Silly bean counters September 7, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Baseball, economics, Research, sabermetrics
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I came across the Beane Count, invented by ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer, by accident. My first thought: “That’s crap. Just summing ranks doesn’t accomplish anything.” My second thought: “How can I prove this?”
My third through nth thoughts involved my standard method of creating a needlessly complex spreadsheet using data culled from ESPN.com. The results were quite surprising.
Harper's Bizarre Election September 5, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Canada.Tags: Canada, editorials, elections, Globe and Mail, politics
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There’s a reason I don’t do politiblogging anymore. When I kept a LiveJournal and used it mainly for polemics and political analysis, even my friends and classmates didn’t pay much attention. The problem, I guess, was that I was really bad. Really, really bad. If I were a political candidate, and I needed a strategist to work free, I wouldn’t hire myself. I predicted Thomas, then Luttig, to fill the Chief Justice slot after Rehnquist died, Edith Brown rather than Samuel Alito to fill Sandra Day O’Connor’s slot after Hurricane Katrina, and Bill Richardson for Barack Obama’s Vice President, after Obama defied my expectations to win the primaries. I’m batting a thousand.
With that in mind, let’s leave the analysis of the upcoming Canadian federal election to the experts. I’ll take a look at the news and editorials behind the cut. (more…)
Wins Above Expectation (with a side of run differential) September 1, 2008
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Angels, Baseball, Blue Jays, Rays, Research, sabermetrics
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In continuing my thoughts about the Pythagorean Expectation from about a week ago, I took a look at the MLB standings for the period ending August 31, 2008. I played with the stats a little bit, since I haven’t really thought through the basis for most of them.
Today’s project: find Pythagorean expectations for each team, then find the difference between the actual and expected win percentages (“pythagorean difference”). Apply the pythagorean difference to the total number of games played to determine a team’s Wins Above Expectation by multiplying the total number of games by the pythagorean difference.
Practical application: none.
Discussion and numbers behind the cut.
