Owner: Vegas Watch URL:http://vegaswatch.blogspot.com Join Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:47:58 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: A blog focusing on baseball and college basketball, with analysis, profiles, predictions, betting tips, and more. Site statistics:Click here
The NL Rookie of the Year...Race? 2007-09-25 23:41:00 Before I get into any kind of intelligent analysis, I'd like to point everyone to Ryan Braun's MySpace page. (Warning: This immediately starts playing T.I.'s "Big Things Poppin" really loud.) I don't know if this is actually his (he only has 88 friends, which seems low), but I found it entertaining ("Occupation: 3rd base").For awhile now, Ryan Braun has been considered a lock to win the NL Rookie
of the Year award. From an August 20 post on Baseball Analysts:"If discussing Braun's place in history is a bit premature with more than a month to go, I believe it is safe to say that he is a virtual lock to win the NL Rookie of the Year. Braun has even been mentioned as an MVP candidate although it says here that he will have a difficult time beating out teammate Prince Fielder, who is leading the league in home runs with 38."And I'm not going to waste my time disputing that, because Lederer is right, Braun is probably going to win the ward easily.But should he? Braun is a great hit
Futures Watch: Quick Hits 2007-09-25 23:02:00 We're down to the last few days, so instead of doing one Futures Watch this week, I'm just going to throw up the occasional short post when I see something that looks enticing.On September 18, the Braves' playoff odds were literally zero. Since then, they have won seven of eight, and have gotten back into the race- after tonight's game they are only two games behind the Phillies, and three back of the Padres.Over at SportsBetting they're 300:1 to win the World Series. Their chances are still slim (making up three with five to play is a tall task), but they're far from out of it-this is a great value, and will probably be changed in the morning. Read more:Quick
Evaluating April MLB Predictions 2007-09-24 19:09:00 Everybody makes baseball predictions in late March/early April
. A lot of people just predict who will win each division, and who will advance to the World Series. Anyone can do this- you really only have to have a general knowledge of the top teams.There are also people who predict how many wins each of the 30 teams will have. There are various complications with this (Jayson Stark's predictions have the average team winning 83.6 games, which is quite unlikely), but the thing about this is you actually have to know what you are doing. People make these predictions differently- some rely strictly on numbers, others on "feel".I found 13 sets of these predictions- 10 from ESPN (Gammons, Stark, Crasnick, Olney, Neyer, Kurkjian, Phillips, Law, Caple, Karabell), two from BP (PECOTA and BP Hit List), and also the over/unders from SportsInteraction.com (via SoSH). I thought I'd take a look at some of the best and worst individual predictions, as well as whose overall predictions were mo Read more:Predictions
An Open Letter To Eric Wedge 2007-10-03 19:15:00 Dear Mr. Wedge
,You seem like a pretty reasonable guy. I thought you kept giving Trot Nixon regular ABs for too long, and you have a weird tendency to pinch-run for your best hitters in the 7th inning, but if those are two of my biggest complaints this year, you're probably doing a decent job.That being said, what you're about to do is completely insane. You plan on going into a playoff series against the New York Yankees with Joe Borowski as your closer. This, in itself, isn't all that unreasonable. After all, if that's your best guy, what are you gonna do? That's Shapiro's fault, not yours.Borowski is not your best reliever. You know this. In the clincher, you kept Betancourt in for the ninth. I know it was a four run lead, and thus wouldn't have been a save situation if Borowski had come in. But if that's not saying he's your best guy, I don't know what is.He's not your second best reliever. Again, not debatable. The world may not yet know about Rafael Perez, bu Read more:Letter
A Question 2007-10-03 17:07:00 From Prospectus Today, well, today (subscriber-only)."I read that the Yankees are as much as 2-to-1 favorites in Las Vegas."This site, last night:"That Yankees percentage is absolutely enormous. They're 2:1 on two sites, which is pretty ridiculous."The question is obvious. The answer, of course, is no (and if it is somehow yes, it seems like a questionable use of Mr. Sheehan's time).Go Rockies. More later (not that this was something). Read more:Question
2007 Vegas Watch NL RoY: Troy Tulowitzki 2007-10-03 15:37:00 This was never really that close, as Tulo ended up edging Braun by a margin of 100-67, taking nearly 60% of the vote.AL Cy poll is up now. I voted for Sabathia.Photo: LBSU Read more:Vegas
Here We Go 2007-10-02 22:12:00 This little tournament starts in a couple hours, which is pretty exciting. So I have this for reference, here are the final series prices:COL (+120) @ PHI (-140)CHC (-135) @ ARI (+115)LAA (+150) @ BOS (-180)NYY (-180) @ CLE (+150)In general, these correlate pretty closely with the run differentials:COL (+102) @ PHI (+71)CHC (+62) @ ARI (-20)LAA (+91) @ BOS (+210)NYY (+191) @ CLE (+107)Colorado is +102? They're +51 over their last 15 games; their Pythag W% over that time is .777, which is pretty amazing. That's really the only series where the run differential and odds don't agree. Christina Kahrl did the writeup for this series on BP, and picked the Phillies in 5. Interesting.I hadn't realized just how good Boston's pitching is. They ended up with the least runs allowed in baseball (657), although that's kind of unfair since SD played the extra game (they ended at 666). Considering the Padres' home park, that means Boston's pitching was considerably better. Wouldn't have guess
Inside Vegas: Division Series Edition 2007-10-02 22:02:00 In theory, this site was going to be solely about gambling, and things relating to Vegas
odds (thus the name, of course). That obviously isn't how things worked out, which is probably a good thing. But it's still something I'm quite interested in.One of my favorite things to do is to look at the Vegas lines to gauge the strength of teams. Before this site started, I did this for the NCAAs last year and Luke Winn actually posted them on his SI blog. They ended up being a better predictor of tournament success than Pomeroy's percentages (BasketballProspectus.com coming soon, BTW). So here are the percentages for each team to win the WS, according to the Vegas lines at five different sites (sportsbetting.com, sportsinteraction.com, betus.com, bodoglife.com, vip.com):That Yankees percentage is absolutely enormous. They're 2:1 on two sites, which is pretty ridiculous. That being said, these lines wouldn't hold if people weren't betting on them, so they're clearly getting action. The Read more:Division
, Edition
Evaluating April MLB Predictions (Again) 2007-10-02 17:48:00 This was a lot of fun, and there's more to look at, so I thought it deserved another post.First, the final standings. Methodology is slightly different, as I'm using RMSE (Root Mean Squared Error) rather than just average error. This penalizes large misses more (sorry, Buster), and is more widely used.As we'll see, Neyer comes out on to pretty much any way you do this. Notice the top five are all at least based on statistical systems. Be sure to remember that when you're watching Baseball Tonight next March. Your time is probably better spent subscribing to BP.Just for fun, I also looked at how many of the Vegas over/unders everybody chose correctly. A lot of this is luck- if the line is 83.5, and your prediction is 84, you get the same credit if that team wins 84 or 104. (BTW, Silver is Nate Silver from BP; he's the "PECOTA guy", among other things. As I understand it, he took the PECOTA predictions and just made adjustments where he saw fit.)Again
, pretty meaningless, but Caple Read more:April
, Predictions
THT Article 2007-10-02 02:49:00 If you somehow haven't gotten your fill of the MVP races, I have an "op-ed" article on The Hardball Times today. Inspired by Neyer's Cy Young Predictor, it's a statistical system based on a regression analysis of the last five years of MVP voting, which attempts to predict who will win. There's some pretty cool stuff- for example, the amount of credit you get for each RBI depends on whether your team makes the playoffs. Article
is here.There are no comments on THT, so if you want, leave one on this post I guess.
Game 163 2007-10-02 02:13:00 Graph up top is FanGraphs, of course. Pictures are from this tremendous Yahoo! photo gallery.They won't let me use the Yahoo! "!" as part of a label. Mottram wouldn't approve.
Why Even Bother Playing the Games? 2007-10-02 00:49:00 I understand that baseball isn't the Sports Guy's specialty. He's an NBA & NFL guy, and just happens to be a Red Sox fan.He also has one of the most visible writing gigs in the country. So when he started talking to "Cousin Sal" (who apparently is the only guest he's interested in having anymore) (sorry, I'm an idiot, it's Jack-o) last week on his podcast about the AL playoffs, you'd think he would offer a somewhat coherent analysis.False.CSJ: This could come back to bite me but, uh, last year, because it could be like last year when I had no concerns about Detroit, it turns out I should have been quite concerned, but, uh, I have no fear of Cleveland- I'll believe CC Sabathia, and more importantly, Fausto Carmona can do it in the playoffs when I see it, and as you said Joe Borowski- and their lineup, I mean, I dont know, their lineup doesn't really frighten me much either.SG: Yeah, Grady Sizemore is one of those guys that puts up awesome stats and, you know, is like a five Read more:Games
ALDS Vegas Odds 2007-10-01 13:26:00 Sportsbetting.com just posted the following odds for the ALDS (these are for who will win the whole series, rather than just Game 1) :CHC (-130) @ ARI (+110)LAA (+160) @ BOS (-190)NYY (-180) @ CLE (+150)No line for the fourth series yet, obviously, but SD is -137 tonight with Peavy. Also interesting: Yankees are slightly favored (-113) in G1, even in Cleveland against Sabathia. Hardly surprising- this is a team that was (from memory) 6:1 to win the WS when they had a 35% chance of reaching the playoffs. And, even then, I'm sure people bet on them.Boston is a big favorite at home in G1 with Beckett against Lackey (-158). No surprise there, but I'll be interested to see what the G2 line is, SchillingMatsuzaka vs. Escobar.Edit: Apparently they're going with Matsuzaka in G2. Don't get that. Matsuzaka, Apr-Jun: 106.2 IP, 36 BB, 110 SO, 9 HR, 3.80 ERA.July-Sep: 98 IP, 44 BB, 91 SO, 16 HR, 5.05 ERASchilling wasn't great when he came back in August, but in his last six starts he has Read more:Vegas
The Real MVPs Revisited 2007-10-01 08:59:00 I knew some people didn't like WPA, although I may have underestimated how strongly people felt about it. "The Real MVPs" has 35 comments so far, and only 14 of those have been me responding to people. There was also the BBTF discussion. Here's my favorite comment, from Anon: "Interesting analysis. However, it is fundamentally unsound to include park effects in MVP considerations. For an award, players should be evaluated based on their actual performance rather than what they might have accomplished on a level playing field." I cant say I follow that logic, but to each his own, I guess.Since I don't entirely disagree with the complaints about WPA, I thought I'd go through the same exercise, replacing WPA with VORP. With the understanding that the excellent "On Baseball and the Reds" blog beat me to it on this for the NL, here goes. Once again, the fielding stats are a combination of UZR's midseason numbers, and THT's numbers Read more:Revisited
The Morning After: Tabloid Wars 2007-10-01 08:31:00 I like the DN's back page better, myself. There's an actual story here- Rollins wouldn't shut up way back in January. Really not necessary to resort to the kid crying.Photos from the DN & Post websites, of course. Read more:Morning
, Tabloid
Steve Phillips: Super Genius 2007-09-30 20:08:00 Over the last couple of weeks, I have been very critical of ESPN analyst StevePhillips
on this site. First it was his prediction that the Yankees would miss the playoffs, and the Mariners would be the Wild Card winner. Then, in looking back at the accuracy of preseason predictions, Phillips came in dead last.Today is different. Today, Steve Phillips is smarter than all of us.On the morning of August 14, the Mets had an 85% chance of reaching the playoffs. At 65-52, they had a three game lead in the East. The Postseason Odds Report had them winning the division 70% of the time, and having the Wild Card to fall back on half the time they didn't. Nobody was picking the Mets to miss the playoffs- despite their flaws, all logic pointed towards the Mets playing in October.Not one to be deterred by logic, Phillips predicted that the Mets would fall short of the playoffs. I can't find a link to him specifically saying that, but MetsSox wrote about it on August 16. In the days prior Read more:Super
Tom Glavine Hates Ties 2007-09-30 12:41:00 FanGraphs still gives the Mets a 7% chance of winning the game, which seems high. But with that number, the odds of a massive tie scenario are down to 1 in 56.Over at BP, Sheehan is live-blogging all day, and Silver has a chat at 2. Read more:Hates
"Massive Tie Scenario" 2007-09-30 10:28:00 One of my favorite parts of the stretch run has been the enthusiasm about the potential for a multiple team tie. All of these brilliant baseball writers (the BP guys and Baseball Musings in particular) are absolutely giddy about the fact that it might take three extra days to decide the NL playoff participants. To his credit, David Pinto from Baseball Musings has been all over this from the beginning; his first "Massive Tie" post was all the way back on September 5th, and he's given an update pretty much every day since.BP's Clay Davenport, creator of the Playoff Odds Report, has started giving live updates as games end. After last night, he calculated the odds of a four-team tie at 1 in 8, or 12.5%.The thing about the Playoff Odds report is it doesn't take each day's starting pitchers into account. This doesn't matter at all over any significant period of time, but obviously plays a big role in our current situation. Because of this, I thought I'd look at the Vegas lines fo
Should the Diamondbacks Lose? 2007-09-30 04:02:00 In discussing potential NL scenarios over at Something Awful, I just realized that the Diamondbacks
have an incentive to lose to Colorado today. Let me explain.First of all, the Diamondbacks have clinched both the NL West (they hold the tiebreaker over SD) and home field throughout the NL playoffs. So they wouldn't be hurt by a loss tomorrow.Here's where it gets interesting. The Diamondbacks are playing the Rockies, who need to win to stay alive. If Colorado wins, there is the potential for a three-way or four-way tie, which would necessitate two or three games to resolve. This would be extremely advantageous to Arizona, since they would end up playing a team on Wednesday (or possibly Thursday, in the four-way tie scenario) that had just been through an intense "mini-tournament", likely using their best starters (Peavy would go for the Padres on Monday). Arizona's opponent's bullpen would also likely be pretty worn out.I'm not saying they should lose- that would be unfair to
Red Sox Choose Longer Series 2007-09-29 22:09:00 With the Indians' loss in Kansas City tonight, the Red Sox
clinched home field throughout the AL playoffs (throughout the entire postseason in fact, thanks to LaRussa). They also received the opportunity to choose which series schedule they want to play.According to Boston.com, they have chosen the longer series. I don't understand this at all. The Angels have two of the best starters in the league, in Lackey and Escobar. The Red Sox have Beckett, and then there is a significant drop off before you get to Matsuzaka, Schilling, and Wakefield. In either series, they can pitch Beckett twice on full rest. With the longer series, the Angels can now throw their top two four times if the series goes five, without having to pitch them on short rest. How is this favorable for Boston? I guess they avoid having to pitch Wakefield, but if I were them I would have chosen the other series.This also completely screws over the Indians, who will have two options for their game four starter: P
ALCS Game Three Live-Blog 2007-10-15 15:18:00 6:01 Lineups:7:29 OK, I think Blogger is back to working now.Yes, those last two pitchers to Hafner were outside. But none of those pitches to Manny were even close.7:31 Ah, there's the real Ryan Garko.Bases loaded, nobody out. Varitek up.7:36 Well, this isn't going to work for very long, but Westbrook gets Coco to roll into the 6-6-3 DP, and somehow gets out of the jam without a run scoring.Rockies turned DPs in each of the first three innings last night, didnt' they? (I am not comparing the defenses of Cleveland and Colorado. Or Peralta and Tulowitzki. I am not insane).Scoreless after 1.5.7:42 Garko may be completely useless in the field, but the man can hit.22 pitches, 12 strikes from Matsuzaka. He was at about 4.5 BB/9 in the last two months of the year. Something to keep an eye on.7:45 Peralta goes down without much of a fight. Two dead, Kenny up.7:46 LOFTON HITS ONE OUT TO RIGHT CENTER.7:47 I normally hate these silly nicknames they come up with, but you could do worse Read more:Three
ALCS Primer: Game 3 2007-10-15 12:33:00 First of all, Boston announced that they're going with Wakefield in G4, regardless of what happens tonight. Francona:"You know what, I think what we're trying to do is set up our rotation so we can win a series," Francona said. "I think sometimes you get short-sighted if the need for panic arises, like perceived panic. If you lose a couple of games, everybody wants you to immediately change what you've set up. The reason we set it up like this is because we think it gives us our best chance to win a series. "Doing something like [pitching Beckett in Game 4] may give you a chance to win a game, it may not, but it doesn't set up the rest of the series. We really value the rest that [Curt] Schilling can get, and Daisuke [Matsuzaka] also. It's not just one guy that it affects -- it affects three guys in the rotation."If they went with Beckett, their rotation would be Beckett (short rest), Schilling (4 days), Matsuzaka (4 days), Beckett (4 days).If Wakefield, then it's Wakefield (th
Day 13: Updated Vegas Percentages 2007-10-15 09:40:00 Colorado's defense has been pretty impressive. But I didn't really understand why halfway through last night's game, the announcers started talking about how "this team doesn't win the way people think they do." While I'm not sure this is even true, wouldn't that be your fault, TBS? Last night was the sixth COL playoff game on TBS (with them winning all six, obviously). Shouldn't you have given your viewers a pretty good idea of "how the Rockies win" by this point?Game 3 Primer up this afternoon (hopefully). Live-blog at 7. Read more:Vegas
Three Days Rest 2007-10-15 01:28:00 Around this time of year, for obvious reasons, there's a lot of talk about pitchers on three days rest. Tangotiger had a post the other day about how pitchers on short rest in the postseason since 1995 have had a 4.37 ERA. Their teams went 39-54, which is a .419 W%. His B-R data is here.So I started trying to figure out what the average ERA of those guys had been during the regular season, and how much lower it was than 4.37.In doing this, I realized that a good number of these guys weren't really pitching on short rest. 27 of them had come into a game in relief, and that's why they were showing up in the data. Only 66 of those 93 guys had actually started in their previous appearance. And isn't that what we're really looking at here?Not surprisingly, the numbers for the guys legitimately pitching on three days rest are even worse. Their teams went 24-42, which is a .364 W%. Here are their stats in the short rest start, compared to their numbers during the regular season.S Read more:Three
, Three Days
Day 12: Updated Vegas Percentages 2007-10-14 12:08:00 Five hours, fourteen minutes. Fourteen pitchers combined to throw 416 pitches; Boston's bullpen threw 126 pitches. Eight position players actually played the entire game for both teams, but the Indians DH slot saw Barfield pinch-run for Hafner, Nixon pinch-hit for Barfield, and then Michaels pinch-run for Nixon. All in a three inning span.Mercifully, today is an off day for the ALCS. Last night was a little much (from FanGraphs):This graph doesn't capture the fact that in the bottom of the 10th, the Red Sox had Ortiz, Ramirez and Lowell coming up, and the Indians had already used Lewis, Betancourt, and Perez. Wanting to save his closer for a save situation, Wedge put in Tom Mastny. Somehow, this worked, as he retired the side in order.Joe Sheehan ran the numbers on the decision to pinch-run Barfield for Hafner in the 9th, which really ended up being a decision between having Victor come up with a guy on first, or having Garko come up with first and second. Looks like Wedge mad Read more:Vegas
Indians Take Game Two 2007-10-14 00:55:00 All photos from Yahoo! They are awesome. These are all from the 11th inning.Update: From Wikipedia, via The DiaTribe:"Trot Nixon is still widely accepted as the ultimate dirt dog, for his play, his disgustingly dirty cap and his pine tar caked helmet." Read more:Indians
ALCS Game Two Live-Blog 2007-10-13 17:16:00 7:52 Seeing as this is unquestionably the Indians' most important game in six years, I figured a live-blog was in order.Before we get started, wanted to pass along some excellent video from Red Sox Monster of the Indians' mascot Slider swinging from the Jacobs Field roof onto the infield.8:03 According to my little system, if the Indians win G2, they have a 42.6% chance of winning the series. If they lose, it's down to 14.1%.I am nervous.8:08 The DiaTribe tells the story of Game 1 in pictures.I'm pretty sure the FOX studio guys have been talking about the game, but I'm not listening.8:13 David Ortiz's OBP so far in the postseason? .882. Promising.8:21 I think "Baby Omar" is a great nickname for Asdrubal."The Man" for Peralta? Not so much.8:22 By the way, I am ignoring the fact that Ryan Garko is apparently a big Brady Quinn fan.8:23 Prediction, Hermano? I'll go 4-1 Tribe.8:25 Grady leads it off with a double. Quite different from last night, when Beckett made him look quit
ALCS Primer: Game 2 2007-10-13 14:58:00 Game 2 LineupsI would assume the only lineup change for G2 will be Drew starting in right instead of Kielty. Nixon is 2/9 in his career against Schilling, so I doubt Wedge will start him over Gutierrez.Game 2 StartersGameday had Fausto's sinker as 95-96mph against the Yankees, which means FOX will probably have it at about 102. The flame thing that accompanies the pitch speed for everything above 95 really enhances the viewing experience. If they didn't have that, I wouldn't know that I'm supposed to interpret 98mph as "fast".Carmona pitched against Boston on July 25, throwing eight shutout innings, with two walks and six Ks. Last year, during his historically bad stint as a closer, he blew two saves against the Red Sox. One ended on an Ortiz walk-off, the other with a two-run double by Mark Loretta.Schilling pitched against the Tribe in May, striking out a season-high 10 over seven innings, while allowing one run. The only Indians with any significant number of ABs against h
Day 11: Updated Vegas Percentages 2007-10-13 12:03:00 Each team's % chance of winning the World Series, according to the current Vegas
futures lines:The Indians' didn't hurt themselves that much by losing last night (yes, I'm going to keep telling myself that). They went from +150 to advance to about +200, which means their chances went from 39% to 31%. The system I completely made up has them at 28.3%; it would have had them at 59% had they won last night. RD has it at 26.8%.Francona pulled Beckett after 80 pitches last night, which I thought made sense in looking ahead to possibly pitching him on short rest in G4. Although I highly doubt they'll do that unless the Indians win the next two. Beckett walked five in his first career playoff start; in seven postseason appearances since his K:BB ratio is 53:7.Meanwhile, Sabathia has now issued 11 walks this postseason, in 9.1IP. During the regular season, he walked 37 in 241 innings. So he went from 1.38 BB/9 to 10.61 BB/9. It was pointed out in the comments over at TBL that he h
ALCS Primer: Game 1 2007-10-12 11:21:00 After three grueling days without American League baseball, the ALCS finally begins tonight. I've already written about the rotations, lineups, bullpens, and defenses. And as if that wasn't enough, I discovered that we really shouldn't just look at the Pythagorean records of these two teams and assume the Red Sox are a lot better; it's actually pretty close.Game 1 LineupsAgainst the righty Beckett, I would assume won't do anything weird- Victor catching, Garko at first, Asdrubal at second, Peralta at short, Blake at third, Kenny in left, Grady in center, Gutierrez in right, and Pronk DHing.Boston is going to start Kielty in right, since he has the platoon advantage against Sabathia, and has hit CC well in his career (.310/.375/.655 in 32 PAs). Beyond that, I would assume it'll be Youk, Pedroia, Lugo, and Lowell from 1st to 3rd, Manny and Coco joining Kielty in the OF, and Ortiz DHing.Game 1 StartersSabathia vs. Beckett is a pretty ridiculous matchup. I had somehow missed thi
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