Bargain Shoppers

January 23, 2012

Sometimes Geoff Baker’s asshole migrates up toward his mouth, and then he starts talking. 

“The sad part of Moneyball, which really was an entertaining book, is that it seems to have convinced a generation of fans that being cost-effective actually means something in a sport where nobody is competing on an even economic footing.”

So cost-effectiveness is no help in a sport where some teams spend $200M and some spend $40M? That makes no sense. Baseball, with all its uneven economic footing, is exactly the environment where the Moneyball strategy is essential for some teams.

Baker later argues that many of these owners could be spending more. Ok, cool. Does it really matter what they could do? They can do what they want with their money, and the GMs simply have to work with those limits. Sure it would be nice if the Mariners ownership group decided to up payroll and make a guy like Prince Fielder more affordable. Maybe they would even make money. But if ownership doesn’t want to pony up, then Jackie Z has his hands tied. Baker makes it sounds like the owners are playing Moneyball. The owners are just being stingy, and so it’s the GMs that are forced to play Moneyball, a very real and effective strategy (see: Tampa Bay).

So, Geoff, of course we are concerned with cost-effectiveness. We could fly to Japan and protest the Mariners owners’ fiscal conservation, or we could support a strategy that maximizes the product on the field with the given resources ownership has made available.

I completely agree that owners are mostly greedy jerkfaces who spend public money on their stadiums and reap the benefits. Would I like to change that? Hell yes, I would. But down at the field level, winning teams must be created within given constraints, and adding wins with low-cost talent is good place to start. For some GMs, it’s the only place to start.

As a pro-Moneyballer-cost-effectiver, I support a GM’s efforts to find bargains, while I loathe the owners that make it so necessary. There are two separate issues at play; let’s not confuse them.

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Posted by uoduckfan33

A Savior in Seattle?

January 14, 2012

Yesterday, the Ms traded fireballer Michael Pineda and single-A pitching prospect Jose Campos to the Yankees for C/DH Jesus Montero and pitcher Hector Noesi. Even though Michael Pineda had such a promising first year in the bigs, Montero has the potential to be a great hitter, and oh boy do we need (any) hitters.

Let’s meet the cast.

What we lost:

Michael Pineda started the 2011 season in Seattle and impressed right away, posting a 2.01 ERA in the first month with 30 Ks and 12 walks. His average fastball velocity checked in at 4th most fastester in the league, and he finished the season with a 3.42FIP/ 3.53 xFIP. He is gooder than most.

Jose Campos pitched well in Rookie and low-A ball for 138 innings. He racked up 144 Ks versus just 32 walks. He is good, but untested.

What we got:

Jesus Montero has been compared to Miguel Cabrera, and that’s enough right there to excite my loins. His .328/.406/.590 in 68 PAs with the Yankees last season is not the best projection for his first full major league season, but the guy can hit. In AAA he slashed .288/.351/.493, hitting dingers 4% of time—well above the league clip. One knock on his game has been his contact. He struck out 20% of the time in AAA, and 25% of the time with the Yankees. A more appropriate comp for hitting might be Nelson Cruz, who struck out 22% of the time last season but took a free pass just 6% of all PAs. Cruz’s minor league K and BB rates were similar to Montero’s, and they both derive their value from power. I have no problems with a cost-controlled Nelson Cruz, especially if he catches.

Fangraphs rated Hector Noesi as the Yankees’ 9th best prospect going into last season. He was bumped up to the majors after just 24 innings at AAA Rochester, and pitched mostly from the bullpen. Throughout much of his minor league career, he started, so the hope is obviously that he can become a back-end starter. His ceiling is not high, but he is major-league ready, and he is versatile.

I really like this trade for a few important reasons: Pineda is a pitcher, and Montero has an additional year before arbitration.

The Mariners have a built-in advantage playing in Safeco Field. They can acquire low-cost southpaws to fill their rotation out, and get a lot more out of those guys that most other teams could, thanks to the way Safeco plays. With Felix leading the charge, James Paxton and Danny Hultzen waiting in the minors, and that home-field advantage, the Mariners were smart to swap pitching for hitting. On top of that, pitchers are more volatile that hitters. There are far more Mark Prior and Rich Harden stories than there are stories of great young hitters being hampered by injury. The Mariners effectively traded away some risk, but arguably received equal upside in return.

Another perk comes in the form of Montero’s contract. Because he did not play much for the Yankees last season, he still has three full seasons before he hits arbitration. Pineda has just two such years remaining. If hypothetically both players produce the same value on the field, Montero will be doing so for significantly less money. Example:

Year

Pineda ($M)

Montero ($M)

2012

0.5

0.5

  

2013

0.5

0.5

  

2014

3.5

0.5

  

2015

5.5

3.5

  

2016

7.5

5.5

  

2017

10*

7.5

  

Total

27.5

18

  

 

While the figures are somewhat arbitrary, with Pineda hitting arbitration and free agency* a year earlier, the Ms would have to pay him something like $10M more than Montero for the same number of years. Team control keeps the costs of Montero down, the surplus value high, and extra cap room free for signing other free agents. If they perform equally-ish on the field, advantage Mariners.

Obviously a lot of Montero’s value is tied up in whether or not he will catch. Even if he DHes, it makes sense to trade pitching for hitting, and the mariners definitely got a good hitter.

#edgarpartdeux

 

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Posted by uoduckfan33

Designated Hero

January 10, 2012

Another Hall-of-Fame vote passed, and again Edgar Martinez received well less than 75% of the votes–the required tally for enshrinement in Cooperstown. The Hall is an interesting place. A place with an unwritten set of rules. A place where the career leader in hits cannot be found, where a guy who hit 70 home runs in one season and 583 HR in his career garners only 20% of possible votes, where the player with the third-best career average of all time is absent.

If we’re trying to identify that mysterious set of rules, the examples above prove that stats aren’t everything when it comes to the qualifications for entry. Ethics and morality come into play. Character. In a word, fame. While the kindest, most sincere player won’t make the Hall based solely on legends of his goodwill to baseballkind, a perceived asshole or cheater with all the right stats won’t either. In reality, it probably should be called the Hall of 75.7%-Stats-17.2%-Gut-and-9.7%-Fame*.

*You savvy numbers people out there may have just realized that doesn’t add to 100%. Reader, meet the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Edgar has been downgraded by most for being a DH. Others have knocked him for his relatively short career and short peak compared to other HOFers. These are really the main two objections, so let’s get right to ‘em.

Let’s start with longevity. Edgar became a full-time player in 1990 and retired after the 2004 season, giving him 15 seasons of action. Without looking through every HOFer, I would bet the average career is significantly longer than 15 years. Probably 20+. But get this: Edgar played in the minor leagues for nearly six full seasons before he was called up for good, and those weren’t six years of futility. Here are his minor league statistics from AA and AAA (and then his overall totals), courtesy of Baseball Reference:

Year

Age

PA

HR

BA

OBP

SLG

OPS

BB%

SO%

1985

22

535

3

0.273

0.389

0.374

0.763

15.5%

6.9%

1986

23

553

6

0.264

0.383

0.39

0.773

16.1%

6.3%

1987

24

531

10

0.329

0.434

0.473

0.907

15.4%

9.0%

1988

25

407

8

0.363

0.467

0.517

0.983

16.2%

9.8%

1989

26

141

3

0.345

0.457

0.522

0.979

15.6%

9.2%

Totals

2842

46

0.300

0.412

0.439

0.851

15.7%

8.9%

Who the hell keeps a guy with those numbers down in AAA?!? In 1987, in his 24-year-old season in AAA-Calgary, you can see that Edgar hit .329 with an OBP of .434. He walked nearly twice as much as he struck out. Yet he was left to the minors for much of the next two seasons, getting 548 minor league plate appearances and only 234 in the show. I have to believe that any other corner infielder putting up those numbers at age 24 in AAA got a chance in the majors…like the very next game, maybe.

Oh, but you say, “He did have a chance! He got at bats in each of 1987, 88 and 89!” Yes he did. A whopping 280 PAs, a .268 average, and a .336 OBP. Wanna guess the American League averages during the 1988 season? .259 / .324. At the time he was playing both first and third for the Ms, hitting above the league clip in both batting average and OBP, and yet he was sent right back down every time until 1990.

Edgar put together 21 seasons of professional baseball, with the majority of 6 seasons coming in the minors. While we don’t make arguments for implementing other players’ minor league stats, this is clearly a unique case. In his first full MLB season, 1990, Edgar came to the plate 570 times and slashed .302/.397/.433. Yeah, a .397 OBP for a rookie. I’m pretty frickin’ sure he was ready to do that two seasons earlier. If counting stats and longevity are keeping him out of the Hall, how much is he being punished for the ineptitude of the Mariner’s front office?

Even without taking into account Seattle’s mismanagement of his early years, there are precedents in the Hall already. Duke Snider played 16 seasons once he was called up for good. Sandy Koufax pitched 10 seasons after first recording at least 100 innings in a season. Relatively short careers have made the Hall of Fame in cases where that player dominated his era.

Snider’s career wRC+ was 139. Basically that just means he was 39% better than the average hitter. He recorded top seasons of 169, 165, 164, and 156. The great thing about this stat is that it is adjusted for both ball park and time period (like OPS+, but a more telling statistic). Edgar Martinez averaged a wRC+ of 148 over his entire career–that’s 48% better than a bunch of roided out sluggers–and he recorded top seasons of 184, 169, 165 and 165. Power was never Edgar’s primary weapon, but we can easily see that he made up for it in other ways.

This brings us to the discussion of his DHyness. Many critics have rightly pointed out that to be a HOFer and a DH, one has to set himself apart as a hitter even more so than a position player. He has to really dominate as a hitter during his career. Unfortunately there is no precedent for a full-time DH with Edgar’s skill set. Many DHs don’t move into that role until they are past their primes, so simply comparing him to other DHs straight up wouldn’t be fair. Edgar got to play DH during his prime. Let’s see how he did in comparison to other key players of his era. To be fair, I am going to look at the best stretches of 4, 6, 8, and 10 years, plus career numbers.

Player

4 Years

wRC+

Player

8 Years

wRC+

Thomas

1991-94

181

Thomas

1991-98

170

Edgar

1995-98

167

Edgar

1995-2002

162

Sheffield

1995-98

163

Sheffield

1996-2003

158

Player

6 Years

wRC+

Player

10 Years

wRC+

Thomas

1991-96

177

Thomas

1991-2000

165

Edgar

1995-2000

164

Edgar

1992-2001

160

Sheffield

1995-2000

160

Sheffield

1996-2005

154

For their careers, Thomas hit 154, Edgar 148, and Sheffield 141.

Thomas is almost certainly a HOFer, while Sheffield may never quite get that 75%. Edgar’s offensive production was nestled right between those two for all the best stretches of their respective careers. Is that good enough to overcome his role as DH? I used Thomas as a comparison because he played a little DH later in his career, played the least-demanding position on the diamond for the rest of his career, and played that position quite poorly based on most defensive statistics available. Add in that Edgar lost at least two seasons of MLB at bats because his team somehow missed all the signs of potential, and perhaps his counting stats also inch closer to Thomas’.

I admit that this evidence is not 100% compelling, though I hope it at least serves to summarize Edgar’s amazing accomplishments with the bat. Edgar is a borderline Hall-of-Famer, and I believe he is significantly closer than the 36.5% of yes-votes he received this year. If, at this point, you are still wishy-washy on the matter, consider the “fame” part of the implicit requirements. Edgar always seemed like one of the more personable players in the league, though I obviously saw his interviews far more than those of other players. He made funny commercials, and more importantly he was never linked to steroid use.

But his most famous accomplishment occurred right here in 1995. Hiroshi Yamauchi and gang bought the Mariners in 1992, but threatened to sell the team after the 1995 season if public funding was not made available for a new stadium. On September 19th, 1995, King County voted against a sales tax increase to help fund the new stadium. A sale was imminent, and the potential for relocation was probably high (see: Seattle Super Sonics).

On the night of the vote, the Ms beat Texas 5-4 in eleven innings to pull within one game of the division-leading Angels. Edgar quietly went about his business, going 1 for 3 with two walks. Seattle went on to win 8 of its last 11 games, clinching its first AL West Division title in a one-game playoff against the Angels. In those 11 games, Edgar hit a scintillating .405/.447/.548.

In their first playoff berth ever, the Mariners drew the New York Yankees in the Division Series, and quickly fell behind 2-0. After a gutsy 7-5 win in game three, Edgar took over the series. In game 4, he hit two bombs and knocked in seven, helping the Mariners outscore the powerful Yankees 11-8. Game 5 saw the Ms fall into a 4-2 hole late before a Griffey homer in the 8th and a bases-loaded walk from Doug Strange in the 9th knotted the game up at 4. Randy Johnson pitched extras on short rest, but gave up the go-ahead run in the top of the eleventh. Score: 4-5.

Then, in a half-inning I have probably watched 13 times, Joey Cora led off with a drag bunt single down the first base line, narrowly avoiding Mattingly’s tag. The Kid followed it up with a single to center setting the stage for Edgar.

Strike one. Looking, of course.

Then the 0-1 pitch…(this is where you watch that video again). The late Dave Niehaus commentates the Double that saved baseball in Seattle.

Though the Ms lost in the ALCS to the Indians, on October 14th a special session of the state legislature was called to come to an agreement about funding. On October 23rd, just 34 days after shooting down one proposal, King County voters approved a plan to help fund a new stadium, and today the Mariners can be found in Seattle, Washington playing at Safeco Field.

If fame makes any difference to the Hall of Fame, I’d say it’s about time to break precedent and add the greatest DH of all time, Edgar Martinez.

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Posted by uoduckfan33

And Don’t Forget…

January 8, 2012

Seattle signed one of it’s former players last week when it rescued George Sherrill from free agency. Well, maybe rescued isn’t quite the right word…

But for serious, Sherrill could be a very useful piece in the pen at a cheap price ($1.1M + some incentives). In 36 innings last year with the Braves, he posted a 3.00 ERA with a 3.08 FIP to back it up (read: not a fluke). Sherrill is really good at one thing: getting lefties out. Last season he struck out nearly 40% of the lefties he faced, and while that was a bit of a spike, he has struck out over 30% of all lefties in the last three seasons.

George Sherrill is a lefty specialist in a pen that is short on southpaws. His job will consist of getting the Josh Hamiltons of the world out when needed.

Nothing wrong with this addition.

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Posted by uoduckfan33

Mariners Happenings

January 6, 2012

The two primary stories coming from Seattle include the Prince Fielder Saga and the signing of Japanese pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma. USSMariner and Fangraphs discussed these issues at length here and here, so I’m just going to give the abbreviated version with my take.

Iwakuma is not a special Japanese pitcher. He is not going to become Nomo Mr. Nice Guy, nor is he likely to be as good as Yu Darvish. However, he limits walks, keeps the ball down, and allows his infielders to make plays for him. When Brendan Ryan is your shortstop, these are good traits to have as a pitcher.

Here’s the bombshell. The Ms are paying him just $1.5M dollars to start, and up to $3.4M in incentives for meeting innings and starts quotas. If he sucks, we cut him before he hits his targets, and we’re out pocket change. If he’s good enough, we pay him his incentives, and we get a player worth anywhere from $5M to $15M for $4.9M. Using Dave Cameron’s words, “there’s literally no downside.” This is an intelligent signing by the organization. The kind of signing that doesn’t turn heads, but silently wins games. This is an example of Moneyball.

As for Prince Fielder, I have never been in favor of giving a squat, fat man a 6 or 7-year deal. But at least one person believes that Fielder and his agent, Scott Boras, may have missed the boat on their market. What this means is that Fielder might have to settle for something less than 7 years. If Fielder can be signed for three years, I’m so down.

Cameron comes from a different angle. Since we’re talking about Scott Boras, one of the shrewdest agents in baseball, maybe there’s no way to avoid 7+ years. Cameron lays out a contract he could support:

2012: $13 million
2013: $16 million
2014: $16 million
2015: $25 million (player option for remainder of contract)
2016: $25 million
2017: $25 million
2018: $30 million
2019: $25 million (team option, $5 million buyout)

This contract gives the player an option to test free agency after three seasons, so how could it possibly favor the organization? Here we go. If you look at this as a 7-year, $155M (150 + $5M buyout), that’s just shy of $25M per year, about what Boras is looking for anyway. It would basically be the same contract that has been in discussion throughout this off season. However, Fielder’s prime years are likely to last about 3 more seasons, at which point he can choose to hit free agency. With three good years in Seattle, he might very well test the market, and the Mariners will have had a great player in his prime without paying for the aging process.

Notice how back-loaded the contract is. The Ms could end up with three seasons of the Prince for $45M. He is likely to be worth something in the neighborhood of $70-75M based on free agent demand over those three seasons. That’s $25-30M in surplus value. The worst case scenario would obviously be if he under-performed and exercised his player option. Then we’d simply have the 7-year, $155M contract.

In other words, it’s like there’s a 50% chance we get massive surplus value, and a 50% chance we get a good-but-not-great Prince Fielder for 7 years. Though I pulled the 50% figure out of my ass, the point remains. This improves the expected returns for Seattle, while still offering Fielder his guaranteed 7 years. Is there a chance he gets injured and we get screwed? Sure. There’s always that chance. But my primary concern with a straight up 7-year deal is that there is virtually no potential for surplus value, and money could be more intelligently spent on guys like Iwakuma. With a contract similar to Cameron’s example, there would be a significant potential for that surplus value.

Conclusions: Iwakuma was a low-reward-but-NO-risk signing, and I love it. If Fielder can be had in some sort of 3-ish-year deal, I’d love it. Otherwise if a back-loaded contract with player option could give the Ms a shot at big-time surplus value, I’d love it.

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the most abbreviated article ever.

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Posted by uoduckfan33

Rose-colored Goggles

January 1, 2012

As of right now, the bookies have Oregon as 6-point favorites over Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl, and Vegas Odds tend to predict results pretty well. Crowd-sourcing results—like those used to make betting lines—have been shown to be incredibly accurate in many cases. The famous problem where a bunch of Schmos guess the weight of a cow comes to mind. Turns out, while most of them have no idea how much the cow weighs, the average (or sometimes median) of all their guesses ends up being really close to the true weight. However, when it comes to sports, there is a lot of misinformation, and the national media is able to skew betting patterns. So while Vegas has Oregon on top by a touchdown (complete with errant Maldonado kick), I’m a little more concerned.

It’s no secret the Pac-12 was not one of the best “power 6” conferences this season. Pardon me while I indulge myself with some numbers…

 

Conference

Win%

Margin

SEC

86.3%

19.5

Big 12

88.9%

16.9

Big 10

71.2%

13.2

Big East

65.1%

10.9

Pac 12

59.1%

7.7

ACC

61.1%

7.2

 

These are statistics from the non-conference schedule this season, including bowl games to this point. While I have not accounted for the strength of non-conference schedules, the data are clearly telling me that the Pac-12 was a cut below the Big-10. Both win-loss records and margin of victory support that. With that discrepancy in mind, let’s turn our attention to team statistics for the Ducks and Badgers.

Wisconsin averaged an impressive 44.6 points per game (5th nationally) in the supposedly grind-it-out Big Ten, just shy of Oregon’s 46.2 (3rd), so this game is likely to see some scoring. To continue this little chat, though, I first need to adjust all statistics to a per-possession basis to account for each team’s style of play. Here are your not-so-fun results, complete with national rankings in parentheses.

Team

Off

Def

Margin

Oregon

42.4 (7th)

23.0 (40th)

19.4 (8th)

Wisconsin

49.4 (1st)

21.0 (25th)

28.4 (2nd)

 

So the bad news for Ducks fans is that Wisconsin outperformed Oregon statistically in a more difficult conference. Skewing these numbers slightly, however, is the fact that Oregon played 9 games in conference while Wisconsin only played 8. Wisconsin filled that extra game in with the likes of South Dakota, beating the Coyotes 59-10 in its final non-conference game. Oregon had to play that extra game in conference, and I would bet that even Colorado is better than South Dakota. Additionally, Oregon had to play LSU, the nation’s top-ranked team. Wisconsin’s big non-conference game was the OSU Beavers. Fittingly both Oregon and Wisconsin beat the Beavs by exactly 35 points.

Who knows if the difference in schedules is enough to make up for Wisconsin’s advantages in margin of victory and conference strength, but it doesn’t seem so obvious that Oregon is a 6-point favorite anymore.

I’m going to take off the rose-colored goggles that so many Duck fans seem to be wearing and cheer for them as the underdog in this game. It’s more fun to cheer for the underdog anyway.

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Posted by uoduckfan33

Are the Mariners Screwed?

December 9, 2011

The Angel’s owner, Arte Moreno, decided to extend last winter’s spending spree and shelled out for both Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson, two of the top free agents on the market. With another awesome team already in the AL West, how will it affect my Mariner’s chances of making the playoffs in the next five years?

There is no doubt that adding Pujols and Wilson improves just about any team in the near future, and the Angels are no exception. However, Mariner fans should not jump off a cliff right away.

Here’s a before (left) and after (right) comparison—not including relief pitching—of the Angels teams heading into 2012 after the big signings.

Pos

Player

WAR

Pos

Player

WAR

C

Iannetta

2

C

Iannetta

2

1B

Trumbo

3

1B

Pujols

7

2B

Kendrick**

3.5

2B

Kendrick**

3.5

3B

Callaspo

1.5

3B

Callaspo

1.5

SS

Aybar**

3

SS

Aybar**

3

OF

Hunter**/Trout

3

OF

Hunter**/Trout

3

OF

Bourjos/Trout

5

OF

Bourjos/Trout

5

OF

Wells/Trout

2

OF

Wells/Trout

2

DH

Abreu**/Trout

1

DH

Trumbo/Trout

2.5

P

Weaver

5

P

Weaver

5

P

Haren**

5.5

P

Haren**

5.5

P

Santana**

2.5

P

Santana**

2.5

P

Pineiro*

1.5

P

Wilson

4

P

Chatwood

0.5

P

Pineiro*

1.5

Total

39

Total

48

 

While Pujols and Wilson provide approximately 11 WAR individually, because of who the Angels leave out of the lineup, I estimate that 11 gets cut down to about 9 WAR over the alternative lineup before the trade. Whatever the exact numbers are, the Angels are going to have a significantly better team in 2012 than they would have otherwise. Nine wins is the difference between the playoffs, and staying at home playing MLB The Show 2013 (which should come out around….oh the ALCS in 2012).

Here’s the deal, though. The Ms are gearing up to compete in 2013 and 2014, not 2012, and it seems like that has been the plan for a while. None of the Mariners four and five-star prospects–Danny Hultzen, James Paxton, Taijuan Walker and Nick Franklin—will see the field until the end of 2012 at the earliest.

The Angles are going to have some issues preparing for 2013 and beyond. This year, Pineiro’s contract is up, but the Angels could have had Abreu’s $9M salary off the books, too. In their infinite wisdom, the Angels let his option vest when Mike Trout should have been playing, effectively meaning they have to pay him to not play the 2012 season. And here’s what happens to the Angels in 2013: every player above marked by a “**” will be free agent in 2013. Guess what! Free agents cost a lot of money, and the Angels will be spending quite a pretty penny on Wilson, Pujols and Vernon Wells already (combined about $62M per year for just those three—newsflash: a baseball team requires 25 players). With Kendrick, Aybar, Haren, Hunter and Santana (worth an estimated 14-15 WAR per season) needing to be re-paid or replaced, the Angels may very well not be able to provide a supporting cast for the aging stars Pujols, Wells and Wilson. 15 WAR costs about $75M* on the free agent market, maybe more by next offseason, and now Moreno’s tab is up to $137M for eight players. In other words, unless these signings have an unexpectedly huge impact on revenue outside winning, the Angels may have just one really good shot before dropping back to being a playoff bubble team.

It all depends on how much Moreno is willing to maintain his huge payroll in the next five years, but based on how he’s spending now, he likely won’t be able to spend more later. Pujols, Wells and Wilson are already into their thirties, and won’t get any cheaper. In 2013, just as the Angels are figuring out they can’t afford to direct an all-star cast, the Mariners will be paying cheap money for some great talent, with all kinds of money to spend on complementary free agents.

The Angels will need couple things to happen before their all-in bet can work out beyond 2012. Pujols and Wilson need to age well, and GM Jerry Dipoto has to find low-cost talent to fill out the roster. Based on the Angels’ valuations of guys like Wells and Mike Napoli, I wouldn’t bet on it. The Angels will be excellent in 2012, and will probably be good for years after that; that’s what $200M payrolls do. But they won’t be great so long as they’re paying lots of money to a few players, and as long as they continue to employ Jerry Dipoto.

*The Harvard Sports Analysis Committee estimated that the market is cheaper this particular offseason, but this is likely only a blip, and just means that the Angels overspent on Pujols.

 

 

 

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Posted by uoduckfan33

Bowl Championship Furies

December 6, 2011

Once again the theatrics of college football are center stage this time of the year. UCLA sort of nearly made the Rose Bowl after finishing the regular season 6-6, two SEC teams are going to replay a baseball game for the national title, and many lesser teams made BCS bowls because of conference contracts.

College football rankings create chaos, and much of the blame is often directed at the BCS system. Granted, the BCS system is a joke (great article, by the way). However, there are two much larger problems at the root of college football’s chaos. Parity, or lack thereof; and sample size, or lack thereof.

If all college football teams competed at roughly the same level, as is the case in most professional sports, strength of schedule rankings wouldn’t be needed. Every team’s opponents would be about equal. But in reality, the quality of Houston’s opponents is in a different stratosphere than the quality of the opponents of, say, LSU or even Oregon. Thus some measurement of a team’s opponents is necessary in ranking that team. Enter, Strength of Schedule.

Additionally, teams only play about 12 games a year. There are 120 teams in the FBS classification, so teams are only playing one-tenth of all schools in their division. And because of the huge differences in ability—even within the FBS division—that 12-game sample is rarely representative of 12 average college football teams. The SEC teams—and other major conference teams—play some of the best teams in college football, while most of Arkansas State’s (7-0, 9-2) opponents in the Sun Belt Conference are significantly worse than even the most inept of the major conference schools. Example: Arkansas State lost to Illinois, the Big 10’s eleventh best team (huh?), by 18 points.

The combination of wildly uneven teams and short seasons creates a very difficult problem in ranking teams. Obviously there are upsets; some team that is noticeably inferior to its opponent wins every weekend, and we don’t instantly believe it is the better team. We accept that the inferior team just had a good day. Unfortunately, those particular upsets also make up about 8% of the entire season, and the better team doesn’t have enough games remaining to show its true colors in the win-loss department.

I looked at some computer simulations in an effort to articulate the phenomenon that the best teams don’t always come out on top. To get started, the following are the results of a simulation of the former Pac-10 conference, with the assumption that every team has a 50% chance to beat every other team. In other words, for a second I’m going to assume that all teams are equal and see what happens in 1,000,000 simulations of a Pac-10 season. The chart shows how often each number of wins won the conference.

Wins

%

9

30.6%

8

49.8%

7

16.9%

6

2.0%

5

0.7%

Even though every team was evenly talented and had a 50% chance to beat any other team, the conference winner still ended up 9-0 or 8-1 80% of the time. Since even an 8-1 team from the former Pac-10 was likely to get a BCS bowl, perfect parity among the teams in this hypothetical Pac-10 conference still produced a BCS bowl-worthy team 80% of time! If the Pac-10 were, say, the 3rd best conference, and all its teams were equal, then it is hard to believe that that 8-1 team would truly be a top-10 team nationally.

In the next example, I used the old Pac-10 template again, except I changed the skill levels of the teams to something a little more realistic. In this system, the best team in the conference has a 94% chance of beating the worst team in the conference, and the other head-to-head probabilities are proportional to the teams’ true abilities. The results here indicate how often the true best team won the conference, followed by the true second best team, and so on. Again upsets happen, and the simulation allowed for that possibility.

Champ

%

Best

44.1%

2nd

23.6%

3rd

10.9%

4th

7.2%

Other

14.2%

What we see here is that the best team in the conference had just a 44% chance to actually win the conference. Kind of like how the best golfer in the world doesn’t win every major. When you’re up against the field in such a short season (or tournament), your chances aren’t good. For more context, in this scenario the best team in the conference was given a 63% chance to beat the second best team, and the second best team a 61% chance to beat the third best team. Four teams clumped in the middle, all about even, and then there were three pretty bad teams.

Also interesting to note, the collection of teams 5th best and below still won the conference 14.2% of the time (much of that coming from the 5th and 6th best teams). Changing the theoretical win probabilities will obviously change the results, but the point remains. A 9-game conference season does a poor job of identifying the best teams based solely on their win-loss records.

(In future I hope to put together a simulation of the Pac-12 conference, using two separate divisions and a championship game to pick a winner.)

I hope the results above are convincing enough to show that more information is needed to create accurate rankings. When only win-loss records and opponent’s win-loss records are used, there is not a lot of information available to create accurate rankings. The obvious remedies are increasing the number of games played, and using more data.

Increasing the number of games played is somewhat impossible. It would be great statistically if every team played every other team in the FBS 46 times each, but realistically we can only fit about 12-14 college football games in per team per season. So the next best thing we can do is use more data, and the best statistic available is margin of victory, or point differential.

The primary objection to using margin of victory revolves around blowouts. Coaches would try running up the score, and it would be hard to determine the relative difference between Oregon beating Colorado by 43, and USC beating Colorado by 25 (for example). While both teams won comfortably, Oregon gets 18 additional margin of victory points over USC for that game, a significant difference. There are many easy fixes for this. A cap at 21, for instance, would give them both 21-point wins in the rankings. Or, using the square root would give Oregon a 6.6-point victory while USC would get a 5 point victory. The 1.6-point difference now only represents 32% of USC’s “5-point victory”, while before the 18-point difference represented 72% of USC’s 25-point win. The square root function, in effect, creates diminishing returns for piling on points. If you want “no returns” for piling on points, well the cap is for you.

Bill James, a pioneer in baseball and sports statistics, claimed this about the BCS computer rankings, “This isn’t a sincere effort to use math to find the answer at all. It’s clearly an effort to use math as a cover for whatever you want to do. I don’t even know if the people who set up the system are aware of that…It’s just nonsense math.”

Kenneth Massey, the creator of one of the six BCS computer rankings, complained, “You’re asked to rank teams that don’t play each other, that don’t play long seasons, and you can’t include margin of victory?… It’s a very challenging problem from a data-analysis standpoint. It does require sacrificing a bit of accuracy. It’s not the best way to do it.” Massey actually provides what he believes are better rankings on his website, http://www.masseyratings.com/rate.php?lg=cf, which, of course, utilize margin of victory.

Citing blowouts and running up the score as an excuse for excluding margin of victory is a cop-out by the BCS, plain and simple. It’s an easy fix, and we’ve seen how using only win-loss records falls apart in many scenarios due to small sample sizes. To me, it doesn’t seem like the BCS is very serious about its computer rankings…

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Posted by uoduckfan33

Meet Forrest Snow

November 21, 2011

Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus came out with Seattle’s top 20 prospects a few weeks ago, and while there’s a lot of talent to be excited about atop the list, I wanted to focus on #20, Forrest Snow.

After recovering from surgery to repair a torn labrum in 2007, he went on to put up relatively unimpressive numbers at Washington before the Ms drafted him in the 36th round in 2010. His minor league numbers, however, were good enough to get him 35 innings in AAA Tacoma toward the end of this past season. He is a right-handed reliever with a low ceiling , but the intrigue lies in the fact that he will likely be pitching in Seattle at some point during 2012, whereas many other top prospects on Goldstein’s list aren’t projected to be roaming Safeco Field until 2013 or 2014.

With only 35 innings pitched at the AAA level, looking at conventional stats like ERA and wins is even more meaningless than usual. Focusing on statistics that stabilize quickly, like the percent of his pitches that were swung at and missed, or his overall strike percentage, are likely to be more indicative of what Snow brings to the table.

Snow struck out over 20% of all batters he faced via the swinging strikeout. The major league average is 14.5% for relievers. Possibly even more telling is the fact that PCLers–a group that hit historically well last season–swung and missed at more than 13% of his pitches. Again the major league average is well below Snow’s rates, coming in at 10% for relievers. And finally, 64.5% of his pitches were thrown for some sort of strike, versus a major league average of about 63%. Major league hitters are obviously better than what the PCL has to offer, but based on cutting-edge research, being above average is so much better than being below average.

While 35 innings is hardly a sufficient sample size, by breaking down his stats into the 147 batters he faced and the 546 pitches he threw, we can look for more meaningful indicators with larger sample sizes. Using these statistics, his AAA stats showed obvious potential, and the good news doesn’t stop there. Pitching in the Arizona Fall league this summer, Snow is #6 on Fangraphs’ leaderboard for pitcher performance, and he is the top-rated reliever. These leaderboards are based on some of the very same per-pitch statistics from above in an effort to take meaning out of small samples.

While Forrest Snow will never be the next Felix Hernandez, he can be a valuable reliever in a bullpen whose headliners looked like this last year:

Pitcher

IP

K/9

FIP

League

61.1

6.6

2.78

Josh Lueke

32.2

7.99

3.24

David Pauley

54.1

5.63

3.36

Wilhelmsen

32.2

8.27

3.36

Chris Ray

32.2

6.06

3.58

Jamey Wright

68.1

6.32

4.3

Jeff Gray

35

4.11

4.68

Aaron Laffey

42.2

5.06

5.23

While this bullpen put up the 3rd best ERA in the league, that figure masks the fact that they get to pitch in Safeco, and that the highest strikeout rate was recorded by Willhelmsen at 8.27. Not a recipe for sustained success, nor for success on the road.

Is Snow going to turn into a top closer? Likely not, as Goldstein indicates. But you can’t complain about a team-controlled, low-cost middle reliever with above average success in the minors, especially when he’s only your 20th best prospect.

 

 

Name IP K/9 FIP Brandon League 61.1 6.6 2.78 Josh Lueke 32.2 7.99 3.24 David Pauley 54.1 5.63 3.36 Tom Wilhelmsen 32.2 8.27 3.36 Chris Ray 32.2 6.06 3.58 Jamey Wright 68.1 6.32 4.3 Jeff Gray 35 4.11 4.68 Aaron Laffey 42.2 5.06 5.23

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When BCS Biases Help…

November 14, 2011

The AP, Coach’s and BCS polls just came out Sunday, and as expected, the Ducks moved up to number 4 in each, ahead of all other one-loss teams except Alabama. We often complain about the East Coast biases hurting teams out west, but the voting system is also unfairly biased toward teams that haven’t lost recently, and this is working out to be an advantage for Oregon. So…..do the Ducks deserve to be as high as they are right now? Or should they even be ahead of Alabama? To the stats!

The top-ranked, one-loss teams—Stanford, Oregon, Alabama, Boise State, Oklahoma, Virginia Tech and Clemson—hail from the Pac 12, SEC, Mountain West, Big 12 and ACC conferences, so here are some superficial non-conference statistics to get us started.

Conference

W

L

%

PF

PA

Exp %

Big 12

27

3

90.0%

40.0

21.5

77.6%

SEC

35

5

87.5%

37.5

16.5

83.8%

ACC

27

15

64.3%

32.4

21.0

70.4%

Pac 12

22

13

62.9%

35.0

24.3

67.5%

MWC

21

18

53.8%

30.1

31.8

47.3%

 

Non-conference stats give us a basic litmus test for how tough each conference is relative to the others, and looking at these stats, the Pac 12 does not look very tough. Exp% is a way of calibrating the point differentials into a projected win percentage, but no matter how you slice it, the Big 12 and SEC come out on top. Now the question is: are these top schools challenging themselves with difficult non-conference schedules? For the most part, no.

None of these one-loss teams have played more than one school from the traditional 5 power conferences, and Virginia Tech hasn’t played any. The toughest non-conference schedules go to Oregon, Alabama, Boise State and Oklahoma–each of which played a top 3 school from another power conference in addition to at least one top 2 school from a weaker conference.

Moving inside each conference, the following chart displays the in-conference schedule strength and overall margin of victory for each one-loss team. Higher SOS scores mean that a team has played the better rivals within the conference thus far. The first four teams are those that I eye-balled to have the most difficult non-conference schedules.

Team

SOS

Margin

Oregon

1.05

25

Alabama

0.98

27.4

Oklahoma

0.83

25.7

Boise St

0.90

23.8

Clemson

1.14

11.4

Arkansas

1.00

17.3

Stanford

1.05

26.2

Virginia Tech

1.12

13.4

 

My ranking method is basically going to combine all the stats presented so far: overall conference strength, non-conference and conference schedule strength, and margin of victory. So here it is:

1. Alabama

With the best margin of victory, toughest conference to play in, and relatively difficult non-conference schedule, we can overlook the fact that the Crimson Tide hasn’t played South Carolina, Georgia or Auburn. However, of those three teams, Alabama will only play Auburn, and likely won’t get an SEC championship game. This is where Oregon can make some ground in SOS.

2. Oklahoma

Oklahoma, like Alabama, hasn’t played some of the tougher teams in the conference yet (like Oklahoma State and Baylor.) However, with the Big 12 rivaling the SEC in depth, and an average margin of victory at 26.2, the Sooners have a legit claim to be ahead of Oregon.

3. Oregon

While Stanford is from the same conference and has a better margin of victory, that 53-30 win on the Farm is arguably the most dominating performance of a top-5 team by any school this season. Additionally, Oregon’s tougher non-conference schedule leaves little doubt that it is the Pac-12’s best team right now. Oregon edges Arkansas primarily on its more difficult non-conference schedule, and higher margin of victory.

4. Arkansas

The Razorbacks play in the SEC, but their best non-conference opponent, then #14 Texas A&M, has sputtered in conference play this season, devaluing Arkansas’ win over the Aggies.  Arkansas is the last team with a chance to knock LSU out of the SEC championship game with a big matchup on the Bayou November 25th, and event that could really shake up the BCS.

5. Stanford

The polls have dropped Stanford all the way down to 8th or 9th depending on which one you look at. But this is just recent-memory-bias. Had Stanford’s loss come to Oregon in the first game of the season, and had Arkansas’ loss to Alabama come last week, then the polls would likely reflect a very different ranking order. In the end, Stanford’s margin of victory in a conference comparable to the ACC puts them ahead of Clemson and Virginia Tech.

6. Clemson

Clemson’s non-conference schedule edged out Virginia Tech’s with a win against Auburn back in September, but after that, both teams are pretty even. They have each played all the toughest teams in the ACC already, and their margins of victory are basically a wash (Hokies’ edge by +2). The separation came on October 1st when Clemson went on the road and beat Virginia Tech by 20. Case closed.

7. Virginia Tech

VaTech is behind Clemson for all the reasons mentioned above, and behind all but BSU because of an incredibly weak non-conference schedule “highlighted by” a 7-point win over Conference USA’s East Carolina.

8. Boise State

The Broncos just can’t be taken seriously, playing in a conference that pales in comparison to even the Pac-12 and ACC. Had they beaten TCU last week, I still would have ranked them behind all of the teams on this list. Boise State did have an impressive win at Georgia earlier this season, but every other team on this list has beaten an opponent ranked higher than the Bulldogs. The MWC’s other top 2 teams—TCU and Wyoming—have lost respectively (but not respectfully) to Utah State and Southern Methodist by a combined 51 points. Upsets happen, but it’s not hard to see that the Mountain West is a cut below the power conferences. BSU is good, and definitely a top 25 team, but its resume just can’t compete with other one-loss teams.

 

Ranking these teams was more for fun than anything. Distinguishing between the power conferences’ one-loss schools is an exercise in splitting hairs, and each of these teams could beat any other on any given Saturday. The point here is that the ranking systems are biased toward teams that have not lost in recent weeks, and teams like Stanford get screwed because they played Oregon in their 10th game instead of their 3rd. Oklahoma lost more recently than Oregon, so Oregon is rewarded with a higher ranking despite there being little in the data to support that.

In the end, I think it’s fair to say the Ducks are deserving of a top-5 spot. Perhaps a trade with Oklahoma’s ranking would be more “fair,” but who really knows.

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