Haiku Wednesday

Dad

A rock to lean on
Full of valuable advice
But teen repellent!

Rox Talk

The Week That Was

A 3-3 week against the Giants and D-Backs. The Rox currently stand at 29-27. Four games back from division leading San Diego in fourth place. Currently 15-9 at home and 14-18 on the road, the Rox have outscored its opponents 261-222 (expected wins is 32 versus historical wins at 25). On pace for 84 wins with 755 runs scored and 642 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.18 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

The next 3 weeks will determine the season. 13 of the next 16 games are at home. Hopefully after some good home cooking the Rox will find themselves in the lead or a game back. Things to look for: Starting pitching settling into a routine, bullpen maintaining its dominance, winning some close games, and a more stable lineup without the juggling. I think these are the keys.

A lot was said over the weekend about the lack of hitting with runners in scoring position. Spreadsheet below shows certain offensive statistics with RISP over the last few years

Nothing overtly earth shattering. Two things of note at least to me is that if you take the ratio of runs to hits, the Rox, when hitting (!), are scoring. The problem is the hitting is down (obviously). Another highlight is the number of double is waaaayyyy down. Average number of doubles hit with RISP is around 83...Rox are on pace this year to only hit 55 (can you say Helton!). Of course Rox have played a lot of games on the road where their doubles tend to be lower. Also now that Helton has contacts maybe he will be able to see the ball...any why do the players not all have eye exams each year in Spring Training? To me that would be something pretty obvious!

Finally one note of concern is the lack of run scoring or production after the 5th inning. Historically the Rox have scored 55% of their runs in the first 5 innings and 45% over the last 4. This year through 56 games Rox are scoring 70% in the first 5 and 30% in the4 last 4. Rox are either bashing their way to an early rout or going to sleep in the later innings...big time!

Third Inning

A 162 game schedule can easily be broken into "9 innings" of 18 games a piece. Over the years I have tracked monthly averages and I am always amazed how similar the averages are. So this year instead of months I am simply tracking 18 game stretches to see if anything changes. The spreadsheet below shows the first, second, and third inning.

Amazing how similar stretches of games are and yet games themselves are so vastly different. Goes to show how statistics can mess with you!

John Birmingham - Final Impact

And finally after 2 and half years, I finish the trilogy. Book 1 was fantastic, Book 2 just racist and violent (I frankly don't even remember it), and then Book 3 which was a good wrap up, but the whole nuke thing just kind of cheapened it all. Alternate histories are certainly interesting but I think they have to done right and with this one you had the interesting concept of technology and history being brought back. I almost think it would have been interesting to have them sent back to the future just see what had happened.

Either way the books did have one of the more interesting characters in Karen Halabi who was the CO of the HMS Trident. Great character and anytime you can remember someone who isn't real is a good thing, at least from a reader's perspective and probably should be a goal for every writer out there.

Haiku Wednesday

Opera

Costumes and big voices
It's old school entertainment
Thank god for TV

Rox Talk

The Week That Was

A 4-2 week against the D-Backs and Dodgers. The Rox currently stand at 26-24. Four games back from division leading San Diego in fourth place. Currently 15-9 at home and 11-15 on the road, the Rox have outscored its opponents 242-204 (expected wins is 29 versus historical wins at 22). On pace for 84 wins with 784 runs scored and 661 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.19 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

Nice week at home. With May coming to a close the Rox have stayed in the race. With June coming around the Rox should smile. Historically the Rox have played 0.460 in April, 0.441 in May, and 0.495 in June. June has some tough series. Lead off in San Francisco (1-2) then a weekend series in Arizona (2-1). Return home for four against Houston (3-1) then have homer happy Blue Jays (2-1) in for a visit. Off to Minnesota's (0-3) new park (we hated the old park) then return home for the Brewers (2-1) and Red Sox (2-1), who aren't dead yet, actually playing like our Rox lurking in the bush. This is followed by a trip to SoCal to visit the Angels (2-1) and then San Diego (2-1). A 15 - 12 month (one game in San Fran was today 5/31)? Will we see Huston Street? Taylor Buchholz? Jorge de la Rosa? Huge pitching assets that really could help during the hot summer months.

Periodic Chart of the Rox

Everyone like periodic charts especially us chemists. So what do you get when you add some baseball stats into the mix? See below (for a larger version go here). To rank the players I took WAR and added it to WPA. Why? Well there are only 109 players (I need 118 players) with a WAR above 0.7 and two I couldn't accept that Dante Bichette was 70th in WAR and 3rd in WPA. Combined puts Dante in the top 5.

The above table is straight ranking. My next chart is by position. Little tougher to put together.

Just for fun...the Major League WAR leaders.

Comic Splat (2)

Dazzler #1 - Snore, great supporting character, never makes it has a solo artist

Secret Avengers #1 - Love the writer but the characters are such a mixed bag, really hard to follow the Dark Avengers

Haiku Wednesday

Bloom

Sunshine, dash of rain
Mother Nature's color wheel
Overwhelms senses

Rox Talk

The Week That Was

A 3-4 week against the Cubs, Astros, and Royals. The Rox currently stand at 22-22. Four games back from division leading San Diego in fourth place. Currently 11-7 at home and 11-15 on the road, the Rox have outscored its opponents 206-185 (expected wins is 24 versus historical wins at 20). On pace for 81 wins with 758 runs scored and 681 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.11 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

Well this was the week I thought the Rox might make a run. Playing three sub .500 teams I thought a 5 - 2 week should be expected. Unfortunately the offense decided to take the week off for the most part. As much as I want to berate this team I just can't do it. I mean the team is playing .500 baseball...they are only 4 games out...nothing has clicked and yet they find themselves still within striking distance with 118 games still to be played. Sure you hate to see the big offensive players struggling, the defense committing 25 errors, and pitching staff that has been saved by U-Ball but even with all this you have Beimel having thrown 14 2/3 scoreless innings, Corpas having regained his closer roll, Francis looking like 2007, CarGo for the most part continuing his playoff pace, Helton still getting on base, Hawpe still hitting, and Olivo hitting dingers. Day to day it stinks watching the Rox struggle but I think the bigger picture is that this team has a tremendous upswing when all parts start working together. Plus throw in Street, Buchholz, and de la Rosa. Warn the NL now because come September I think this team will be unstoppable (or maybe Vegas knew something we didn't...remember Rox over/under was 83 games...; (

First Quarter of the Season

Back in March I provided an overview of 2010 projections comparing Bill James, Marcels, and CHONE. I added ZiPS later. Each of these projections provided at bats, plate appearances, run scored and wOBA for each hitter and innings pitched, runs allowed, and FIP for each pitcher. Taking each of these data points and averaging them I put together a projection for a Rox projected lineup. Since we passed the 40 game mark, we are approximately a quarter of the way through the season so how do the projections stack up to the real data (i.e. CarGo has scored 24 runs this year so far so he is projected to score 83).

The solid bar represents the average of the four projections and the red line is the 1st quarter pace. So above represents that CarGo is on pace for about 15 more runs then what the average projection had him before the start of the season. Obviously Hawpe's injury limited his time so his numbers are low and with Ianetta stuck in AAA he isn't scoring a lot of runs in the big leagues. The projections don't do the bench players much justice because they assume they will get a lot more starts and thus more runs. Based on this analysis the team is on pace to score 753 runs. Interesting to note that we have been whining about Tulo's power but he has gotten on base and scored a ton of runs in the first quarter. He is on pace to score 108 runs. Helton is trending lower but is currently on pace for -16 from his projection. My bet is as the season warms so will Todd.

In addition to the hitters the above graph shows the runs allowed for the pitchers. With the pitching flux this year it is hard to get a real feel for what this staff is capable of. Frances and U-Ball have been amazing. I mean if Jimenez keeps this pace he will only allow 28 runs. That is crazy! Relief pitching is such a crap shoot...look at Betancourt...light's out last year, this year struggling. Team is on pace to only allow 631 runs which would be a new team record. We shall see...

Based on projections the team is headed for about 87 wins. Little low to ensure a Wild Card or Division Title but still in the hunt!

Comic Splat (5)

Avengers #1 - Nice lead off issue. Finally not a soap opera but a real Avengers story...although hasn't this kid thing been done before?

Stumptown #3 - Love Ruck, hate missing the first two issues!

Oz #6 - Love the art, but this story isn't has easy to mesh with as the first one!

Iron Man #26 - Hammer Time

Joe the Barbarian #5 - Great storytelling

Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

I heard Connie Willis speak a few months back and enjoyed hearing her in person. She is a very nice and approachable writer. Being that she has won so many awards you kind of feel obligated to read what the fuss is about. Connie and Ursula Le Guin must be separated at birth. Two well known, female writers who seem to know the formula for winning science fiction awards.

Reading the Doomsday Book was interesting but I frankly just got frustrated with the story. The story was kind of obvious and the plot points that you knew were coming just seemed to be purposely delayed which drove me nuts. Then in the end I was hoping for a Crichton like finish and yet the finish was very tame. No flip, no ah hah moments, just an ending. The book was ok but just didn't do much for me.