Friday, August 31, 2012

Footbaw!

Most NFL teams haven't finalized their rosters. Why, just today, the Arizona Cardinals decided on a starting quarterback for the season. I don't know that much about football, having only started really watching last season, but I'm pretty sure that no one in their right mind should even consider making picks on next week's games, let alone who's going to make it into the playoffs.

Having said that, here are my picks for every game in the upcoming NFL season and my playoff predictions, all the way to the Super Bowl.


These are the picks I'm going to use on the ESPN Pigskin Pick'em game, and I won't stray from them, I promise. I'm going to keep tabs on the season as it progresses on this page, filling up the lovely blank grid you see below.



How do I know this is a silly endeavor? I've got Denver in the Super Bowl.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Another fWAR comparison

We've got another fWAR comparison for giggles here. My wife told me that Yunel Escobar has been put on the paternity leave list and will be unavailable until Saturday. I figured that besides Encarnacion, the average fWAR would be well below 1 - I forgot about Rasmus. I pressed on and for your amusement, here's tonight's lineup and corresponding fWAR value, the value of the players on the DL and unavailable list, and what an ideal lineup might look like:

August 22 2012 Lineup
DL/Unavailable
Ideal Lineup
Player
fWAR
Player
fWAR
Player
fWAR
Davis
1.3
Arencibia
1.7
Davis
1.3
Rasmus
2
Bautista
3.2
Rasmus
2
Encarnacion
3.7
Coello
-0.1
Encarnacion
3.7
Cooper
-0.1
Drabek
0
Cooper
-0.1
Sierra
0
Frasor
0.2
Bautista
3.2
Torrealba
0
Hutchison
0
Arencibia
1.7
Johnson
0.7
Lawrie
2.6
Johnson
0.7
McCoy
0
Lind
-0.2
Lawrie
2.6
Hech
-0.1
Litsch
--
Escobar
1.5
Laffey
0
McGowan
--
Morrow
1.6
7.5
Morrow
1.6
18.2
Perez
0.4
Santos
-0.2
Escobar
1.5
10.7

Considering Romero threw some balls last night, Morrow would probably get the start today, and the team would post an accumulative fWAR of 18.2. For comparison's sake, Mike Trout's current fWAR? 7.5 - the same as tonight's ENTIRE BLUE JAYS STARTING LINE UP PLUS THEIR PITCHER.


Trout the best. I'm going home now.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Happy Birthday, Geddy Lee

The "Ben Affleck Curse" is something that was recently brought to my attention, and it made me chuckle. Since 'Good Will Hunting' opened in 1998, the Boston Red Sox have lost 13 straight games that fall on noted Sox fan Ben Affleck's birthday, including Wednesday's 3-5 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. I find this both hilarious and fitting, and it got me thinking:
"I wonder how the Blue Jays did on Geddy Lee's birthday?"
It makes sense: he's a huge Jays fan, he can be spotted at the dome sitting in the seats behind home plate when Rush isn't rockin' out on tour.

As it turns out, the Jays have done better than the Red Sox do on Ben's big day - not great, but not all that bad. The worst Geddy had to deal with was a ten game stretch from an off day in 1996 to a 8-9 loss in 2006 where they did not win a game. Nothing compared to the suck-hole of 13 straight games that Affleck is mired in.

How's about them apples!

Overall, their record on his birthday is 12-18, with five off days and one game missed in 1981 because of the strike. Thankfully his birthday doesn't fall in the middle of January, otherwise this would have been an exercise in futility.

Speaking of futility:

While putting this together, I decided to see how the Jays fared on MY birthday, October 15th. That's a different story altogether:

Ugh.
I think I know what to ask for from now on.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Ratios, damn it. Ratios.

This is a post about Ricky Romero.

Sort of.

It seems pretty simple, so tell me if I'm getting this wrong. As a pitcher, if you're going to walk a lot of guys, you're going to have to strike out a hell of a lot more of them. "They" say a good ratio of strikeouts to walks is 2:1, "they" being the local team's television commentary duo that shall remain nameless. Fangraph's 'average' K/9 and BB/9 rates are 7.1 and 3.3 respectively, therefore, one can imagine that an 'average' K/BB is 2.15 and an 'above average' or good ratio would look more like 2.68. Here's a table, dangit.

Rating
K/9
BB/9
K/BB
Excellent
10.0
1.5
6.67
Great
8.5
2.3
3.70
Above Average
7.5
2.8
2.68
Average
7.1
3.3
2.15
Below Average
6.0
4.0
1.50
Poor
5.0
4.5
1.11
Awful
4.5
5.0
0.90


Looking solely at this stat, Ricky Romero is hovering between 'below average' and 'poor', with a K/BB of 1.29. As of this writing, the only qualified pitchers worse so far this season are the new-New York Yankee, Derek Lowe with a K/BB of 1.00, and Carlos Zambrano at 1.28. Ricky's 2012 troubles have been expertly summed up at both Getting Blanked and Fangraphs, so I'm not going to try and reinvent the wheel here, nor am I going to point to this and say "Bingo-bango, sugar in the gas tank" as if this is the only reason for his slumping season. There are probably all sorts of issues be they mechanical or mental contributing to this years' struggles.

What is curious to me, and what drove me to look into this stat, is the significant drop-off in his K/BB rate. In 2009, his rookie season, he posted a so-so 1.78. He followed that up with a closer to league average 2.12 in 2010, and 2.23 in 2011 (league averages were 2.17 and 2.3 respectively). The loss of almost an entire strikeout per walk from one season to the next is shocking to me as this appears to be a number that stays relatively level for a pitcher over their career.

He is three walks away from matching last season's total. With a BB/9 of 4.82, he stands a good chance of taking care of that tonight against the Chicago White Sox. (Thankfully, for Romero's sake, the White Sox are one of the least patient teams at the plate, ranking 26th in the league with a 7.3 BB%)

One could take solace in the thought that this drastic rise in walks and decline in strikeouts is merely an anomaly on an otherwise positive, upward career trajectory. On the other hand, he pitches in Toronto, where the panic button is constantly in the shop for repairs from overuse. With about 9 starts left this season, it will be interesting to see where his strikeout to walk ratio ends up, and what it looks like going forward. I'll be watching, that's for sure.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Meet Hunter

So. It's August 11th, the Blue Jays have just completed their 111th game of the 2012 season, and have now used a club-record 32 pitchers. Why not make it 33? Provided he clears waivers, I think I may have found a proven reliever that could help solidify the bullpen.

Meet Hunter:
He's got a decent ERA, he's amassed a pretty good strikeout total, and he looks to be a pretty intimidating figure on the mound.
His HR/9 rate has to be low, considering he will probably shoot you WITH THE GUN HE IS CARRYING IF YOU HIT A HOME RUN LET ALONE A SINGLE WHO LETS A PITCHER BRING A GUN ON THE MOUND A GUN THAT HE USES TO 'PITCH' THE BALL WITH NO LESS WHERE I COME FROM THEY CALL THAT SHOOTING YOU ARE NOT AT BAT YOU ARE BEING SHOT AT.

All screenshots of the awesome Baseball Superstars 2012 for iOS - I hope Gamevil doesn't mind, it's a great game.

Friday, August 10, 2012

On Aces

A few days ago, I came across a series of comments on a fangraphs post whereupon a series of people disagreed on whether or not a particular pitcher qualified as an ace. The term 'Ace' is traditionally defined as the first name on a particular team's five man rotation, of which there are 30, as there are 30 teams. Some use it to describe a pitcher that can be dropped into any rotation and take over the top spot, of which there are very few.

A similar debate can be created surrounding the term "Number-One Pitcher", but I'm going to hang on to that nugget for another sleepless night.

An Ace, to me, is a starter who can give their team 230+ innings per season, a K/9 rate of around 8.5 or higher, a FIP below 3, and chocolate-vanilla-twist soft serve ice cream from their armpit - home AND away - and can do it on an annual basis. Well, everything except the ice cream. Basically, I don't call a lot of starting pitchers Ace, even if they are the team's top o' the rotation guy. Those guys, I call "Staff Aces",

To me, the waters are so muddy on this subject, I decided I should put together a visual aid to help the average baseball watching person (like myself) determine one type of Ace from another. To help the internetting folks among us, I have captioned them in the easy to recognize Image Macro/Meme font, Impact. Which I like to call "Meme-pact". I don't actually call it that, and neither should anyone.

The pictures!


 


 




I hope we all learned something.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

More WAR on the shelf

The Blue Jays 15 inning loss on Friday night (Saturday morning) was interesting. Coco Crisp denied Blue Jays fans their first #weirdbaseball of the season with just minutes to spare. It happened on the west coast (decidedly no longer the best coast, after this incident), which meant some of us were up until three in the morning, happy that we turned down that Chapmans ball-top ice cream cone after dinner, only to be let down on multiple fronts. Coco's just straight up mean.

More importantly, both Colby Rasmus and Brett Lawrie were pulled from the game with apparent injuries. It turned out that Lawrie aggravated his rib cage in his first at bat, and Rasmus strained his groin in the later stages of the game. He was eventually pulled in the 12th inning. John Farrell held them out of Saturday's game, and both of them are now listed as day to day, with Rasmus possibly back in the lineup on Sunday. Lawrie's return date has yet to be determined.

With two more everyday contributors out of action, I thought, well... just... this:

Active Roster (Aug. 5 2012)
Disabled List/Injured DTD
Pitchers
WAR
Pitchers
WAR
Henderson Alvarez
0.2
Robert Coello
-0.1
Jesse Chavez
-0.2
Kyle Drabek
-0.1
Steve Delabar
0.0
Jason Frasor
0.2
J.A. Happ
0.1
Drew Hutchison
0.6
Casey Janssen
0.8
Jesse Litsch
n/a
Aaron Laffey
0.1
Dustin McGowan
n/a
Brad Lincoln
0.1
Brandon Morrow
1.6
Aaron Loup
0.3
Luis Perez
0.4
Brandon Lyon
0.3
Sergio Santos
-0.2
Darren Oliver
0.9
Catchers

Ricky Romero
0.3
J.P. Arencibia
1.6
Carlos Villanueva
0.6
Infielders

Catchers

Brett Lawrie
2.8
Jeff Mathis
1.2
Adam Lind
-0.2
Infielders

Outfielders

David Cooper
0.0
Jose Bautista
3.2
Yunel Escobar
1.8
Colby Rasmus
2.1
Yan Gomes
-0.1
Accumulated WAR
11.9
Adeiny Hechavarria
n/a
Kelly Johnson
0.9
Brett Lawrie
2.8
Omar Vizquel
-0.3
Outfielders

Rajai Davis
1.2
Anthony Gose
-0.3
Colby Rasmus
2.1
Moises Sierra
0.0
Designated Hitter

Edwin Encarnacion
3.5
Accumulated WAR
11.4


That's right. The accumulated WAR for the players on the DL or listed as day to day (therefore unavailable for action on Saturday afternoon) is greater than that of the entire active roster. That disabled list, y'know, the one with more WAR? That list includes two players who have yet to pick up a ball in the regular season whatsoever. Incredible.

What's more incredible is the ability that this team has to hover around .500 when a definitely smaller group of players with decidedly better statistics is unable to play.

The cherry on this inexplicable sundae is the pitching. The Blue Jays' pitching staff is carrying a FIP of 4.71 - tied for last in the league with the Rockies and Twins. Their accumulated WAR for the season is 26th place 4.4. Those are not the pitching numbers of a .500 team.

So, despite the disparity in WAR, despite Ricky Romero getting no run support (The Blue Jays scored a total of 4 runs in the six games Romero started in July), and despite playing the walk-off kings in Oakland, they won the game on Saturday afternoon. Again, incredible.

In the eleventh inning, Edwin Encarnacion scored the go-ahead run on an error, only after sliding into, and then scrambling around third base. He has been playing with a tender heel, and I for one shuddered at the thought of him getting injured to the point where he landed on the DL, especially after putting these lists together.

Imagine if he did get injured, imagine an active roster with an accumulated WAR of 7.9, while the DL sported a hefty 15.4. These damned Jays would probably go on a twenty game winning streak with a pitching staff led by Marcus Stroman if that happened.

Sidenote: I left the headers from the Blue Jays active roster that I used in the list above as is. Note the header: Catchers. Plural. There is only one there, and it's Jeff Mathis. The same Jeff Mathis that started Saturday's game on the bench and came into the game as a pinch-hitter. The same Jeff Mathis who as Sam Miller (@SamMillerBP) pointed out on twitter:


Baseball is just weird sometimes, even when you don't get ice cream.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Investimagative Reportering

In my last post, I wrote about Darren Oliver and the stellar season he is having at age 41, and how his numbers are trending in the right direction. It got me thinking, why? There must be a reason why he is doing such incredible things. What is his secret? After some (read: barely any) research (read: twitter search) I think I may have found him out.

Dude loves PF Chang's.

He's networking to get them off the ground in Toronto:

Even his kids are in on the action:

He is Juan Ponce de Leรณn, and PF Chang's is his fountain of youth:
Four tweets are not enough to prove that the magic is in the mu shu chicken? In 2003 with Colorado, he posted a WAR of 2.9 with the closest PF Chang's half a mile away from the stadium. With the Mets in 2006, he put up a goose-egg: 0.0 WAR. The closest PF Chang's? 11.3 miles away. He had to cross the island of Manhattan to get his Ginger Chicken with Broccoli on.

And with that, please enjoy the rest of your day while I get blocked by Darren Oliver on twitter for dragging his name through the hoisin sauce.