Armchair Thoughts

The updated standings can be found here.


We are now 5/23 of the way through the season.

That's 21.7%

That's over a fifth.

That's seemingly quite a bit.

Strictly from looking at the standings we have a two way tie at the top for supremacy. Riley and Mike both want the glory but it will come down to who wants it more this year. It looks like Caff's current squad has more staying power than Riley's, who is projected to get nipped out of that 4th playoff spot. Then again, a couple moves here and there and we have a whole new outlook on the season.

And yes, it's starting to be that time of year. Trade talks. Talkin' trades. Proposals, rejections, counter offers. It comes with the sport. I'm hoping some people start looking at their farm squads and bad future contracts and say "screw it, let's go for it all this year". Remember, flags fly forever, gentlemen.

Going top down on the standings, finding the first team that I haven't covered yet, and we arrive at Seductive Wendepunkt,. A scrappy hodgepodge of misfits who have the most cohesive team chemistry since JJ's Maple Sausages from 2011.

Offensively, they'll kill you with their power and speed, but their rate stats are abysmal.  My team is projected to hit .267 for the rest of the season. To put that in context, Wilkin Ramirez hit .272 last year.

On the pitching side of things it's a bit of the same story. Wins, Saves, Strikeouts; they can hold their own. But those rate stats can hinder my quest to assemble the most beautifully run baseball team since Joe's Torn Ligament from 2010. Man was that team a joy to watch. They could do it all. I'd stay up late on my computer just to watch Joe make transactions in real time. It was a real thing of beauty the way he would drop one pitcher that pitched that day and pick up another pitcher who was pitching the next day. I would always think "Dang, that Joe is sure smart! Why didn't I think of that?!".

Anyway. Back to my team. I am going to tear all of your hopes and dreams into pieces. I am a savage and ruthless manager who is destined to go top of the league after 23 weeks. My computer program says so. I will then extract all of your best players and make you pay for the majority of their salaries, because it's written in the stars. All of you will finish below .500 since I will simply be that far above you all in the standings. You have been warned.

The updated standings can be found here.

I don't think there's much that went on over the course of the last week. The season is still but a pup. Slowly, teams are getting sucked to the top or the bottom of the standings, hovering toward their rightful places.

I'll be brief this week since I have things to do.
But let's focus in on a team. Starting from the top of the current standings, we've already looked at Funky Cold Gardena, so let's dig deeper on I got Matsui!.

Side note: It's odd that I'm 3 for 3 in chronicling the teams that are highest in the standings, and also the team I am facing for that given week. I think I found the answer though. It's because everyone plays me after Dave, and so they come off a fresh whooping of Bats Hit Crazy and propel themselves toward the top of the league and then get to play me.

I got Matsui! (or IGM) is one of two teams that has zero categories of undefeatedness or total defeatedness (I am the other).
Observe here.

That said, don't sleep on them as a totally unremarkable team. Offensively, they're the best power squad in the league. Miggy Cab Cab, Joey Vee, and Tulo, all help shore up HR and OPS matchups. Respectively, I have Riley ranked 2nd and 1st in those categories for the rest of the season. The Achilles heel on offense? You guessed it; the opposite of power is speed. Runs and SBs are lagging behind, but all in all, they've got a slightly above average offense going forward.

Pitching is a different story. A lot of extremes here. Home of the 2nd lowest Wins projected for the rest of the year, the 2nd lowest Losses for the rest of the year (which is good, remember), and predictably it's because they have a bevvy of closers. Saves galore. This approach yields few Ks, but all in all he's shored up a slightly below average, if not average pitching staff. It's not as extreme as Outfield Fly Rule (thought it is better), but it's surely a new age hybrid of the Less-Starters-More-Closers strategy. So far they're winning pitching categories at a 60% clip, and I'm thinking that will shrink down to earth in the near future.

They're projected to slide in to a playoff spot, but will need to keep the momentum going to feel safe about it anytime soon.

To Whom It May Concern,

Disappointment. Shame. Astonishment.

At this point in time, I ready myself to receive the attack of those previous sentiments upon from all of you; for I have failed you all. These emotions and placeholders for an opinion of a man can come about in many forms. Perhaps someone has wronged you by stealing from you. Perhaps they hurt you. Perhaps they kicked your dog. I clench and brace myself as I write the following words, since I have done something leagues leagues worse than the previous examples.


I discovered a typo in my projections.


Stone me, yell at me, slap me, verbally assault me all you want; though none of those would bring about the proper justice that I am entitled to after such an error.

Whilst looking through the weekly projected results column for Week 4, I saw that Goose's Flock's numbers were rather low and did some digging. I found out that on two occasions I had Outfield Fly Rule instead of Goose's Flock on the schedule, which meant an overinflated place in the standings for JP, and an under-inflated place in the standings for Goose & Co. The error has been corrected and I was sure to check that there were no other typos in the schedule. I had to scrap the previous projections since they are now useless and I have no way of going back and updating them to contain the correct numbers.
Forgiveness is such a lofty thing to ask for at such a time. But here I am, on my knees.

The updated standings can be found here.

Let's continue our trend of checking in on the league leader each week. Funky Cold Gardena (a saucy mix of Tone Lōc and Totino Grace folklore) has capture our hearts and the first place position with a mix of intimidation on the mound and speed on the basepaths.

As you can see here, they're 15-2-1 in all pitching categories this year (.861 W%). While it's not sustainable in the slightest, it's a huge headstart. They're projected to have a .529 W% in pitching categories the rest of the year (Good for 3rd in the league behind Goose's Flock and myself) which puts them at about a .572 clip (just for pitching) at the end of the year. That's absurd.

Of the four pitching categories that F.C.G. hasn't conceded this year (SV, K, ERA, WHIP), my money is that Ks will be the first to give way. By my projections, I've got about a 65% chance of winning in Ks this week, but even if we want to go by past results, F.C.G. are 6th in the league in terms of total Ks so far this year. He's benefited from having played Outfield Fly Rule (last in total Ks), Clown Question Bros (7th), and Bats Hit Crazy (9th).

On to the positives. Well, their Saves category is 2nd to only Riley's, and there seem to be no glaring weaknesses. Lots of Ws, mitigated Ls, and great rate stats. A solid foundation to work with.

We haven't really touched on the offense. Though, I'm running out of time. Bottom line is, for the most part it's below average, but not enough to counteract their strong pitching. They're strong in SBs and could use some RBIs.

Bottom line of the bottom line is, their pitchers are nothing to mess with and you should hope to take as many offensive categories as you can if you want to keep your matchup close.

Rieser out.

Week 2 in the books. Everyone is hot on Mooch's heels, who is riding the wave from his 10-2 week 1 thrashing over Ryan. A narrow defeat (7-5) was had this week over Dave, who has retreated to the bottom of the Armchair league standings, ready to make his resurgent comeback to the holy land of playoff contention. Last year's last place finish left an insatiable thirst that he will attempt to quench without mercy.

Mooch, however, is picking up right where he left off. The defending champion has swept all offensive categories up until this point, except for SB. Dave was fortunate enough to nip him 5-4 in that category last week.  It may come as no surprise that SB was the category that ruined a couple of perfect offensive weeks for Mooch, since it is quite noticeably his weakest offensive category. Extrapolating out the rest of the season (with the players he has starting today) he'll have only 73 more predicted SBs the rest of the year.  Only Goose's Flock is predicted to have fewer swipes, with 53.  However, Mooch should be in good shape since he's got a bench full of regular base-swipers with Ben Revere, Alexei Ramirez, and Kolten Wong.
Moral of the story: If you think you found a weakness with Mooch, he's already found a way to fix it.

Here are the ROS projections (make sure you're on the W2IR tab):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O7QDJjNuysoTVqrCjYSnP5x5P1cgeLDA78QXHKFhncg/pubhtml

Happy Hunting.

I apologize for the abbreviated post this week. I've been doing a bit of traveling and can only give you the bare bones numbers without any analysis. Infer from them at your own discretion:

Link to Latest Standings.

I'm also tooling around with the best ways to display this information to you all. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Hopefully I will have more insight for you all in the future. Until then.

Love me. Hate me. Read me.

Let's first look at a timeline of events:

Sunday March 9, 2014
7:00 pm - Armchair Baseball Fantasy Draft begins
~9:30 pm - Armchair Baseball Rookie Draft begins
11:00 pm - I go to bed.
Monday March 11, 2014
9:00 am - Text message from Joe Johnston:

Hope to see some draft analysis soon Jack. Gotta have something to quench the anticipation of 3 weeks until opening day.

Consider it done, Yung Joseph.

You all know me (save for our new member, Chuck). I'm the guy that insists on providing you with "analysis" (don't laugh) and "insight" (please) by using "complex statistical tools" (ok maybe not). I'm going to keep serving them, hopefully throughout the whole year. You have the option of whether you want to chew on them. But then you also have the option to swallow them or spit them up back all over me. Let's keep it civil this year. Clean up can be a bia.

You want projections?
....
I said, DO YOU WAN PROJECTIONS??? PLAYOFF ODDS???
....
Anyone?
....
Crap.

For whoever is still reading, well I have them.  Here you go, the projected end of season winning percentages:

	Rest of Season	Batter	Pitcher	W%
1	TBD JACK	0.498	0.555	0.527
2	Bats Hit Crazy	0.534	0.499	0.517
3	Yung's $1 Store	0.494	0.533	0.513
4	BilateralLegWeakness	0.493	0.521	0.507
5	Clown Question Bro's	0.517	0.496	0.506
6	Sano Me The Money	0.467	0.544	0.505
7	I got Matsui!	0.521	0.469	0.495
8	Outfield Fly Rule	0.538	0.445	0.491
9	Funky Cold Gardena	0.504	0.448	0.476
10	Goose's Flock	0.434	0.489	0.462

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


Now, before you throw up or diarrhea yourself, there are some caveats that you need to know:
I start by taking the projections of every player.
I only count the batters that are in your starting lineup, since they will play at least 5/7 of the week.
I count all of the stats of the pitchers on your team.
I divide them by 25 (the number of weeks in the regular season)
I look at each category for a given week and calculate the likelihood of Team A beating Team B in that category
I sim the schedule for the rest of the season

As you can see, there are a lot of variables not in play. Injuries, managerial styles, undervalue/overvalue for young players, etc. Even swapping one of your outfielders will have a massive impact because it's assuming you're playing one player over another for 23 straight weeks.

But in the end, it's anyone's best guess as to how the season will play out. If you have any sort of parameters on how this process can be improved, let me know (kindly), or create your own projection system. I'm not for sure that I'd win, but I'd love to make a wager on my method versus someone else's. Heck, if I lose, then I can stop with this madness and spend my time on something constructive (Like getting back to work).

YOU SAID SOMETHING ABOUT PLAYOFF PROJECTIONS?

I sure did.  I simmed out 4000 seasons (not nearly enough, but enough to get a general picture) and found out where each team placed and counted how many times out of 4000 each team finished in the top 4:

	Season's End	Batter	Pitcher	W%	Playoff %	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
1	TBD JACK	0.498	0.555	0.527	74.0%	28.3%	16.9%	12.6%	9.9%	8.1%	5.6%	4.6%	2.8%	1.7%	1.0%
2	Bats Hit Crazy	0.534	0.499	0.517	62.4%	16.8%	14.6%	13.8%	12.0%	10.1%	8.2%	6.3%	5.1%	2.7%	2.0%
3	Yung's $1 Store	0.494	0.533	0.513	56.3%	14.6%	14.3%	11.9%	10.7%	11.5%	9.0%	6.7%	5.9%	4.9%	2.1%
4	BilateralLegWeakness	0.493	0.521	0.507	48.9%	10.3%	11.2%	11.2%	12.1%	10.3%	11.5%	9.6%	8.0%	4.9%	2.5%
5	Clown Question Bro's	0.517	0.496	0.506	47.7%	9.2%	11.8%	11.5%	11.1%	9.7%	10.5%	9.4%	8.0%	6.3%	4.0%
6	Sano Me The Money	0.467	0.544	0.505	45.4%	9.1%	10.4%	11.0%	11.1%	10.5%	10.8%	10.1%	8.3%	6.6%	3.6%
7	I got Matsui!	0.521	0.469	0.495	32.5%	5.5%	6.8%	7.8%	9.7%	10.4%	11.6%	11.6%	11.2%	10.5%	6.5%
8	Outfield Fly Rule	0.538	0.445	0.491	30.3%	4.2%	6.5%	7.8%	9.2%	10.4%	10.8%	10.9%	11.1%	11.2%	9.4%
9	Funky Cold Gardena	0.504	0.448	0.476	15.4%	1.7%	2.3%	4.1%	6.0%	6.6%	8.1%	11.4%	14.3%	18.7%	18.4%
10	Goose's Flock	0.434	0.489	0.462	5.0%	0.3%	0.6%	1.4%	2.2%	4.0%	5.4%	8.8%	13.1%	20.0%	35.7%

(Sorry that these kind of spill off of the page. I'm not good with formatting.)

As previously noted, this isn't perfect, but it's a baseline.  Do I have exactly a 28.3% chance to win the league? Very unlikely. But I would venture to say it's somewhere around that number.

I can try to do some more insightful analysis at a later date. If you have ideas on what sorts of studies or whatever you'd like to see, let me know. (E.g. Who had the best draft? Who has the best keepers? Which player has the best contract right now?) I won't have all the answers, but I'll try my best.

Also Goose, you might want to stock up on some speed. Paul Goldschmidt is projected to lead your team with 12 SBs.