SO record; Big, hairy butts

[KCBOOMER]

An interesting point to Carlton's 1972 season when he went 27-10 with th edreadful Phillies is that his NW-NL record would have been 27-10. This implies that being on the woeful Phils didn't hurt him in the least.

Maybe we should spend more time talking about Gaylord Perry's 1972 season with the Indians. He finished at 53 RSAA (Carlton had 54) and a record of 24-16. Perry's ERA was actually a little lower. Perry's NW-NL was 29-11. Amazing that a guy could start 40 times and get 40 decisions. He even relieved once and got a save.

I think these numbers illustrate the use/misuse of won/loss records. Using the w/l figures we quickly identify who the contenders are and when we use the deeper numbers we can determine who was doing what.

[nyy26wc]

Originally posted by JamesI
Doesn't support neutral still base winning percentage on the number of decisions they recieved?

Not the way that I compute it. I compute it purely on a percentage basis without any regard to how many decisions he had.

But, when I compute neutral wins and losses, they are based on the actual number of decisions a pitcher has. That's done so that the numbers look like things people are used to seeing. I tried substituting IP/9 for decisions, but that produced results that looked too low in comparision to what people used to seeing, at least from starting pitchers.

The neutral wins and losses are then rounded off to become whole numbers.

So, let's look at Woody Williams for a moment. His neutral percentage is .955. Then instead of having a neutral win-loss record of 2.87 wins and 0.13 losses, the figures are rounded off to a 3-0 neutral record. But, his neutral percentage remains .955 and isn't recalculated based on the rounded off figures.

[nyy26wc]

Originally posted by Fatwater Fewl
Lee,

I enjoyed the mailbag edition very much. It is certainly something I would
look forward to on a weekly basis -- if you could find the time to do it.

It's definitely going to be a new feature. Since I already spend a lot of time on email, having a mailbag feature doesn't really add to the workload.

In response to the discussion of "W's"(I might be taking this a little farther than is should go -- but hey, anything worth doing is worth overdoing!): can you envision reconditioning fans to the point where they get excited and euphoric when their favourite team gets outscored in a particular game but still leads the league in run differential? Or dancing around after the 7th game of the World Series, in which their favourite team finished one run behind for that game but 5 runs ahead for the Series, screaming and shouting with excitement because their team won the Series? Because in the end what's being said with RCAA and RSAA is that the best team in baseball is the team with the best RCAA - RSAA differential, isn't it? It's a hell of a job you're undertaking.

That's a completely different thing. I would say it's like comparing apples and oranges, but I prefer better an analogy of better tasting foods. So, it's like chocolate and pizza.

Winning and losing is the whole point of the game, at the team level. But, winning and losing requires the combination of many things. It's the combined efforts of each team's hitting and pitching (and for this, I'll include fielding, using pitching a proxy for defense) vs. the combined efforts of the opponent.

It's when you try to take the fact that the outcome is determined by that combination of factors and then try to assign credit (W) or loss (L) to just one individual pitcher that there's a breakdown in the system.

[JamesI]

thanks for the clarification Lee!

[Fatwater Fewl]

Originally posted by nyy26wc

That's a completely different thing. I would say it's like comparing apples and oranges, but I prefer better an analogy of better tasting foods. So, it's like chocolate and pizza.

Mmmm ... chocolate pizza....

Winning and losing is the whole point of the game, at the team level. But, winning and losing requires the combination of many things. It's the combined efforts of each team's hitting and pitching (and for this, I'll include fielding, using pitching a proxy for defense) vs. the combined efforts of the opponent.

It's when you try to take the fact that the outcome is determined by that combination of factors and then try to assign credit (W) or loss (L) to just one individual pitcher that there's a breakdown in the system.

I agree that winning and losing is the point on the team level. I just had a momentary vision of that winning and losing being an extended thing so that the whole season became one multi-sided game -- but that's getting into multiple round robin tournament territory, isn't it....

[satchel]

Lee, I enjoyed the mailbag edition (not just because I was in it ) but I think it deserves its own thread in the future.

[nyy26wc]

Originally posted by satchel
Lee, I enjoyed the mailbag edition (not just because I was in it ) but I think it deserves its own thread in the future.

Good idea.