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Is St. Louis safe from an upset against Pittsburgh? A 2013 MLB playoff preview

By Dr. Ed Feng Leave a Comment

mlb2013_baserunsThe St. Louis won more games than any other NL team this season, winning the Central by 3 games over Pittsburgh. Moreover, they’re ranked 2nd in The Power Rank while Pittsburgh is 9th. It should be easy to call a series win for St. Louis.

Not so fast.

To dig deeper into these two teams, consider the idea of cluster luck. Some teams tend to cluster their hits together and score more runs. Other teams spread their hits out over the innings and score fewer runs.

One can quantify this luck using run creation formulas. These equations take box score statistics such as at bats and hits to estimate the number of runs a team should have scored. Deviations from this expectation are random.

You can read more about this in my cluster luck article on bettingexpert.

Pittsburgh at St. Louis

Cluster luck has some dramatic consequences on this series.

This season, the Cardinals have scored 60 more runs than expected, almost 3 standard deviations away from the mean. They scored more runs than any teams besides Boston and Detroit despite having average power numbers.

While the Cardinals have gotten lucky, the Pirates have not been so fortunate. They have scored 34 fewer runs than expected. Moreover, their league leading 577 runs allowed has not been the result of luck. This remarkable total is only one less run than expectation.

The visual above accounts for cluster luck by ranking teams by expected runs scored minus allowed. St. Louis only leads Pittsburgh by 10 runs over the course of the season.

To see the rankings of all 30 teams, click here.

The gambler’s perspective

While I originally looked into run creation a few years ago, Joe Peta, author of Trading Bases, inspired me to get back into the analysis. He has his own way of quantifying cluster luck that seems consistent with my work.

Joe thinks the Cardinals still have an edge. His preview shows that the Pirates pitching and defense was spectacular during the first half of the season but only average the second. In a 5 game series, he’s predicting Cardinals in 4.

Why should you trust his prediction? Joe took his methods to Las Vegas and turned a 41% profit. To read more, buy his book Trading Bases.

Outlook

This series has a special meaning to me since two of my best friends root for the opposing teams.

I texted the Pirates fan a few weeks back about this cluster luck analysis. When the Pirates started to lose the division in the season’s last week, I got a death threat.

Cluster luck had an even more drastic effect on the Cardinals fan. Despite his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford, he texted this back.

You have just made me doubt all numbers ever.

Nothing like analytics to make baseball fans crazy.

Filed Under: Baseball analytics, Cluster luck, Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals

Will the Pittsburgh Pirates finish the season with a winning record?

By Dr. Ed Feng Leave a Comment

The last time the Pittsburgh Pirates finished the season with a winning record, Bill Clinton was about to get elected President of the United States for the first time.

In the 19 seasons since then, Pittsburgh has finished below 0.500.

However, the Pirates are currently 51-40, tantalizing their fans with the hope of ending this streak of mediocrity.

But are the Pittsburgh Pirates lucky or good?

What run creation say about luck

We asked the same question last year, which led us to analyze formulas for run creation. These formulas take raw statistics like hits and walks and estimate the expected number of runs scored. A deviation from this expected result indicates luck. A fortunate team on offense tends to cluster their hits together. A team with unlucky pitching and fielding gives up hits and walks in clusters.

Last July, we found that Pittsburgh had allowed 36 fewer runs than expected. Since the math expects two of every three teams to be within 14 runs of this average, the Pirates had been a very lucky team up to that point in the season. When this luck dried up, the Pirates dropped well below 0.500 (72-90) by the end of the season.

What about the 2012 Pirates?

This season, the Pirates have only allowed 21 runs fewer than expected. They have still been fortunate, but not nearly as much as last year. On offense, they have scored 10 more runs than expected. The run creation formulas suggest that the Pirates are 31 runs lucky this season. Since Pittsburgh has actually scored 34 more runs than they have allowed, they should have a +3 run differential. Teams with an even run differential tend to finish near 0.500.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are an average team.

However, they currently have a 51-40 record. If they win half their games the remainder of the season, the Pirates will easily finish above 0.500. They would need to get really unlucky, like having superstar Andrew McCutchen get hurt, to finish the season with a losing record.

Pride.

Passion.

Nineteen straight losing seasons.

It all ends this year.

Thanks for reading.

Filed Under: Baseball analytics, Pittsburgh Pirates

Are the Pirates lucky or good?

By Dr. Ed Feng Leave a Comment

Pirates, luck or skill?
Who will win NL Central?
Watch out for Brewers

The Pittsburgh Pirates have been bad for 18 years. Since they lost to Atlanta in the 1992 NL Championship Series, the Pirates have not won more than half their games in a season. In the previous six full seasons, they haven’t come within 13 games of winning the 81 games required for 0.500 baseball. It’s a remarkable streak even for a small market Major League Baseball team. In contrast, the Steelers have won two Super Bowls and played in two others since 1992, and the Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2009. Hence, the people of Pittsburgh wear shirts that say “Pittsburgh, City of Champions… and the Pirates”.

However, this season has been different. The Pirates have a 52-47 record through July 24, 2011. Not only might they end 18 years of losing, but Pittsburgh actually leads the NL Central. The baseball gods are teasing Pirates with thoughts of the postseason when just playing 0.500 baseball would be a monumental achievement for this franchise. In a summer in which Steelers stars Hines Ward and James Harrison have made headlines for all the wrong reasons, the people of Pittsburgh live an a bizarre world in which everyone wants to talk Pirates but not Steelers. But before Pittsburgh starts preparing their ballpark for the World Series, let’s ask how they’re having so much success. Remember, the Pirates lost 105 of 162 games last year, pushing that 0.333 winning percentage that no MLB team normally dips below. The Power Rank had them as 1.61 runs worse than the average team last year. This year, the Houston Astros are also pushing the 0.333 barrier but are only 1.17 runs worse than average. So it makes sense to ask whether Pirates are lucky or good.

To answer this question, consider how a team scores runs: batters get on base, and then subsequent batters drive them home. Hence, a team will score more runs if they can cluster their hits and walks in one inning rather than scatter them throughout the game. Now, it’s highly unlikely that teams can control how their hits are distributed in a game. Do hitters focus more intently with a base runner on third? Do they care less with the bases empty? No one has ever found statistical evidence of clutch hitting in baseball. While this research might not convince every baseball fan, we’ll assume a team can’t control when it hits a homer or gives up an RBI double. For each team that hits 283 doubles and 154 homers, some will score 745 runs while others will score 698. Here, we’ll examine a few formulas for the average runs scored given a team’s statistics. The difference between actual runs scored and this average will measure luck.

Not surprisingly, Bill James, the father of baseball analytics, developed one of the first formulas for run creation. The basic idea is incredibly simple: runs are scored by getting base runners and then driving them home. His Runs Created says runs are equal to the number of runners that get on base times the rate at which they’re driven home. The number of base runners is the sum of hits, walks, and other minor events. James said the second rate factor is proportional to the slugging percentage, or the total number of bases (1 base for a single, 4 bases for a homer) per at bat. Over the last ten seasons, Runs Created overestimates the actual runs a team scores in a season by 18.8 runs. Since teams averaged 758 runs a season over this period, Runs Created is off by only 2.5%. Since a team allows runs in the same way in which it creates them, Runs Created can also be used to evaluate how a team’s pitching and defense prevent runs. Over the same time period, Runs Created overestimates runs allowed by 18.5 runs, or 2.4% error.

However, the Runs Created formula isn’t perfect. Take the simple example in which a batter hits a solo home run in his only major league at bat. The formula of Bill James gives 4 runs created, which clearly overestimates the one run from the homer. In an alternative run creation formula developed by Dave Smyth, home runs explicitly count as one run. The remaining runs come from a second contribution inspired by the simple logic of Runs Created except that home run hitters no longer count as base runners. The basic version of this formula is reminiscent of good physics research in that one attempts to explain complex phenomena with simple expressions. In physics, the merits of these simple expressions were judged by their correctness in particular limits. In baseball, this limit is the hypothetical team which only hits home runs. One can show that Base Runs passes this test. Moreover, Base Runs overestimates runs scored and allowed over a season by 7.5 and 7.2 runs respectively, giving less than 1% error. We’ll use this formula in assessing luck in Major League Baseball.

This season, the Pirates have given up 36 less runs than expected. To explain the magnitude of this luck, the standard deviation of Base Runs from the actual runs is about 14 runs at this point in the season. In other words, one expects that the runs allowed by two thirds of MLB teams deviates from the Base Runs prediction by less than 14 runs. Pittsburgh is more than two standard deviations away from this average on the lucky side. Since The Power Rank considers the actual scores of games, our rankings do not account for this kind of luck. Hence, Pittsburgh should probably be lower than 18th. Here, we list the luck factor on offense and defense for all teams this season. Pittsburgh’s NL Central foe Milwaukee also is an outlier, giving up 16 more runs than expected. The Brewers have been unlucky in run prevention, although they are still deadlocked with Pittsburgh for the division lead. Don’t be surprised to see the Brewers surge and take the division.

Rankings through July 24, 2011:
1. Boston, 62-37, 1.33
2. New York Yankees, 59-40, 1.22
3. Philadelphia, 64-36, 0.88
4. Texas, 58-44, 0.71
5. Toronto, 51-51, 0.40
6. Tampa Bay, 53-47, 0.40
7. Atlanta, 59-43, 0.39
8. Los Angeles Angels, 55-47, 0.29
9. Cincinnati, 50-51, 0.18
10. Detroit, 54-47, 0.13
11. St. Louis, 53-48, 0.12
12. New York Mets, 50-51, 0.10
13. Chicago White Sox, 49-51, 0.03
14. San Francisco, 59-43, 0.01
15. Cleveland, 51-48, 0.01
16. Arizona, 55-47, -0.04
17. Oakland, 44-57, -0.08
18. Pittsburgh, 52-47, -0.10
19. Washington, 49-52, -0.13
20. Milwaukee, 54-49, -0.14
21. Colorado, 48-54, -0.16
22. Seattle, 43-58, -0.31
23. San Diego, 44-58, -0.40
24. Kansas City, 42-59, -0.40
25. Florida, 49-53, -0.43
26. Minnesota, 47-54, -0.53
27. Los Angeles Dodgers, 45-56, -0.54
28. Baltimore, 40-58, -0.80
29. Chicago Cubs, 42-60, -0.99
30. Houston, 33-68, -1.17

Filed Under: Major League Baseball, Pittsburgh Pirates, Runs Created, Sabermetrics

Pirates in first place

By Dr. Ed Feng Leave a Comment

On Friday, July 15, the Pittsburgh Pirates shut out the Houston Astros and took over first place in the NL Central. This is quite remarkable given how bad the Pirates were last year, ending the year with 105 losses and a -1.68 rating in The Power Rank. Here’s a piece from last summer about Pittsburgh fans. Will Jeremy’s prediction for this year’s Pirates come true?

Filed Under: Major League Baseball, Pittsburgh Pirates

Pittsburgh Fans

By Dr. Ed Feng 1 Comment

I’ve only ever been to one NFL game.  In 2006, the Pittsburgh Steelers came to the Bay area to play the Oakland Raiders.  In Pittsburgh, the Steelers are a religion, and the disciples follow the team plane wherever it travels.  My friend Jeremy Jones got 8 of his friends from Pittsburgh, including his dad, to fly out for a few nights of drinking and the game.  It might be my last Steelers game though, as they lost to a Raiders teams that ended up winning two games that year.  A win at Oakland would have put the Steelers in the playoffs that year.

While everyone in Pittsburgh is a Steelers fan, it takes another level of dedication to follow the Pittsburgh Pirates.  This major league baseball franchise hasn’t won more than half their games since 1992.  With the lowest payroll in baseball, they spend about one sixth the money of the top spenders.  But Jeremy Jones follows every move the team makes.  Recently, he told me he thinks the Pirates will break 500 next year, a claim he’s made before.  But for now, he’s stuck following the worst team in the Power Rank.  A month ago, he sent me a haiku:

I hate powerrank
biggest gap equals Pirates
as true as it is

Not much as changed since; it takes awhile to scroll down to the Pirates.  Jeremy Jones, you’re a true fan.  When the Pirates win the World Series, you have the right to celebrate in whatever manner you see fit.

Filed Under: Major League Baseball, National Football League, Pittsburgh Pirates, Pittsburgh Steelers

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