SB Nation User Blog: Bilzo

Recapping the Regular Season in a graph

Bilzo — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:48:15 -0000

Since I work with a fans from other teams, as well as some just pure baseball fans...I like to keep track of the post-season odds as presented by baseballprospectus. Also, being an excel nerd, I would go go in every day, input their data, and keep a graph going. Since it's the end of the year, (and I finally remembered to email the file home) I decided to share that fun little graph, and I'll go ahead and put in what I think are some key events/stretches and how those things may have impacted each teams percentages at making the post-season.

Keep in mind that this is "playoff" odds...NOT division odds. That's why if you look close at some of the numbers, you'll notice things can add up to more than 100%, thanks to the wildcard. Graph and commentary after the jump.

via i667.photobucket.com

Now some fun dates for each team:

Washington Nationals:

April 11th, Day one of simulations, Nats odds max at 21.3% and never get any higher. By May 23rd, the drop to <1.0%. That's what....7-8 weeks into the season, and it's essentially over for Nats fans. That's a shame.

Florida Marlins:

The Marlins started off the year 11-1. That's pretty good. April 20th, 58% shot at playoffs. Followed that torrid start up by dropping 7 straight (3 of those to the Phils!). At the end of that slide, they'd cut their odds in roughly in half, down to 30.5%. The month of may was particularly cruel to the Fish who only won 9 games the whole month against 18 losses, including losing streaks of 3, 3, 4, and 5 games. That's all in 1 month. Yikes. By the end of May the Marlins were 23-28 and about a 3% shot at meaningful October baseball. They had a decent June and managed to get back over .500 by the ASB, and had a nice stretch in August where the swept the Phils in the midst of a 5 game winning streak and ran their odds back to 24% after play on August 11th (coincidentally, when my grandmother turned 102!!!). From that point on though, the Fish faded into oblivion and joined the ranks of spoilers.

New York Mets:

Aside from the Marlins incendiary start, the Mets played the best ball at the start of the year. As of May 29th, they topped out at 77%. What happened? Umm....I think we all know, and we're not shedding any tears over it.

Reyes - Done for the season on May 14th.

Beltran - Done for the season on June 22nd.

Delgado - Done for the season on May 11th.

Putz - Done for the season on June 6th.

Honestly, I'm a little surprised they hung around as long as they did, but their AAA lineup caught up with them around the end of June and they PLUMMETTED. From June 27th to July 27th, they went from ~62% to (wait for it.........................) 3%! while playing about 9-18 over that stretch. Not abominably hideous, but bad enough to seal their fate.

Atlanta Braves:

Aaah...a true model of consitency over the season. The Braves played about 80% of the season hovering between 10 and 30%. On May 5th, the Braves were 5 games under 500 (odds = 20%). June 27th, they'd fallen to 6 under (odds = 10%). From there until mid-Sept the braves were pretty much within 5 games of .500 the whole way. If they won a few in a row, they'd drop a few to make up for it, and vice versa. In September though, they played out of their minds and thumped the likes of the Nats and Mets, winning 15 out of 17 during a stretch (those 2 losses to the Phils though) and running their playoff odds from a yeah, right! of 1% all the way up to 23%. Then some guy named Matt Diaz had a moment of indecision debating whether or not to try and score on a wild-pitch and the whole thing went *poof*. The Braves didn't win another game and were done.

The Phillies:

The Phillies didn't start as bad this year as they had in a few recent ones. The difference was that the Marlins got off to such a hot start, that the Phils just couldn't keep pace. At the end of April, the Phils were 11-9, 1.5 games back, but only a 15% shot at the post-season. Then came May....and a 17-11 record, but only going 3-7 against NYM/FLA/ATL. Going 8-0 against the Nats didn't hurt. End of May...Phils are up a half game, and 37% chance at playoffs. June was unkind to the Phils...sure they started if off by finishing up a 7 game winning streak, but then came those pesky AL East teams. 11-15 during the month, with some losses by some guy named Madson. Thankfully, the rest of the division wasn't doing so well then either. Phils maintained their division lead and were still up 1.5 at the end of the month. Hurry up July...get here already!!

July had 'the streak'....a 10 game winner. This pretty much put the division away, coupled with the 4 game win streak that occurred in front of it. Heck...they were a Brad Lidge BS away from winning 15 in a row. On July 2nd the Phils were tied for the division lead with the Mets, while being 12 percentage points less likely to make the playoffs (40 vs 28). 15 games later, they're up 6.5 games. The Mets have stunk it up and are now a 4% chance at playoffs. The Phils? 80. The Phils slid a little, after the aforementioned sweep at the hand of the Marlins, but then something clicked again in mid-august, and the Phils just stepped on the throats of their pursuers. From Aug 11-24th, the Phils went 11-2, got 3 wins from newcomer Cliff Lee, held the division lead at 7 games and were at 92%.

The Braves and Marlins had played decently during this time, but they just couldn't afford to lose a game. It seemed as though the Phils were winning every game, making their winning exercises in futility, just basically stopping them from dropping further back. Essentially, they were either treading water or sinking.

So there you have it... a mini-recap of chutes and ladders amongst the NL east teams (sorry nats...you just tripped at the starting block)

Relying on the homer....Gold Rush mentality and how it projects success.

Bilzo — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:11:28 -0000

There's been some discussion of late about the Phillies dependence upon the long ball as their primary method of run production. The recent run of 15 straight home runs coming as solo-shots (as in....nobody on base) coupled with a depressed offensive output for the team has made this discussion even more heated recently. There are two primary schools of thought, with competing themes.

In order to win baseball games, you have to score runs. As Harvey Haddix found out long ago...being perfect, even extending into extra innings, can still lead to a loss if the guys at the dish are as inept as your opponents at making contact and putting balls where the opponents are not. Therefore, hitting home runs is good. A good power hitter is in scoring position the minute he steps to the plate. Common sense says that the more home runs you hit, the more potent your offense, the better your chance to win games. There really isn't any arguing going on with this point.

The discussion at hand however is going on the premise that if a team seems to rely on the long ball too much for their scoring, they might do better cease trying to hit the ball into next week, focus on making contact, getting on base, and being able to score by more reliable means. My take on this has been that if you run into a homer drought, you're dead. Also..in post-season you tend to face good pitchers on better teams. Hitting dingers off the middle relievers from marginal teams is likely easier than doing it against a staff ace from a playoff team (but then again...so is getting a hit of any kind..) Small ball isn't necessarily more exciting, we all remember McGwire and Sosa, and we all likely know that Rickey thefted 130 bases one year....but that's not how the Phillies are built nowadays. So the question at hand is...do teams that have a higher or lower percentage of the runs come via the home run have better success in the regular season and in the playoffs?

One of my co-workers (Chris Dial...recognized for his defensive analysis and a regular contributor at www.baseballthinkfactory.org was kind enough run a query in his stat software and give me the data for all teams since 1993 with regards to their runs scored, and the percent of runs scored via the homer. In my attempts to make some sense of the data, I discarded 1993-1995 as it was pre-divisional play, and also included a couple strike shortened season (makes correlating percentages to win totals a little difficult).

So what did I find?

Let's get to the data.

Here's each year, and the MLB average for the percent of runs scored via the homer:

1996 35.0%

1997 33.8%

1998 34.3%

1999 35.9%

2000 36.7%

2001 36.6%

2002 35.7%

2003 35.7%

2004 36.8%

2005 35.9%

2006 36.0%

2007 34.1%

2008 34.3%

The numbers hold pretty steady, roughly 34-37% over a 13 year period. My litmus test of precision is the term ‘%RSD' which effectively normalized standard deviations. Those 13 values yield a %RSD of 2.97, which I'll call ‘tight' with a little room for improvement, but for the purposes of what I'm doing here...good enough to warrant discounting year to year variations and fluctuations in how teams are doing.

The first correlation I'll go after is runs scored to wins. Here's the plot:

via lh6.ggpht.com

While this looks scatter shot, you will notice there's a slight tilt to the dots, as evidenced by the trendline. The rationale here is essentially, home runs = runs; runs = wins. One other thing to think about though is that the teams above that 100 win mark seem to be centered around 30-45%.

Now to determine how teams did in the playoffs, I gave them a ‘score' based on their performance.

Zero = missed playoffs altogether.

One = made the playoffs, but lost in first round.

Two = made it to the LCS, but lost.

Three = made it to the World Series, but lost.

Four = won the World Series.

How does the homer percentage correlate to post-season performance? Lets see....

via lh3.ggpht.com

Before you dig into this, remember that a ‘dot' on the 4 line, should also be dropped to the other 3 lines below it as well, as this is a population graph, so attaining a score of ‘4' means you also made it to the LCS, and the playoffs as well.

What do we notice?

A bit of a parabolic effect. Teams that have made the playoffs pretty much cover the same range as the teams that don't, but there's only a couple blips down there at the 25% range. Looks to be that if you want to make it to the playoffs and have any shot of advancing, you best get about 28-45% of your runs via the homer.

The data seems to support both sides of the argument. Home runs are good for your offense, but overly relying on them might get you there, but you won't hang around for long. As of Sep. 8th, the Phils were scoring 46% of their runs by the homer. If they were to win or even make it to the World Series with that mark, it would be the highest value of any team to do so in the past 14 years.

AAA Scouting Report - 23 JUN 2008

Bilzo — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:31:06 -0000

Had the pleasure of watching the Iron Pigs take on the Durham Bulls last night. Went with the wife and had seats right against the field down by the home team's dugout. After an hour long rain delay to start., here's what we saw:

Pitching:

JA Happ looked *really* good. I believe the first hit and only hit he gave up was either in the top of the fourth of fifth. A few balls hit hard to the outfield, but no screamers. Walked a couple as well, but fanned 9. A really good outing against a decent team.

Swindle came in to pitch the 7th. He was entertaining to watch. Guy was heckling him calling him Jamie Moyer after he threw a 55 mph curve up there. Speeds ranged from 55-89 I think, which is pretty sweet. Unfortunately, the Bulls had him timed really well. First guy made an uneventful out, second and third batters timed his slow stuff and went to right field with back to back singles on very hard hit balls. He got bailed out of it as the next batter lined one to second, and a runner was doubled off. Box score shows a decent inning, 1 IP, 2 H, O ER, but in reality, he got hit hard by 3 of 4 batters.

Ennis pitched the 8-9th. Looked good, but the Bulls were swinging at everything and just ready to call it a night, seeing as how they were down 7 and it was an hour later than normal.

Hitting:

Knott and King both hit no doubter impressive homers to left center. I thought one had a shot at breaking a window on the adjoining offices, but not quite. Jaramillo had an RBI single, but didn't look impressive. Andy Tracy is slower than me. Cervenak looked the best, as most of his hits were pretty well tagged.

Other Notes:

Andy Tracy appeared to pull a hammy running out an infield single. Ball glanced off pitchers glove into dead zone between 1st, 2nd, and pitcher. Run scored on that play, but Tracy is either ridiculously slow or was hurt on the play. He stayed in, so I'm guessing he's Luzinski-esque. He also appeared to be heckling the crowd in the 8th inning, saying something about "take your girlfriend" but I couldn't quite figure it out.

Mike Rouse got the bonehead award as he hit an infield dribbler, tried to leg it out but was called out on a close play (correctly I thought) and he started jawing at the ump. Greg Gross half-heartedly restrained him, the ump turned to walk away and Rouse kept going and then finally gave up. I'd have tossed him out of the game. Next inning the first ball hit comes to him, and he bobbles it, letting a fast runner on base.

Prospects look pretty slim. Other than Happ, I didn't see any one who really excited me. Cervenak doesn't have a spot in MLB, and Swindle looks gimmicky.