NLD XXXVI - The Fun Continues

I don't do Sims and have no ratings data persay. But the nose says an an Alan Funt style reveal would be in order if he were still around.

I'll see you at your place tonight. I'm sure you won't have zero home wins after tonight.

I feel like I'm on candid camera right now. 0-9 at home?? I actually liked my team post draft too, not sure what the hell is going on. This team played very well in sims.

Still early Corky. Still 0-9 at home? Weird.

Speaking of oddities, Gio has been hurt twice in two starts, missing a start in the process. Ok, that's weird enough, BUT the same batter, Adam Dunn, was up on both injuries! Weird huh?

First pass through the divisions show them, with the exception of Corky, to be very close. The Central is, in particular, very tight. On to intra-divisional play for the Central and West. I believe the East keeps playing each other?

My second week on the road ... Actually the second week on the flight routes ... heading to Seattle, San Fran, LA and Houston this week.

My team is doing better than last year. Lost a few close games and hoping to get the dice falling my way against the other divisions. Nice to see how avoids tossing my R2 reliever and loves tossing Gracia.

Might be time for a few changes to the team starting with the beer sale hours. The fans are getting restless with the team struggling to score runs.

It's unclear why HAL has 32+ opportunities to advance a runner and has seen fit for my guys to be 5 for 10 in running. That's got to change along with a subpar base stealing %.

We'll try to harder next week.

[quote=

It's unclear why HAL has 32+ opportunities to advance a runner and has seen fit for my guys to be 5 for 10 in running. That's got to change along with a subpar base stealing %.

.[/quote]

Semper - lot of good OF arms in our division. Maybe HAL's reluctant to test them. The West has only attempted to take the extra base ~ one-third of the time while the other two divisions attempt around 50% of the opportunities.

If GMAC doesn't use his remaining funds, can I borrow them?

LOL!


Sorry I've been silent for a week. I was out camping and kinda just went off the grid for a week.

Back at it!

Here's a quick summary of my thoughts on my team so far, and some interesting observations on Strat's stats on base running:

1. I think my team has had a little bit of luck so far on die rolls. My pitchers have had a little more rolls to the batting cards (about 30 rolls more to the batter cards - bad luck), but my hitters have had EVEN MORE rolls to their own batter cards - about 70 rolls more (i.e. good luck)! So overall, it looks like good luck on the die rolls. Also, I've had good luck on die rolls for ballpark home runs compared to my opponents (7/14 vs 9/25) - i.e. my batters were lucky and my pitchers could have been burned much more than they were. My home park is "Nationals" (1-8 each way), and my division rivals are very mixed in terms of ballparks.

2. I'm very happy with my pitching and defense overall so far. Despite a relatively low payroll (see Joe's analysis, thanks Joe!), it's 7th in ERA, but just 5th in runs allowed (including unearned runs). My fielding has been good so far (78 out of 97 on the X chart), but it's been really good in terms of low errors allowed, and therefore low unearned runs (2nd lowest errors - 5- Naples is best at only 4). My pitchers are getting it done despite relatively more rolls to the batter cards (30 more to the opposition batter cards).

3. My runs scored is 3rd best in the league, but that should decline as the rolls to the pitcher cards even out a little (currently 70 more rolls to the batters' cards for my hitters).

4. Baserunning and outfielders arms:

I did my own stats on my outfielders' performance - similar to the offensive base running stats, but from a defensive point of view. It makes me wonder how strat is keeping the offensive stats. I did this quite carefully - I think - and I show WAY more base running opportunities than strat does. IMO I may be UNDERstating the base running opportunities, but I'm showing WAY more opportunities than strat.

Through 21 games, strat shows (on average for the league) 35 offensive base running opportunities per team.

Through 21 games, I show 58 (Fifty-eight) very clear base running opportunities defensively for the Blue Bombers. (Later today I'll check the offensive base running opportunities for the Bombers, and share that in a separate post).

My inclusions (for opportunities) are:
-all singles except for ** singles (Yes I checked them all), and of course excluding singles from X chart readings and strategy plays.
-all doubles except for X chart readings and strategy plays. My understanding of the rules that are used online is that all doubles can be run on by the baserunner, at the offensive manager's option.
-Sacrifice flies actually carried out (i.e. either successful, or ending in outfield assists where the runner is thrown out). I didn't include sac fly opportunities where the offensive manager elected not to send the runner - I just thought that was too much work to check, and I didn't think of this type of opportunity till later. However I did count the sac flies actually carried out.

The Blue Bombers "fielding" stats for opposing base running are (through 21 games):
-58 opportunities
-14 advances
-4 runners thrown out (agrees with the team fielding stats).

Of the 14 advances, 3 were sacrifice flies. 11 were on base hits.

Most interesting to me, though, is that in 40 of 58 cases (about 2/3), the opposing runners simply didn't run! To me, this is the most important stat. The other key stat is that Molina has only allowed 4 stolen bases, while catching runners 3 times.

5. My own team's base running - not great so far

My own team's base running stats are just 10 extra bases and a whopping 7 outs, in 35 opportunities!!! That despite a "decent" average base running of 1-13 for the team (average for starting lineup). Seager is the worst offender at 2 outs, no advances in 5 opportunities.

The outs are uncharacteristically high for my teams. I always set the team setting to normal, and I expect a success ratio of 70% or better.

As I said before, I'll be checking the stats later today.

6. Base stealing

A happier story here, with 18 stolen bases (!) and just 5 caught stealing.

And of course, with some good luck as noted above, and a 12-9 start, I am very happy so far.

I checked the offence base running stats for the Blue Bombers. Instead of 35/10/7, I calculate 44/11/9. Not too far off, which is kinda interesting, given the very high number of base running situations defensively - which I was kinda shooting for by my strategy.

In terms of how strat seems to be keeping track of base running events, advances and outs, here are a couple of theories for reconciling the differences between their calcs and mine:

1. It really looks like they DON'T count situations where a batter tries to take an extra base from a hit on his own card. So for example, Marte and Zobrist have each been thrown out in those situations, but those don't appear to be counted in strat's totals - so they have 7, whereas I have 9 thrown out runners. They have no throw-outs for Zobrist, whereas I have 1, stretching a single into a double on a throw home to the plate. Similarly, I have 2 throw outs for Marte, whereas strat shows 1 - with Marte having been thrown out at second trying to stretch a single into a double with no-one on.

2. As for the advances, I'm really not sure, but I have a feeling they didn't count a sac fly which moved a runner to third, instead of sending him home.

Obviously, I show a lot more opportunities than strat does (44 compared to 35) - about 25% more opportunities. Generally speaking, though, my figures for the advances and outs are closer to their numbers, as noted above.

What that tells me is that my pitching staff has allowed a LOT MORE "runnable" hits than most other pitching staffs - which is what I was expecting. My basis for saying that is that I calculate that they've allowed 58 base running opportunities. By comparison, the average for the league is probably around 44 opportunities the way I count it - 35 average per strat, times 125% gross-up for the way I calculate opportunities, compared to strat's calculation.

So by my estimate, my pitching staff has given up about 14 more base running opportunities than my estimate of the league average (58 versus 44). My theory is that with a good set of outfield arms, the extra opportunities are essentially nullified by the deterrent factor of the strong outfield arms.

My theory is that the run production value of the "runnable" singles and doubles is therefore diminished by the outfielders' arms. Since the pitchers' salaries would be reduced to reflect the value of these runnable hits (again, just a theory on my part), I should, in theory, be getting more value for them, for the good aspects of their pitching cards (low home runs, good pitcher's fielding - almost no errors, double play balls induced, etc.).

Thanks for indulging my rambling thoughts. My curiosity makes me want to explore these odd theoretical tangents. I hope you find it somewhat interesting.

I checked the offence base running stats for the Blue Bombers. Instead of 35/10/7, I calculate 44/11/9. Not too far off, which is kinda interesting, given the very high number of base running situations defensively - which I was kinda shooting for by my strategy.

In terms of how strat seems to be keeping track of base running events, advances and outs, here are a couple of theories for reconciling the differences between their calcs and mine:

1. It really looks like they DON'T count situations where a batter tries to take an extra base from a hit on his own card. So for example, Marte and Zobrist have each been thrown out in those situations, but those don't appear to be counted in strat's totals - so they have 7, whereas I have 9 thrown out runners. They have no throw-outs for Zobrist, whereas I have 1, stretching a single into a double on a throw home to the plate. Similarly, I have 2 throw outs for Marte, whereas strat shows 1 - with Marte having been thrown out at second trying to stretch a single into a double with no-one on.

2. As for the advances, I'm really not sure, but I have a feeling they didn't count a sac fly which moved a runner to third, instead of sending him home.

Obviously, I show a lot more opportunities than strat does (44 compared to 35) - about 25% more opportunities. Generally speaking, though, my figures for the advances and outs are closer to their numbers, as noted above.

What that tells me is that my pitching staff has allowed a LOT MORE "runnable" hits than most other pitching staffs - which is what I was expecting. My basis for saying that is that I calculate that they've allowed 58 base running opportunities. By comparison, the average for the league is probably around 44 opportunities the way I count it - 35 average per strat, times 125% gross-up for the way I calculate opportunities, compared to strat's calculation.

So by my estimate, my pitching staff has given up about 14 more base running opportunities than my estimate of the league average (58 versus 44). My theory is that with a good set of outfield arms, the extra opportunities are essentially nullified by the deterrent factor of the strong outfield arms.

My theory is that the run production value of the "runnable" singles and doubles is therefore diminished by the outfielders' arms. Since the pitchers' salaries would be reduced to reflect the value of these runnable hits (again, just a theory on my part), I should, in theory, be getting more value for them, for the good aspects of their pitching cards (low home runs, good pitcher's fielding - almost no errors, double play balls induced, etc.).

Thanks for indulging my rambling thoughts. My curiosity makes me want to explore these odd theoretical tangents. I hope you find it somewhat interesting.

GB, some thoughts on your "ramblings":
- Fly A are almost certainly not a throw so shouldn't be counted.
- Fly B's are probably in the same boat whereas Fly B? are advancing situations. Since you said you didn't go through all the Sac Fly possibilities, I think you are prolly over counting Sac Flies.
- If the runner advances behind a throw then I would think that Hal isn't counting it. So, if a batter hits a single with a guy on second and that runner attempts to score *and* the throw goes home, and the batter goes to second, I don't think it's counted. Otherwise you'd have to chances on one play.
- If there is a throw to third on a single with a guy at first, the runner automatically advances that also would not be counted because there is no option to throw for the trail runner.
- I'm not sure that all Do** or Si* are considered running situations. I think the computer randomly selects which are and which aren't. That would likely be the cause of your higher count.

"Heavy Doc."

"Heavy Doc."

I'm assuming a reference to "back to the future". Are you trying to say we're out dated???

Maybe your name should be superMCFLYdaddy instead of superflymacdaddyjuice!