SB Nation User Blog: phils11

Who's Contributing The Most To The H/A Splits?

phils11 — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:11:03 -0000

The splits are ugly. Everyone's heard about that.

Using home/road splits for sOPS+, we can see who's contributing the most to the difference:

What is sOPS+?

OPS you more than likely are familiar with.

OPS+ is normalized, so an OPS+ of 100 is average, over 100 for batters is better than average and vice versa. (For pitchers, it's reversed)

sOPS+ is how a performance is compared to the league average for a particular split.

The sample sizes range from small to very small, so this is not evidence that player A and B should be platooned home/away or Madson should close at home / Lidge on the road. Just some stuff i found interesting.

Here are our regulars, in decreasing order of the % difference in sOPS+ from Away to Home. For clarity, a positive percentage is better on the road than home, and a negative is better at home than on the road.

Player	Home sOPS+	Away sOPS+	% Diff sOPS+
Jayson Werth	90	142	36.62%
Chase Utley	136	191	28.80%
Ryan Howard	115	153	24.84%
Shane Victorino	103	135	23.70%
Jimmy Rollins	56	68	17.65%
Raul Ibanez	164	174	5.75%
Pedro Feliz	99	105	5.71%
Carlos Ruiz	140	97	-30.71%

And here is our pitching staff, sorted in the same way, also with home and away BABIP:

Pitcher	Home sOPS+	Away sOPS+	% Diff sOPS+	Home BABIP	Away BABIP
Ryan Madson	128	-1	100.78%	0.362	0.217
J.A. Happ	130	64	50.77%	0.286	0.211
Antonio Bastardo	117	71	39.32%	0.28	0.303
Joe Blanton	142	87	38.73%	0.336	0.288
Jamie Moyer	151	130	13.91%	0.3	0.355
Brett Myers*	136	123	9.56%	0.298	0.231
Brad Lidge	158	154	2.53%	0.333	0.371
Cole Hamels	110	130	-18.18%	0.333	0.364

Raul Ibanez Blogger Goes on OTL

phils11 — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:50:19 -0000

A link to the video: OTL Taping

A link to the original article: Raul Ibanez great start comes with steroid speculation

I'm still reading the original post, but i think i agree most with Andy Behrens, who had this to say:

"Morris wrote a long fantasy post in which he examined Ibanez's 2009 home run binge. It was thorough. He discussed park dimensions, lineups, and the quality of opposing pitching. He gave the post a semi-incendiary headline and he addressed the fact that today -- unless you're a complete fool -- you sometimes think of PEDs when a player gets unusually hot at an odd point in the career arc. There were no accusations. It was basically the same thing Rick Telander did with Ryan Theriot, except with data.

On Tuesday, the Philadelphia Inquirer's John Gonzalez hopped on a soapbox: "Until there's proof to the contrary, shouldn't all of us -- from the traditional mainstream media to bloggers -- be judicious about calling people cheaters?" Indeed we should. But Morris didn't call Ibanez a cheater.

This afternoon, Morris found himself in a ridiculous situation. He was asked to appear on "Outside The Lines" to defend a position that wasn't quite his, debating both Gonzalez and a didactic national columnist who didn't seem like he'd read Morris' piece. Video here. Morris did well. (ESPN gave him no makeup to reduce glare, which is kinda bush league). Hopefully it was a good day traffic-wise for MSF."

-Link

How many years until the Phillies will "PROBABLY" win another WS?

phils11 — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:39:46 -0000

OK first a few points/disclaimers/etc.:

My knowlege of statistics is limited in comparison to many of the people on this site- I had been wondering about this for a while and doing this gave me something to do while watching the phillies spring training game. I'm posting this mainly to get feedback from those on here who know more than me- not to convince people to think something or other about the phillies playoff chances, so please be reasonable and don't be a dick if you disagree.
When I say something "probably" will happen, I mean that the chance of this something happening is greater than 50%.
When I say k= the average chance of winning over n years I'm aware that since C(n) isn't linear, average isn't what will give you exact answers, but I believe the difference between the simple average and what would make it exact is negligible enough to where my main points are still valid, so i kept it as a simple average for simplicities sake.

Here we go, For a long time, I had been wondering about this subject, but recently I was reading THE TEAM TO REPEAT? fanpost and read this:

With all of the guys we have locked down for the next few years I whole heartedly believe we can have nice runs the next 3 years, not that we will necessarily win a WS every year, but we should get at least 1 more.

I had heard lots of similar things said and was a little pessimistic as to their accuracy, and so i did some work and this is what I found:

FOR the Phillies to "probably" win a WS in atleast one of the next 3 years, they would need to average at the least a 20.63% chance of winning the WS over the next 3 years.

Since it is VERY UNLIKELY that the Phillies will have a chance of winning the WS that averages greater than 20% for the next 3 years, The Phillies PROBABLY WILL NOT win a WS in the next 3 years.

My Reasoning/Proof:

To judge the accuracy of this claim, I tried to mathematically model the chance C of winning atleast one WS over the next n years, and came up with this-

The chance "C(n)" of the phillies winning a WS in "n" years can be modeled as C(n)= 1- (1- k)^n, where k = average chance the phillies have of winning a WS for each of the n years (see disclaimer 3)

So, using the equation above, the previous statement (the chance the phillies have of winning a world series over the next 3 years is greater than 50%) can also be written as C(3) > .50.

Now we can solve for k to find what the average chance each year would have to be for this statement to be true. Plugging 3 in for n and .50 in for C(n), we find that k > .2063

So for the previous statement to be true, thus for it to be probable that the Phillies win a WS in the next 3 years, the Phillies average chance of winning (k) over the next 3 years must be greater than 20.63%. (Which we've already ruled highly unlikely).

So, It will probably take the Phillies longer than 3 years to win another WS.

This brings up an interesting question, though-

How many more years must go by before the Phillies "probably" will have won another WS?

Using the same formula as before, we plug in .50 for C(n) again and a variety of reasonable values for k and solve for n:

For example:

If k = 10% (or .1), n= 6.578 rounded up = 7 years.

So- If we (the phillies) have an average chance of 10% of winning the WS over n years, it will take 7 years for our chances of winning atleast one WS to be greater than 50%.

The problem with trying to estimate exactly how long it will take for the Phillies to probably win atleast one WS is that any k value that I (or anyone) gives is going to be disputed. SO, rather than me telling you what I think a good k value for the Phillies will be, I'll let you make the decision.

Here is a list of k (and their corresponding n) values- You can complete the following paragraph to complete your estimate:

The Phillies will average a ___% chance, so it will be ___ long years until the Phillies will have probably won another WS.

3.33% (or 1 in 30) chance = 20.45 years

5% chance = 13.51 years

7% chance = 9.55 years

10% chance = 6.58 years

12% chance = 5.42 years

15% chance = 4.27 years

17% chance = 3.72 years

20% chance = 3.10 years

Note: Keep in mind that since there are 30 mlb teams, if all the teams had equal chances of winning, it would take 20.45 years for a team to probably have won a WS.
Thanks for bearing with my boring-math-textbook-esque writing abilities and any feedback.

Poll

SB Nation User Blog: phils11

Who's Contributing The Most To The H/A Splits?

Raul Ibanez Blogger Goes on OTL

How many years until the Phillies will "PROBABLY" win another WS?

How long do you think it will probably be until the Phillies win again?