Baseball Prospectus Secret Sauce: Their Rationale for Ending It Was Incorrect

[NOTE: wrote most of this up before, just getting around to posting now]

Baseball Prospectus did a study for their great book, "Baseball Between the Numbers", of how teams historically, during the divisional baseball era, got deep into the playoffs, answering the question Billy Beane had, of why his sh!t didn't work in the playoffs.

They found, on an overall basis, that offensive stats was random and all over the place, meaning that it is defensively how teams got deep into the playoffs, that is, pitching and fielding.  They narrowed down the variables to three key metrics:  K/9 for the pitching staff, WRXL for their closer, and their Fielding Defense metric, FRAA.  The only offensive metric that seemed tied to going deep was stolen base attempts, which they attributed to the link of team speed to stolen base attempts.

For a few years, BP published analysis based on their "secret sauce".  But after a number of failures, they decided to end the analysis, making the assumption that the playoffs had changed in some way to make it fail as a strategy.

Your 2019 Giants: BP Rant Time

I'm going on a rant about BP, feel free to ignore this post if that topic don't interest you. [sorry, forgot about this, been tied up with work, just publishing now, no time to update]

Hey Zaidi! My Giants Business Plan: Great Starting Rotation

As shown in a prior chapter, preventing runs are very important (and espoused by Zaidi in an interview, about low-scoring games given that the Giants play in ATT Park; though we might be getting a new name by 2020, as ATT's contract is up, and the going price has gone significantly up from the approximate $2M per year paid by PacBell, to the $20M+ range; and it has happened already, Welcome to Oracle Park!) and who has the biggest influence on that? The starting pitchers, who pitch around 70% of the innings of games. That is another pillar in the strategy of creating the best team for success in the playoffs, and ultimately in the World Series.

Thoughts on Championships and Dynasties

Saw a column on Fox Sports, about how the season teaches us nothing, about how the season don't matter much anymore, how the best team no longer wins the World Series championship, about how there's no dynasties anymore, and I just couldn't let it go without comment.  My comment is below, unchanged, other than that size limits forced me to break it up into, like, five comments, plus I put in what seems to be the right breakpoint for a header.

Your 2012 Giants: BP's Adjusted Standings Show Giants Well

I just ran into Baseball Prospectus' Adjusted Standings report, where they analyzes all team's win/loss record, and adjusts them based on a a variety of factors, such as Pythagorean (they use the Pythangpat's formula however), the Pythagorean using adjusted runs scored (though I wonder why they don't do one with adjusted runs allowed as well), and lastly one adjusted for quality of competition as well as the other adjustment.

Interesting enough, the Giants should be leading, by about 1-2 games, but over the D-backs, not the D-gers.   The D-gers have been playing above their heads and should be close to, if not under, .500, which is where I opined they would be this season.  Of course, it helps that Kemp is out, but they are also being propped up by pitchers doing better than previously.

Of course, the Giants should be above their Pythagorean:  they are currently 4 games over .500 in 1-run games, which most teams regress to zero, but as my research showed, Bochy is the rare manager who can manage a winning record in 1-run games.  So that regression that BP expects with the first order win percentage probably will not happen.

Still, even with all that, the Giants are about where they are expected to be, statistically.  And the D-backs are the real team to be worried about, as they have been underperforming.  I don't know how they are doing it but for the second season in a row, their pitching staff is in shambles the first couple of months, then somehow they regroup, find some new pitchers and start rising up the standings quickly.

They also have playoff odds.  The Giants are currently at 83.5%, best in the NL.

Prospecting the 2012 Giants Prospects: Checking the Lists

Being of sound mind and cheap genes, I wanted to point out some free analysis from name sources on the Giants top prospects, plus run through the Minor League Baseball Analyst book's list, which comes from Ron Shandler's fine group of analysts, and which I just received in the mail yesterday.   I will provide comments as they percolate up in my foggy mind, still can't shake the cough or recover fully yet.