Home cookin'

As I’ve made clear before, I think there are few pleasures in life more pure than a long, uninterrupted day of sports. In that same piece, I suggested one way to get those glorious days to occur more frequently in Major League Baseball would be to radically expand home field advantage in the playoffs and play every single wildcard, divisional, and league championship game at the stadium of the team with the better record. Two and a half years later I think it’s and even better idea and I’d like to talk more about it here.

More fun with binomial stats: Dunn, Davis, and Anderson

I mentioned in my last post that it is possible to use binomial theorem to compare player statistics year-to-year (between any two samples actually) and assess whether a player’s current numbers are in line with previous performance or well beyond our expectations, indicating that something – a new mental approach, a lingering injury, a mechanical adjustment – has changed and substantially affected his or her abilities.

Since it’s fun* and easy,** let's apply this to a few more cases and see what we can see.

*You bet your sweet ass it’s fun.

**Again, see my previous post for a slightly more detailed explanation of just what we’re up to here.

The new Gordon Beckham: binomial statistics for baseball

Watching the White Sox this year has been awful.* I have to imagine Robin Ventura wants to do this pretty much every  night. Through the end of May the Sox were hanging around .500 and then the wheels just fell off. It’s ok to lose to Detroit or Texas, but to get swept by the Cubs and Twins or drop three of four to the 4A team that is Houston** is just…ugh.

*In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve stopped watching.

** Seriously, a league-average major league player puts up about 2 WAR in a given year. The Astros have 6 players total (4 position, 2 pitchers) on pace to even sniff that mark this year. That team is baaaaaaad.

Baseball!

Is there any better feeling than waking up and knowing that – if you wanted to – you could watch playoff baseball for something like 12 glorious, uninterrupted hours? It’s like the early days of the NCAA Tournament where you get to devour a sport you love for the better part of a week. Who cares if you can’t tell Savannah State from Gonzaga without the commentators’ help, it’s basketball dammit!  Same thing here. I don’t care that I am perpetually surprised to learn that Scott Rolen hasn’t retired or that my mind races to the former still-playing (!?) catcher Henry every time Gregor Blanco gets his name called. It’s baseball! 

Take me out to the ballpark

You can’t get much further apart than Miami and Minnesota. Lakes versus oceans, cabins versus night clubs, walleye versus dolphins, James, Wade, and Bosh versus this guy*. The Twins and the Marlins, however, have quite a bit more in common than you would think. Both clubs have two World Series championships. Both have spent the majority of the 2000’s as small market teams. And both have brand spanking new stadiums.