Comments on FIRE JOE MORGAN: I Knew Ozzie Wouldn't Let Me Down

Did I mention I loved our readers? Here's David o...

2007-03-22T22:44:00.000-04:00

Did I mention I loved our readers? Here's David on Tony's OutsBall formula. Things is gettin' nerdy, folks!

Tony made 2 mistakes that jump out at me:
1) He forgot to subtract outs not played in rain-shortened games. Since that's completely luck, though, it does make sense to leave it out from his plan for calculating what sort of team is most likely to win OutsBall.
2) His subtraction in part 4 is wrong, it should be deleted. Part 2 correctly addresses the final inning of all home walk-off wins, extra innings or not, so I'll ignore that. In extra innings home wins, he seems to think it makes sense to subtract out the 3 outs that would be expected if that last inning were totally completed. The problem is, he's forgetting about the addition of the bottom of the 9th in those games.

Part 1 accounts for the addition of the bottom of the 9th in extra innings home losses, when combined with part 3. He thought part 3 would overcount the last inning in extra innings home wins, but in fact it does not. In an extra innings loss, the number of innings is 9+extras. For a home win, we only expect 8 innings, so the extra innings count as above expected number of outs and the number of (full) innings in such games is 8+extras.

So the formula for innings should be:

81*9 [minimum away innings] + 81*8 [minimum home innings] + HL [home losses] + E [extra innings, even in home wins] - R [loss of innings due to rain].

Multiply that by 3, add in the last inning outs in walk-off wins (note that this includes all home extra innings wins) to get the total number of outs for the team in the year.

Ball's in your court, Tony.

Wait. He's not done.This is getting complicated (...

2007-03-19T15:09:00.000-04:00

Wait. He's not done.

This is getting complicated (notice I change my fundamental conclusion)

The winner of OutsBall would be the team that has the highest total: (1) 3 x Home Losses + (2) Outs used in last inning of Home Wins in Last At-bat + (3) 3 x Total Extra Innings Played - (4) 3 x Extra Inning Home Wins. Based on these factors, it would seem tough to predict the team that ends up with the most outs.

Teams with largely negative run differentials (scores 1 run per game, gives up 5) would lead category (1). However, teams with run differentials close to zero (scores 3 per game, gives up 3), would be most likely to play extra innings or have to bat in the ninth at home. Also, the extra innings categories are affected by a good amount of chance.

Some research will hopefully clear up what teams (large negative run-diff or near-zero run-diff end up at the top of the list.

Originally a joke in this post just read: "The goa...

2007-03-19T15:07:00.000-04:00

Originally a joke in this post just read: "The goal [of OutsBall] is to make as many outs as possible." I have changed it to "...at the top of your line-up." Why? Because of this e-mail from a wonderfully literal- (and like-) minded reader named Tony:

The winner of OutsBall would be the team that has the highest total (1) home games in which the team was not ahead after 8.5 innings + (2) total extra innings played. Based on these two factors, it would seem to me that the team that has the largest difference between average runs scored and average runs allowed (assuming constant variance for simplicity) would be the anticipated winner. The more you get outscored by, the more often you are behind after any number of innings, and the more you get outscored by, the less likely you are to be tied at the end of nine innings. Although there is a good amount of random chance involved in how many extra innings you play, it's intuitive that the more likely you are to be outscored, the less likely you can keep up after nine innings. However, since intuition causes so much trouble in baseball, I will do some research based on the past few seasons

I love you, readers.