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More Lineup Analysis

Pryor_tiny by Buckeye Brad on

Star-divide

First of all, before everyone jumps on me, I realize that this topic has been discussed to death.  And I know I posted about a week ago suggesting moving Grady down to second and that prompted a long discussion.  But I was reading Joe Posnanski today and he linked to something at Baseball Musings that did a lineup analysis.  If you entered the nine batters along with their respective OBP and SLG, the tool would return the expected runs per game for that lineup along with what the 30 best (and worst) lineups.  Naturally, I had to try this out with the current Indians lineup.

I used what is currently the starting lineup (including Grady, BenFran, Gutz, and Choo in the 4 OF/DH spots and leaving out Delluci) and their OBP and SLG for 2008.  I realize this may include a small sample size for some players, such as Choo, but this method seemed the easiest and fairest.  Here are the results of the optimal lineup:

  1. Choo
  2. Sizemore
  3. Garko
  4. Francisco
  5. Blake
  6. Peralta
  7. Shoppach
  8. Gutierrez
  9. Carroll

Very close to the current lineup, with the obvious exception of Choo leading off, Grady second, and Carroll ninth.  This lineup would score an average of 5.175 runs per game, while the usual Indians lineup (that I entered) scores 4.906.  This difference amounts to about 0.27 runs per game, which over the course of a full season is 43 runs.  So I would say that difference, while small, is certainly not insignificant.

I have no idea how they run this simulation (although there are three links at the top to articles that help describe their methods) but I thought it was fun to try.  I thought some member here might want to try other lineups (with Delluci, perhaps, or using their career numbers rather than from this season).  I realize, also, that Choo might be overvalued with his .400 OBP and .510 SLG, so I ran another simulation using his career numbers of .356/.424 and the results were . . . exactly the same.  He still hit leadoff.  Also, in the best lineups, Grady always hit either second or fourth, and the hitter batting leadoff most often after Choo was Carroll.  Very interesting.

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but I found this tool fun and interesting and thought some people from LGT might enjoy this.

 

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the line-up actually looks pretty good, but how would we fare against left-handed pitching?

One of these days... bang, zoom, straight to the moon...

by mixmasterasia on Jun 24, 2008 6:20 PM EDT   0 recs

Switch Choo and Carroll.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 24, 2008 7:13 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

I would do it with two-year averages.

43 runs = 4 wins, right? I distinctly remember reading that 10 runs equals an extra win over the course of a season.

Steel Nick

by nickjs21 on Jun 24, 2008 6:43 PM EDT   0 recs

yeah, I’ve read that many places

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 24, 2008 7:13 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Somebody please do this with PECOTA projections and get back to us.

LeCavs!
If you were good enough, maybe we'd name it after you.

by Matt in LA on Jun 24, 2008 7:20 PM EDT   0 recs

Ok, I did it with THTs 2008 Marcel’s projections and Sizemore is back at #1.

5.217 runs per game
1. Grady Sizemore
2. Ryan Garko
3. Shin-Soo Choo
4. Ben Francisco
5. Jhonny Peralta
6. Franklin Gutierrez
7. Casey Blake
8. Kelly Shoppach
9. Jamey Carroll

LeCavs!
If you were good enough, maybe we'd name it after you.

by Matt in LA on Jun 24, 2008 7:28 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Projections are nice, but shouldn’t you use how they’re actually hitting this year, not how they were expected to hit at the beginning of the year. I’m sure Hafner and Martinez were projected to hit much better than they actually did.

Also, Sizemore wasn’t projected to slug .514 which may be why he’s hitting first in your lineup but not in the one with his actual stats.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 24, 2008 8:28 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Another reason projections are better than your gut – Marcels has Sizemore slugging .490, which looks dead on right now, considering he’s 24 points higher while surging.

LeCavs!
If you were good enough, maybe we'd name it after you.

by Matt in LA on Jun 24, 2008 8:56 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Who said anything about using your gut? I was using their actual stats from this year. While I’m not saying that is the perfect method (what they have done in years’ past definately matters, too), I think it’s better than using what they were projected to do at the beginning of the year. After all, Cliff Lee was projected to be barely a 5th starter, and look what he’s done.

And you say that Sizemore is “surging”? He’s slugged .370 in his last seven games. Doesn’t sound like he’s surging right now to me.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 24, 2008 9:14 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Except that “how they’re actually hitting this year” isn’t really represented by the stats, with the huge role that luck plays over three months. The projections, while far from perfect, at least are incorporating stats over multiple years from that player, which goes a long way toward weeding out meaningless variance.

A good middle ground would be to use PrOPS for 2007-08 combined.

by Jay on Jun 24, 2008 9:12 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Of course, that’s why I said my method wasn’t perfect. Some combination of this year’s data and their career numbers would be best, but I was going for easily accesible data.

This debate was had earlier this year between Rob Neyer and another blogger (don’t remember his name right now) assessing Cliff Lee’s great start. How much was due to luck and small sample size, and how much was an actual change in ability?

In Sizemore’s case, thought, an increase in power shouldn’t be surprising. He’s just entering his prime, and power has shown to increase with age, so his jump in home runs isn’t unusual. But it might not be accounted for in his projections.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 24, 2008 9:22 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Of course it’s accounted for in the projections.

Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?

by Jay on Jun 24, 2008 9:31 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Uhh, yeah, I know what I’m talking about. I’m no expert, but I know quite a bit about baseball statistics. Thank you for questioning my intelligence, though.

Continuing our discussion on Grady, I looked back at his statistics and I guess I misspoke some. I was going on my memory, which was faulty. I see that his home run rate and slugging is on par with what he hit two years ago - I didn’t realize it was that high. I thought he had a big jump in home runs this year from his previous years (probably because he’s second in the league - I guess the whole league is just down). So I thought his projections, while they would project an increase in power, wouldn’t project the increase that I thought he had. I was incorrect.

Again, I know using only this year’s statistics wasn’t the best method, but I didn’t have access to any stats that combine the last 2 or 3 years of data. If you know of any, please tell me where I can find them.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 24, 2008 9:43 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

No offense, BB, but you do not in fact seem to know “quite a bit” about baseball statistics.

You seem to have learned the absolute minimum possible to chase after your lineup theories, but since your fundamental understanding of these numbers isn’t that strong, you’re basically spraying fallacies all over the place.

You can add up stats for individual players over date ranges by using David Pinto’s Day-By-Day Database, or you could just add them up yourself using Baseball Reference or any other source.

by Jay on Jun 25, 2008 8:52 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

I’m not chasing after any theories! Would you please read what I write, because I’m tired of saying the same thing over and over again. I never said my method was the best or perfect, I just said it was the easiest data to find. I didn’t want to take the time to calculate OBP and SLG for every player in the lineup that wasn’t available for me to find. So that meant using either career numbers or this year’s numbers (or previous year’s) and I chose using this year’s numbers. I even said it wasn’t perfect, and it included a small sample size. I wrote all that! Why are you disregarding that?

I know what projections are; I read them in my Baseball Prospectus (and yes, I’ve read that for many years). But I argued that using projections aren’t perfect, either, because some players overperform and underperform their proejctions. Look at Cliff Lee’s projections for this year; I’m sure he’s significantly overperforming them. And he’s kept it up for three months, so we can assume he’s probably done something to improve his pitching. Or, yes, it could be just luck. As I said, this was the same debate that Rob Neyer had with another blogger after the first month of the season, and so far Lee has kept up his good pitching.

Also, I’m sure if you looked at Hafner’s projections going in to last season, he has significantly underperformed them (I don’t have them available, but I’m guessing they predicted he would hit pretty good last year, coming off his 2004-06 seasons). He had a major dropoff as a hitter, and I doubt the projections showed that. At first, we thought he was slumping and he would eventually come out of that slump, but as the season continued he continued to underperform, And he continued to hit poorly this year. So that projection was probably not correct, either.

My only point was that, while using this year’s statistics isn’t the best method, neither is using projections. Because players can, for whatever reason, improve or regress when we least expect it (not usually, but it happens). I used Martinez as an example: BP has him at .369 OBP and .457 SLG this year. He has significantly underpeformend those numbers (especially slugging). Of course, that may have been due to his injury. But that’s just an example.

Again, please read what I write and stop making things up that you think I think. Just because I haven’t posted here for a while doesn’t mean that I don’t understand numbers and I need a lesson from you.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 25, 2008 10:35 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

That’s a pretty cool tool for generating lineups. It’s amazing that most of the GMs are probably aware of optimal lineups and the various theories and math behind them. However, most managers probably aren’t even aware of this at all, and if they are, probably don’t use them.

Nice to see that the math agrees with your move Grady down to 2nd in the order diary from last week.

by Cols714 on Jun 24, 2008 7:28 PM EDT   0 recs

Yeah, I was happy about that too! I wasn’t expecting to see Choo at leadoff and Grady batting second when I did the projections, but it was nice to see my theory backed up.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 24, 2008 9:24 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

This doesn’t back up your theory in the slightest.

It’s based on small samples for everyone and miniscule samples for half the guys.

It’s also based on the Indians very aggressively ignoring 100 years of baseball convention in assembling their lineups, explaining it endlessly to the players, who will take it personally, and the media, who will stupidly compare it to closer-by-committee.

by Jay on Jun 24, 2008 9:33 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Baseball convention can be wrong in many ways. Many managers bat light-hitting batters second so they can bunt with them. They also save their best relief pitcher for the ninth inning when it would sometimes be better to use them earlier in the game, and don’t pitch them with a tie game. Would you agree that either of those are a good strategy?

Again, to repeat what I wrote, I didn’t say that was the best data, but it was easily available. I could have used career data, also, but that’s not perfect, either. You could make arguements both ways. And I did mention that I used Choo’s career data (admittedly not a large sample, either) instead of this year’s and it didn’t change a thing. If I had access to better data (such as the last 3 years stats) I would use that, but I didn’t. And I didn’t want to take hours calculating it myself.

I know all about sample size. I’m a math teacher and I teach a statistics class, so I don’t need you to tell me about statistics.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 24, 2008 9:51 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

This discussion is an excellent example of human nature. We observe the world so that we process our observations filtering out what does not agree with our original assumptions and allowing in that which does agree with our original assumptions.
You know quite a bit about statistics, yet, you were willing to accept all of the vagueness of modelling, small sample sizes and general player measurement when this particular modelling tool supported your original assumptions.
How many plate appearances does Ben Francisco have? Yet this tool proposes batting him clean up. The statistical confidence interval for this one recommendation must be huge. You didnt stop to question how accurate a tool this is, when that popped up, yet you embraced the results showing Sizemore batting second.

by elsandito on Jun 24, 2008 11:26 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Acutally, I did question the accuracy of this tool. If you read my initial post, I said that many of these players have a small sample size by using only this year’s numbers, but that was the data that was easiest to find so I used it. Like was discussed earlier, using some combination of the past 2-3 years’ data would be best, but I didn’t have access to that. Using career number would be easy to find, but those might not very accurately reflect current production, either.

And I never said that this was the lineup I thought the Indians should use, only that it was a fun tool to play with and maybe other should try different analysis and see what they came up with. Yes, I did mention that this lineup agreed with my earlier post about Sizemore batting second. But I never claimed to be doing an advanced statistical study or anything like that.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 24, 2008 11:57 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

All you’ve shown is that you’re willing to spend a lot of time putting together numbers to argue for your “theory” — except when it comes to actually getting reasonably good data, in which case you’re not willing to spend any time at all.

by Jay on Jun 25, 2008 8:54 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

This didn’t take a lot of time, and I wasn’t trying to argue any theory. I just wanted to see what would happen using this tool with the current Indians lineup Please read what I actually write.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 25, 2008 10:17 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

It didn’t take up much of your time. So there’s very little “analysis” here. You accepted someone’s model without understanding the underpinnings of it. You threw some crapola numbers into it. And voila, analysis. Perhaps you should retitle your post “Lineup Musings”.

by elsandito on Jun 25, 2008 11:09 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Its called confirmation bias seeking out information that supports our preconceived notions, while ignoring information that does not confirm these notions.

by hans on Jun 25, 2008 11:58 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Actually it does back up his theory in the slightest. It doesn’t prove anything, but his theory was that Grady should be hitting lower in the lineup, and this is one data point that backs that up. It’s not all its cracked up to be, but it definitely helps.

by Cols714 on Jun 24, 2008 9:53 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Grady bats #1 — the only place for him to go is “lower.” Feed any numbers into any model — and this is just one model — the odds are pretty good it will come out in one of the other eight spots.

by Jay on Jun 25, 2008 8:56 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

You are right, Grady should bat #1 forever and no one should ever write about anything that might point out otherwise.

by Cols714 on Jun 25, 2008 10:03 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Let’s add reading comprehension to the course load

by Roger Dorn on Jun 25, 2008 10:15 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Jay never indicated what he feels is the optimal lineup, he was only pointing out the flaws in the analysis used. Your comment above that no one should ever question Grady batting leadoff only suggests that you missed his entire point.

by Roger Dorn on Jun 25, 2008 11:40 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Not really. Jay indicated that since Grady batted #1 that any analysis showing him batting lower is just the result of the fact that 2-9 have 8 batting slots so of course he’s more likely to be batting elsewhere. Which is of course true and is going to be a flaw in whatever lineup analysis used.

But go on, question my reading comprehension. It certainly adds to the discussion.

by Cols714 on Jun 25, 2008 11:57 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Yeah I have to agree that we’re arguing semantics here. If BB is trying to identify the optimal spot for Grady (our best hitter) to hit in, then thats where it should have ended. Now he goes out and hypothesizes that after he does his research, he will conclude that Sizemore should bat lower in the lineup. This is a poorly done hypothesis, as Jay points out. Now if BB simply said I think that Sizemore’s bat would be optimized in the 2 hole and heres the data to back it up. Then we have a fair hypothesis. I’d take a guess that BB’s actual hypothesis was that Sizemore should have batted third in the order, but after reading The Book, decided to look into batting him second in the order.

by hans on Jun 25, 2008 12:07 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

You guys are taking my intentions for this post way too far. As I said, I found the link in Posnanski’s blog and thought it would be interesting to try with the current Indians lineup, so I plugged in their batting data from this year. I was NOT trying to justify my earlier post about batting Grady second, it just happend to turn out that way. I would have posted the results no matter what they showed. Cols714 mentioned that it agreed with my post about moving Grady to second, and I said that, yes, I was happy to see that. But you guys are acting like I manipulated data to get the results I was looking for. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Also, I first read The Book last summer, and at the time thought nothing of moving Grady in the lineup. But a couple weeks ago, after Grady had a home run surger, I began thinking that maybe batting him first wasn’t optimizing his production in the lineup, and thought of who could possibly replace him at leadoff. And since The Book’s research said you should put your best hitter second, that’s what I did. You guys are reading much more into this than I intended.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 25, 2008 12:31 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Semantics and agree that Jay was just pointing out that it was a poor hypothesis

by Roger Dorn on Jun 25, 2008 12:31 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Actually Jay, I agree with you. There are many reasons to not mess with the batting order. Some players hit better where they are comfortable, you don’t want to mess up a good clubhouse, changing things around could screw up a good lineup, tradition, etc.

These are good reasons and should be factored in when considering a lineup change. However, the Indians right now aren’t very good. If you are going to try new lineups that may be more optimal for scoring runs, wouldn’t now be a good time to try it?

by Cols714 on Jun 25, 2008 10:43 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Oh, and if I thought a certain lineup was the best for my team, I wouldn’t care one lick what the media thought of it.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 24, 2008 9:53 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

The SSS point is definitely a valid point. The thrust of Brad’s point with this is that the line up would be more productive if you:

1. Lead off with Choo
2. Drop Sizemore to #2
3. Bat Carrol #9

If you use career averages you get the same results as what Brad reported, with these 3 points being common to the most productive lineup combinations. Sizemore and Carrol’s career OBP are definitely not SSS. That just leaves Choo’s as a SSS. He has shown a clear ability to get on base through out his major and minor league career. But when you play around with the numbers, SSS shows itself to be very relevant here. Here is who leads off top ten most prodcutive line-ups for some Choo OBP’s:

Choo OBP .350 : Sizemore (7) Choo (2), Blake (1 {shudders})
Choo OBP .360: Choo (6), Sizemore (4)
Choo OBP .370: Choo (10), Sizemore (0)

So even if you expect Choo to get on base at a good clip, and you should, just how good he is makes a difference. So I think Jay is right to preach SSS caution here for the moment. He would have to produce at very close to his minor league OBP (.381) to justify rocking the boat by dropping Grady down from #1. So until he shows he can do it for a long time, and preferably against lefties too, it is probably not worth the drama of moving Grady from #1.

by KevinV on Jun 24, 2008 11:29 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Now this is nicely done.

by hans on Jun 25, 2008 12:08 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

And yet apparently all people want to do is trash the “poor” work. Good job, Kevin V, btw.

by Voltaire on Jun 28, 2008 10:53 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Kinda gross seeing Blake batting 5th though.

by Cols714 on Jun 24, 2008 7:29 PM EDT   0 recs

cool site, I just used it to make a batting order for my mediocre-at-best softball team.

by ASP on Jun 24, 2008 8:17 PM EDT   0 recs

That’s awesome.

by Cols714 on Jun 24, 2008 9:53 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Looking at the various possibilities here just confirms my general impression of the Indians offense: it’s not good enough. Any way you shuffle it, we’re relying on getting production from guys who are inexperienced and don’t have outstanding minor league records that would predict immediate, huge success (Choo, Francisco, Gutierrez) and from guys who have demonstrated already that they’re good, but not great hitters, who are inconsistent (Peralta, Garko, perhaps even Blake). Sizemore is the one true potential star hitter in the group. I don’t see how this team, whatever the batting order is, will score many runs unless either Martinez and/or Hafner return and hit as of old OR they acquire a significant major league hitter for the middle of the order.

by peter m on Jun 25, 2008 10:12 AM EDT   0 recs

Amen. Rearranging the batting order here is akin to shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic it would seem. However, I’m not opposed to the suggestion that if the offense were to continue to struggle, that perhaps moving people around might be useful in determining where they might be best suited to hit or most comfortable no matter what projections might tell you.

I did a Google image search for "Andy Marte." It turned up zero results.

by emd2k3 on Jun 25, 2008 11:14 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

We should be able to agree on the following points:

1. Rearranging the batting order is not going to magically make this team start scoring tons of new runs.

2. There are good reasons not to change the batting order, most of them chemistry / personal feelings / some hitters hit better in one position, etc. based.

3. The current lineup the Indians use is definitely not the best one for this team at this time if you are going by a pure numbers based analysis.

by Cols714 on Jun 25, 2008 12:00 PM EDT   0 recs

3. The current lineup the Indians use is definitely not the best one for this team at this time if you are going by a pure numbers based analysis.

I would say it’s so close as to making this statement irrelevant.

by afh4 on Jun 25, 2008 2:19 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Wow, such vitriol in this whole thread…

Burn on, big river, burn on...

by Turkmenbashi on Jun 25, 2008 12:03 PM EDT   0 recs

Yeah. We’re getting testy. Time to focus on something important (like hbp records?)

by peter m on Jun 25, 2008 12:13 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Are you plugging a rival fanpost? This is brave new ethical territory for us.

by NickFantana on Jun 26, 2008 11:06 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Not really. Just making fun of myself—and proposing a kind of intentional over-reaction thread, I guess.

by peter m on Jun 26, 2008 11:15 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

My gut says the optimal lineup would not score 43 more runs than the “usual” Indians lineup. Doesn’t such modeling ignore the procedural nature of hitting? The Indians are 26th in the majors in total bases.

by odradek on Jun 25, 2008 1:46 PM EDT   0 recs

Actually, this particular model is really cool in that it does not ignore the procedural nature. Traditional lineup analysis (to the extent there is any such thing) generally assumes that you want the more productive hitters hitting more than the less productive hitters, with just a small bias towards OBP-precedes-power, and that the distribution of base-out situations among the nine spots is more or less random.

But of course, it’s not random, because the game always starts at slot #1, so the first batter always faces a no-outs-no-runners situation at least once in a game, and sees fewer runners per PA than any other batter as a result of that. But it goes beyond that — the #2 spot gets very nearly the same number of PA as the #1 spot and yet comes up with about 60 more baserunners over the course of the season.

Other spots also show a surprising propensity for coming up in particular base-out situations, indicating a slight preference for an on-base guy (bases empty or no outs) or a slugger (baserunners with outs). The differences between spot-situation combos are small — and once you’ve already ordered the hitters roughly best-to-worst, the differences between players that you’d consider switching are small, too. That’s why, even in an extreme case, you’re talking about a handful of runs over a whole season.

The distribution of which spot gets the final PA is not perfectly even, as traditional analysis assumes, and that further skews things. One result of this is the surprising finding that you can kind of “hide” a mediocre hitter (Blake?) in the #3 spot, but you want to put possibly your best guy (Sizemore) in the #2 spot. This is a fascinating result because, of course, it’s the opposite of what we’ve always been told. Apparently we should have had Alomar-Ramirez-Vizquel-Thome back in 1999 — my Lord, what would we have scored then?

The system’s strength and weakness are the same: it’s based on real game-data, which makes it curve-fitting rather than truly predictive. In other words, since nobody really builds lineups like this, lineups built like this aren’t part of the game data, while traditional lineups dominate that data. So what we’re really seeing here is that based on data amassed overwhelmingly with one type of lineup, another type of lineup seems like it would work best.

by Jay on Jun 25, 2008 4:27 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Jay, you said this model would work best using the last 2-3 years worth of data (which I agree with). If you have easy access to that data, could you run a model for the current lineup using that? That would be interesting to see.

Also, I don’t know if there is a way to factor in minor league numbers for players such as Choo and Francisco that have limited PA in the majors. I know people have done major league equivalents of minor league numbes; do you know where to find those?

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 25, 2008 5:46 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Can’t you just enjoy the game? I love stats as much as the next nerd, but what is the point of doing all of this? We can configure everything up, but unless the Tribe manages more than two runs it all means nothing.

by mjschaefer on Jun 25, 2008 5:57 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

How is trying to optimize our lineup taking away enjoyment of the game? You sound like one of those crusty old sportswriters complaining about statheads.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 25, 2008 8:11 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

You still never bothered to answer it. I get it if numbers fascinate you, but what is the point of calculating all of this? And if I already sound like a crusty old sportswriter, I guess thats a good thing because I am majoring in journalism.

by mjschaefer on Jun 25, 2008 8:43 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Like I said, I just thought it was a fun tool to play with. I did it for the current Indians lineup, but you could do it for any team with any players. I thought some people here might enjoy it, like the guy that made a lineup for his softball team.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 25, 2008 8:48 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Oh, and if I sound like a math nerd, that’s a good thing because I’m a math teacher.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 25, 2008 8:54 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Thats a good thing. I can’t do anything after adding or subtracting. I avoid math all the time.

by mjschaefer on Jun 25, 2008 11:00 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Well I hate writing. So, to each his own!

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 26, 2008 9:05 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

I enjoy the game immensely, especially when I get to go to one.

I also enjoy fiddling with the numbers — a small part of trying to understand the game, which is something else I enjoy.

What is the point of doing all of this? What’s the point of anything I’ve ever posted? Why are you even here?

by Jay on Jun 25, 2008 8:57 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

I’m not sure why I’m here. I ask myself that question all the time. Not sure what my mission is.

I simply am frustrated by the Indians sucking, and basically said some stupid stuff. Nothing new. Sorry to those involved.

by mjschaefer on Jun 25, 2008 11:02 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

No harm done. I know it’s really just a clever maneuver to bring Brad and me onto the same side of an argument.

by Jay on Jun 26, 2008 9:30 AM EDT to parent up   0 recs

You have easy access to that data.

by afh4 on Jun 25, 2008 7:42 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Not only do you have easy access, 3 years of data is exactly what I used by inputting the Marcels projections above!

LeCavs!
If you were good enough, maybe we'd name it after you.

by Matt in LA on Jun 25, 2008 8:04 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Where? I mean, without having to do all the calculations myself.

by Buckeye Brad on Jun 25, 2008 8:09 PM EDT to parent up   0 recs

Jay already linked you to this thing once!

ctrl+F player name!

I even put in the date parameters for you!

You’ll have to add in your own minor league data.

Sheesh.

by afh4 on Jun 25, 2008 8:16 PM EDT to parent