Daily Notes: Adjusting NERD for the Playoffs, Already?
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.
1. Reluctantly Featured Game: Houston at Colorado, 20:10 ET
2. MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule
4. Today’s Complete Schedule, Adjusted for Playoff Odds
Reluctantly Featured Game: Houston at Colorado, 20:10 ET
What the Reader Is Likely Saying
The reader is likely saying — with regard to the selection of this game, featuring a pair of teams that are a total of ca. 20 games out of their respective division races — the reader is likely saying, “I protest!”
What a Different Sort of Reader Might Be Saying
A different sort of reader — one who’s not a member of England’s landed gentry, for instance — might be saying something more like, “I hate this author” or “This author’s an idiot” or “I hate this author’s face part of his face.”
Regarding All Those Comments
All those comments by all those fictional readers I just invented are probably reasonable.
What’s Going On
What’s going on is, is NERD (the blanket term for our very proprietary watchability scores) doesn’t know that the Rockies are already 14.5 games behind the Dodgers, and have less than a 5% chance of making the playoffs.
What to Do About That
One thing to do about that, obviously, is factor a playoff-odds adjustment into the NERD Game Scores.
What the Author Just Did About That
I factored a playoff-odds adjustment into the aforementioned NERD Game Scores. You can see that below, in the section marked “Today’s Complete Schedule, Adjusted for Playoff Odds.”
One Thing to Note
One thing to note is that Colorado’s starter, right-hander Alex White, is both rather young (23) and has demonstrated the skills that lead to run prevention. To wit: 23.2 IP, 15.7% K, 5.9% BB, 51.9% GB, 3.63 SIERA, 93 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project, FanGraphs readers prefer Houston Television (link).
MLB.TV Free Game
Oakland at Minnesota | 14:10 ET
Scott Diamond, who continues to resemble an ace somehow (25.1 IP, 67 xFIP- 0.6 WAR), pitches for Minnesota.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Oakland Radio.
Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.1.
Regard, a magnificent and sortable table:
| Away | SP | Tm. | Gm. | Tm. | SP | Home | Time | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cole Hamels | PHI | 9 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 6 | NYN | Jonathon Niese | 13:10 |
| Lance Lynn | STL | 7 | 10 | 6 | 7 | 4 | ATL | Tommy Hanson | 13:10 |
| Jor. Zimmermann | WAS | 8 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | MIA | Carlos Zambrano | 13:10 |
| Bronson Arroyo | CIN | 5 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 7 | PIT | James McDonald | 13:35 |
| Doug Fister | DET | 7 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 7 | BOS | Felix Doubront | 13:35 |
| Travis Blackley* | OAK | 6 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 8 | MIN | Scott Diamond | 14:10 |
| Jeff Suppan | SD | 0 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 | CHN | Travis Wood* | 14:20 |
| Chris Sale | CHA | 8 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 5 | TB | Matt Moore | 15:10 |
| Wandy Rodriguez | HOU | 5 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 6 | COL | Juan Nicasio | 15:10 |
| Nathan Adcock* | KC | 3 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 7 | CLE | Josh Tomlin | 16:05 |
| Trevor Cahill | AZ | 5 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 0 | SF | Barry Zito | 17:05 |
| Tommy Hunter | BAL | 4 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 5 | TOR | Drew Hutchison | 19:07 |
| Kevin Millwood | SEA | 2 | 5 | 5 | 10 | 5 | TEX | Matt Harrison | 20:05 |
| Jordan Lyles* | HOU | 6 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 8 | COL | Alex White | 20:10 |
| Shaun Marcum | MIL | 5 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 4 | LAN | Aaron Harang | 20:10 |
| Phil Hughes | NYA | 5 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | LAA | Jered Weaver | 21:05 |
To learn more about Pitcher and Team NERD scores click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.
Today’s Complete Schedule, Adjusted for Playoff Odds
Here are today’s games, adjusted for the playoff odds (per Cool Standings) of each team. Essentially, a team gets credit for being closer to 26.7% (the generic playoff chances for all teams when the season begins).* The methodology of the adjustment likely isn’t ideal, but it appears to produce decent results.
*Or, at least, as was the case in 2011. A switch to 33% probably wouldn’t alter the following numbers very greatly.
Note: the right-most column (marked “POFF”) reflects each game’s playoff-odds adjustment.
| Away | SP | Tm. | Gm. | Tm. | SP | Home | POFF | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cole Hamels | PHI | 9 | 4 | 8 | 1 | 6 | NYN | Jonathon Niese | 1.7 |
| Lance Lynn | STL | 7 | 10 | 6 | 7 | 4 | ATL | Tommy Hanson | 0.1 |
| Jor. Zimmermann | WAS | 8 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 3 | MIA | Carlos Zambrano | 0.8 |
| Bronson Arroyo | CIN | 5 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 7 | PIT | James McDonald | 0.0 |
| Doug Fister | DET | 7 | 3 | 8 | 5 | 7 | BOS | Felix Doubront | 1.9 |
| Travis Blackley* | OAK | 6 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 8 | MIN | Scott Diamond | -1.7 |
| Jeff Suppan | SD | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 4 | CHN | Travis Wood* | -2.1 |
| Chris Sale | CHA | 8 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 5 | TB | Matt Moore | -0.2 |
| Wandy Rodriguez | HOU | 5 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 6 | COL | Juan Nicasio | -0.1 |
| Nathan Adcock* | KC | 3 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 7 | CLE | Josh Tomlin | 0.8 |
| Trevor Cahill | AZ | 5 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 0 | SF | Barry Zito | 1.1 |
| Tommy Hunter | BAL | 4 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | TOR | Drew Hutchison | 1.4 |
| Kevin Millwood | SEA | 2 | 5 | 3 | 10 | 5 | TEX | Matt Harrison | -1.4 |
| Jordan Lyles* | HOU | 6 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 8 | COL | Alex White | -0.1 |
| Shaun Marcum | MIL | 5 | 7 | 3 | 5 | 4 | LAN | Aaron Harang | -1.4 |
| Phil Hughes | NYA | 5 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 4 | LAA | Jered Weaver | 1.5 |
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Padres/Cubs has a zero game score!
Will they even bother playing?
I don’t know if this been asked before or if it is even appropriate to ask but
Does anyone know where I can find a downloadable schedule for mlb.tv free game of the day?
I would also appreciate this.
However, the uncertainty makes the reveal when I get home from work kinda like a scratch-off lottery ticket.
Shouldn’t the playoff adjustment take the league into account? In the AL, the number is 28.5% (or 35.7% this year), while in the NL it’s 25% (or 31.3% this year). That must make some difference at the margins, no?
For Maximum Precision™? Yes, probably.
If doing so is within my spreadsheeting skill set, I’ll make that adjustment.
Otherwise, I won’t do it, but just pretend I did.
I don’t think I understand the playoff adjustment. The White Sox have a 73.4% chance of making the playoffs and the Rays have a 58.9% chance. These are the second and third best odds in the AL. Yet that game loses 0.2 points? That’s unpossible.
The theory (nor am I suggesting it’s a great one) is that the team closest to ca. 33% (the generic start-of-season playoff odds this year) is playing in the most “urgent” or “high-leverage” games — that nothing, in effect, has been determined regarding their playoff chances since the beginning of the season, which (in theory) makes that team’s present games more exciting.
The further a team is from 33%, the less urgent the game, is what the adjustment reflects — although teams above are treated differently than team’s below 33%, simply because the range above 33 (i.e. 100 – 33) is bigger than range below (i.e. 33 – 0).
I think that would make sense late in the season but coolstandings odds vary pretty quickly so at this point in the season they are more a measure of who is playing well through two months than who actually is going to be in the race. I’m a White Sox fan and I don’t think they are so likely to be around come October.
Baseball Prospectus playoff odds seem to be more stable and less influenced by hot and cold streaks. Maybe those would work better for you, or are you prohibited from using a competing SABR sites stats?
Where are you getting this from? The Rays are in the top 5 teams in the majors, and tied for first in their division and are 10 games over .500. The ChiSox are in second place, behind a team that’s around the same quality as themselves, with a flailing juggernaut/division champion from last year looming only 2.5 behind them.
So why you’d think that the Rays would be less likely to win their division/a wild card berth than the White Sox is at the very least, confusing.
Carson uses coolstandings.com. Baseball prospectus also publishes playoff odds and has very different numbers.
http://www.coolstandings.com/baseball_standings.asp?sn=2012&i=1
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/odds/
I’m intrigued by the NERD ratings but even after reading how these are calculated I have a hard time working out how Phil Hughes gets a higher rating than Jered Weaver.
Two things, the ratings don’t make sense, and once you accept that you begin to see a sort of internal logic (like a Magritte painting). Secondly, it seems to me that the ratings give higher scores to guys with a chance of flaming out spectacularly over guys that are expected to be competently excellent.
That actually makes a certain kind of sense. Consistently excellent pitchers like Weaver are, well, boring. I’d love to have him on my team, but I don’t know if he’d be my favorite to watch.
Hey Carson, the face part of your face is just alright with me.
The playoff odds adjustment seems in the ballpark.
Padres v Cubs and Oakland v Minnesota are the worst games? Yep. Detroit v Boston the highest leverage? Yeah. Makes sense, right?
I wonder if using Baseball Prospectus ratings, and giving extra credit for “7 day delta” or their change in playoff chances over the last seven days, or giving credit for positive changes, at least. Large changes are likely to signal “this team is different than what you thought last week.” The Angels +21% over the last seven days tells me that game is likely to be exciting, since they’re on a roll (I know, no such thing as a streak, but within the narrative the game will be more entertaining). I’m less sure about negative changes; the Braves’ -34% is the largest absolute change, but I don’t know if that makes me more likely to watch the game.
Just throwing things out there.