World...series!!!

[wolf213]

Heltonfan,

something is bugging me here and it has bugged me for a long time now.

Is the AL really much better then the NL? Me thinks that Boston and New Yorks recored wouldn't look so good if they didn't get the chance to beat up teams like Kansas City, Baltimore, Toronto, Texas, Chicago, and Tampa Bay to name a few.

For the NL, the west looks like the best division in baseball, the NL Central is fairly weak, but our Worst team is better then their worst teams, and our second worst team(s) are better then their second worst teams and so on.

If the AL is better it can't be by to much can it?

[Heltonfan]

All of the studies done have found a huge difference between the AL and NL, on the order of 8-9 wins per year (i.e. a .500 team in the AL would be a 90-win team or so in the NL). This does seem awfully hard to believe at first.

However, there's one quick common-sense test we can do: look at team payrolls. The average AL team payroll this year was $92.8 million; the average NL payroll was only $74.1 million. To turn this into wins, we use some basic logic: a replacement level team will play about .300 ball, which works out to 49 wins a year, and they'll have a payroll of around $10 million (minimum salaries for the full roster, plus some guys on the DL and in the minors). Which means that a team that wins 81 games, with an average MLB payroll, is paying $73 million for 32 wins above replacement level. That works out to $2.26 million per win. If we take the average payroll difference between the AL and the NL, and divide it by that 2.26 figure, we get an expected advantage for the AL of... 8.26 wins per year. Bingo.

So we've got interleague results, sophisticated analyses of players switching leagues, and payroll differences, all pointing to the AL having an 8-9 game per year advantage. I think that's pretty compelling evidence.

[GerryInCS]

Originally Posted by Heltonfan

All of the studies done have found a huge difference between the AL and NL, on the order of 8-9 wins per year (i.e. a .500 team in the AL would be a 90-win team or so in the NL). This does seem awfully hard to believe at first.

However, there's one quick common-sense test we can do: look at team payrolls. The average AL team payroll this year was $92.8 million; the average NL payroll was only $74.1 million. To turn this into wins, we use some basic logic: a replacement level team will play about .300 ball, which works out to 49 wins a year, and they'll have a payroll of around $10 million (minimum salaries for the full roster, plus some guys on the DL and in the minors). Which means that a team that wins 81 games, with an average MLB payroll, is paying $73 million for 32 wins above replacement level. That works out to $2.26 million per win. If we take the average payroll difference between the AL and the NL, and divide it by that 2.26 figure, we get an expected advantage for the AL of... 8.26 wins per year. Bingo.

So we've got interleague results, sophisticated analyses of players switching leagues, and payroll differences, all pointing to the AL having an 8-9 game per year advantage. I think that's pretty compelling evidence.

I don't see how an AL team can be 8-9 wins better in the NL when you take the DH away, especially when that DH is Ortiz or Thome.

[Heltonfan]

I don't see how an AL team can be 8-9 wins better in the NL when you take the DH away, especially when that DH is Ortiz or Thome.

This works both ways. Put an NL team in an AL park, and the difference will be more than 8-9 games, because the NL team will be using its 9th-best hitter as its DH. And that hitter is going to be a far cry from Ortiz/Thome/Hafner/Cust.

[hiaspire]

According to 850 AM, the Rox will add Cook to the World Series roster and he'll pitch game 4. Good to see Cook in there, and hopefully he comes through for them as he did last time he faced those BoSox hitters.

[Roxpert]

Keith Law is not on the Rockies bandwagon, that's for sure....

ESPN - Law: World Series scouting report - MLB

What's notable in his commentary, and I somewhat agree, is this....

Don't get sentimental: Clint Hurdle is reportedly considering using Aaron Cook as the fourth starter over Franklin Morales. Cook hasn't pitched in a game since Aug. 10, and there's no guarantee he'll be effective or able to go more than three or four innings. (He faced only 16 hitters in his last simulated game, which is equivalent to only 3 1/3 innings against the Red Sox and their team OBP of .362.) The Rockies should start Morales, and use Cook as the long man if he gets into trouble.

Cook is a real risk at this point. The best thing going for him is that he's analogous to Westbrook and Byrd, the two pitchers who did the best against the Sox in the ALCS, while they feasted on Sabathia and Carmona (which may NOT have boded well for Morales). Still, Game #4 is usually the key "pivot" game in this type of series, and we need to win that one at all costs. It'll now be Cook vs. Lester, and the outcome is totally a crapshoot.

Heltonfan, your analysis seems reasonable. On paper, the Rox appear to have about a one in three shot at winning this thing. Your bottoms-up analysis is logical. However, I think the standard deviation is sufficiently wide enough to make such a handicapping of this series all but meaningless. It would not surprise me if the STDEV of 6 games exists over a 100 game sample. Plus or minus one STDDEV would mean there is a 68% chance of 27 to 39 World Series wins in 100 chances (with 33 Series wins the midpoint). Given the intangibles, and all the pressure being on the Red Sox, not us (after all, they are EXPECTED to win while we are just happy to be there), it wouldn't surprise me if the real odds of us taking this thing is 40% or even more. It takes some faith and things that aren't quantifiable to believe that, but I'll buy into that notion!

[Dante Bichette]

Originally Posted by hiaspire

According to 850 AM, the Rox will add Cook to the World Series roster and he'll pitch game 4. Good to see Cook in there, and hopefully he comes through for them as he did last time he faced those BoSox hitters.

I heard that. Good for Cook, he earned a chance to come back, but I will be nervous when he takes the mound for game 4. I'm sure Hurdle will have him on a short leash.

[bedir than average]

Originally Posted by Heltonfan

Here's how my projections see the lineups (numbers given are projected Wins Above Replacement over a full season).

Shouldn't these numbers be adjusted based on this years performance? There was a whole season played.

[BigRapidsJackass]

Cook is a real risk at this point.

Yeah, I suppose he is. We really should've brought back Mark Redman instead.

Hey, the point is that THEY'RE ALL RISKS. Morales? The stat-heads say he's hardly proven himself. He's a replacement level pitcher at his point in his development looking at his minor league stats. I say he's better than that right now. In fact, he's pretty decent right now. But he has kind of melted down 2 games in a row after having the ump call a ball for going to his mouth.

I'd take my chances with Cook. Don't forget, he's a pretty darn good pitcher. The ony issue here is his long layoff. But does 2 months with lots of workouts/simulated games cause more of a problem than 14 days, which is what Morales would have? When Cook is a proven MLB starter and Morales, well, isn't?

Interesting discussion on 950 on my way home. Irv and Armstrong were wondering why managers don't try to game the situation. Why not start Cook in Game 1, since the chances of Beckett holding us to 1 or 2 runs are pretty good? Why not save Francis for Game 2? Jimenez to start at home? After all, the point here is that you need 4 games to win, and everyone knows which 4 pitchers are starting for each team. And all but your Game 4 starter will come back if the series goes 5-7 games. So if you're the Rockies, do you try to maximize Francis' value by matching him up with a lesser pitcher? No way any manager has the guts to try it, but it's an interesting thought.

[HoyaRoxFan]

Flip side is Red Sox couldn't use Wakefield, the only Boston pitcher to beat us this year. Glad we don't have to see him.

[Heltonfan]

Shouldn't these numbers be adjusted based on this years performance?

They are. What made you assume otherwise?

[bedir than average]

the use of the word projection, as opposed to something that is backwards looking in order to see the value of the player over the past season as opposed to the projected value over last season.

I guess by using a projection you include 3 years data, where as a single season backwards looking metric would not, thereby getting you closer to true talent level of the players in question.

[Heltonfan]

Gotcha, bedir... I guess that's an understandable mistake since you don't get in-season updated projections from PECOTA, ZiPS, etc. Which, incidentally, I find rather sad. Updated projections are something everyone should be doing; having to choose between pre-season projections and '07 stats when evaluating playoff rosters is a sad state of affairs. I've got my sheets set up to update the projections automatically as the season progresses - it's not hard to do.

Cook is a real risk at this point. The best thing going for him is that he's analogous to Westbrook and Byrd...

The best thing he has going for him is that he's our best pitcher. No need to overcomplicate this with tortured logic based on tiny samples and highly questionable characterizations of the pitchers in question (if we're going to go down this road, Westbrook is much more similar to Carmona than he is to Byrd, so I don't think we have any sort of meaningful classification of which types of pitchers did well against the Sox and which did not).

Interesting discussion on 950 on my way home. Irv and Armstrong were wondering why managers don't try to game the situation.

Because it's an incoherent idea. Anything you gain by matching Francis up with a lesser pitcher, you lose in the other game where you have to start someone else. Aside from the gains to be had by giving your best pitchers the most starts (I've said it before; Fogg should be the Game 4 starter, with Cook going in Games 3 and 7), it's a zero-sum game.

[Roxpert]

Originally Posted by Heltonfan

The best thing he has going for him is that he's our best pitcher. No need to overcomplicate this with tortured logic based on tiny samples and highly questionable characterizations of the pitchers in question

Well, sure it's "tortured logic", but I consider your general overarching statement that Cook is our best pitcher to be rather meaningless at this stage as well. The guy hasn't pitched competitively in 2 months, and will be thrown into a pressure-cooker (no pun intended), even at home, in Game #4. If we are still down 2 games to 1, it's asking an awful lot of even an otherwise quality #2 starter to come back from the 2 months off to give us even 5 solid innings. In short, you generalize and I use meaningless anecdotes. We are both tortured (something Bush never admits to, lol).

Let me continue this theme of torture. Another sim engine is running this World Series....

AccuScore World Series Game 1 simulation - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

The World Series was simmed 10,000 times. The engine gives us a 33.2% chance of winning it, but only a 31% chance of winning tomorrow night. Interestingly, Ellsbury increases their odds in Game 1 by 5%.

Anyway, this sim seems to further confirm that the Sox being 2 to 1 favorites is mathmatically appropriate. I still think it could be higher (using homerism and illogical "intangibles"), but we have a real shot no matter how you'd want to handicap it.

[AutomatedTeller]

I'm really not sure why ANYONE would say that Jiminez is better than Schilling. I mean, you can argue that the Rockies 3 and 4 pitchers are better than Dice-K and Lester - god knows no one in Boston is comfortable with those two on the mound - but Schilling was great this year and was particularly strong after coming back in the second half and had 2 out of 3 strong starts against good teams.

To say nothing of the fact that Schilling has proven over many years that he's a postseason monster.

That said, I'm not sure that the Sox are 2-1 favorites, or whatever those work to be. The Rockies offense is fearsome. I think the Sox win, but then, I'm a sox fan They were the best team in baseball, from a W-L point of view, for most of the season - and the reason they weren't a 100 win team is Eric "I have pictures of Theo Epstein in drag" Gagne, who can't pitch himself off the roster no matter what he does.