3.31.2011

Ski Season

3.30.2011

Haiku Wednesday

Rain

Moody clouds move in
Huff and Puff and Shed their tears
Sun shoos them away

3.29.2011

Reif Larsen - The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

Quirky book.  Loved it, got a little bored with it, and then it ended.  Did I like it?  I think I enjoyed the concept, the tables, the pictures, and graphics really appealed to me but I think at times the story became compromised by the art and what not.  Either enjoyed the concept and thought the characters were good.




3.28.2011

Rox Talk

The "X"-Factor
In this past weekend's NY Times Keeping Score, there was an article on the intangibles.  It is well known that stat heads claim there is no "X"-Factor.  But everyone has tales that Player X took that extra base, worked the count, stole a base, framed a pitch, or just had that "umpf" - that presence that leads a team to victory.  Data below shows last year's team record when Player "X" starts.  Throw out those rare starts and I was a bit surprised to see Smith and Fowler at the top. 


For the Rox to succeed in 2011, the intangibles need to work.  Players like Smith, Iannetta, Fowler, and Stewart are going to have to do the little things.  If the Rox think they can only win with "Os" it is going to be a long year. 

So let's us have a great fun Summer!  Go Rox

3.23.2011

Haiku Wednesday

Baseball

Bust out those Jerseys
Dust off that mitt, grab a ball
Just say it's so Joe!

3.21.2011

Rox Talk

Errors and Winning Percentage
In defense (ah get it?) of Troy, I was curious about the same thing that he wrote in his column yesterday.  What part does defense play in successful teams?  Pretty easy to see that not giving up extra outs allows your pitcher to be more comfortable.  But is it that black and white?  I didn't look at any exotic defensive statistics, just simply looked at errors and winning percentage.  Graph below shows the results from 2006 - 2010.  X-axis is winning percentage and Y-axis is errors.  Correlation of this data (R^2) is around 0.2 indicating that while it makes sense that fewer errors would lead to more wins, the data over the last 5 years indicates that this isn't true.  

Look at the graph and one point kind of jumps out at you and that is the team with a winning percentage below 0.400 and less than 80 errors...that would be the 2009 Pirates who won 62 games.  Now of course the year the Rox went to the World Series they committed only 68 errors.  The average errors committed over the 5 year period is 99.  Teams having more errors then the average won an average of 78 games while the teams committing less than this average won on average 84 games.  So regardless of the scatter plot below, generally committing less errors does help a team out.  Over those 5 years the teams in the top 10 won on average 86 games and if you throw out the Pirates and Jays, then that average number of wins jumps to 90 which is probably a playoff team.

Links
- Ah the continuing battle between seamheads and old school stat lovers...as always Joe says it best...original article here...and I resent the quote about my mother's basement, because I didn't have one!
- Chris Quick's article is an eyesore for Rox fans and of course makes a pretty good argument that defense does matter...maybe my analysis of errors above is an error?
- Just because I love Ichiro...
- And finally in a tweet by Mike Axisa, he gives us this little gem:
"Greg Maddux faced 20,421 batters in his career. Just 310 of them saw a 3-0 count. That's roughly one every three starts."  Wow!

3.18.2011

Malcolm Gladwell - What the Dog Saw

A collection of shorts that Gladwell has mostly published in the New Yorker and thus I have seen most of them. Few good pieces and the ones I liked:

The Ketchup Conundrum:  Why is there only one type of ketchup and yet a gazillion different mustards?

Blowing Up:  Small world, an article on Nassim Taleb and you know it is next to impossible to invest with him...check out the website sometime.

True Colors:  Who knew it used to be taboo to date a woman who colored her hair?

John Rock's Error:  If you're a woman don't read this article or you might be amazed how Catholicism caused a whole lot of your hormone issues.

Connecting the Dots:  Hindsight is twenty/twenty...much like in the Black Swan learning to look at things a little differently might help you along but could you connect the dots before something happens?

Blowup:  "Over the past few years, a group of scholars has begun making the unsettling argument that the rituals that follow things like plane crashes or The Three Mile Island crisis are as much exercises in self-deception as they are genuine opportunities for reassurance.  For these revisionists, high-technology accidents may not have clear issues at all.  They may be inherent in the complexity of the technological systems we have created."

The New Boy Network:  Just a glimpse, who needs an interview, that is all it takes to hire someone...frightening


3.17.2011

Comic Splat

OK so my effort to continue this comic thing weekly has been a miserable failure. So in an effort to try and stay on top of this what about the comic splat haiku?

Here it goes:

The Amazing Spider-Man #656 (Slott and Martin)
Spider-sense missing /
Bulletproof shiny new suit /
New rule, no one dies!

Invincible Iron Man #502
Stark versus Doc Ock?
Pepper and Electro/Sandman
Where is Spider-Man?


3.16.2011

Haiku Wednesday

Seed

Nature's tupperware
Tiny package packs a punch
It seals in Springtime

3.14.2011

Rox Talk

Relief Game Score - Part II
In Part I of my treatise on a relievers game score, I noticed some possible modifications that could then be integrated with the starters game score to produce a total game score for the pitching staff of that game. The basis of the starters game score is to represent an average start to be around 50 points. Any exceptional start would be in the 80s and an extraordinary start would be in the 90s.

Basing a relief game score on the same 50 point basis would suggest a similar trend. An average relief outting would score around 50 and go up from there. To extrapolate from this it would suggest that an average start and relief appearance would end up to be around 100 points. For instance in 2010, the average relief game score for the Rox was 58 and the average starter game score was 50. But what if we scaled the relief score, so that instead of an average effort of 108 points, you would get around 75 points when you add the relief game score to the starters game score (you know a nice C effort?). So instead of starting the relief game score calculation with 50 points let's start with 15 points. Now the average relief game score for the Rox is 24 for the 2010 season and to go along with the average starter game score of 50 we now have a total game average of 74 points for 162 games.

How does this hold up in the wins and losses? Well the average total game score in wins is 85 and in losses it is 63. Not too shabby. Table below shows the top to bottom total game scores for the 2010 season.



Top Scores:
Game 82: 15 inning 4-3 win over the Giants (Hammel goes 7 innings)
Game 93: 10-0 win over Florida (Francis goes 7 inning, bullpen strikes out 5)
Game 4: 7-0 win over San Diego (de la Rosa goes 7 innings, bullpen strikes out 3)
Game 52: 11 inning 2-1 win over the Giants (Hammel goes 6 2/3, bullpen strikes out 6 and no hits)
Game 113: 6-2 win over Mets (Francis goes 6, bullpen strikes out 6 and no hits)

Worst Score:
Game 133: 11-12 loss to Phillies (bullpen gives up 9 earned runs in 3 2/3 innings)

Conclusion
Game Scores isn't a real statistical tool. It was mostly just a back of the envelope calculation to rate a starting pitcher's effort and to especially look beyond the "quality start". In much the same way the relief game score is just taking some benchmarks that you'd like to see out of your relief corp and assigning some point values. Manipulating these numbers to get a realistic number so that they can be favorably compared. Based on one season of input, the numbers would seem to indicate that you can assign a value to the relief effort much like the starters. While you can similarly rank the relief corp on a similar point scale it would seem to be more of a value to be able to take both the relief and starters score and produce a total game score and have this be on a 0 - 100 point scale.

3.13.2011

China Mieville - Perdido Street Station

After reading this post, I ordered one of Mieville's books hoping to find another author who enthralls me like Murakami.  After muddling through Perdido Street Station I have to wonder if the author who posted the post has ever read anything by either author?  These two are totally not the same.  After going back to the post above and then reading the comments I have to whole heartily agree that Mieville couldn't come close to being as good an author as Murakami.

I mean I understand the post was more about how both author's write in extremes but Mieville's extremes are so strange that I have a hard time understanding the connection.  Murakami's extremes are often juxtaposed with characters that seem very real.  Mieville's characters don't seem real and thus the unreal situations just seem all the more crazy.

To be honest I didn't hate the book but I was disappointed with the comparison and if there had been no comparison the book might have played a little more honest with me.

3.12.2011

Super 8 - Magic Continues


I can't wait!

3.09.2011

Haiku Wednesday

Daylight Savings Time

Help! What time is it?
Do I Spring ahead, Fall back?
Where does that hour go?

3.07.2011

Rox Talk

Reliever's Game Score
If you know my work then you know I have an interest in Bill James' Game Score (Part I, II, and III). I have a belief that it favors the strike out kings and tends to ignore those finasse pitchers. I even came up with an alternative. Well years ago I wrote myself a note and said what about a relief game score? Sure over the years they have gotten the save and the hold but what about scoring the relief just like the starter? Rate the bullpen for that game much like you do for a starter? So let's start with the game score for starters premise:

1.Start with 50 points.
2.Add 1 point for each out recorded, so 3 points for every complete inning pitched.
3.Add 2 points for each inning completed after the 4th.
4.Add 1 point for each strikeout.
5.Subtract 2 points for each hit allowed.
6.Subtract 4 points for each earned run allowed.
7.Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed.
8.Subtract 1 point for each walk.

So if the above works for a starter how might it work for a bullpen? Well to me what is important? Strikeouts! Yeah lots of those. Keeping opponents of base? Yeah amazing how that walk in the 8th inning of tight game can really bite you in the...

So here it goes
1.Start with 50 points (I will get back to this later...)
2.Add 1 point for each out recorded.
3.Add 3 points for each strikeout (how relief should be...short, sweet and to the point)
4.Add 3 points for each inning completed allowing zero runs (include partial innings)
5.Subtract 2 points for each baserunner (baserunners bad...)
6.Subtract 6 points for each earned run allowed or inherited runner to score
7.Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed (hey defense gotta help too)

So what does it mean? Well using the 2010 rox bullpen I ran the numbers and for the most part I am pretty pleased. I obviously played around with numbers a bit to make an average bullpen outting approximately 50 - 60 points (the blank game scores indicate a complete game from the starter).



Graphically how does it compare to the Starters? Well below graphs the 2010 Rox starting pitcher's game scores (in red) versus the reliever's game scores (in blue). The distribution looks good although maybe the numbers are a bit high. The average starter game score comes in at 51 while the average relief game score comes in at 59. I could probably manipulate the numbers a bit more to get the average closer to 50 but then maybe our relief squad was pretty good last year. I will track the numbers this year and give it a whirl. Maybe next year I will make some adjustments. Next week I will look at starter and relieve game scores as a component score and see if maybe we should adjust the relief game score a bit more...

3.03.2011

Old School Comic Splat

Captain America 21 - 26
Huge fan of Bachalo's art and he was featured in this run.  Captain went through some difficult times trying to find relevance in the comic book world.  Taken straight from the headlines this series sends Captain to the Guantanamo Bay in defense of the secret military trials.  While this is nothing new in comics it isn't always easy to read about your hero in the modern world.

3.02.2011

Haiku Wednesday

Mardi Gras

Beads, beads, and more beads
Big parties, big carnival
If I just spoke French...