THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Friday, December 15, 2006

Clemens: Bads85 v Olbermann

I quite enjoyed this piece:

Your opening salvo against Clemens is that his team have lost seventeen of the thirty-post season games he has started, even though Clemens is 12-8 in the post season. ... you imply that the reason Clemens’ teams lost seventeen times is because Clemens had to leave the games early or because he blew leads.  Let’s take a look at Clemens’ no decisions that resulted in a team loss. {summary chart} In most of those games, it is obvious that Clemens was hardly the reason for his team’s defeat. To parade idea that Clemens was responsible for all of his team’s seventeen losses is disingenuous. However, from there, you embark into complete stupidity, faulting Clemens for blowing 8 leads over the course of a game in 34 post season appearances.

Inside Story on Ken Macha’s Firing

This stuff is fun to read.  Here’s a tiny snippet:

“Everyone thought it was weird Kotsay didn’t hit against left-handers the last two months of the season, he’s so great defensively,’’ starter Dan Haren said. “And it was unfair to sit him two months against lefties and then all of a sudden throw him in there in the playoffs against tough lefties like (Johan) Santana and Kenny Rogers. I don’t think Macha handled that correctly.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Sabermetrics at Berkeley

Studying Baseball Statistics to Learn Bioinformatics , with long-time Fanhome resident James Fraser.

This course will teach methods and theory for computational analysis of biological datasets through examples using baseball statistics. Students will learn to program in perl, how to use databases, and how to form and test scientific hypotheses with large datasets. The methods to answer questions such as “how significant is the similarity between two genes?” and “how significant is a sacrifice bunt?” will be revealed to be quite similar. Students will leave the course with a greater appreciation for baseball, biology and the parallels between the two.

He’s a Star, a Free Agent and, Rarer Yet, Only 26

A little love from the NY Times’ David Leonhardt:

Matsuzaka is unlike any other free agent on the market this year — or almost any other year. He is 26, an age when a typical pitcher is in his prime and yet usually too young to be a free agent.
...They develop better control over the course of their careers and walk fewer batters in their late 30s than at any other point, Tom M. Tango, a co-author of “The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball,� has found.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Managers influencing scoreboard operators

Jayson Stark reports on this story of the scoreboard showing differnt pitch spees for Zumaya from GameDay and Fox.  The differences were not between tracking the velocity from the mound or from the plate, since all the other pitchers were in-synch.  No, Larussa telling the scoreboard operator seems to be the culprit.  I remember when Pedro was hurt a few years ago, as the story goes, the scoreboard operator was told never to show a fastball pitch slower than 87mph.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

What happens when sabermetricians become mainstream writers?

Apparently they completely lose their minds.

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Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Wall Street Journal and The Bunt

A nice article in the WSJ quoting a bunch of sabes.  The WSJ’s Carl Bialik, the writer of this piece, and Russell Adams, who did a piece on The Book a while ago, are definitely good sportswriters who aren’t full of the same old, same old.  Great to see stuff like this in such a respected newspaper.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

This Day In Genderism

Yet another play with your own kind articles:

This wouldn’t be a bee in my bonnet if the determined young ladies didn’t have the option of trying out for the school’s girl’s team ... but they do. Apparently the pair are unimpressed with the calibre of play on the team designed for their sex. They say “some of them can barely skate.” I suggest perhaps they take that problem on rather than bypass it and leave it for others to fix.
...
These young ladies, who are so talented beyond their gender, need to help their gender. They can look at it as a challenge and a rush to become builders of the sport. The sisters say they are ecstatic about their chance to battle with the boys for a roster spot, or two. Fine, but the guys who don’t make the boys’ squad now don’t have the right to try out for the girls’ team.

Wow.  The Michelle Wie syndrome in teen sports.  I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, so I’ll repeat it here.

We have women’s league to give women an additional opportunity to participate, not the sole opportunity.

The way the leagues are setup, you have the top division, where the best person makes it, regardless of gender.  Then, you have two branches, which are split by gender.  You move up the rung, until you reach the top.  That the top division is almost always made up of boys doesn’t mean it’s a boys-only division.

This is the 21st century. Why are we still talking about gender?

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Arneson: Moneyball, cliche, irony, Brown

This blog entry has it all! 

I’ll give this one the “Tango’s Blog-of-the-Week Club”.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim

http://firejoemorgan.blogspot.com/2006/08/timmeh.html

There is nothing that opens up big innings any more than a leadoff walk. Leadoff home runs don’t do it. Leadoff singles, maybe. But a leadoff walk. It changes the mindset of a pitcher. Since he walked the first hitter, now all of a sudden he wants to find the fatter part of the plate with the succeeding hitters. And that could make for a big inning.

The chance of a guy scoring from a leadoff single or a leadoff walk is virtually the same (about 40%).  It’s as simple as that.  I know we want it to mean something more, like “a leadoff walk means the pitcher doesn’t have it right now”, or whathaveyou.  It certainly sounds exciting and plausible.  But, so did this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society

Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim.  Stop it.  Please.  (I’m sure Tim doesn’t read this, but how many degrees of separation between me and him?  Somebody, help me out.)

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Is Winning Everything?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Winning_isn’t_everything%3B_it’s_the_only_thing.%22

Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing
—UCLA football coach Henry “Red” Sanders

The most important thing . . . is not winning but taking part (in the Games).
—Pierre de Coubertin

Now, the scenario:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/rick_reilly/08/07/reilly0814/index.html

In a nine- and 10-year-old PONY league championship game in Bountiful, Utah, the Yankees lead the Red Sox by one run. The Sox are up in the bottom of the last inning, two outs, a runner on third. At the plate is the Sox’ best hitter, a kid named Jordan. On deck is the Sox’ worst hitter, a kid named Romney. He’s a scrawny cancer survivor who has to take human growth hormone and has a shunt in his brain.

So, you’re the coach: Do you intentionally walk the star hitter so you can face the kid who can barely swing?

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Verducci v Abreu

Tom Verducci says:

It should be alarming that Abreu has whiffed once in every three at-bats in close and late situations (20 in 61 at-bats) while hitting .230. He’s the kind of hitter who is happy with a walk in run-scoring situations, which sometimes leads to looking at third strikes.

Entering 2006…

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