Rox Talk

This is Part 2 of my post in trying to come up with a better way to show a pitcher's effort using Bill James' Game Score as a basis to a new improved system which I will term GS+. You can review my starting premise here. The long and short of my research was to determine how Aaron Cook's 74 pitch masterpiece stood up against other pitching performances during the 2007 season and against other great pitching starts. The anemic 67 game score seems to me not a good way to show the importance of this start.

In trying to come up with a modified Game Score I came with three game pitching indicators which I felt was missing from the Game Score scoring system.

1) Innings pitched. With Game Score you do score additional points as you go past the 4th inning but a complete 9 inning game should mean the most to any pitching performance. Therefore there should be something penalizing not going the full 9.

2) Pitch Count. The second indicator I looked at is how close was the pitcher to the magical "81" pitches. If you recall a perfect game score is 114 points which is 27 strikeouts in a complete, perfect game. To do this a pitcher would have to throw 81 pitches. So for Cook's 74 pitch game performance, he was actually more economical and to me and that should be a factor in his performance and Game Score.

3) Pitch Normalization. My final indicator is a a way to normalize pitching performances. As mentioned earlier I think going 9 should mean more and yet with Game Score you do find high strikeout pitchers getting high game scores of 70s when only pitching 6 or 7 innings. Normalization was basically done to determine the amount of pitches from 81 in 9 innings. For instance, if a pitcher goes 7 innings and has 76 pitches we would normalize this to 9 innings and 98 pitches.

With these indicators as goals, I began trying to come up with values that would keep Game Score relatively intact but give a little extra for an economical type starting pitchers. Data sets that I used was ESPN's 2002 - 2007 best pitching performance page, 2007 Rockies game score data from baseball reference, and finally 1997 - 2001 STATs Inc Baseball Scoreboard. (Which by the way was one of the best year end reviews of baseball using stats ever!). This spread of data (about 330 pitching performances) is by no means complete and for further validation would probably require to look at all MLB pitching data over a period of time (ha, more work for me and probably some database experience!).

From my indicators, I developed two adjustment factors which I felt described what I needed and made them usable in numbers format. The first is pitches per out. This takes a starter's pitch count and divides it by the number of outs. I then take 3 which is a minimum number of pitches for an out in the "81" perfect game scenario and divide it by the above value. So in the perfect scenario a perfect game score pitched game would give a pitcher a ratio of 1.0. Graphing Game Score versus the ratio (pitches divided by outs) you get data tightly grouped with no real correlation between pitch count and Game Score.

Now if you take the Game Score and use the adjustment factor (Game Score multiplied by 3 divided by pitch count divided by outs) you get the following:

From this point the graph shows a better relationship to pitch count and Game Score. Throughout this study I used two landmark games to serve as a guide of whether this GS+ made sense. The two games were Red Bartlett's 58 pitch game (lowest for a 9 inning game which had a Game Score of 83) and Kerry Wood's highest 9 inning Game Score (105 with a pitch count of 122). The graph above currently shows just well pitched games not a team's yearly pitching performance. I will get into this analysis later but for any system it would have to make the games that Red Bartlett pitched (58 pitch complete game versus Kerry Wood's 105 all time best pitched game) look somewhat comparable. With the adjustment factor above Bartlett's game score becomes 116 and Wood's game becomes 70. Therefore although the method looks promising it adjusts the Game Score a bit too far out of whack to make it a logical extension of the Game Score framework.

The second adjustment factor that match the indicators I set out was something I called "Extra Outs" which basically takes the pitch count (normalizing it to 9 innings) and then dividing it by 3 (min for a strikeout...give pitcher's some credit for the pitches they aren't really throwing!). In this instance I graphed normalized pitch count versus Game Score to check the reality of this method. For Game Score you get the following:
If you look add the first adjustment factor and add it to the graph you get this:

Again you see a nice linear relationship between Game Score and pitches thrown. The outliers include Bartlett's 58 pitch game with a Game Score of 116 (on the low end) and Randy Johnson's 160 pitch 8 inning lost at Texas when he had 18 strikeouts and a 76 game score (top end of graph). Now adding in the second adjustment factor ("Extra Outs") you obtained the following:

The orange dots is the "Extra Outs" adjustment factor. The important factor in this adjustment factor is that Bartlett's new Game Score (GS+) is 91 and Wood's new GS+ is 91. What a coincidence! The key to this adjustment factor is that it awards pitchers who go 9 (no normalization required) and for those pitchers who do go 9 and have a pitch count lower then "81" and they get a so called "negative outs" and thus their Game Score is adjusted higher. So from 2002 - 2007 the best games were:

And the new GS+ top 10 ranks them this way:

Three of the original top 10 still make it. Problem with most high strikeout pitchers is that they throw a lot of pitches. So with the best pitched games the GS+ seems to be a good fit for pitching but going back to my original question how would Aaron Cook's 74 pitch complete game stack up (and how would one team's adjusted Game Scores look)? Also remember we gave each pitcher a break when normalizing their pitched games by using three pitches, what about normalizing to what their actual pitches per out? Stay tuned as Part 3 will look into this...

Titanic

Went to the Titanic exhibit today at the Denver Natural History Museum. Fascinating exhibit. Have to say I am a bit morose about seeing the exhibit and the commercialism of it all. I mean finding the ship meant something, exploring it was heroic and an engineering feat but why bring up the spoils? I understand that part of finding shipwrecks is being able to savage what you find. Lots of shipwrecks out there and those spoils don't mean much to me but with the Titanic wreck it seems too recent, too close to home and with survivors still alive it seemed too much. One person's opinion but it was interesting to see the artifacts just an overall undercurrent of sadness to me. I guess Titanic represents man's ego of building things bigger and more daunting and when fate slaps us in our face for our overzealous desire for perfection it makes it seem all more dramatic. Unfortunately the human element which plays out in this makes the story compelling.

Fascinating how some things survived. Things that were interesting include diaries, people's unmailed letters, and china plates.

At 882 feet the Titanic was the largest ship of its time and built in about 2 years. For comparison I found this while doing a search on google. Amazingly the Titanic could fit in the pool in front of the Bellagio! Other interesting fact was that only 3 of the 4 stacks were actually used. The 4th was a vent and only served as a visual look see. It was supposed to look all the more impressive. The final resting spot of the Titanic can be seen below. What is interesting is that had it been a bit north it wouldn't have sunk in such a deep part of the Northern Atlantic (a whooping 12,546 feet below the surface).

Juno

A wonderful touching movie. Good movies or at least movies that mean more than just a Saturday Afternoon are few and far between. And I am not just talking about movies that win the Academy Awards...which I think have become more of a political marketing ploy.

This movie ranks up there because it has good writing, good dialogue, normal characters, and it is well directed (plus a little quirky is always good). The director, Jason Reitman is the son of Ivan Reitman...wow, love the seemingly neverending nepotism of Hollywood...or perhaps should we say the interbreeding of Hollywood (sort of like modern day European monarchy?). Anyway I digress, loved the movie and characters. The movie kind of jumped up on me...another goofy undercurrent of information that percolated under the radar. For some reason the movie's author, Diablo Cody, popped up on my screen which then led to her Movie which then led me to see the movie which then turned out to be really good. What can one say...it was fresh and new and warmhearted. I thought Jennifer Garner was fantastic...a role that should be nominated for best supporting actress. We think of her just as Sydney Bristow but this really showed a side we haven't seen. Anyway Cody will get nominated for best screenplay which will win. My one and only 2008 prediction.

This Week in Comics

Ultimate Spider-Man 117
Good conclusion to a good story although I thought the ending was a bit abrupt. Six issues and it all came down to a big fight, a death, and then a glossy three page hero definition. It appears that we will have a lighter fare with some good old fashion Spider-Man and his friends. Interesting to see if Bendis can pull off a cheesy TV show and make it fun.

X-men 206
Chapter 9 in the series starts to make some sense of where all this is going (or maybe not?). I thought Bishop was always an interesting underdeveloped character especially when comparing "Days of Future Past" (I suppose the definite future X-men). Since he was from a different version it will be interesting to see where they take his character. So obviously something triggers his future and Cable must have a vision of a different. An interesting development...where will it all end?

Captain America 33
I thought there might be more of a surprise of who was going to take the shield. No big royale battle with Iron Man...hmmmm kind of disappointing. Perhaps this will be revisited.

TV Animation Memories

In previous posts I have mentioned GI Joe has a mainstay for TV (well at least comics) growing up memories. In addition to this was the epic Star Blazers. Hard to believe it has been 30 years since it was first played on American TV. I used to watch the series after school.

For me although Star Wars was a modern day story, the voyage of the Yamato seemed more exciting to me. It wasn't so clear cut. It was a classic journey motif. Having every episode finish with a due date seemed pressing. The characters were a bit more dynamic. The story was more developed, the ships were classical, and the interconnectedness of it was compelling. Looking back it is interesting to see that the series holds up pretty well. It was a compelling story and when the Comet Empire came out the next year it was even better. Kind of a darker version of the original. Very compelling..

Lots of Good Sites
http://www.desslok.com/

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Harbor/3904/geoyamato.html

Also discovered that they had a neat battle game called Star Blazers Fleet Battle System
http://members.aol.com/neghvar2/

http://www.starblazersonline.com/

Lately I have been trying to rewatch the series as I didn't see all the episodes growing up. Boy it is tough trying to go back and rewatch a 26 episode TV event!

Haiku Wednesday

Resolved

End of year, need goals
Climb a mountain, write a book
Life is short, do more

Merry Christmas

Ha, forecasters predicted a slight chance of snow for today and what happened...yup about 8 inches at my house!  The newspaper gave a 50/50 chance.  The article went on to say that Christmas snow is unusual.  The chance of Denver having an inch of snow on the ground is only about 36% having occurred 38 times in the past 106 years.  If a white Christmas means having measurable snowfall at least 0.1 inch the likelihood falls to around 12%.  Only 13 Christmas Days since 1900 have had measurable snowfall.  Well we can add a 14th!

Rox Talk

Since it is the offseason I have revisited some earlier research that I looked in particularly Game Score...see my post dated 7/30/2007. My previous research documented Aaron Cook's masterful 74 pitch complete game victory (Game 101). His game score was a measly 67 basically because he is not a power strike out pitcher which Bill James' Game Score is more tailored to. In an effort to "level" the playing field for "finesse" pitchers, I tried to come up with what I call Game Score +. My effort is described below:

Bill James devised the Game Score metric to determine the dominance of a pitcher in a game. This score is derived by:

1. Start with 50 points;
2. Add 1 point for each out recorded;
3. Add 2 points for each inning completed after the 4th;
4. Add 1 point for each strikeout;
5. Subtract 2 points for each hit allowed;
6. Subtract 4 points for each earned run allowed;
7. Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed; and
8. Subtract 1 point for each walk.

The highest Game Score for a 9 inning game (105) was recorded by Kerry Wood on May 6, 1998 when he struck out 20! In some circles this metric is also known as the "Ryan" since Nolan Ryan has had 31 starts with a game score equal or greater than a 90. In fact if you look at the top Game Score pitchers most of them are strikeout kings (with the likes of Ryan, Johnson, Koufax, Seaver, Gibson, and Clemens at the top). Based on the scoring above it is obvious that a high strikeout game will lead to the highest possible score for a 9 inning game. The maximum score possible is 114 points for a 27 strikeout perfect game. Meanwhile a perfect game of 27 groundball or flyout outs is only worth 87 points. These two extremes pretty much define "Power" (or dominance) and "Finesse" (or economy). James' method rewards the strikeout which like the Home Run is a bellwether of a pitcher and memorable games surrounding pitcher's typically is the 19 to 20 game strikeout performances.

My study turns to those unsung pitcher's who breezed through games, hardly breaking a sweat. When history looks back at the 90s it will probably be remembered by two (and baseball's last) 300 game winners (well besides Glavine). These two are at the polar opposites of the pitching spectrum. Clemens was obviously a power, dominant, strike out king while Maddux was the crafty, scholarly, economical pitcher.

Clemens 1984 - 2007
W L G IP H R ER HR BB SO ERA WHIP
354 184 709 4916.7 4185 1885 1707 363 1580 4672 3.12 1.173

Maddux 1986 - 2007
W L G IP H R ER HR BB SO ERA WHIP
347 214 711 4814.3 4522 1876 1665 332 969 3273 3.11 1.141

Gee talking about some similarities! About the only difference is that Maddux has about 600 less walks and of course about 1,400 less strikeouts. When Game Scores are considered Clemens had 13 starts with scores greater than 90 (high of 99) while Maddux had 4 starts greater than 90 (high of 96). Would like to try to find average game score of their 700 starts but that is beyond the stats I could find. My guess is that Clemens has a higher career game score average due to his greater amount of strikeouts. Great for Clemens and other strikeout pitchers but what about Maddux (based on career stats they basically look the same). Is there a way to equalize pitcher's who win games with outs and economy of pitches thrown? Is not Red Barrett's 58 pitch performance in August 1944 (Game Score of 84) not equal to Wood's performance (which by the way required 122 pitches!).

Bill James' Game Score is an esoteric stat that very few find all that intriguing. Its basis is another way to define a quality start. My premise is that for defining a pitcher's start it is a good tool and a good place to start (can it be tweaked meaningfully?). As mentioned above the highest possible Game Score for a 9 inning game is 114 which relates to a 27 strikeout performance. In a perfect perfect game this would equate to 81 pitches. Therefore to start any sort of equalization the Game Score + system relates to this magical 81. Next post I will get into the numbers.

National Treasure 2

Okay first movie...great story, great adventure. This one...sort of a good story but not a great adventure. Whereas as the first one had an exciting back story with lots of conspiracy (got to love secret societies and the Masons!), this one had sort of a convoluted and when you really think about a conspiracy that really doesn't make any sense. I mean 1865, the Confederates are looking for the lost city of gold and some word puzzle leads to some French guy who made the statues of liberty. Said French guy puts a clue on a statue in France (how the Confederates are going to make it there?) and then the statue points to the resolute desks which weren't even made until 1879 and then these desks contain some drift wood with clues to the ancient city??? So again how were the Confederates going to find the city of gold when the clues weren't even in place??? And why didn't the original owners of the drift wood just go get gold? Then the crazy search for President Book of Secrets which claims that Mount Rushmore was built to hide the city???? Again why are we hiding it in the first place...ughhh if they make a third one let's have a better background (Fountain of Youth page 46???)

Air Force Basketball

As an AF grad I try to follow AF sports. Obviously Football is easiest to follow but I've always been a big basketball fan. Nothing like going into a warm gym on a cold winter's night to watch a game. Although Football is America's sport, I believe that College Basketball is our unrequited love (Baseball is our conscious)! Anyway before the 2003 - 2004 season there really wasn't any reason to follow AF basketball. They were an average team capable of beating the nobodies (assuming we weren't a nobody!) but getting spanked in conference play (see below for winning percentage of overall, grey boxes and conference play, blue boxes).

Even before conference play in 1980 we were a .500 team at best. Two early tournament invites (1960 and 1962) and then nothing. About the only claim to fame is that Gregg Popovich was team Captain back in late 60s. One other blip was two WAC tournament wins during the 89 - 90 season. Overall AF is 602 - 751 (including this year). They have had 52 seasons so the average record is 12 - 14 with a .445 winning percentage. As mentioned pretty average. Conference record has been abysmal at 113 - 313 averaging 4 - 11 record and a winning percentage of .265. Of course this includes the last 5 years when AF went 98 - 39 (conference 43 - 17)!!!! Take these wins out and we had a conference record of 70 - 296....ughhh....wonder why no one watched AF basketball. Obviously in 2003 all this changed. A new attitude (a winning attitude) and a new offensive (Princeton) and AF basketball landed on the map. Unfortunately our two NCAA appearances were against prominent teams like N Carolina and Illinois. We played good in the first half but the talent came through in the second halves. Last year we did make to the NIT Final Four losing a heart breaker to Clemson. The amazing thing is that over this 5 year period we have had 4 coaches! When did AF become the test bed for new hot coaches? Scott and his crony Mooney were expected (funny how Scott couldn't succeed at Princeton and is now back in Colorado at DU) and then of course the traitor who left for more money and Colorado...a real disappointment...I really thought his home was AF but I guess you can't take egos out of coaches. Anyway AF is 8 - 4 going into conference play this year. Hopefully they can be respectable and continue what was started 5 years ago.