Baseball Investor

Top 3: D-backs, Cardinals, White Sox

The top three Pythagorean Expectancy over-achievers are Arizona at a whopping +9.9, St. Louis at +6.7 and the White Sox at +6.3. Arizona is the most remarkable of the three mostly because their leading the NL West by a game over the Padres. So, where would they be if their record matched their Pythagorean Expectations? Believe it or not: the D-back would be in last place in NL West! Here’s the stats as of 8/6/2007.

NL West Pythagorean Standings:

SD = 61.5 wins
LA = 58.4 wins
COL = 57.6 wins
SF = 53.8 wins
ARI = 53.1 wins

The following Chart are Pythagorean Expectations. The red bar graph is a standard W/L chart (each win moves graph up one unit, each loss down one unit). The small red line graph represents the Pythagorean Expectancy in visual form.

Top 3: Yankees, Giants, Orioles.

Here are the top three teams that are under-performing their Pythagorean Expectations. The Yankees chart is really something at -8.1 games,  San Francisco is at -5.8 and the O’s are at -4.2. What I find remarkable is that both the Yankees and San Fran have had very turbulent years: the Yanks were under .500 at the All-star break mostly due to poor pitching and, of course, the Giants had suffered through Barry Bond’s quest for the HR record. Even the O’s had a little drama when they let go of their manager Sam Perlozzo.

All this drama reminds me of that Tolstoy line…Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I’m not sure the same thing applies to baseball and baseball teams, but then again were applying Pythagoras why not Tolstoy.

The following Chart are Pythagorean Expectations. The red bar graph is a standard W/L chart (each win moves graph up one unit, each loss down one unit). The small red line graph represents the Pythagorean Expectancy in visual form.

Great Pythagorean Expectations.

Here’s a list of each teams (+/-) Pythagorean Expectations thru 8/6/2007. Each team has a calculated value. A positive “+” value indicates that the team should be performing a little worse than their record indicates (example: D-backs +9.9). A negative “-” value indicates that the team should be performing a little better than their record indicates (example: Yankees: -8.1).

For those new to the Pythagorean Expectancy or those that just need a primer…here’s the a link to the Pythogorean Expectations Wiki page.

NYM = +1.7
PHI = -1.8
WAS = +4.4
ATL = -1.1
FLA = -0.2

CHC = -3.5
STL = +6.7
HOU = +0.5
CIN = -2.5
MIL = +1
PIT = +0.2

LA = -0.4
SD = -1.5
SF = -5.8
COL = -0.6
ARI = +9.9

NYY = -8.1
BOS = -2.2
BAL = -4.2
TOR = -3.4
TB = +2

MIN = -0.3
CLE = +1.1
CWS = +6.3
DET = -0.8
KC = -2.9

LAA = +2.6
OAK = -3.6
TEX = -1.4
SEA = +5.8

Baseball Betting

I little while ago i received a great comment from a reader who wondered… have you ever considered setting up a “pay-for” subscription website so that gamblers can use your technical analysis?

As I started typing out a response, I realized…this was a post in itself. Its a subject that I’ve been meaning to talk about for quite some time and this gives me the perfect excuse. To answer the question…Yes, i have thought about turning this website into a pay-for site. What i fear, however, is that this small shift in website direction might have a very large affect on my mindset, my mojo and my floundering morals too. If you’re wondering why, just check out the movie “Two for the money” with Al Pacino. The movie is okay, but the message is spot-on: gambling affects nearly everything in your life. It affects your financial situation and the way you view money; it affects how you enjoy the game. And from personal experience, gambling drains a good deal of my creative energy and kick. The problem is that gambling tends to occupy my mind to the near exclusion of all other thoughts and ideas.

This comes from my experience as a stockbroker of 10 years — not to mention the years playing poker and, of course, sports-betting. In the past, these activities have cost me time, energy and capital. And the truth is, unless you dedicate yourself full-time to one particular niche of gambling, or investing, you’ll probably fail. So, for now, I’m gambling my time energy and capital on this web-site and the ideas therein. Which is not to say that I won’t resume gambling activities later on, but for now I’m content just pluggin away at the site. Heck, I’m getting new ideas every day. And once again, these are new ideas i wouldn’t be working on… if I was gambling or giving out advice in which I had a vested interest.

That said, I do enjoy studying the Lines on a purely theoretical basis. Here’s a chart of a Washington Nationals: a team that has a losing record and yet is 2nd in money this year. Here’s the facts: the Nats have a 45-60 record, they are plus $419 this year. The reason why is because the Average Line has been .419 according to Vegas but their winning pct is .429. That’s a small but significant difference when multiplied times the number of games.

Red Graph is a W/L graph with each win moving the graph up one unit, each loss moving down the same. Orange Graph is Cash, same as W/L graph but with the daily Vegas Lines taken into consideration.

Chart of the Day: Detroit Tigers

The Tigers are a tough team to figure out: great offensive team 07 not so much in 06, great pitching team in 06 not so much in 07. This flip-flop was the focus of a post we did on July 4, 2007 entitled: Detroit Tiger: Transformers in 07 . The difference between there two styles of winning can be summarized by the playoff series between the Tigers and the Yanks. Where Detroit’s outstanding pitching staff once again proved the adage “good pitching beats good hitting”.

And now that the Detroit has Gary Sheffield maybe they’ve become the Yankees. Well, we wont go that far but we will point out that good hitting teams often suffer from inconsistency at the plate and streaky-ness in offensive production. And seeing as the Tigers dropped 3 out of 5 games to tough but under-performing White Sox team, we cant help but wonder if the Tigers are ready to slump a little bit here. The stats for Detroit are: average margin of victory 3.85 and average margin of loss -3.04. As you can see by the chart below those green bars are not quite as high as they used to be. Plus, this chart looks a little toppy here.

The WinBy/Lose By chart is a basic W/L chart (a win moves the chart up one unit and a loss moves the chart down one unit) with a non-cumulative scalable function that determine how many runs the team won by or lost by. In simple terms if a team won 7-2 the chart would go higher one unit and the green bar would scale higher by 5. If the team lost 4-2 the chart would go lower by one unit and scale lower by 2.

Chart of the Day: New York Yankees.

Earlier this year we wrote a post entitled Downgrading the Yanks, part 1 and part 2. In it, we made the argument that the Yanks were losing with pitching as opposed to winning with hitting (as they had done in recent years). Well, what a difference a month makes. Milky, Cano, Abreu and Matsui are hitting and the rest of the Yanks haven’t stopped. As for pitching, their starting pitching is doing better and their bullpen seems to have settled down. Then again, maybe the Yanks owe their current winning stretch to the decreased level of competition.

The chart below is a WinBy/LoseBy chart of the New York Yankees as of July 26, 2007. The purpose of this chart (and all WinBy/LoseBy charts for that matter) is to see how many “wasted runs” a team is generating. A “wasted run” is the amount of runs above (or below) the amount that is strictly required to win or to lose a ball game. So really, a wasted run isn’t all that wasted if you’re Joe Torre and you value the security of more than a couple run lead. Perhaps the true measure of whether a run is actually wasted is above and below the number three. In any case, this chart shows the every run, and what it shows for the Yanks… is pure domination. They are simply crushing the ball and making teams suffer. The stats below are quite impressive: the average amount of runs the Yanks have won by is 4.88 and the average amount they’ve lost by is -3.06.

So, are we ready to upgrade the Yanks. Lets, wait a bit and see how they fare against the O’s this weekend.

The WinBy/Lose By chart is a basic W/L chart (a win moves the chart up one unit and a loss moves the chart down one unit) with a non-cumulative scalable function that determine how many runs the team won by or lost by. In simple terms if a team won 7-2 the chart would go higher one unit and the green bar would scale higher by 5. If the team lost 4-2 the chart would go lower by one unit and scale lower by 2.

Chart of the Day: Boston Red Sox

According to accepted wisdom the Red Sox should be reeling after losing nine out ten 1-run games in a recent stretch from 6/26 to 7/18. The accepted wisdom maintains that 1-run games are the stuff of emotional roller-coasters: win a few and the team is likely to soar, lose a few and the team is likely to plummet. The fact is… the Red Sox have rattled off five consecutive wins since 7/18 and that must be a relief to the Red Sox Nation (especially when a newly called-up Jon Lester got one of those W’s). All that aside, we at Baseball Investor cant help but wonder, what are the reason behind these losses and does it bode poorly for the remainder of the season.

There are two primary reasons why a team has a poor record in 1-run games: poor bullpen and weak offense. Strangely enough the Red Sox dont really fit either profile: they have the best bullpen in AL with the team relievers having an ERA of 2.74 and their offense is having a good July with 119 runs for the month which ranks 2nd behind the Yanks. Simply stated the facts dont support either claim. So what’s behind all those lost games? Well, we cant figure it out. And seeing as the Red Sox have won 5 in a row, we’re inclined to chalk it up to a mild case of the summer blahs. That’s something that every team goes through and the fact that the Red Sox have managed to play 2 games above 500 since 6/26 is a credit to both their team leadership and coaching. Or maybe the Red Sox are headed to fall, and inevitable was just delayed. Stay Tuned.

The Following Chart is a Standard W/L chart (team win moves chart up one unit, team loss down one unit). Red bar indicates a 1-run Game loss, Green Bar indicates a 1-run Game Loss.

Recently we’ve gotten a few visitors who seem to be mystified as to what we actually do here at Baseball Investor. This, of course, is our fault. A website, or a blog, should be easily understood within the first 30 seconds and ours (we fear) isn’t. Our only excuse is that we’ve been so focused on getting the blog running (not to mention all the Wordpress stuff) and all the Flash Chart programs too…that we’ve let certain issues slide. One of them is user-ability and web page understandability (is that a word). Anyway, the key to understanding this website is that we’ve taken the way a baseball season is usually presented (think boring old standings. Bos 95-67) and turned those numbers into a graphic chart. The best analogy is to the stock chart. Let say you were considering the purchase of Microsoft stock, well, what’s the first thing you’d do…look at the chart, right. That’s the idea here. And reason we call ourselves Baseball Investor because if you’re investing your time, energy and capital in a team wouldn’t it be smart to check out the chart, first. We think so, and that pretty much what this site is all about. Click here to see those charts for 2007 Flash Charts

If your still not getting it: here’s three types of fans and what those fans might expect at Baseball Investor.

1. Serious fan/stat-head, card-carrying SABR member. The ideal visitor (from our perspective) who will hopefully “get” these charts right off the bat. SABR is the Society for American Baseball Research and generally they’re a curious bunch who are always looking for new ways to see baseball. The only thing we’d like to point out is that each team has 14 charting tools to help analyse each team: everything from Pythagorean Expectancy to 1-run Game to a 20-day moving averages. A must see for the serious fan.
2. Casual fan/local team supporter. One of the things we wanted to achieve when we started this site is to make is easy for the casual fan to “get” these charts while investing very little time “ramping up”. On that note, if you’re a fan of one team (with little interest in baseball outside that one team) then please click the Flash Charts:  here. After getting to the Flash charts click your favorite team and then use a few of the tools. Do you get it? Are you confused? What experience did you have? …We’d love to hear from you.
3. No interest in Baseball what-so-ever. Well, if you’re not a fan, then this site is probably not for you. Although, we be loathe not to mention that these charts are the easiest way to understand the ebbs and flow of a baseball season. So impress your family, friends or co-worker with your accelerated baseball knowledge. Or not.

Lets gets to work on the NL Central. Here’s a list of the charts in order: Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals, Houston Astros, Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates.

The purpose of this Chart is to see the what makes up a winning streak. In this case, the Cubs are 9-3 in one run games while in the previous stretch they were 2-12. Wow!

The Brewers are 32-14 at home and 19-26 on the road. That’s quite a difference. The key thing is the streaky-ness of the chart as the arrows point out. The red bars are home games.

St. Louis Cardinals using the WinBy/LoseBy tool. This chart is great for viewing “wasted runs”. A “wasted run” is a run that’s above the number required to win (so maybe they’re not all wasted). But take a look at how many times the Cards get blown out. This can be confirmed by the Lose By Ave which is -4.70 and much higher than the Win By Aver which is 3.63. That’s in the box on the lower right.

Houston Astros using the 3-In-Row tool. Check out all those red bars and no green bars (36 red/8 green to be exact). The 3-In-Row tool becomes active on the 4th consecutive win or loss. On the 4th consecutive game with greater than (or less than) 4.5 runs scored. And 4.5 runs allowed. Basically if the team is hot it will be green and if not, red. You can see all six totals in the box on the lower right.

The 2007 flash Charts have been updated through 7/15. As we mentioned in last post there’s a new tool that’s included in the package: the Win By/Lose By tool. We’ll try to keep the updates coming regularly throughout the rest of the season, usually at the start of the series (that’s Monday or Thursday for those unfamiliar with MLB scheduling). It takes us a few hours to update so please be patient. Anyway, you can see all the charts by clicking here: 2007 Flash Charts

The Chart below is Seattle 2007 Win By/Lose By. This new tool takes the amount that the team won by (or lost by) and then uses that data to formulate a bar chart. The beauty of this bar chart is that cumulative totals aren’t seen. Therefore the viewer gets to see “wasted runs” in graphic form. This tool was inspired by the classic bar charts that Wall Street Pro’s love to use. As for “how” to use this tool: the wasted runs part is crucial. Seattle is a good example to use because their playing above their pythagorean expectancy and its always tough to figure out how a team is doing that.

Here’s the link to the 2007 charts.