TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Saturday, September 06, 2003

Left Off the Resume
I was driving home today when I heard a Peter Ueberroth for Governor commercial. I noticed his term as Commissioner of Baseball was not listed amongst his accomplishments. This makes sense, as he presided over baseball during Collusion, which led to a $280M pay-out by ownership. I know California needs to find a way to cut its costs, but restraint of trade isn't something you want to pull out from the toolbox.

posted by David 11:35 AM

Thursday, September 04, 2003

Well, spinning up a simulation took a little longer than I thought it would. I tried to model a 14 team league, with two divisions of five teams and one of four. After a while I just took the 1996 NL schedule and used that as a template. I then ran 100,000 full seasons, treating each game as a 50-50 coin flip. This filled a win matrix and then this was sorted by division. The runners up in each division were compared and the team with the most wins was awarded the wildcard.

After 100,000 runs, the mean number of wins for the wildcard team was 87.1, more or less one standard deviation. I'm a little surprised that complicated situation like that comes up so close to the standard deviation.

OK, so I'm good with the wildcard now, historically those have been good teams.

posted by David 9:47 PM

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D'oh!

I spend far too much time with the normal distribution...

As Tom points, out, we are actually dealing with a binomial distribution, and the variance for that is np(1-p) = 162(.5)(.5) = 40.5. Take the square root of that to get about 6, so 87 wins would be a standard deviation above .500. So in every year, we have had a team a standard deviation above...

Of course, it is a little more complicated than this, because you have 16 (or 14) teams shooting for the playoffs, so simply looking at a standard deviation and comparing it to the actual results is probably too simple a model. If I have the time and motivation, I'll whip up a simulation and run it a few tens of thousands of times.

posted by David 7:14 PM

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Parity... Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It has been observed that the optimal solution to any problem is rarely at the extremes. A league where every team finished within a game or two of 81-81 would be just as boring as a league where you could pencil in the champions for the next eight years. The question comes down to what is an exciting middle ground?

I happen to think that dominant teams, so long as their dynasties are short-lived, are good for the game. This year's NL Wildcard race is said to be exciting because so many teams are involved. But you can't shake the feeling that it is a bunch of mediocre squads thrashing it out. Give me 1993 when the Braves and Giants went down to the wire. That was an epic struggle between two great teams, what a pennant race should be about. I'm not that jazzed about the current chase.

And that goes for the wildcard in general. This year the numbers conspire to put a bunch of .500 teams in the running, but any scientist will point out that the square root of 162 comes out just shy of 13, so a hypothetical 94-win (13+81) team is indistinguishable from .500 given the sample size involved. Looking at the history of the wildcard once they got back to 162 games, let's see how many teams broke the 94-win threshold:

2002	95	99
2001	93	102
2000	94	91
1999	97	94
1998	90	92
1997	92	96
1996	90	88

For the most part, the history of the wildcard has been about teams that were statistically indistinguishable from .500.

I've never thought that MLB had a big parity problem in the free agent era. In the NBA, the variation in winning percentage has roughly a 30% effect on winning percentage two years down the road. Some of that has to do with the smaller roster size and the salary cap. One or two bonehead moves and you can really sink a franchise. How large is that effect in baseball? About 6%. That's so small I really can't see it as a problem.

posted by David 9:04 AM

Wednesday, September 03, 2003

Regarding Tom's post on the 29th: I think that the NL Wild Card race this year proves how great the playoff system truly is. I do know that only four teams in each league make the playoffs, which is less than most other sports. But when whispers about competative balance continue to swirl even after the luxury tax was introduced, the amazing race in the NL shows us that the Wild Card keeps us glued to the tube in September, when most teams are starting their September callups and making golf reservations.

However, it's also showing us just how mediocre the NL is this year. As Tom pointed out, teams in the NL Central have a lot of losses (Houston and St. Louis have 66 and 67, respectively, as of this moment) and because of that race, no one is exactly running away with the Wild Card. And how about those Marlins? Just when you thought that they were headed for another season of trading away stars and "rebuilding," they're in the thick of a race. Sure, they lost their best player, Mike Lowell, but they're a scrappy team with a good pitching staff and a pretty solid lineup. If Dontrelle Willis can pick up his game from a recent slump (compared to his previous numbers), they'll be able to beat out teams that should be winning, like the Phillies, who are tied for the WC lead. I'm looking forward to seeing this race and the NL Central race being decided on the last day of the season. Great baseball...

posted by Charles Curtis 9:03 PM

Famous Name, Wrong Sport
I'm sure that baseball did a good deal of market research before placing a team in Miami, but let's face it, Florida is football country. For example, look at the mailing address for contacting Marlins players:

Florida Marlins
Attn: (Players Name)
2267 Dan Marino Blvd.
Miami, Florida 33056

Anybody see the problem here?

On the other hand, the official basketball of the NBA has the word Spalding written across its face...

(Baseball has gone with Rawlings since 1976, I think that Spalding is a great link to baseball's past. He led the National Association, the very first "Major League", in wins in every season it existed, becoming baseball's first 200 game winner. He then joined the National League for its first season, and won 47 games to lead the team that eventually became the Cubs to the league title. At 253-65, his .796 winning% is #1 all time. He was also a career .313 hitter and one of the essential organizers of the early game.)

posted by David 11:42 AM

Tuesday, September 02, 2003

This is kind of eerie. Check out the photo of Robin Yount on the front page (or in the photo archives once it leaves the front page) and then compare to this photo at SI of Corey Koskie:

Robin's long, lost son?

Speaking of eerie and the Twins, I see that Jesse Orosco has surfaced in the Twins bullpen. Rumors of Jim Kaat's imminent signing are just that, so far as I know.

I think it's safe to say that we saw the Pitchers of the Month go over the holiday weekend with Johan Santana's start Saturday against the Rangers and Mark Prior's Labor Day start against the Cards. Santana tweaked his hammy and left after six shutout innings. Prior threw 131 pitches in eight scoreless innings. I hope Dusty doesn't blow out the kid's arm; I see Kerry Wood, part II, coming down Michigan Avenue. Also, an avoidance of Greg Maddux, part II, would be nice -- please don't lowball the guy when contract negotiations come up for Prior, if you would be so kind to do so, Tribune Corp.

Speaking of lowballing, I'm already starting to wonder how the Twins will keep Santana. After a couple of rough outings at the end of July, Santana has been lights out in August. Granted, four of his six starts in the month came against the Tigers and Indians, but 1.20 ERA is 1.20 ERA. If you consider all the pitchers who have pitched against Detroit and Cleveland this month, 1.20 probably is good for an ERA+ of 250 or so, give or take (most likely take) a few dozen. There's no reason to think the kid can't keep it up; he has three good pitches when he's on, and keeps his velocity 100 pitches into a ball game from everything I've seen. Sign him to an extension posthaste if at all possible, before he pitches himself out of your market.

posted by Tom Renbarger 10:15 PM

Monday, September 01, 2003

September!?!
It's later than I thought it was...

I was looking at the website for my local minor league team, thinking that I might be able to catch some action this week. Wow, it's September and the minors are shut down for September call-ups. I guess the teams with the ten-game leads are figuring out ways not to choke while the other races are really going to heat up. Oh, and the Tigers have lost 100 games already...

posted by David 1:56 PM