Yankees WIN!

All is right in the baseball universe.  The Yankees completed their 27th World Championship season last night, defeating the Phillies 7-3 to win the series in six games.  Some observations:

• Matsui’s performance was the best since Jackson’s three-homer night in 1977.  If Rodriguez had stayed put that last at bat, Matsui might have gotten another hit.  He was only a triple short of hitting for the cycle, which has never been done in a World Series game.
• Matsui was also the first full-time DH and Japanese-born player to win the World Series MVP.  It felt good to see Matsui have a moment in the sun.  He’s been injured for over a year, and hasn’t played in the field since 2008.  The announcers commented that Game 6 might be his last game with the Yankees.  Given his health, it might be his last game in the Majors.
• The Phillies are a great team.  They didn’t play well in the series, and seemed to never come up with a big hit when they needed it.  Before the first game I thought they matched up very well against the Yankees, and I still think that.  The Yankees were just a bit more consistent, and with Matsui and the three-man rotation gained enough of an edge to capatilize on the Phillies’ sub-par hitting.
• I have to admit I’m glad Utley didn’t break Jackson’s record of five home runs in one series.  But no doubt it was a terrific accomplishment for him, and you could make a fair argument for Utley as MVP.  (Only one time has a player from the losing team been selected MVP— Bobby Richardson in 1960.)
• I am now convinced Mariano Rivera comes from another planet.
• I felt bad for Pedro Martinez.  He’s built a Hall of Fame career, and you have to admire his competitiveness.  Who would not want Pedro on their rotation?  Even though I was pulling for New York, it would have been good to Martinez come up with a big game on the biggest stage.
• Pettitte, Jeter, Rivera, Posada.  Those are now some of the biggest names in the Yankees’ history book.
• If you look at how the Yankees played during the second half of the season, this was their strongest club since 1998.
• The Yankees had one of their best seasons in a brand new ballpark.  So it’s a shame they priced their tickets out of the reach of ordinary people.  Even at the Major League level, and even in New York, a plumber, teacher, cab driver, anyone of ordinary means should be able to afford a good seat with enough dough to buy some dogs and beer.  But at the new Yankee Stadium, good seats cost as much as a used car.  And the cheap seats are in New Jersey.  It’s ridiculous that only the rich can afford a box seat at the sport’s most famous venue.
• But the Yankees are only the brightest example of the problem with Major League Baseball.  Through it’s TV, radio, and Internet contracts, and absurd ticket prices at many of the best ballparks, MLB seems to do its best to restrict access to its product.  Their new initiative, to bring baseball back to the inner city (RBI: reviving baseeball in inner cities), is not new.  It’s been around in various forms since the 1980s.  That’s because for nearly 25 years baseball made every effort to market itself to a more wealthy base of customers, cutting off middle and working class families and their children.  When is the last time you saw a week-day World Series game that a kid could stay up to watch all the way to the finish?
• All right, enough of the soap box.  Congrats to the Yankees, the only sports team I’ve really cared about since I was three years old.

Major League Baseball Division Series: Who Will Win?

In the early 80s, Bill James introduced a formula to predict the outcome of a baseball game given the winning percentages of the two teams involved.  Here’s how it works.

• Let A be the winning percentage of Team A.
• Let B be the winning percentage of Team B.

The probability that Team A will defeat Team B is given by

(Prob. of Team A winning) = (A – AB) / (A + B – 2AB)

(Follow this link for some background and additional information.)

Here’s an example.  The Yankees will play either the Tigers or the Twins in the Division Series.  The winner of Tigers-Twins tiebreaker will have a record of 87-76, for a winning percentage of 0.5337.  The Yankees’ record is 103-59, for a winning percentage of 0.6358.  Letting the Yankees be Team A, the probability of them winning a single game against either the Tigers or Twins is

(Prob. of Team A winning) = (0.6358 – 0.6358 x 0.5337) / (0.6358 + 0.5337 – 2 x 0.6358 x 0.5337)

= 0.6039, or a 60.39% percent chance of winning one game

(My calculations are carried out with a spreadsheet, keeping all the decimal places.)

What is the probability the Yankees will win the Division Series against either the Tigers or Twins?  There are ten possible outcomes that result in the Yankees winning a best-of-five series:

1. W, W, W ……….. Yankees sweep
2. L, W, W, W ……….. Yankees win in four
3. W, L, W, W ……….. Yankees win in four
4. W, W, L, W ……….. Yankees win in four
5. L, L, W, W, W ……….. Yankees win in five
6. L, W, L, W, W ……….. Yankees win in five
7. L, W, W, L, W ……….. Yankees win in five
8. W, L, L, W, W ……….. Yankees win in five
9. W, L, W, L, W ……….. Yankees win in five
10. W, W, L, L, W ……….. Yankees win in five

Each “W” has a probability of 0.6039, and each “L” a probability of 1 – 0.6039 = 0.3961.  The probability of a particular pattern is the product of the probabilities of the individual game outcomes.

For example, the probability the Yankees will sweep the series is given by

0.6039 x 0.6039 x 0.6039 = 0.2202, or a 22.02% chance

But this ignores home field advantage.  If we assume playing at home increases a team’s odds of winning by 5%, and noting the Yankees play the first two games at home, the probability of a sweep becomes

(0.6039 + 0.0500) x (0.6039 + 0.0500) x (0.6039 – 0.0500) = 0.2369, or a 23.69% chance

The get the probability the Yankees will win with any one of the ten possible combinations, we compute the probability for each combination (accounting for home field advantage), and add up the results.  It’s best to do this with a spreadsheet, remembering that the Yankees will play at home in games 1, 2, and 5 (if necessary).

Win Pattern	Probability
W,W,W	23.69%
L,W,W,W	6.94%
W,L,W,W	6.94%
W,W,L,W	10.57%
L,L,W,W,W	2.40%
L,W,L,W,W	3.66%
L,W,W,L,W	3.66%
W,L,L,W,W	3.66%
W,L,W,L,W	3.66%
W,W,L,L,W	5.56%
Total:	70.74%

So the Yankees have a nearly 71% chance to win the series against either the Tigers or Twins, with any pattern. While they are a clear favorite, it would not be shocking for the Yankees to go down in the Division Series.  If you know how to construct the spreadsheet, you can compute the probabilities for the other Division series.  Here are the results:

• Yankees favored over the Tigers/Twins, 70.7%
• Angels favored over the Red Sox, 54.3%
• Phillies favored over the Rockies, 53.1%
• Dodgers favored over the Cardinals, 56.6%

There are a lot of problems with this model, but one thing it demonstrates is that baseball’s playoff system is basically a crapshoot.  That part of the model is completely consistent with the real outcomes of MLB’s playoff system.  Here, we can see that the outcome of three of the division series is more or less completely uncertain.  That’s one of the problems with the expanded playoffs in baseball.  The inherent randomness in the outcomes makes the entire process seem arbitrary.

Upsets are great, but only when they are relatively rare.  Generally, fans want to see the best teams advance and meet in later rounds.  Too many times since the Wild Card was introduced have we been denied a World Series matchup between the two best teams in the game.  The 1998 season is the most outstanding example, when the Yankees and Braves combined for a ridiculous 220 victories, but the Braves were upended by the Padres in the NLCS.  This type of disappointment seems to occur every year in baseball.  Since 1995, only twice have the two teams with the leagues’ best records met in the World Series (1995 and 1999).

National League Pennant Race

I wrote about this earlier.  If you take away the divisions and wild card, the National League would have the Pennant Race to End All Pennant Races.

Club	W	L	Pct.	GB
Los Angeles	93	67	.581	—
Colorado	92	68	.575	1
Philadelphia	92	68	.575	1
St. Louis	91	69	.569	2

Note that the Cardinals are actually eliminated since Colorado and Los Angeles play each other today and tomorrow. The best the Phillies can do is tie either Colorado or LA. This is the kind of race they write songs about.

Eventual World Series Winners on Opening Day

The Yankees went down in flames to the Orioles yesterday, 10-5, leaving no small number of Yankees fans wondering if the team has any shot of making the post season.

Before you go bananas over your team’s first-game performance, consider this.  Over the last 25 years, skipping 1994, the eventual World Series winners have a cumulative opening day record of 14 wins and 11 loses.

14 wins in 25 games yields a .560 winning percentage, which would translate to 90 victories over 162-game schedule.

The cumulative winning percentage of the last 25 World Series champions is .590 (2379 – 1651), which works out to approximately 96 wins in a 162-game schedule.  So it seems World Series winners tend to slightly underperform on opening day, although there are a huge number of variables at work here.  For example, rosters change throughout the season from trades, injuries, demotions, etc.

Bottom-line: If your team loses on opening day, it probably doesn’t mean anything.  Good teams, by definition, win their games.  Opening day is like any other day, so the tendency is for the good teams to win.  But even great teams lose 40% of their games, so a loss on opening day doesn’t necessarily mean your team sucks.

Some useless facts:

• In the Wild Card era, only one 100-win team has won the World Series, the 1998 New York Yankees (114-48).  They lost on opening day.  In fact, they rolled out the gate losing four of their first five games.
• Five of the last seven World Series winners lost on opening day.  The exceptions are the 2005 Chicago White Sox and 2006 St. Louis Cardinals.
• Since 1983, there have been only three World Series winners with fewer than 90 regular season wins: the 1987 Minnesota Twins (85-77), 2000 New York Yankees (87-74), and the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals (83-79).  All three won on opening day.
• Since 1983, the longest opening day winning streak among World Series winners was only four games, from 1984 through 1987 (Tigers, Royals, Mets, Twins).  The longest losing streak was three games, from 2002 through 2004 (Angels, Marlins, Red Sox).
• The last two World Series winners (Red Sox, Phillies) both lost on opening day.

(Just to clarify: we’re looking at opening day performance the year the team wins the World Series, not performance on opening day of the year following their win.  Opening day simply means the team’s first game of the season.)

Hope Springs Eternal: About the Yankees in 2009

I’ve been a Yankees fan for as long as I can remember.   Except for a brief period in the early 90s, I’ve followed them closely nearly every year of my life.  Tomorrow (Wed), the Yankees open their Spring Training schedule against the Toronto Blue Jays at Dunedin, FL.  It’s about time.  It’s been a long winter.

At CNNSI.com’s Spring Training primer, an unnamed scout had little confidence in the Yankees’ chances at making the post season:

“I’m sorry, I just don’t see it: This is not a championship team. CC’s performance in big games has to be a concern; I don’t have much confidence in him in the big spot. You know Burnett’s going to make a couple trips to the DL. The defense behind the pitching is still a horror show. With all this stuff going on with A-Rod, getting Teixeira was even bigger for them, because a lot of their problems last year were actually with scoring runs. [Jorge] Posada is such an important part of what they do, they need him to somehow stay in the lineup. They’re going to struggle to get into the playoffs.”

But at the Sporting News, Stan McNeal picks the Yankees to win the World Series:

The Yankees don’t hand out ridiculous contracts to just anybody. They hand them out to very good players. As a result, they can make a case for having the best in the game at first base, third base, shortstop, closer and top of the rotation. With that kind of talent, they should win the World Series. This season, they will.

I can’t follow McNeal’s logic.  Plenty of teams, including the Yankees, have provided huge contracts to players who haven’t performed as expected.  And you can’t predict how the new additions to the Yankees’ roster will respond to the unique pressure that comes with playing for the Yankees.  You also can’t use total payroll to project a team’s chances of success.  Just ask the Baltimore Orioles and Los Angeles Dodgers about that.

The Yankees need comprehensive improvements over last year to make the playoffs.  They ranked in the middle of the league in runs scored (789/7th) and runs allowed (727/8th), and must dramatically improve at least one of those to earn a wild card berth or division title.  Playing in the Eastern division, the Yankees probably need to win a minimum of 95 games to finish in second place and have a better record than the other two second-place teams.  There’s no way they can do that without improving last year’s numbers.  If they can get to 825 runs scored and 700 allowed, they’ll have a shot.  Otherwise, they’re toast, big contracts and all.

My questions:

• Burnett was healthy last year, but he’s passed 200 innings only three times in his career, and never in consecutive seasons.  (He pitched 221.1 innings last season.)  How many innings will he provide this year?
• Will Chamberlain be the #4/#5 starter or the set-up for Rivera?  The Yankees need to define his role this year and stick with the decision.  Chamberlain has better numbers in the set up role, and too much talent to squander at either the #4 or #5 spot.  And he’s young, so the Yankees don’t want to put 150+ innings on his arm this year.  It seems putting him in the same role Rivera played for John Wetteland in the mid-90s is the best they can do.
• Will A-Rod be able to put the doping scandal behind him and have another MVP season?  Rodriguez has not gone consecutive seasons without finishing in the top 5 in MVP voting since 1999; he was 8th last year.  No one can predict how sportswriters will vote given the recent news, but the point is that the Yankees need a big season from Rodriguez to anchor the lineup and improve their ability to score runs.
• Will Posada play the entire season at catcher?  Do they have anyone who can handle the pitching staff and replace him in the lineup?

I don’t expect Spring Training to answer many of these questions.  Girardi will be moving every player at camp into and out of the lineup to give everyone some playing time, and we probably won’t see the line up and rotation crystallize until the final ten games of the spring schedule.  But that won’t be enough games to tell how well they’re going to play together.   The Yankees need to come out of the gate fast and play well in April and May, but it may be mid-May before we really know how good they’ll be.

Links:

• Spring Training Online
• Yankees roster plus invitees
• The Yankees official web site
• River and Sunset
• LoHud Blog

A-Rod Admits to Cheating

A-Rod has come clean about steriod use during his years with the Texas Rangers.  Read about it here.

It’s good that Rodriguez is telling the truth.  There is such a thing as redemption, and it starts with admitting what you’ve done wrong.  If he admits what he did and shows remorse, the fans should forgive him.  In fact, right now he looks golden compared to many of the others caught up in this controversy.

A-Rod Tests Positive for Seriods in 2003

Read about it here.   As a Yankees fan, this is disappointing.  On the other hand, it removes some of doping spotlight from pro cycling.

Here’s my take on McGwire, Bonds, et. al.: As far as I’m concerned, Roger Maris still holds the single-season home run record.

And let’s not forget about the Hammer, still the all-time home run king in my book:

I’ll take Maris and Aaron over modern-day dopers anytime.

The Phillies in the World Series

The Philadelphia Phillies won their sixth pennant Wednesday night, upending the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games. It was the fourth time the Phillies and Dodgers had met in the NLCS, with the Dodgers winning in 1977 and 1978, and the Phillies winning in 1983 and now 2008. In four of their five previous trips to the World Series, the Phillies have faced teams with better won-lost records and who usually were playing better heading into the World Series.

Lost Toys #4: Pulsonic II Electronic Baseball

I’m not sure when my obsession with baseball started, but after it took hold it was pervasive. I not only loved playing the game, I was mesmerized by its structure, cadence, and symmetries. And not just the game, but the people, stories, stadiums, and history fascinated me to no end. By the time I reached junior high, my friends and I were creating fantasy leagues complete with schedules, divisions, playoffs, and all the data we could record. But before my obsession evolved to the level of J. Henry Waugh, I started with a simple electronic game: Pulsonic II Electronic Baseball.

The coolest thing about this game was the stadium. I don’t think any other handheld electronic baseball game featured such a realistic ballpark—even though this one was a bit odd since it seated more people in the outfield seats than around the infield. I knew this wasn’t right, but I didn’t care.

Skip Caray Has Passed Away

CNN.com, via the AP, reports that Skip Caray, longtime Atlanta Braves announcer, died in his sleep at his home Sunday. Caray was 68.

Caray had been broadcasting Braves games since 1976.  Follow this link for an article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  Another article from the AJC can be found at this link.