Vegas Watch

2008 NFL Wins Over/Unders

2008-05-12T20:04:00.010-04:00

These are from Sportsbook. They are the first to post them, I believe.

8.5 for the defending Super Bowl champs. Nice.

Some crazy juice on these, since the season is 1/10 as long as baseball and there's not much room to move them around. Ignoring the juice for now, average wins for each division:

The NFC average is 7.72, while the AFC is 8.03 (the overall average is less than 8; it looks like you have to pay more juice for most of the overs, though). The only NFC team over 8.5 is the Cowboys, at 10.5.

Money Line had a post a few weeks back listing various helpful stats from last year. The correlation between last year's wins and this year's O/Us is .887; the correlation between last year's Pythag record and this year's O/Us is .900.

Here are the biggest difference between '07 Pythag and '08 O/U:

The three teams with the biggest discrepancies between '07 wins and '07 Pythag were the Patriots (16, 13.8), Bills (7, 4.9), and Dolphins (1, 3.8). So, in theory, that would make the NE U, BUF U, and MIA O attractive, although there are obviously many other factors to consider.

What Are The Odds: Chipper's Quest For .400

2008-05-11T20:25:00.007-04:00

It's May 11th, and Chipper Jones currently has a .400 batting average. This has inspired some discussion about whether Chipper can hit .400 for the entire season. Well, it's obviously a possibility, but how unlikely is it?

The first thing to do here is to figure out Chipper's true talent level. He's hitting .400 at the moment, but it's certainly lower than that. Various projections had him between .294 and .318
in the preseason. PECOTA expected him to hit .316. I'm going to use that, and incorporate his current .400 BA over 148 PAs (as Tango describes here) to arrive at an expected BA of .32677 going forwards.*

The next thing is to figure out is how many at-bats he'll end up with. This is very important- it's a lot easier to hit .400 over 10 ABs than over 1000. Before the season started, PECOTA expected him to have 600 PAs. Incorporating the 148 PAs he's already accumulated over his team's first 35 games, we should expect 618 PAs at this point- that'd mean about 525 ABs. I'll also include situations where he has 518, 568, and 668 PAs, since the probabilities will be different for each.

Using this information, here are the chances that he hits .400 given each number of PAs:

Ideally, he'd like to get exactly 502 PAs, which is the minimum required to qualify for the batting title. If he did that, his odds would be 1 in 225. As those PAs go up, it gets very unlikely, very quickly. Weighting the 618 PA scenario as 40%, and the other three as 10%, 30%, and 20%, respectively, we come to odds of 1 in 546.

If he keeps this up (unlikely), some enterprising gambling site will probably offer odds on whether he'll hit .400. I'll be interested to see what they are, although I'm sure they'll be absolutely terrible. If they were listed now, I think they'd probably be along the lines of 50:1, maybe even 25:1.

I think this is because it's a rate stat, rather than a counting stat. What I mean is that he's hitting .400 now, so at first glance it seems at least somewhat likely that he'll keep it up. Contrast this with a guy who gets off to a hot start (20 HRs) hitting 70 HRs- he's still got a long way to go. For a guy hitting .400 with 20 HRs at this point in the season, even if it's more likely that he hits 70 HRs, it'll seem more likely, to the average person, that he'll hit .400, since he "just" has to keep up his pace, rather than more than triple his HR total.

The ideal candidate would walk a ridiculous amount. In 2004, Bonds had 617 PAs, so he easily qualified for the batting title, but only 373 ABs. He probably had a better chance of hitting .400 that year than anyone else in recent memory- he ended up at .362.

The closest thing to that today is Pujols. He's walked in 21.7% of his plate appearances so far. In theory, he could end up with the requisite 502 PAs, but only about 385 ABs. He's off to a very good start himself, hitting .348 through 172 PAs. If we figure his true talent level at .335 (which includes the boost explained below), he'd have a 1 in 694 chance of hitting .400 if he ended up with exactly 502 PAs this year. Lower than Chipper, but only because he's currently hitting 52 points lower. Point being, the person most likely to hit .400 in 2009 is probably Pujols, both because of all the walks and his historically high BAs.

*There's a reason I'm using such an optimistic prediction. Since we only care whether he reaches such an extreme milestone or not, his BA for the purposes of figuring out whether he'll hit .400 or not is higher than his expected BA for the rest of the year in all situations. For example, take two scenarios, one in which he hits .200 over the next two months, another in which he continues to hit .400. To determine his BA over the last two months of the year, the first example is irrelevant- if he's hitting .285 on July 10, he is not going to hit .400, so we don't care. However, if he's hitting .400 on July 10,he still has a shot. So, we care about the .200 but not the .400, which skews his batting average for this exercise upwards. Thus the optimistic .32677 BA.

Photo: FanIQ

Also: Forget What You Think You Know [The Money Line Journal]

This Week's Links (5/5-5/9)

2008-05-08T20:18:00.007-04:00

14-22. Worst record in the AL. First baseman throwing his helmet at opposing pitchers. Fire McLaren!

"Charles Barkley Is a Dumbass."

Cliff Lee took the subway to Yankee Stadium before his start on Wednesday. He should just run for President at this point, really.

What would happen if you let a pitcher play CF? Oh, I see.

"Wait, let me get this straight, you proposed when it wasn’t even Felix day?"

Starting price for Super Bowl XLIII commercials: $3 million.

Congratulations to Brian Sabean, winner of the Worst GM tournament.

#1 Pick Odds

2008-05-08T18:34:00.008-04:00

First off, Sportsbook followed The Greek's lead and put up odds on the Draft lottery. Strangely, some of them are pretty close to the true odds. The Knicks should be +1216; Sportsbook has them at +1200. I'm not really sure what they get out of this- if they want to have more attractive odds than The Greek, why not put them at +1000? At +1200, they are barely making any money.

They also have odds on who the #1 pick will be; this is somewhat more interesting, since we don't already know what the actual odds are.

This matches my intuition- it's essentially a coin flip between Beasley and Rose, and it'd be a shock if anyone else went first.

Obviously, a lot of this depends on which team wins the lottery. So I figured I'd mess around with ESPN's Lottery Mock Draft thing, and see which teams picked which players when they landed the top pick.

Here are the results, along with the percentage of the time that the team in question is expected to get the #1 pick.

The Pacers (0.8%) and Trail Blazers (0.6%) are noticeably absent from this list. That's because they never won in the ridiculous number of lotteries I ran, so I don't know who they would pick. Edit: Apparently he has both teams taking Rose. Which kind of makes the next paragraph irrelevant.

I question the uniformity in the bottom of this list, with each of the last six teams choosing Beasley. This may be true, but it's also possible that Chad Ford didn't actually break down the "2,184 potential lottery scenarios", and Beasley was the pick for these teams by default.

Mostly on the strength of being theoretically picked by the Heat, Timberwolves, and Grizzlies, Beasley looks like the favorite. I wouldn't bet on him with this information, since I have no clue how accurate Chad Ford's predictions on this are- it's likely that the oddsmakers' predictions are superior. We'll see if the odds change after the lottery, which is on May 20.

Futures Watch: Week 6

2008-05-08T00:21:00.005-04:00

Last week:
Cincinnati, 150:1 (still 150:1)
Texas, 1000:1 (now 500:1)

Both teams that were 1000:1 at VIP last week (Rangers & Nationals) played competently this week (5-2 and 4-2, respectively), and are now 500:1. It's not like their World Series chances doubled; the folks at VIP probably just realized there is no reason to put a team at 1000:1 to win the World Series in early May.

The Reds were not as fortunate, going 1-5. This dropped their PECOTA Playoff Odds from 8.8% to 5.9%. Their odds are probably about right at this point.

This week:
Oakland, 45:1 (5Dimes)
Current Record: 21-14
PECOTA Playoff Odds: 34.2%
Tampa Bay, 100:1 (Sportsbook)
Current Record: 17-15
PECOTA: 33.9%

The fun is almost over with these two. Oakland's odds are entirely reasonable- between 30:1 and 45:1- at all five sites now. Sportsbook is a little behind on Tampa, but the best you can do on them anywhere else is 66:1. And at BetUS, their "to win division" odds have been dropped from 25:1 to 14:1. It was fun while it lasted, at least.

Rough week for Tampa's run prevention. Over their last six games they've gone 1-5, and allowed 42 runs. They're now on pace to allow 722 runs; a big dropoff from last week's pace of 654, but still 222 fewer runs than last season.

Now would be the time to get them at Sportsbook at 100:1. People are starting to catch on, if slowly.

After staring at all the current odds for about 10 minutes, I've got nothing. At times like this, I turn to Matchbook. Always something interesting going on over there.

The most useful thing about Matchbook, from an informational standpoint, is that it's an exchange, so you can bet on both sides of their futures. For example, you can currently bet on the Red Sox at +530 to win the World Series, or at -650 to not win the World Series. With these, we can figure that Boston has between a 13.3% and 14.6% chance of winning it all. Averaging those, it's 14%; "true odds" of +580. Sure enough, the best odds you can find on them is the +530 at Matchbook, followed by +485 5Dimes.

I did this same exercise for all 10 teams that current have money being offered on both sides of the "World Series 2008" prop. Here are their "true odds", compared to their highest available odds elsewhere:

The first nine all come in below their true odds. They're all close- none are terrible bets, but none are worth making.

Then there's Toronto. The Blue Jays are 60:1 at VIP, and between 30:1 and 35:1 everywhere else. My focus has obviously been elsewhere, but Toronto is off to a decent start. They're only 17-18, but they've outscored their opponents by 17 runs. True to expectations, their run prevention has been excellent- their 124 runs allowed are the fewest in the American League, and second fewest in baseball (Atlanta, 120).

Sadly, they cannot score, and managed to get both their shortstops injured in one game. Realistically, 60:1 isn't that great; you'd be better off taking them at +1700 to win the East at Matchbook.

Related: Cliff Lee: great pitcher, or greatest pitcher? Discuss.

NBA Draft Lottery Odds

2008-05-05T23:08:00.005-04:00

I spend a good deal of time on this site looking at odds, and trying to determine whether they're worth betting on or not. Sometimes this is pretty difficult, trying to incorporate all kinds of different factors, and make necessary adjustments.

Sometimes it's really, really easy.

The Greek has posted odds on the NBA Draft lottery. No, not the NBA Draft- the lottery. Like, which ping pong ball will pop up. It's not very hard to figure out what these odds should be-the chances for each team are listed here.

If you bet on these, you have a problem.

Shockingly, there is no value in these. It'd be pretty amusing if there was- if the oddsmakers screwed up and put the Heat at +1750 or something. Alas, no.

Unless...remember this? For anyone who throws these conspiracy theories around, this is your time. Oh, Stern is going to give the Knicks Beasley to get their franchise back on track? Okay, then put $300 down on them at +800.

What would be really funny would be if any of these odds changed. We'd have to assume that someone maxed them out, and The Greek didn't want to put themselves at too much risk on a silly prop. I'd like to interview anyone who actually bets significant money on these, and figure out what their reasoning is.

Contract Years

2008-05-04T22:05:00.005-04:00

The fact that there is actual evidence that players perform better in contract years has always interested me. It's one of the relatively few old baseball clichés that have been confirmed by actual data. Today- and, probably, a couple more times throughout the course of the season- I thought I'd check in on some of the bigger names that are eligible for free agency this winter.

The following players have been selected completely arbitrarily (from here)- I'll probably look at a different group if I do this again.

Pat Burrell
.320/.445/.670, 9 HRs, 24 BBs, 23 Ks

It's unlikely that Burrell will continue doing his best '00 Bonds impersonation, but notice the BB/K ratio. In his first year in the league, he struck out in 34.1% of his PAs, and walked in 13.4%. He's been steadily improving since:

His other numbers have also steadily increased, if not as consistently. He's 31- the hot start puts him in good position to have a career year, and it's certainly nice timing.

It'll be interesting to see how much he gets in the offseason. In theory, I'd think that the same GMs that appreciate the walks and don't mind all the Ks (read: the smart ones) would be hesitant to invest too heavily in a 31-year old with the dreaded "old player skills". Although maybe he'll end up with a high enough BA and HR total that it won't matter.

Adam Dunn
.209/.371/.374, 4 HRs, 24 BB, 24 K

At least he's still walking.

This seems like unfortunate timing for Dunn, doesn't it? Unless there is a dramatic reversal of fortunes, he will be viewed as a secondary option to Burrell. I won't waste everybody's time pointing out the obvious similarities. Not an ideal situation for Dunn, but it might make him a good deal for whichever team he ends up with. Maybe a certain GM with a team incapable of scoring runs that needs a LF anyway is thinking the same thing.

C.C. Sabathia
1-5, 7.51 ERA, 38.1 IP, 50 H, 6 HR, 18 BB, 37 K

The K/BB still isn't yet at the lofty numbers we've come to expect from Sabathia, but considering it was 14/14 after four starts, he's recovered quite nicely. And if Franklin Gutierrez was capable of catching a fairly routine fly ball, his ERA over his last three starts would likely be under 1. The ERA looks like it'll be fine, if a little inflated because of the early struggles. Whether the Indians will be able to score enough wins to get him a respectable win total is an entirely different story.

It doesn't really matter though. By November, those four April starts will be ancient history- barely more recent than the the '07 Cy Young award. How much will he get? Santana's contract (6/137.5) is probably a good starting point- Johan is better, but he also never got to test the open market. With the way "Generation Trey" is shaping up, I might even (cringe) take the over on that.

Ben Sheets
4-0, 2.29 ERA, 39.1 IP, 3 HR, 11 BB, 33 K*

Well, Gagne isn't helping. Obviously, the big thing with Sheets is health, as he has a 3.77 career ERA but has averaged just 21 starts/year since 2004. I apologize if this was covered in Baseball Between the Numbers- strangely, I don't own it- but I wonder if guys tend to stay on the field longer in contract years. That's not to question Sheets' "toughness" or whatever- I can't blame the guy for having some extra incentive to stay out there and get those IP totals back to his '02-'04 levels.

Because of the injuries, Sheets probably has the most to lose/gain over the next five months. If he wins the Cy Young, how much could he get? 5/90? That may be a little high, but it doesn't seem unreasonable. On the other hand, if he gets hurt in his next start, who's going to give him more than one, maybe two years? Besides him.

Rafael Furcal
.381/.466/.603, 4 HRs, 19 BB, 15 K

Both Furcal's BABiP (.411) and ISO (.222) are way above his career averages. There's no way the BABiP stays that high- he's been between .298 and .350 each year of his career. The ISO is impressive though, and it's not only a product of an increased HR/FB%, since he has 12 doubles and 4 triples. He won't keep this up, but this winter's contract should look similar to the 3/39 the Dodgers gave him after 2005.

*Stats include Sunday's game; everybody else's are through Saturday.

(By the way, Macklin is transferring to Florida.)

Photo: ESPN.

This Week's Links (4/28-5/2)

2008-04-30T22:03:00.015-04:00

So I understand that Braylon Edwards was on Costas Now this week?

Okay, let's think about this logically. Watch the video (here, here). Then read the responses from Posnanski, TBL, FJM, AA, and Leitch. Who, again, is bringing down the level of discourse?

The Sports VU's 08-09 SEC Basketball preview.

Odds on which NBA player is most likely to be the next to admit to marijuana use.

The Angels brought up their top prospect, Nick Adenhart, who has already undergone elbow surgery, and had a 19:15 K:BB rate in AAA, to pitch on three days' rest. Shockingly, this did not go well.

Oh, so this is why Hansbrough returned to school. Fair enough.

"Meathook Bobblehead Is a Spitting Image...of Johan Santana." Very true.

Totals Contest Update: May

2008-04-30T22:03:00.010-04:00

There will be one of these at the beginning of each months. Lots of meaningless tables follow.

Everybody is doing pretty well so far, I'd say. The metric I made up to create these standings is very simple. It's just how many games a team is on pace to win, minus their over/under. Take, for example, the White Sox. They are 14-12, which is an 87.2 win pace. Their O/U was 78. So if you have their over, that's +9.2, and the under is -9.2.

Obviously, at the end of the season, you'll just get one point for each correct prediction, but this is a more interesting way to do it for now.

The average is +19.3. That's pretty good. Most of that can probably be attributed to the Oakland O, Detroit U, and Tampa O all doing very well- a lot of people had those. Here are the 10 best bets so far:

Almost 40% of entries had the St. Louis under, so that's not going very well. The Rockies' under is really looking good in light of the Tulowitzki news.

The "perfect" entry so far would be +187.1. With that in mind, here is the top 10:

JP, who I gather from his e-mail is an Angels fan, has the Tampa over, St. Louis over, Oakland over, San Diego under, and Toronto under. Nice.

And the bottom five (I am in 37th out of the 113 entries, by the way):

CJ- not to be confused with CJ S., who is in 73rd place- is really getting killed. Colorado over, Tampa under, St. Louis under, San Diego over, Arizona under- things are just not going well.

Everybody else's results are here.

Futures Watch: Week 5

2008-04-30T17:45:00.003-04:00

Sorry about the lack of posts over the past couple days. Finals week.

Last week:
Atlanta, 40:1; now 30:1
Cleveland, 17:1; now 12:1

This week:

Oakland, 75:1 (BetUS)
Current Record: 17-12
PECOTA Playoff Odds: 33.3%
Tampa Bay, 125:1 (BetUS)
Current Record: 15-12
PECOTA: 36.8%

Some books are giving these guys respect, but not all of them, causing for some huge gaps. You can still get Oakland at 75:1, but they're 20:1 at Sportsbook. BetUS decided to increase Tampa's odds from 80:1 to 125:1 (not sure how you can explain that), but they're down to 60:1 at VIP.

Even more encouraging than the impressive records of these two teams is that they are legitimate assessments of their performance so far. Looking at BP's Adjusted Standings, the Rays have the best third-order record in the East, and Oakland easily has the best third-order record in the West. At least in April, both of these teams have played like legitimate contenders.

The A's have scored a lot of runs (135, fourth in the league), but they're not going to continue to hit .309/.407/.431 with RISP.

The Rays are now on pace to allow 654 runs, which is somewhat absurd. They are third in the majors in Defensive Efficiency. And Kazmir makes his return on Sunday. They're still 25:1 to win the East at BetUS, by the way.

In less optimistic news, Dave Cameron has a post at FanGraphs (some great stuff over there recently) about how Eric Hinske is not likely to continue hitting .292/.407/.639.

Cincinnati, 150:1 (VIP)
Current Record: 12-17
PECOTA: 7.92%
Texas, 1000:1 (VIP)
Current Record: 10-18
PECOTA: 3.82%

Some wacky lines at VIP. The best you can do in the Reds elsewhere is 80:1, and 200:1 for Texas. I think they're able to do this because of their low limits. The site is down right now so I can't double check this, but I'm pretty sure that the max "to win" on these bets is $5,000, so they're really not exposing themselves that much. Some sites have the max bet at $500; if someone maxed out the Rangers, and they somehow made a run, they'd stand to lose half a million dollars. Not the case with VIP's low limits, so they can be a little more liberal.

The Rangers are worth a $5 at that price, I would think. I mean come on, it's still the AL West.

Not much else out there this week. The Dodgers are 35:1 at VIP, which seems high. Should have a post with an update on the leaders of the MLB totals contest up a little later.

Break Up The Rays

2008-04-28T20:22:00.004-04:00

Did you really think Tampa's six game winning streak would go unmentioned on this site?

At this point, every piece of purely objective analysis indicates that they will finish over .500. PECOTA pegged them at 88 wins in the preseason. They're currently 14-11, which works out to 90.7 wins over a full season. Their record in the adjusted standings is even a bit better than their actual record- based solely on their play so far, they'd be expected to win 87.6 games.

And yet...being "purely objective" is hard. They have never won over 70 games. They allowed 944 runs last year, thanks to a laughably bad defense. Their team payroll is $44MM- the entire pitching staff is making about as much as Barry Zito. None if this is particularly relevant, but it's tough to ignore.

If we were able to ignore the second paragraph, and just went by the information in the first one, would would Tampa's odds for winning the AL East be? Definitely better than the Blue Jays, right? Well, at both BetUS and Bodog, Toronto is 5:1 to win the division. Tampa is 25:1 at BetUS. For comparison, the Royals are 22:1 to win the Central, and the Marlins are 15:1 to win their division.

25:1 is too high. Those are very good odds. Should they be +233, as PECOTA suggests? No, that'd be ridiculous. But there's a whole lot of room between +233 and +2500.

Matchbook is a very good place to look when considering things like this, since you can bet either side- you can bet that the Rays don't win the division. Currently, that prop is being offered at -1500. This presents an arbitrage situation- one can bet on the Rays at +2500 at BetUS, and against them at -1500 on Matchbook, and lock in about 2.5% profit.

But I'm more interested in what the market thinks the Rays' chances are. That -1500 has been available all afternoon, and so has Tampa winning the division at +860. That nobody has jumped at either tells us that their true odds are between 6.3% and 10.4%. Let's be conservative and say 7%. This would put their true odds at 13:1. A far cry from PECOTA's +233, but not close to 25:1 either.

As you probably noticed when I mentioned the odds for the Royals and Marlins to win their division, it's rare that you can find a decent longshot in the "To Win Division" odds at sites like BetUS and Bodog. The 2008 Rays are a pretty rare team, though. Even so, I doubt they will be 25:1 for now- people are starting to pay attention now that they're winning baseball games on the field, rather than just looking good according to some crazy computer.

Photo: STATS Blog.

A Post-Draft Deadline Look at the Big East

2008-04-28T15:07:00.004-04:00

The deadline to declare for the draft was yesterday. There are still a lot of moving parts, since players have until June 16th to withdraw their name from consideration. We can make some reasonable assumptions though- most of of the top prospects have hired agents, and it's unlikely that guys like D.J. Augustin and Russell Westbrook will be returning. A full list of who has declared can be found here.

Since I couldn't care less about the NBA (although I do enjoy the draft), I'm primarily concerned with the guys that are coming back. The notables on this list include Earl Clark, Darren Collison, Stephen Curry, Blake Griffin, Hansbrough, Hasheem Thabeet, Terrence Williams, and Sam Young. The thing that jumped out at me is that the Big East is going to be very, very good next year. They dominate the previous list, and they won't lose as much to graduation as other conferences. A look at some of the top contenders:

Connecticut (20:1 at Sportsbook)
Declared for draft: Nobody
Graduated: Nobody

UConn would be getting all kinds of hype if Price hadn't gotten hurt in the first round. They'd be a Sweet 16 team (at least) with almost everybody coming back (Wiggins transferred). As it happened, they're an afterthought with a rehabbing point guard. If Price makes a full recovery, with the ever-improving Thabeet returning, this should be a top 5 team.

Louisville (20:1)
Declared for draft: Derrick Caracter
Graduated: David Padgett, Juan Palacios

They return an excellent backcourt- Williams, Smith, Sosa, and McGee- and Earl Clark returning is huge. They lose a lot more than UConn, but were better to begin with. The big question is whether incoming freshmen Samardo Samuels (#9 on the Rivals 150, an "automatic double/double guy") and Terrence Jennings (#18) can replace the production they are losing inside.

Georgetown (20:1)
Delcared for draft: Nobody
Graduated: Jonathan Wallace, Roy Hibbert, Patrick Ewing Jr.

Tough break for the Hoyas last week, as sophomore foward Vernon Macklin announced his intention to transfer. That's a big hit to their frontcourt, which was already going to struggle to replace Hibbert. A lot of Georgetown's success will depend on how good incoming freshman Greg Monroe (6'10", Rivals #8) is.

Pittsburgh (20:1)
Declared for draft: Nobody
Graduated: Ronald Ramon, Keith Benjamin, Mike Cook

Sam Young and DeJuan Blair will be very tough inside. The lack of guards may be a problem, with three of their top four graduating (Fields is the fourth). With a potentially dominant combo inside, they won't need the guards to be all-world, but there are some holes to fill. Pitt doesn't look to have any highly touted recruits coming in.

Notre Dame (40:1)
Declared for draft: Nobody
Graduated: Rob Kurz

Ugh. I'm still bitter. Kurz is a significant loss inside, but they still have Harangody and Hillesland. Combine them with McAlarney, Tory Jackson and Ryan Ayers on the perimeter, and they might even win a road game. Seriously though, that is a very solid starting five. I just don't know if I can deal with another year of Harangody and Hansbrough being on ESPN three nights a week.

I won't give them their own paragraph, but if McNeal withdraws from the draft, Marquette will be a contender. The same is true for Donte Greene and Syracuse, although it seems unlikely that he would return.

At this point in the year, it usually seems like the quality of play is going to be down, since most of the guys we are familiar with are either graduating or heading to the NBA. With every other conference, I think this holds true, but not with the Big East, which looks to be the strongest conference heading into the upcoming season.

Longoria and Leverage

2008-04-27T23:21:00.004-04:00

I've seen the following thought expressed in various articles; the Prospectus Hit List just happens to be the most recent (and thus most readily available). Regarding the Longoria extension:

"If nothing else, the move obliterates any questions regarding the financial motivations behind his late-spring demotion."

As I write this, the fact that the Rays waited a couple weeks to call Longoria up is completely irrelevant. It will have no bearing on any decision either Longoria or the Rays make in the future.

That doesn't mean it didn't have an effect in the negotiations. Having Longoria under control for an extra year gave the Rays that much more leverage. Since that's an extra year of arbitration rather than receiving his true value on the free agent market, it decreased the expected value of Longoria's career earnings at the time. At least in theory, this would cause Longoria to agree to a less favorable contract.

Not breaking camp with Longoria in the big leagues didn't end up having any direct effect, because he signed a contract extension after playing six games with the Rays. But it's likely that it had an indirect effect, and I don't see how the extension proves that keeping him in AAA wasn't a financial decision. If anything, the opposite is true- do you really think Tampa actually thought that a guy they were about to give $17MM didn't deserve to start over Willy Aybar?

One More Year

2008-04-25T15:26:00.006-04:00

He's coming back.

I just hope that this year Tyler will finally get full credit for how hard he plays. The man's oversized heart somehow continues to go unnoticed. It's really a shame.

Photo: MSNBC.

This Week's Links (4/21-4/25)

2008-04-25T13:36:00.006-04:00

Cliff Lee's ERA+ currently sits at 1563. Update: Unfiltered:

"Since 1956, do you know how many pitchers had made three straight starts with 8+ innings, <=3 hits, <=1 walk, and 8+ strikeouts? Here's the list, which I have put in alphabetical order for your convenience:
Cliff Lee.

Here's that list again, sorted by last name:

Lee, Cliff."

Apparently, the key to a successful baseball team is figuring out which 42 games are the "important ones".

20 years ago, Crash Davis already understood BABiP.

Mets Geek interviews Tom Tango.

I understand it's a tough job, but you have to wonder what goes through the umpire's head on a call like this.

Two Posnanski interviews- Hardball Times, and Outs Per Swing (a Rays blog).

LeDunk.

I love this:

"If the problem is 'the heart of the order fails with runners in scoring position,' the solution isn't 'put fewer runners in scoring position.'"

Futures Watch: Week 4

2008-04-23T23:01:00.004-04:00

Along with the regulars, I've also taken odds from VIP this week. They tend to have some pretty good prices on futures.

Same as always, except this week I have incorporated the World Series percentages that MGL posted for each team yesterday.

Oakland, 75:1 (BetUS )
Current Record: 12-9
PECOTA Playoff Odds: 32.9%
MGL World Series odds: 4.2%
Tampa Bay, 150:1 (VIP)
Record: 9-11
PECOTA: 28.8%
MGL World Series odds: 2.7%

Every week. I was not kidding.

The Rays won tonight, so they're actually 10-11. They have scored 103 runs, and allowed 93, putting them on pace to give up 717 runs on the year. This is the exact same pace as last week, which is kind of amazing. PECOTA's seemingly crazy projection had them with an RA of 718. Kazmir's rehab start went well today, and he's expected to return on May 3 or 4.

VIP has excellent odds on them, but the "max bet to win" is $3,000, so you can't wager more than $20. They are still available at 100:1 at Sportsbook and 5Dimes. They're also 100:1 to win the AL on VIP; you can bet $30 on that.

The only problem with Oakland's hot start is that their odds are dropping. They were 125:1 at 5Dimes two weeks ago, and 80:1 at the same book last week. 5Dimes has probably been receiving some action on the A's, since they're all the way down to 66:1 now.

Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports initially reported that Oakland had signed Frank Thomas, but is now saying he is also considering an offer from a second team. Hopefully the A's get that done- he would be an excellent addition.

Atlanta, 40:1 (Sportsbook)
Record: 10-10
PECOTA: 27.9%
MGL World Series odds: 5.2%

Lost today, now 10-11.

I was surprised to see the Braves this high at Sportsbook. At the other four sites they are between 25:1 and 32:1. MGL's percentages confirm my surprise, as he would have Atlanta at 18:1.

They have not exactly gotten off to a flying start standings-wise, but have actually outscored their opponents by 24 runs which, as we have seen, bodes well for them going forward.

I don't really have much to say here. Their line seems way too high- they are probably not as good as the Mets, but the best odds you can get on New York are 6.5:1 at VIP. That's a pretty ridiculous discrepancy. Unless they play very poorly in the near future, I can't imagine they'll be 40:1 for much longer.

Cleveland, 17:1 (VIP)
Record: 8-12
PECOTA: 52.9%
MGL World Series odds: 8.6%

VIP has the Indians at 17:1, and the Tigers at 6:1. If someone could explain this to me, I would really appreciate it.

This really seems like more of an inefficiency in VIP's odds than anything else. Thsi can happen at the beginning of the year, when we are still going by expectations/reputation as opposed to actual performance. There is just no reason for that huge gap. The Indians have not been playing particularly well, but they have outscored their opponents by three runs. Cliff Lee has been brilliant, and Sabathia finally looked like his old self last night. This is still a very good team- the favorite to win their division. The Indians and Tigers should each be around 12:1; I think that would make a lot more sense.

Comments

2008-04-23T16:42:00.004-04:00

Two things. First, I have made it so I don't have to approve your comments before they show up- they will appear immediately from now on. I'll still get an e-mail every time a comment is posted. If I hate this, I'll switch it back, but I think it will be easier for everyone.

Also, there have been numerous comments recently beginning with, "I don't know where to put this, but...". From now on, just post any comments like that in this thread. I have put a permanent link to this post at the bottom of the "Daily Reading" tab on the left sidebar.

2008 NFL Draft Odds

2008-04-23T14:21:00.004-04:00

Bodog has some entertaining odds posted on the NFL Draft. First off:

"Which ESPN NFL Analyst will have the most correct selections on their final 2008 NFL Draft 1st Round mock draft?

Mel Kiper Jr. (-120)
Todd McShay (-120)"

This strikes me as an extremely entertaining thing to root for while watching the draft. Betting on this would give you a rooting interesting for every pick in the first round, except for when they have the same prediction. I'll probably have some kind of post early next week on whose mock drafts were the most accurate.

There are also odds one each of the first 11 picks. I'm not going to post them in full (go here for that), but here are the favorites for each pick:

1. Miami, Jake Long (N/A)
2. St. Louis, Chris Long/Glenn Dorsey (each 10/11)
3. Falcons, Matt Ryan/Glenn Dorsey (each 1/1)
4. Raiders, Darren McFadden (2/3)
5. Chiefs, Branden Albert (8/5)
6. Jets, Vernon Gholston (1/1)
7. Patriots, Keith Rivers (9/5)
8. Ravens, Matt Ryan (17/10)
9. Bengals, Sedrick Ellis (29/20)
10. Saints, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie (2/1)
11. Bills, Devin Thomas (6/5)

For those last two the favorite is actually "Field", but I figured that wouldn't be too informative. Those two are the only ones that differ from Kiper's mock draft; he has Aqib Talib going 10th (4/1) and Leodis McKelvin going 11th (3/1).

The Scouts Inc. Live Mock Draft has Ellis going 5th , Ryan 7th, and Rivers 8th. None of those guys even have odds listed on being selected with those picks at Bodog. They are trying to predict trades and such, which seems like an exercise in futility.

2008 NFL Week 1 Lines

2008-04-22T20:34:00.003-04:00

From Sportsbook. I'm curious as to how much these will change in the next 4+ months.

Redskins @ Giants (-4)
Bengals @ Ravens (pk)
Jets (-3) @ Dolphins
Chief @ Patriots (-15.5)
Texans @ Steelers (-7)
Jaguars (-2.5) @ Titans
Lions (-1) @ Falcons
Seahawks @ Bills (-2)
Buccaneers @ Saints (-3.5)
Rams @ Eagles (-7)
Cowboys (-3) @ Browns
Panthers @ Chargers (-9)
Cardinals (-3) @ 49ers
Bears @ Colts (-9)
Vikings @ Packers (-3)
Broncos (-1.5) @ Raiders

Finding The Happy Medium

2008-04-21T22:52:00.008-04:00

I like to think that I understand the concept of "small sample size" fairly well. I'm aware that we're only about 1/8 of the way into the season, and it's too early to get caught up in the order of the current standings.

I try to put things in perspective by looking at BP's PECOTA Playoff Odds report. See, that's better. The Orioles only have a 1.25% chance of reaching the playoffs. The world makes more sense now.

But I find even this analysis lacking at this point in the season. If you look at the "Pct3" column, you will notice that each team's win percentage is the same as it was in the preseason. Now, I don't think we should expect the Tigers to win 31.6% of their games the rest of the way, but 56.2% seems a little high, doesn't it? It seems like that should be some kind of happy medium.

So, I decided to try to determine what this "happy medium" is. I went and took the PECOTA projections from the past five seasons, along with each team's Pythagorean record through their first 20 games. I used these two as the independent variables in a regression, with the dependent variable being each team's winning percentage in games 21-162. I did this again at the 40-, 60-, 80-, 100-, and 120-game marks. (Note: This took forever.) Here is what I came up with:

This is interesting- notice except for the 80-game mark (which is just weird), the PYTHAG variable slowly rises as more games are played. This is what we would expect. Looking at the P-value, it doesn't become clearly significant until after 100 games, but I think it'd be hard to argue that it's not significant before that. I'm pretty confident that if you did this for the last 10 or 15 seasons, rather than just the last 5, we would be sure that they are significant.

This data is probably better seen in a graph. Here is the weight we should give to PECOTA, versus the weight we should give to PYTHAG, at each point:

The weirdness at the 80-game mark continues to be an annoyance, but I think this gets the general point across. Right now, it's about a 90/10 PECOTA/PYTHAG spit. The PYTHAG portion increases by about 5.5% after each 20-game stretch, until we're at a 63-47 split in mid-August. It's hard to look any further than that, because you start trying to predict a really small sample, but in October it looks like it ends up at almost an even split, if this trend continues linearly.

Using the 90-10 split, we can create what I think are pretty accurate projected standings right now. These take into account the team's record so far; the W% column is their expected winning percentage the rest of the way. The next column is how many game PECOTA predicted them to win prior to the season, and then finally the difference between their current win prediction and PECOTA's original one.

In the East, PECOTA still expects the Yankees to be the superior team the rest of the way, but Boston's current 3.5 game lead means both teams have an equal chance of winning the division. The Rays have outscored opponents by 6 runs, so their expected W% hasn't been significantly decreased, but their 8-11 start has dropped their expected W total by 2.5.

The West has gone essentially according to plan- the part I'm interested in here is the Central. BP's PECOTA Playoff Odds Report paints an optimistic picture for the two current cellar dwellers, expecting them to win the division 80% of the time. That changes significantly when we look at it this way- the White Sox are 11-7, and their Pythagorean record is even better, at 12-6. This has caused their expected W% to rise from .475 to .495, a very significant boost. I am not smart enough to run a Monte Carlo simulation, but I'd guess that the division champ breakdown for CLE/DET/CHW would be around 40/30/25, with about 5% left over for the Royals and Twins.

Now for the NL:

The Braves and Phillies started the year each expected to win 86 games, and Atlanta is currently only one game ahead of Philadelphia in the standings. But the Braves have outscored their opponents by an impressive 35 runs, while the Phillies are only +2. This causes Atlanta's predicted record to be about 3.5 games better.

Not much has changed in the Central, except for the fact that the Cardinals' hot start has allowed them to vault ahead of the Reds. Impressively, the Pirates being even worse than expected- they've been outscored by 42 runs already (allowing 6.7 R/G will have this effect).

In the West, the Diamondbacks have gone from a dead heat with the Dodgers in the preseason to having an expected 8 game cushion. Arizona has been the best team in the majors to date, outscoring their opponents 116-65. Meanwhile, the Dodgers have been somewhat unlucky, with their Pythag record (11-8) being three games better than their actual record (8-11).

Dusty Gets His Way

2008-04-21T12:38:00.003-04:00

Joey Votto, in 2,985 minor league PA: 401 walks

Dusy Baker, on Joey Votto in March: "He needs to swing more. I'd like to see him more aggressive."

Shysterball now brings us the "list of dudes with a minimum of 20 ABs who haven't walked yet":

Matt Diaz (ATL): 62 ABs
Joey Votto (CIN): 47 ABs
Jose Molina (NYY): 36 ABs
Mike Fontenot: (CHC): 31 ABs
Jay Payton (BAL): 30 ABs
Greg Dobbs (PHI): 25 ABs
Brian Bixler (PIT): 24 ABs
So Taguchi (PHI): 21 ABs
Darin Erstad (HOU): 20 ABs

I'd now like to point out the Reds are paying Baker "about $3.5MM" to manage their team. This isn't "Cincinnati Reds Baseball Heaven Fantasy Camp 2008", where Dusty gets to live his dream for the low price of $3,995.00. This was Cincinnati's idea.

In a related story, Hee Seop Choi is currently playing for the Kia Tigers in the Korean League.

Early Season Surprises: Lucky, or Good?

2008-04-20T20:13:00.006-04:00

Three weeks into the season, it's still too early to read to much into players' performances so far. We can, however, look a little deeper into players' numbers and see if they might continue to perform higher/lower than expectations, or if they've just been lucky.

Strangely, the greatest contrast between these two categories comes when we look at the two starters who have yielded the lowest BABiP so far this year- Gavin Floyd and Cliff Lee. Floyd, who had a 5.27 ERA in 70 innings last year, is 2-0 with a 1.40 ERA in three starts thus far. Lee was demoted to AAA Buffalo last year with a 6.38 ERA through 16 starts, but has a ridiculous 0.40 ERA in 2008. Obviously the predictive value of ERA after three starts is extremely minimal, so let's take a look at their peripherals (from FanGraphs):

Floyd has been impressively lucky. His K/9 and BB/9 are both actually worse than last year, but the absurd BABiP and LOB% numbers more than cancel that out. Not surprisingly, we should not expect Gavin Floyd to maintain a sub-2.00 (or even sub-4.50) ERA throughout the year.

Lee is a more complicated, and more interesting, case. Allowing one earned run in 22.2 innings is very difficult to do- you have to be both extremely lucky, and very good. Lee fits both these categories, with a .154 BABiP and 10.0 K/BB ratio.

His FIP of 1.70 is overly optimistic, but it makes you wonder- how good can he be? The biggest surprise has been issuing so few walks, as his career BB/9 is 3.03. But there is some precedent for Lee having decent control, as in 2005, when he had a 3.79 ERA in 202 IP, his BB/9 was only 2.32.

The strikeouts are interesting as well. His current K/9 is 1.24 higher than his career mark of 6.70, but he's been all over the place. He actually peaked at 8.09 in 2004. Last year with the Indians he was down to 6.10, but thrived after he was sent down, with 50 Ks in 41 innings at Buffalo.

Prior to this season, you could have looked at Cliff Lee's career stat line and thought, "If this guy every puts it all together, he could be fantastic." His first three starts have forced us to seriously consider this option. It's possible, if somewhat unlikely, that Lee has "put it all together", and could throw up a line somewhere in the range of 200 IP, 175 K, 55BB, with an ERA around 3.50, which would make him one of the best pitchers in the league. He could also revert back to his 2007 form, but I think the mere possibility that Cliff Lee could be a Cy Young contender is one of the most interesting developments of the young season.

This Week's Links (4/14-4/18)

2008-04-18T09:57:00.003-04:00

U.S.S. Mariner looks at some small sample size craziness.

Banny log #3.

"The Metro and Magnet Night don't mix like..."

Kenny Mayne has an interesting marketing plan for his new book.

Carib released their college hoops futures odds.

Jay Jaffe thinks PECOTA is overly optimistic about the Rays' defense.

Flat Betting on Baseball

2008-04-17T17:12:00.004-04:00

Betting on baseball games is a lot different than betting on the other two major sports. Because of the relatively low scoring, there is no handicap that will even out the chances of either team winning. In almost every situation, if you make the better team favored by "-1.5" (win by two or more), they become the underdog. Because of this, the majority of baseball betting is done on which team will win straight up, and you have to take either improved or reduced odds depending on the situation.

I hadn't really given too much thought to this aspect of it, but a very well-spoken Covers poster (H/T: Money Line) makes some interesting points regarding how much one should place on their baseball wagers:

"I constantly see people say they flat bet baseball by using 1 unit as a base, and then risking enough to win 1 unit on a fav, and risking 1 unit on a dog. Example:

If you are betting a -115 fav, you bet 115 to win 100, and if you are betting a +160 dog, you bet 100 to win 160.

THIS IS NOT FLAT BETTING!!!!

Flat betting means that all of your bets have equal weighting, and this obviously puts high favs or high dogs at more importance than closer to even money favs and dogs."

Here is what he means. Say you bet on two teams- one is +150, and the other is +250. If you put $100 on each of them, which one would you rather have win? Obviously, the team that is +250. The point of flat betting, as the poster says, is for each bet to have equal weighting. Using this system, the +250 game is much more important to you than the +150 game. It will have a much greater impact on your bottom line than the other game- you are clearly willing to trade a win by the +150 team for a win by the +250 team.

People "solve" this issue by betting enough to win one unit on both favorites and underdogs. So if your unit is $100, you would risk $50 on a team that is +200, and $200 on a team that is -200. Again, this fails to have the desired effect. In this system, the closer you get to +100, the less important your bet. For example, say you bet on two games; one team is -200, and the other -500. Following this strategy, you'd bet $200 on the former game, and $500 on the latter. It is probably obvious at this point that the second game then becomes much more important to you. You'd much rather lose the first game and win the second (-200 + 100 = -100) than do the opposite (100 - 500 = -400).

The poster follows this explanation by noting a solution to this problem:

"I flat bet by taking my unit amount (1 in this example), and bet the amount that the risk + the win = double the unit size.

For example:

-120 fav: risk 1.09 to win .91

+150 dog: risk .80 to win 1.20

-200 fav: risk 1.33 to win .67

+180 dog: risk .72 to win 1.28

This way, every game has equal value and is true flat betting."

This is a little confusing, but makes a whole lot of sense. The proposed system allows each bet to have equal importance. This can be seen in the fact that if you know you're going to go 1-1, you don't care which bet wins and which bet loses. To show this, let's look at his first two examples.

For the -120 favorite, you're risking $109 to win $91. For the +150 dog, you risk $80 to win $120. If the favorite wins, and the dog loses, you'll win $91 and lose $80, putting you at +$11 for the day. In the opposite situation, you lose $109 on the favorite, but win $120 on the underdog- again, +$11. Each bet now has equal importance, so this strategy is truly "flat betting".

This thinking can also be applied to futures. If you think there is equal value in two teams, one of which is 5:1, the other 12:1, it doesn't really make sense in betting the same amount on either. With this system, you would bet $33 on the +500 line, and $15 on the +1200 line. This gets a little more complex when factoring in time value of money, but that's a discussion for another day.

The Covers post has more details regarding how to set this up in Excel, if anyone is interested.

Futures Watch: Week 3

2008-04-16T21:57:00.005-04:00

(All records/percentages through Tuesday's games. Odds taken from 5Dimes, Sportsbook, Bodog, and BetUS)

Last week's picks
Oakland (125:1), now 80:1 (5Dimes)
Tampa Bay (100:1), now 100:1 (Sportsbook)
Milwaukee (30:1), now 27:1 (5Dimes)
Baltimore (250:1), now 250:1 (5Dimes)
Detroit (12:1), now14:1 (Sportsbook)

The Brewers' odds adjusted a little bit, but they also went from up two to tied with the Cubs, so they're still pretty high. Their wost odds are 20:1, so everything has regressed to 24:1, which is about where they should be.

I said that 12:1 would be Detroit's low point, which didn't turn out to be correct. I didn't anticipate they'd continue to lose and end up at 2-10. They did.

This week's picks

Oakland, 80:1 (5Dimes)
Current Record: 9-6
PECOTA Playoff Odds: 34.4%
Tampa Bay, 100:1 (Sportsbook)
Record: 6-8
PECOTA: 31.6%

These two will continue to be featured on a weekly basis until they play themselves out of contention. PECOTA is just that far off from the general consensus.

Tampa's quest to improve their run prevention is off to an excellent start-they've allowed 62 runs in 14 games, putting them on pace to allow 717 over the course of the season. This is actually one less than PECOTA's extremely optimistic prediction, although it's obviously still quite early. Their preliminary defensive numbers are very good, as BP's Defensive Efficiency has them 9th in the majors. Edwin Jackson, who has been a prospect for approximately 17 years, has been a pleasant surprise, with a 2.84 ERA in three starts. He hasn't exactly turned a corner though, as he's issued 10 walks, and has a BABiP of .202 (great defense!). It should be noted that if you were somehow panicking about the Rays' 6-8 record, they've actually outscored their opponents by 11 runs. Also, Kazmir is yet to throw a pitch- his ideal return date is May 3.

Oakland was 5-2 this week, which probably seems impressive until you remember three of those games were against a AAA team. They've only allowed 55 runs,which is 14 fewer than any other team in their division. And that has to be the measuring stick here, for anything Oakland does- they don't have to be worldbeaters, or even win 86 games- they simply need to win more games than any other team in the American League West.

Kansas City, 200:1 (5Dimes)
Current Record: 8-6
PECOTA Playoff Odds: 7.1%

Are the Royals going to make the playoffs? No, probably not. Could they? I think so. If they make it 7.1% of the time, and win it all 7% of the time they make it, 200:1 is fair. So that's probably about right, but my goal is to write about all 30 teams in Futures Watch this year. This is their time.

Bannister and Greinke are both off to completely ridiculous starts. Combined, they've struck out just 22 batters over 45 innings, yet they've allowed a total of four runs. Greinke's BABiP of .214 looks entirely reasonable when compared to Bannister's .178. No matter how good of a writer Joe Posnanski is, I remain unconvinced that Bannister has outsmarted DIPS. Regardless, with those two, Meche, Soria, Gordon, and Butler, they are certainly moving in the right direction. It's just pretty unlikely that that direction involves the phrase "2008 World Series Champions".

There is really not much out there right now. I have a theory about this. I think that the odds adjust very efficiently to teams that start off the season well- it's hard to miss the fact that the A's are tied for first, and so their best odds went from 125:1 last week to 80:1 this week. Once we get a little deeper into the season, this will change. At that point, a team can go on a bit of a hot streak, and since it won't necessarily be explicitly visible in the standings, few people will take notice. That's what happened last year with both the Rockies and Mariners. Hopefully this will again be the case this year, and I'll be able to point these out.