SB Nation User Blog: LoneStranger

Rajai Davis - Fun with Projecting Year-End Batting Avg

LoneStranger — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:30:26 -0000

I was reading the Sweeney post which started talking about Rajai Davis and A's .300 hitters. This got me looking at the numbers and wondering what Rajai could possibly hit by the end of the year.

At this moment, he has played in 106 games with 95 hits and has a .308 batting average in 308 at bats and 344 plate appearances. If you go back to July 22nd (when Rajai started playing almost every day) he's hitting .340 in 191 AB and 213 PA over 50 games. If he keeps up this pace, what will he hit at the end of the year?

In those last 50 A's games Rajai's started 45 of them and hit .340 in 213PA and 191AB. He's had 4.26 PA/G and 3.82 AB/G.

Let's say he sustains a .340 AVG, 4.26 PA/G and 3.82 AB/G over the next 19 games. I don't think that's unreasonable (and it's my playground so I say it's ok). That would be about 73 more ABs and 81 more PAs, giving him a total of 381 AB and 425 PA. This would also give him about 25 more hits for 120 H on the year. He would then hit about .315 AVG (120 H/381AB) for the year. Pretty nice.

Let's take this further.

In order to be considered eligible for year end stat awards (and a legitimate .300 batting season) the player needs 502 PAs for an average of 3.1 PA/G. MLB rule 10.22(a) (PDF warning):

The individual batting, slugging or on-base percentage champion shall be the player with the highest batting average, slugging percentage or on-base percentage, as the case may be, provided the player is credited with as many or more total appearances at the plate in league championship games as the number of games scheduled for each club in his club’s league that season, multiplied by 3.1 in the case of a Major League player and by 2.7 in the case of a National Association player. Total appearances at the plate shall include official times at bat, plus bases on balls, times hit by pitcher, sacrifice hits, sacrifice flies and times awarded first base because of interference or obstruction. Notwithstanding the foregoing requirement of minimum appearances at the plate, any player with fewer than the required number of plate appearances whose average would be the highest, if he were charged with the required number of plate appearances shall be awarded the batting, slugging or on-base percentage championship, as the case may be.

In order to give a shot to those who fall short of the required minimum, MLB has in the rule a provision (the bolded text) where any missing PA can be made up as 0-fer ABs. This has helped players get the title despite not having 502 PAs. In 1996 Tony Gynn hit .353 in 451 ABs and 498 PAs. Those four missing PAs ended up as hitless ABs and he still had the highest average at .349 to take the title.

Rajai's case is more drastic, but let's play just for fun. He would have 425 PAs in my projection so there would be 77 missing PAs considered as 0-fer ABs.

381 AB plus 77 AB = 458 AB. This would give him a .262 AVG (120 H / 458 AB) when it comes to being eligible for awards. Not so nice anymore.

Why stop here though? What would it take for Rajai to finish the year at .300 with the number of BA I think he'll get? Let's go back to what he's hitting right now: 95 H in 308 AB for .308 AVG. I'm projecting 73 more AB this year.

(95 H + ? H) / (308 AB + 73 AB) = .300

Solve for ? and we get 19.3 more hits to stay above .300 AVG. That means he has to average just over one hit over the next 19 games. I think that's totally doable. We're still under the minimum number of PAs for a legitimate award-eligible season AVG though. What would he have to do to get that?

Rajai is still going to be missing 77 AB that we'll have to consider 0-fers.

(95 H + ? H) / (308 AB + 73 AB + 77 AB) = .300

Solve for ? again and we get 42.4 more hits needed, or an average of 2.23 H/G over the rest of the season. That would be a blistering .581 AVG. Wow.

I'm certainly looking forward to watching Rajai next year, especially if he is the starter from day one. It'll be neat to see what he can do not only in the BA area, but in stolen bases.

I hope you had fun reading this. It certainly was fun ~~crunching numbers~~ doing basic algebra and playing the 'what if?' game.

Verizon Coliseum?

LoneStranger — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:55:15 -0000

Verizon Coliseum?

Rumor is that Verizon is discussing five year naming rights for the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum.

The article says that the last deal ran out in 2007, but I'm pretty sure it ran out in September of 2008.

BART and Unions Reach Tentative Agreement

LoneStranger — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:02:50 -0000

BART and Unions Reach Tentative Agreement

For those of you who BART to work and to games, they have reached an agreement with the unions in the labor dispute. It still needs to be ratified by the members of the Unions before it becomes official.

Mind Wanderings 5/13/09 - KC @ OAK

LoneStranger — Thu, 14 May 2009 05:36:20 -0000

I went to the game tonight, sans wife and 10 month old. Bought a ticket for the bleachers and sat in the third row, all the way to the left in right field. Instead of just sitting there and listening to the radio, I thought it might be neat if I took a small page from emperor nobody's book and wrote some thoughts down. It looks partially like a play-by-play, but mostly it's just things I thought about. Nowhere near as poetic as EN, but his is not my style.

6:45 - Enjoy this sun while it lasts. Feels good shining on the face.
6:46 - Ate two of my three dollar dogs, which is against doctor's orders. Have to start eating healthy.
6:47 - Good seat. I can see the whole field and I have a place to kick my feet up.
6:55 - This kid who threw out the first pitch might be a good #5 starter.
6:58 - 6:58? Stadium looks more like 5:58-type full.
7:02 - Cust has as many cheers as Giambi.
7:02 - I hope BoCro makes a good 'second leadoff' guy tonight.
7:04 - Oh hai, my 2009 Athletics.
7:05 - I bet if we all pitched in, we could make this "Athletics Nation Coliseum."
7:06 - Strike one! Fly to Holliday! Yay!
7:08 - Two outs! Good start!
7:10 - Three! Only seven more innings (assuming they go into the ninth with a lead)
7:11 - Yesterday's highlights are better when they win. Wow, Cabrera almost stepped on that bad while scoring. That would have been a crappy DL maneuver.
7:12 - A's out one. Damn!
7:14 - :(
7:15 - Hay, it's the nWo Wolfpac! No, it's just Giambi coming up to bat.
7:18 - Section 126 is packed. They should spread out to...you know...give themselves some more room.
7:22 - No one is eating all they can eat. Is it even open?
7:23 - Radio seems slightly more delayed than normal.
7:24 - Giambi didn't even try to get that grounder. It went right past him.
7:25 - Ugh. KC 1, OAK 0.
7:27 - Hell yea, I wanna see the "Grass Grow" sports highlight. Yes, it won! That's awesome.
7:34 - BART racing from SF to OAK? I just did that route.
7:39 - It's starting to get chilly.
7:40 - Attendance doesn't seem to be too bad tonight. 12k?
7:42 - Kennedy gets a hit.
7:43 - Triple H is coming up to bat! Oh, it's just Travis Buck.
7:44 - Buck flies out. Suzuki dashes for second.. oh crap he's not going to make it.... SAFE at second.
7:46 - No BoCro.
7:48 - Ah crap. I guess it's time for my third and last dollar dog.
7:53 - Looks like $2 tickets are representing.
7:55 - Lost the feed for half of the second contestant in the dance off.
7:57 - nWo Wolfpac! Oh man, it gets me every time.
8:00 - Shit, trainer out to see Holliday. Seems to be ok....
8:07 - Walk #1 for Outman at 67 pitches and 4.2 IP.
8:08 - 68 pitches through 5.
8:09 - New Dot Racing. It's about time the updated this. We're almost out of the 'aughts.' Red Wins.
8:11 - Bunt? Why is Cust showing bunt?...and he's down on strikes.
8:12 - Comebacker, Sweeny out.
8:13 - Kennedy double off the wall. Would have been nice to have someone on.
8:13 - Come on Buck! Time to play the game!
8:14 - Another comebacker....inning over.
8:19 - One. The drumstick is under cap number one.
8:21 - Close, BoCro, close.
8:22 - OCab singles. This could be good.
8:23 - Suzuki singles.
8:25 - Giambi doubles off the wall! Yes! OCab scores! Two in scoring position. Bannister must be getting tired. Coach visit. Leave him in. Yes!
8:27 - Holliday walks! Bases juiced for JACK CUST! Please, oh please x2.
8:31 - Good AB, but flys out. Zook scores, Giambi barely advances to third. A's take the lead!
8:33 - Bannister apparently injured. Ramirez in. Let's hope he's not quite ready. We need a couple more.
8:36 - And Sweeney flys out to end the inning. But we got the lead!
8:38 - Wuertz in for Outman. Probably a good move. Outman pitched very well, let's not blow it.
8:41 - Oh shit, a couple of old horn guys moved in behind me. They yell.
8:46 - Texas beat Seattle. I guess that's the lesser of two evils.
8:47 - 7th inning stretch. Horn guy does a good rendition.
8:49 - There's a dude nearby that kinda looks like Ravishing Rick Rude. The mustache version. R.I.P.
8:52 - Kennedy walks. He should come out to Mr. Kennedy's music.
8:53 - I should have got more than three dollar dogs.
8:54 - BoCro gets a fresh pitcher. Wright.
8:59 - Wild Pitch, Kennedy moves to second. Some insurance runs would be nice.
9:00 - BoCro walks!
9:00 - OCab gets a hit toward 3rd, bobbled, everyone is safe for Suzuki! Bases Juiced!
9:04 - Suzuki pegged, Kennedy scores. We'll take it. (easy for me to say, since I wasn't the one hit.)
9:06 - Giambi pops up to 3b. No runs. :(
9:08 - Holliday hits an infield slow bouncer, bobbled by SS. SCORE!
9:09 - Cust clears the bases with a double! ! ! ! ! ! | : | ! ! | : , ! ! ! /. / //|/|////
9:10 - Apparently Wright was Wrong. Cruz in to pitch.
9:13 - Sweeney walks, and they've batted around.
9:15 - Fly out to end the inning, but man, I like those kinds of innings.
9:16 - They just did trivia for a Buck signed ball. The two correct kids have to split the ball, but the one who guessed wrong looks SO SAD. Give him a ball!
9:18 - Giambi out, BoCro moved to 1B, Hannahanahanannan at 3B.
9:21 - The wind is picking up. Should I leave early?
9:27 - Come on Springer! Let's end this half of the 8th. Oh whew. It's over.
9:28 - I miss the Jungle video for the Stomper Puppet. It was much better than this crowd dancing crap.
9:30 - Looks like half the 'dollah crew' is gone.
9:35 - Let's get 3 quick ones, Bailey. My hands are freezing and I have to release this Diet Pepsi back into the wild.
9:37 - Guillen pops out.
9:38 - Butler out looking.
9:40 - DAMMIT. Jacobs HR.
9:40 - Zook out to calm Bailey.
9:43 - Callaspo strikes out. A's win! Fireworks! Celebrate Good Times! Go home! To BART! It's cold!

So I learned that I don't really have anything clever to say. I also learned that I watch too much wrestling. It's an interesting experiement, but I don't know if I'll do it again. I'm not sure I want to read about what I was thinking during the game, let alone anyone else wants to read it. Attendance turned out to be 16,056, so I was off by 4k. Glad I went to the game tonight. It might be the first game they've won that I've been at.

Spring Training 2009 Meet-ups

LoneStranger — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:20:15 -0000

Spring Training 2009 Meet-ups

I'm going to be heading down to Phoenix for Spring Training next week. I know I'm not the only one so I'm putting this shot together to see who is going to be where and for what games. It would be great to meet up with other ANers and put faces to names. And to get out from behind this protective thing called internet anonymity. I'll be attending the Monday (vs Dodgers), Tuesday (vs Diamondbacks) and Saturday (vs Giants) games at Phoenix Muni, and the Thursday (at Rangers) game in Surprise. As a bonus, I'll be watching the Sharks play the Coyotes. What are your plans?

Sharks Expected W/L using Poisson Numbers

LoneStranger — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:41:55 -0000

I follow a great NFL stats blog called Advanced NFL Stats, that uses live win-probability modeling to determine which of the two teams is most likely to win. This football off-season the author of that blog has started looking at other sports, hockey being one of them. The post on March 9th was his first about modeling hockey games. In the post, he describes the Poisson equation and how to determine the probability of a team scoring or allowing a certain amount of goals, and through that, the possibility of them winning games. Go ahead and read his post. I'll wait..... OK! So I thought it might be neat to see what the Sharks numbers were...

To recap,the Poisson equation looks like this,

Pr = ((x^k) * e^(-x)) / k!

where x is the average goals over the time period of 60 minutes, k is the particular goal amount in question, and Pr is the percent chance of it happening.

He uses the Boston Bruins as the example team. Their average goals scored in 60 minutes is 3.3, while they allow 2.2 goals. After going through the whole process, he comes to the conclusion that they win 60% of their games and tie 15.8% at the end of regulation. Assuming the team wins in overtime about 50% of the time, then the Bruins chance to win any particular game is 60% plus 7.9%, or 67.9%. Before today's games, they were at 67 games played and 43 wins, or 64.2%. Like the Pythagorean Theorem in baseball, the Poisson number shows that the Bruins might be a better team than their record shows.

So what about the Sharks? I took the Poisson equation using the Sharks goals for (3.26) and goals against (2.45) as of this morning. Here's the graph.

via www.lonestranger.net

If you're a fan of the team, you like the high red line on the left hand side, and the teal line's peak to be closer to the right.

I charted the 81 different possibilities of zero to eight goals by either team and used the values from the above data to figure out the possibility of that outcome happening.

GF	GA	Pct	G diff
0	0	0.003313	0
0	1	0.008116	-1
0	2	0.009942	-2
0	3	0.008119	-3
0	4	0.004973	-4
0	5	0.002437	-5
0	6	0.000995	-6
0	7	0.000348	-7
0	8	0.000107	-8
1	0	0.010799	1
1	1	0.026458	0
1	2	0.032411	-1
1	3	0.026469	-2
1	4	0.016212	-3
1	5	0.007944	-4
1	6	0.003244	-5
1	7	0.001135	-6
1	8	0.000348	-7
2	0	0.017603	2
2	1	0.043127	1
2	2	0.052831	0
2	3	0.043145	-1
2	4	0.026426	-2
2	5	0.012949	-3
2	6	0.005287	-4
2	7	0.001851	-5
2	8	0.000567	-6
3	0	0.019128	3
3	1	0.046865	2
3	2	0.057409	1
3	3	0.046884	0
3	4	0.028717	-1
3	5	0.014071	-2
3	6	0.005746	-3
3	7	0.002011	-4
3	8	0.000616	-5
4	0	0.01559	4
4	1	0.038195	3
4	2	0.046789	2
4	3	0.038211	1
4	4	0.023404	0
4	5	0.011468	-1
4	6	0.004683	-2
4	7	0.001639	-3
4	8	0.000502	-4
5	0	0.010164	5
5	1	0.024903	4
5	2	0.030506	3
5	3	0.024913	2
5	4	0.015259	1
5	5	0.007477	0
5	6	0.003053	-1
5	7	0.001069	-2
5	8	0.000327	-3
6	0	0.005523	6
6	1	0.013531	5
6	2	0.016575	4
6	3	0.013536	3
6	4	0.008291	2
6	5	0.004063	1
6	6	0.001659	0
6	7	0.000581	-1
6	8	0.000178	-2
7	0	0.002572	7
7	1	0.006301	6
7	2	0.007719	5
7	3	0.006304	4
7	4	0.003861	3
7	5	0.001892	2
7	6	0.000773	1
7	7	0.00027	0
7	8	8.28E-05	-1
8	0	0.001048	8
8	1	0.002568	7
8	2	0.003146	6
8	3	0.002569	5
8	4	0.001573	4
8	5	0.000771	3
8	6	0.000315	2
8	7	0.00011	1
8	8	3.37E-05	0
	Total	0.992568
	Win	54.3%
	Loss	28.8%
	Tied	16.2%

At the end I've added up the percentages for a win, loss and tie at the end of regulation.

Like with the Bruins, we can assume that the Sharks win half of their overtime games, or 8.1%. Add that to the win percentage, and you get 62.4%. As of this morning, the Sharks were at 43 wins in 65 games, or 66.2%. Based on these numbers, their projection being ~~higher~~ lower than the actual shows the Sharks may not be quite as good as their record shows.

That's it. The Sharks are performing better than they are expected to based on the amount of goals scored and goals allowed. Over long enough period of time, I would expect the Sharks to drop closer to their projected numbers, as I would expect the Bruins to rise to theirs. This doesn't bode well for the Team in Teal, but it's a good thing they still play the games!

Something interesting to do next would be to figure out the numbers compare for each month, or even from the beginning of the season until the slump started. Did the slump drag down their numbers? There may not be enough results in the pool to get reliable numbers, but it would still be fun to see nonetheless.

MLBTradeRumors Poll: Which Team Will Sign Rafael Furcal?

LoneStranger — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:10:24 -0000

MLBTradeRumors Poll: Which Team Will Sign Rafael Furcal?

A poll by MLB trade rumors to see where their readers think Furcal is going to go. Guess who is leading?

Team dollars-per-win for 2008

LoneStranger — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:34:35 -0000

I originally posted this on my blog, but I figured I'd get better readership here. Oh, and probably more people poking holes in my thoughts. ;) Be gentle! I am by no means close to the skills of grover or salb918 or the other Staturday folks!

---

A recent post on the Beyond the Boxscore blog pointed me to another blog entry on Statspeak called Building a sabermatrician's workbench. And as the web will do, I was then pointed to Baseball-Databank.org.

I'm not new to MySQL databases or SQL queries, but the existence of a free baseball database was news to me, so I downloaded and imported the beast. It's quite an interesting blob of data and you can use it to analyize and discover tidbits about your favorite teams and players.

I started off with something simple. I wanted to find out how payroll and team wins are related, specifically from this past year. I messed around with the database, and came up with a query for data that is probably easy to find out and already analyzed on lots of other websites. But where is the fun in that? So I created a query that would take the sum of all players' salaries on each team, and then divide it by the number of wins that team had. A simple calculation, but a little more wordy when written out as a query:

SELECT t.teamID, t.W, t.L, (t.W/t.G) as wpct,
sum(s.salary) as payroll,
sum(s.salary)/t.W as dpw
FROM Teams t, Salaries s
WHERE t.teamID = s.teamID
AND t.yearID = s.yearID
AND s.yearID = 2008
GROUP BY s.teamID
ORDER BY dpw DESC

I won't go into detail on what each line of the query does, because you can find that out elsewhere if you are interested. It query outputs the wins, losses, win percent, payroll and dollars per win that the team spent for 2008. Here are the results, with dollars in millions:

team	W	L	wpct	payroll	dpw
NYA	89	73	0.5494	207.9	2.336
SEA	61	101	0.3765	117.7	1.929
DET	74	88	0.4568	137.7	1.861
NYN	89	73	0.5494	137.8	1.548
ATL	72	90	0.4444	102.4	1.422
LAN*	84	78	0.5185	118.6	1.412
BOS*	95	67	0.5864	133.4	1.404
CHA*	89	74	0.5460	121.2	1.362
CHN*	97	64	0.6025	118.3	1.220
LAA*	100	62	0.6173	119.2	1.192
SDN	63	99	0.3889	73.7	1.169
SLN	86	76	0.5309	99.6	1.158
TOR	86	76	0.5309	97.8	1.137
SFN	72	90	0.4444	76.6	1.064
PHI*	92	70	0.5679	97.9	1.064
HOU	86	75	0.5342	88.9	1.034
CIN	74	88	0.4568	74.1	1.002
BAL	68	93	0.4224	67.2	0.988
CLE	81	81	0.5000	79.0	0.975
WAS	59	102	0.3665	55.0	0.932
COL	74	88	0.4568	68.7	0.928
MIL*	90	72	0.5556	80.9	0.899
TEX	79	83	0.4877	67.7	0.857
ARI	82	80	0.5062	66.2	0.807
KCA	75	87	0.4630	58.2	0.777
PIT	67	95	0.4136	48.7	0.727
MIN	88	75	0.5399	56.9	0.647
OAK	75	86	0.4658	48.0	0.640
TBA*	97	65	0.5988	43.8	0.452
FLO	84	77	0.5217	21.8	0.260

What does this tell us? I've highlighted the teams that made it into the postseason. Most of them were in the top half and around 1.2-1.4 million per win.

There are two reasons you could have a high dpw:

1) High Payroll. The more you pay, the more each win will cost you.
2) Low Wins. The less you win, the more those you do win will have cost you.

Let's look at a few teams.

The Yankees with the highest per-win value (2.336m) had a tough year but came out six wins short of tying Boston for the wild card (assuming those wins didn't come from Boston). That number of wins would have lowered their dpw to about 2.2m. Either way, their strategy, for the most part, is to pay for veterans who have proved themselves to be among the best in the game. This year, it didn't work out for them.

The Tampa Bay Rays, on the other hand, made the most out of a low payroll by taking their 452k per win to a World Series berth. I imagine that their dollars-per-win will go up over the next few years as their young stars start to get into the mature part of their contracts, though I haven't researched that. Also, perhaps the higher revenue from an excited fanbase translates into more money for free agents.

Seattle has the second highest dpw value with their 118m payrool and only 61 wins. Even though the Yankees have the highest dpw, I think the Mariners are the most offensive (as in offending, not in run production) team this year. They are in a smaller market and have less revenue coming in than the Yankees do and the losing record and current roster makes me think that they are a lot of big changes away from being competetive.

The Oakland Athletics are pretty low on the dollars-per-win chart with a sub-.500 year that threatenend for awhile to be a winning year. They are adding payroll this year and should pick up more wins, though I still expect them to be near the lower quarter of this graph next year.

So what does dollars-per-win tell us? Is payroll releated to team wins? Yes, but not always. A team like the Yankees can be successful year after year by throwing money at the best players, but that will not guarantee them a 100 win season each time. They can do that though because they are in a large market and can count on the revenue coming in to make up for the higher cost. Smaller market teams need to be smarter and more efficient with their payroll in order to compete for a playoff spot on a yearly basis since they don't have the same kind of revenues.

I don't think there is anything wrong with having a high dollars-per-win ratio. I think it depends on how you're getting it. If the team isn't making it to the postseason (or getting close to it) then the players they are paying for are probably not worth what they are earning. I think dollars-per-win could be considered an effiency thing, i.e, what is the team doing with the money they are paying out. In the end (competetivly), nothing matters more than a World Series but you'll never get there without the wins, so wins become important. And in the end (business-wise) you just want to make money, and wins will keep people coming to the park.

Where to go from here? First, I should take a look at previous years and see what the patterns are. Do most teams come from the top, or is there always a team or two that comes from the depths? It would be interesting to look at the similar calculation of net revenue-per-win, but I don't know where to get those numbers. The results would take into account their market and attendance and put it up against wins. Teams that have a higher attendance dispite a poor team would probably rate well. Maybe net revenue-per-win would mean more for the bean counters than the stat heads.

Am I assuming too much with dollars-per-win? Have I made any mistakes? Any other thoughts?

OH GOD NO! Nick Swisher a Yankee

LoneStranger — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:50:25 -0000

OH GOD NO! Nick Swisher a Yankee

Nick Swisher traded from the White Sox to the Yankees for Jeff Marquez.

Lodging recommendations for Anaheim?

LoneStranger — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:21:00 -0000

I'm going to San Diego at the end of the month, and since the A's will be in Anaheim that week, I'm going to make the drive up there on Thursday (May 1st) to watch the game. I have to be in Escondido for Friday night, however, and I don't want to drive back down there after the game.

Anyone have any recommendations for places near the ballpark to stay? How about places to stay away from?

There are a few near within walking distance. I would probably prefer to be able to walk. Ayers, TownePlace Suites, Hilton and Doubletree. Are those any good? Bad?

Thanks in advance!