Blogging the Nat’s opening day game vs. the Braves

Today is the opening of the new Nationals Stadium in DC.  I’ll treat the comments as the blog. Read on and comment if you’d like!

This has absolutely no relavance to fantasy sports whatsoever

http://www.suburbanhousehunters.com/about/mortgage-crisis/

Magic Number: 162

Thanks to a little Brandon Moss magic and a white-knuckle 10th-inning save, the Red Sox have inched one game closer to a post-season title defense, lowering their magic number for clinching the AL (far) East to 162 games.  This means that the Red Sox will make the post-season with any combination of 162 wins and Yankee losses.  And Toronto.  And Tampa Bay.  And the Oriol… nevermind.

For those that were unaware, the Sox had their opening day game in Japan this morning at 6 AM, and will continue their season tomorrow morning at the same time.  I woke up and watched this game like a dutiful little fan because, well, I wake up at 6 every morning.  I will say, though, that supplimenting my daily CNN & coffee for Japanese-flavored baseball was a bit weird.  Definitely a new way to start the day (although, in fairness to my darker side, I did roll out of bed at 11 AM once in college and turned on the Patriots Day game, so this was not a true first, unless you factor in that I was sober this morning).

More importantly, though, this game represented much more than a potentially crippling case of Jet Lag as the Old Towne Team amps up for a grueling April slate; it represents the start of another baseball season.  Sure, there are troubles in the country: George Bush continues to do his best Mel Brooks impression, Ben Bernanke seems to be deathly frightened that people on Wall Street will beat him up if he doesn’t quadruple the money supply every three weeks, Bear Stearns reverse-alchemied themselves into JPMorgan, Hilary and Obama continue to piss on each other over irrelevant nothings while failing to forward any real ideas for running the country, the quadruple deficits (buget, trade, medicare, & social security) are no closer to being fixed, and MTV celebrities that I have never heard of continue to do stupid crap that I don’t read about.  Yet it all seems a little less frightening today; today there is baseball to watch.  The country is suddenly a markedly better place than it was the day before.

Yeah, I know that the last time a team other than the Red Sox won a meaningful game was October 16th (congrats, Cleveland).  Sure, after tomorrow there will actually be a 3-day hiatus before the Nats play on Sunday.  Yes, the game was actually very sloppy and looked kind of half-steatopygously played.  Granted, the middle-relief corp and lineup of the teams still had a spring training flavor.  Some other positive assertion, our backup opening-day starter looked very worrisome in those first two outings.  But gosh durnit, it was fun to watch.  The season has begun, the balls have been put in play, and there are six months of daily news, results, and recaps lying ahead.  There are six months of nightly hits, runs, strikeouts, and steals.  We’ve just put our first footprint into the freshly fallen snow, read our first page in the new novel, taken the first bite of our 162-course meal*.  The fun of baseball is not figuring out who wins the world series, but rather waking up and knowing there is a game that day to watch, or listen to, or read about, or end a sentence preposition with. 

For the next few months, I will wake up and have a game to watch (literally, in tomorrow’s case).  There isn’t a whole lot more than I can ask out of life.

*Okay, FireJoeMorgan.com, I threw in a food metaphor for you guys. 

Bubble Guide: T-minus 23 hours

Less than 24 hours away, here is who I would have as locks for the tournament right now (at posting time: St. Joseph’s over Temple 32-25 at the half):

ACC (4): North Carolina, Duke, Clemson, Miami

Big East (7): Louisville, UConn, Georgetown, Pitt, Notre Dame, Marquette, West Virginia

Big Ten (4): Indiana, Michigan St., Wisconsin, Purdue

Big 12 (6): Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas St., Baylor, Texas A&M

Pac-10 (5): USC, UCLA, Stanford, Washington St., Arizona

SEC (4): Tennessee, Mississippi St., Vanderbilt, Arkansas

Other conferences (10): Gonzaga, Memphis, St. Mary’s, Drake, Butler, BYU, UNLV, Kent St., St. Joseph’s, Xavier

That’s 40 teams out of 65. Additionally, there are 19 other teams already dancing. That leaves six spots remaining on the bubble. The teams I have on the bubble are: Kentucky, Arizona St., Temple, Oregon, Villanova, Ohio St., Virginia Commonwealth, South Alabama, Virginia Tech, Dayton, UMass, Illinois St. That’s 12 teams for six spots.

Six In: Kentucky, South Alabama, Arizona St., Villanova, Oregon, Temple

Kentucky’s 12-4 record in the SEC will overcome a loss to Georgia in the quarterfinals. South Alabama has the best remaining profile of the low-majors, with a 3-2 record over the RPI Top 50. Arizona St. has five RPI Top 50 wins, but an RPI in 80s is a huge red flag. Villanova has home wins over Pitt, UConn, and West Virginia, plus a neutral site victory over Temple. Oregon went 1-8 against the top four Pac-10 teams, but has a road win against Kansas State and went 3-1 against the Arizona schools. Temple’s second place finish in the Atlantic-10, a six-game winning streak, and making the conference championship game, plus a win over Xavier, makes the Owls my last team in.

Six Out: VCU, Ohio St., Illinois St., Virginia Tech, Dayton, UMass

VCU won the CAA by three games, but that won’t overcome zero RPI Top 50 wins. Ohio St.’s best win away from home was Syracuse, and went 2-10 against the RPI Top 50. Illinois St. finished second in the MVC, but its only two wins against the RPI Top 50 were against NIT-bound Creighton. Virginia Tech got a big win against Miami in the ACC tourney, but that was the Hokies only RPI Top 50 win all season. Dayton has arguably the best profile of all the bubble teams, but floundered once injuries took their toll, and the Flyers are not the same team (the Committee takes injuries into consideration). UMass suffered a devastating A-10 quarterfinals loss to Charlotte, and went 0-4 against Xavier, Temple, and St. Joseph’s.

Update: Temple beats St. Joseph’s, 69-64, getting the A-10’s automatic bid. I still have St. Joseph’s in the Dance, so no change to who is in, who is out. UMass and Dayton are almost sure to miss out on the tourney, though.

Brad Hawpe

I just traded him, and some might ask why? The answer is that I realized that Hawpe has nowhere to go but down. Of course he could go off and prove me wrong, but I think he’s way overrated. I bit into the hype and drafted him, and now my damage is undone…

Year	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B
2004	42	105	12	26	3	2
2005	101	305	38	80	10	3
2006	150	499	67	146	33	6
2007	152	516	80	150	33	4
HR	RBI	SB	BB	K	BA	BA/BIP	BA/RISP
3	9	1	11	34	0.248	0.333	0.191
9	47	2	43	70	0.262	0.31	0.258
22	84	5	74	123	0.293	0.348	0.255
29	116	0	81	137	0.291	0.341	0.315

So why am I freaked out? For starters, he’s previously been a platoon guy. Last year he hit .214 against lefties and .315 against righties. He strikes out 1 in 4 at bats (more than 1 in 3 against lefties!). His batting average with runners in scoring position is significantly higher than his overall BA, indicating that his RBIs will likely fall this year. This year, it seems as though he’ll get the full-time gig and will stay in the game against lefties. This will undoubtedly hurt his batting average. In the counting stats, he could be in for an uptick, until you see that in 126 at bats, he only had 12 runs and 5 hr. His 22 rbi is nice, but again, that seems to be a statistical anomaly. Is he just unlucky against lefties or what? His BABIP against lefties is .285, well below his overall rate of .341. This indicates that he might have been somewhat unlucky. However, a BABIP of .320 against lefties only would have increased his batting average against lefties to about .230 since he strikes out so much (44 times in 126 at bats!).

This guy is good, but he’s basically a 3 category OF guy once he plays full time. That tells me that he should be a 14th round-type guy. People see that he’s gained the full-time job and plays half his games in Colorado, and think that he’s going to have a great year. Like I said, I bought into it. Not anymore…

Bubble Guide

I wanted to take a step back from baseball, in part because I am still decompressing from my latest draft, and give you a quick guide to the NCAA Tournament bubble.  Joe Lunardi on ESPN.com does a pretty good job of giving a breakdown of each team’s chances to make the tournament, so I will give a more general overview of what factors to look at to determine whether your team will make the Big Dance.

Taking on Goliath

The more good teams that you have beat, the better your chances of making it off the bubble.  These wins are separated into two categories: Wins against the RPI Top 25 and against the RPI Top 50.  Three wins in the latter is almost a must for a BCS conference school, and getting near a .500 record in these games is also a bonus.  Multiple wins against the Top 25 won’t guarantee a ticket to the Dance, but it is usually a point for a bubble teams that most other bubble teams won’t have. 

Strength Away from Home 

The NCAAs take place at neutral sites, and the Committee prefers teams that have shown they can succeed away from home against quality competition.  Teams that rely almost exclusively on what it did on its home floor to make its case will often lose out to teams that maybe did a little less, but did more on the road.

Polls 

They don’t matter.  Ignore, ignore, ignore.

RPI 

The RPI matters a lot less than people think, in large part because there a still a lot of kinks to work out of the system.  Arizona State has an RPI in the 70s right now, and is squarely on the bubble.  Missouri State had an RPI of 21 a few years ago, and didn’t make it.

Head-to-Head

If two bubble teams are vying for one of the last spots, if one team dominated the head-to-head matchups, or won the last matchup decisively (or on a neutral floor in a conference tournament), that could very well be the tiebreaker.  “We beat them by 30, and they only beat us by two in double-overtime,” however, will not matter.

Conference Records 

How a team fairs in its conference matters more than people give it credit.  The Committee looks at how teams have done later in the season, and conference records are usually based on the back half of a team’s schedule.  However, this applies primarily to teams in the Top 10 conferences.  Davidson, which went 22-0 in its conference this season, was still on the bubble until it received the Southern Conference’s automatic bid.  Kentucky, meanwhile, has basically overcome a disastrous non-conference schedule with a 12-4 SEC record.

Conference Tournaments

By far, the most important games for the Committee when it comes to determining both entry to the Dance and seeding.  Neutral floor, high-powered teams, bubble foes, conference records – conference tourneys have it all.  Lose early, and seemingly safe teams may find themselves in the NIT.  Make it to the championship, and a seemingly poor profile might all of a sudden just enough.

Will your team make the cut?  Ask us.

Strategy Meltdown

What happens when you’ve gamed out a scenario that you are almost certain will work, plan your draft for that scenario, and then it doesn’t happen? How do you make these adjustments on the fly?

I’m not sure how well it worked for me, but I will go through the keeper draft I did last night. First, the eight keepers (league starts C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, corner IF, middle IF, 4 OF, 2 Util, 2 SP, 2 RP, 3 P, six bench):

Utley, Fielder, Granderson, Byrnes, Pena, Bedard, Kazmir, Papelbon. I let Zimmerman go, in part because Papelbon is the most valuable closer in keeper leagues and in part because, with picks 9, 11, and 16, I figured there would be a good third baseman to take.

I gamed out the first 16 picks, because I wanted to see if a) Josh Hamilton would be available at 9, b) James Shields would be available at 11, and c) Adrian Beltre would be available at 16. Based on my projections, all three had a good chance of happening. One owner had four picks in front of me and two between 11 and 16, and he was taking Zimmerman. Chipper Jones was also on the board, and clearly would go before Beltre. All but one of the remaining teams was keeping a third baseman, and that owner seemed unlikely to take Beltre based on need/strategy.

I correctly predicted the first five picks, and at six a different closer was taken than the one I projected (Saito over Rivera). Then, it happened. The one owner who could take Beltre did, leaving Mike Lowell, Edwin Encarnacion, and then crap at the position. In hindsight, because of the dearth remaining at the position, I should have planned for this scenario. I didn’t, though, and was now stuck. Do I take Lowell? Do I take a shortstop and salvage another position (Furcal was still on the board, but I was burned by him last season)? Do I stick with my original plan, and hope for some luck at 16?

I went with the latter, basically because I had counted on drafting Hamilton since October and would have died if he had been taken by another owner. So, Hamilton at 9 and Shields at 11, with Furcal going between the two.  Orlando Cabrera and Lowell went off the board at 13 and 14, leaving the next best 3B as Encarnacion and the next best SS Edgar Renteria, neither of which I’m taking at 16.

Nick Swisher was the top player left on my board when my pick came up, and it was decision time.  I already had three outfielders and zero third basemen and shortstops, so taking Swisher would constitute a major shift in my team makeup.  Taking Swisher, combined with the rest of my team thus far, would essentially signal that I will be playing hard for power numbers at the expense of depth and infield strength.

I picked Swisher, and my next three picks were DH Jim Thome, SP Dustin McGowan, and OF Hideki Matsui, who dropped well below his value to late in the 13th round.  Both my SS and 3B, Julio Lugo and Troy Glaus, are high-risk, high-reward guys.  What I did here was get two high-risk players whose strengths are in different categories, hoping that one will pan out.

Overall, I am happy with how the draft turned out, despite the early hiccup.  My saving grace was switching to taking the top player on my draft board whenever he came up, regardless of position.  I now have seven players who ESPN projects will hit 29 or more home runs and score over 90 runs, three potential 30 SB guys, and with 2B Placido Polanco as my middle IF, may still be competitive in average.  There is a lot of injury risk in my lineup, but also a lot of possibility.  The lesson I took from this draft is don’t panic and reach for a player just because he is in the right position, unless there is no one you like significantly more than that player.  However, plan for the contingency where you are stuck with positional scarcity, and try to minimize those occurrences; the less you have to panic during the draft, the better your draft will be.

Stats to Chase – Hitters

Brian made an interesting post regarding Rickie Weeks vs. Howie Kendric. He was thinking that average didn’t matter as much from week to week and therefore Weeks was better. That got me thinking–which stats vary more week to week? In other words, which stats hold truest to their season averages week to week?

The stat to look at is the standard deviation of standardized 7 game trailing moving averages for each stat category and see which is highest. I looked at A-Rod because he has lots of everything, but you could look at any player or sum up all the players you have or some other crazy combination if you want.

Anyway, this is the result (details later):
AVG: 0.324
Runs: 0.461
HR: 0.980
RBI: 0.613
SB: 1.075

Basically this says that you should ‘chase’ Average, Runs, RBIs, HR, and SBs in that order. Of course as you get more players and add them up, the standard deviation of all of these will fall towards 0. However, the ranking will be preserved.* SO…. If Rickie Weeks and Howie Kendrick were EXACTLY the same in all respects, except one had a higher average and the other had more stolen bases, you should go for the average guy.

Now for the nastiness:
Copy and paste a game log of your favorite player into excel
Make a row of =average(x1:x7) and drag it down to get 7 day trailing moving averages
standardize these values by dividing each one by the average for the season (this gets them in the same units so you can compare them to each other).
take the standard deviation of these standardized moving averages, and that’s what you see reported above….

*(please trust me, i don’t want to explain the central limit theorem)

Players to be drafted

The following is the list of draftable players in ESPN pre-ranking order.  I have the first 3 picks and I’m thinking Zimmerman, Young, and Matsuzaka, but I’m not sure.  Chipper is old as is Tejada, but those are the two most attractive picks at this point beyond the three above.

The interesting thing to me is the large amount of hitters available and the lack of pitching (opposite of what I predicted). This means that people kept, on average, too many pitchers, and that it’s best to draft hitting in the first round or 2.

Chipper Jones
Rafael Furcal
Gary Sheffield
Miguel Tejada
Ryan Zimmerman
Michael Young
Takashi Saito
Jim Thome
Vernon Wells
Kelvim Escobar
Daisuke Matsuzaka
Adrian Beltre
Mariano Rivera
Dan Uggla
Todd Helton
Jermaine Dye
Orlando Cabrera
James Shields
Jose Valverde
Howie Kendrick
Hideki Matsui
Francisco Cordero
Edgar Renteria
Rich Hill
Huston Street
Brett Myers
Josh Hamilton
Tim Hudson
Ryan Garko
Jeff Kent
Matt Cain
Ian Snell
Bobby Jenks
Mike Lowell
Kenji Johjima
Brad Hawpe
Adam Wainwright
Rickie Weeks
Matt Capps
Manny Corpas
Pedro Martinez
Nick Swisher
Placido Polanco
Adam LaRoche
Andruw Jones
Rafael Soriano
Chad Billingsley
Edwin Encarnacion
Dustin McGowan
Shane Victorino
Carlos Delgado
Chien-Ming Wang
Jason Isringhausen
Pat Burrell
Jhonny Peralta
Ben Sheets
Aaron Hill
Bengie Molina
John Maine
Johnny Damon
Jeremy Bonderman
Kevin Kouzmanoff
Chad Cordero
Dustin Pedroia
Ken Griffey Jr.
Kevin Youkilis
Brad Penny
Trevor Hoffman
Frank Thomas
Raul Ibanez
Khalil Greene
Ivan Rodriguez
Joba Chamberlain
Jose Guillen
Brad Lidge
Casey Kotchman
Jeff Francis
Aaron Rowand
Joakim Soria
Ted Lilly
Derek Lowe
Troy Glaus
Kazuo Matsui
Michael Bourn
Julio Lugo
Tom Gorzelanny
Ramon Hernandez
Phil Hughes
Michael Cuddyer
Bronson Arroyo
Orlando Hudson
Willy Taveras
Todd Jones
Joe Blanton
Kosuke Fukudome
Jered Weaver
Akinori Iwamura
Kevin Gregg
Jacoby Ellsbury
Curt Schilling

What the heck is he doing?!

Many of you might not be understanding the moves I’m making in our keeper league. First I make an offer for Holliday then I let him go. Then I turn around and trade Brandon Phillips for picks. WTF?!?

Well, there’s a method to my madness. There are a few interesting developments in our league

1) Brian has cornered the market on pitchers, and has expressed wanting to draft more with his 9th round picks. This means that 5 or so of the top 15 starters will be with ONE team. This makes pitching more valuable because other teams’ pitching will be comparatively weak.

2) There’s a load of talent in the 9th-11th round range. Picking up essential pieces like starters and closers in this range allows for more speculative picks in the 12-14 round range when other people are rounding out their rosters.

3) Of the players who are 7th and 8th round talent that will be there in the 9th round, closers and starters are the most common.

So, here’s the rough plan:

I’m keeping 5 position players and 2 starters. There are 13 starting position players, 6 reliever spots, 3 starter spots (I count the utility pitcher spots as reliever spots), and 6 bench spots. I have the following picks:
95,97,98,103,107,110,131,134,138,145,158,160, and 9 picks later on.

First of all, I’m going to punt catchers. I’m well-rounded everywhere else so I can focus on pretty much whatever categories I want. Since I have a ton early picks, I will pick for value and try to be balanced to start the season rather than focus on specific categories.

I’m going to start by drafting 2-3 starters, 1 closer, and 2-3 position players in my first 6 picks (I have 6 of the first 15 picks, assuming nobody else keeps only 7 players).

Next, I’m going to go for 1 high upside position player, 1-2 closers, 0-1 starters, and 1 position player in the next 4 picks (from 131-145).

At 158 and 162, I have 4 or 5 position players targeted that I’ll take with them. Most drafts have them going at 180-200 or so, but I think they are very undervalued and should have no trouble landing them there.

This puts me at:
11-12 position players
4-6 starters
2-3 closers

And this is in the first 14 rounds (19 players)

From there, I’ll round out by trying to get another 3-4 closers/middle relievers, 3-4 position players (about half prospects) and 1-2 starters.

What I’m trying to focus on is building a solid nucleus of above average production with a few with high upside. The idea is that a Verlander/Lincecum/Saito combo is better than a Webb/Arroyo/Borowski combo and a Tejada/Lowell/Sheffield is better than Holliday/Overbay/Alou, etc.