will take it based on his huge K lead. 

In the NL, Kershaw is about to be knocked out.  Both Greinke and Arrieta are on pace to finish ahead of Kershaw in W and ERA, relegatiing Kershaw to third.  As long as Greinke can maintain his lead in ERA over Arrieta, Greinke will take it.  So, I've got the odds at 70% Greinke, 25% Arrieta, 5% Kershaw.  Bumgarner is just about guaranteed to finish 4th or 5th, and Cole is likely to finish 5th.  There's just Scherzer left in the mix for that 5th spot.