I moved to Seattle from Boston 10 years ago today. With my beloved Red Sox playing well and looking like the front runners for winning the World Series, I came to the realization that if they pull it off again this year, it will be 3 World Series Championships in my lifetime, all of which occurred AFTER I left Boston. It isn’t like the Sox weren’t good when I was living there, it is just that they were getting caught behind the Yankee dynasty and couldn’t overcome it. I will count 2003 as a year in Boston, since I was there for most of the time, but here is how the team fared in my time back east vs. my time in the land of salmon and rain:
Years
W-L
PCT
World Series
Playoffs
Winning Seasons
1991-2003
1081-959
.530
0
4
9
2004-Current
898-702
.561
2
6
9
Not really a point to this, just marking the 10th anniversary of my move to Seattle with something vaguely sports related.
You probably don’t know the name Hiroshi Yamauchi, but you should if you live in Seattle. He is the former president of Nintendo and the majority owner of the Mariners and probably the person single handedly responsible for keeping major league baseball in the Northwest when he bought the team in 1994.
Yamauchi passed away at age 85 yesterday. By all accounts, everything the team did got run through him, so I have no idea what kind of impact this will end up having on the Mariners. My guess though is that the team is sold to a bunch of non-local investors for somewhere north of 1 billion dollars and the house cleaning will begin shortly thereafter.
Thanks to Rob Neyer, I watched a 6 minute segment that Keith Olbermann did recently concerning pitchers being babied. Tom Seaver was ranting about it and Olbermann completely destroys Seaver’s argument. Worth watching and you can see it here:
1. I wound up at Emerald Downs last weekend. By coincidence, it was almost two years to the day after the last visit. I think late in the season is the right time to go to the track anyway — a lot of data has been collected for the year, which at least in theory should make it easier to gamble. Since I don’t know anything actually useful about horses, that data is critical to have any chance at all.
It seems a typical day at Emerald Downs features about eight races. Two years ago I made around $60 on a series on bets mostly in the $2 – $8 range. I may have gotten a little lucky, though it didn’t feel like I was especially lucky that day.
This year I made fewer, smaller bets, and made $11.60. I probably wagered something like $6-$12 per race — the total outlay was about $70-80. (A $40 bankroll — $20 was too small to allow any real flexibility.) Last weekend worked out to a ~15-20% return on investment, which I’m fine with given the lack research required. (And I threw away $14 on one race by ignoring the obvious, which didn’t help the end result. It was doubly bad because I threw away money and one of the eight races for the day.) Two years ago it went much better, but that’s why it’s called gambling, right?
I think the biggest difference between those outcomes is that I won about as many close finishes as could have been expected in 2011, but I lost almost every close finish this time around.
2. Many, many years ago I’d go to the library or the used bookstore to get books about “How To Win Betting On Sports”. Most of them would have a chapter about baseball (with rudimentary conclusions drawn from even more rudimentary box scores), one about football, one on the horses, and so on. One thing that continually came up was that something like 1 out of 25 people win money over time at the track. To put it another way: 4% of people who go to the track can expect to leave as winners.
This is the first image that popped up when I Googled “pink horse.” It’s Selena Gomez and it’s a pink horse, and it’s “controversial.” Beyond that, no clue. I could not, however, find a picture of a pink horse with floppy ears. Pink unicorns, yes. Floppy ears, no. Go figure.
Given that I know less than zero about horses, and looking at those odds, I avoided the track up until two years ago, and even then I figured if I didn’t get shelled I’d be happy. I did better than that though, and I did better than break even this time too.
I’m beginning to think that maybe people are putting their money on a horse that they like the appearance of, or the horse’s name, or the color of the jockey’s outfit. Maybe they’re doing Daily Doubles and throwing their money away on those, or some other kind of stupidly improbable long-odds combination bet.
All I know is that it doesn’t seem that hard. There aren’t that many variables. I looked only at the numbers. I ignored the tip sheets. I tuned out the other players and the PA system offering advice. I didn’t want to be influenced. The horses I picked could have been pink, with huge, floppy ears, and I wouldn’t have noticed until after they took off down the track and I saw their ears trailing in the wind. Maybe after a couple more visits I’ll figure out I’ve been lucky all along. At this rate I’ll know the answer to that by 2017..
I happened to be watching the America’s Cup race (don’t ask, it is one of my guilty pleasures) and I noticed on the crawl that there were two retirements announced from baseball today: Vlad Guerrero, who actually hasn’t played in the majors since 2011, and Todd Helton, who made his effective at the end of the season.
Guerrero will always hold a soft spot in my heart. Back in 2003, in what would be Vlad Guerrero’s last game as an Expo, I remember him getting a 5 minute standing ovation from the crowd as he was replaced in right field by Ron Calloway. Everyone knew that Vlad, who was going to be a free agent at the end of the season, was going to sign somewhere else. Vlad will also be remembered by me for being listed at 10-1 in Vegas for the 2004 AL MVP. Needless to say, my bet paid for my 2005 trip to Vegas.
Helton is an interesting case – he is a guy who put up some pretty good career numbers but played half of his games in Coors field.
Just for comparison, here is how they both stack up:
AVG
HR
RBI
H
SB
OPS
OPS+
WAR
Guerrero
.318
449
1496
2590
181
.931
140
59.9
Helton
.317
367
1397
2505
37
.954
133
61.1
They had very similar career numbers. Sadly, I doubt that either of them will end up in the HOF, although they both have a pretty strong case that they belong. Vlad would get my vote and I think Helton would get mine eventually – heck he is a much better choice than either Tony Perez or Jim Rice.
The NBC Sports network has been advertising their upcoming EPL coverage with a brilliant set of commercials titled “An American Coach in London.” As I was looking for them to post to the blog, I discovered that they are actually just segments of a much larger promo video that NBC Sports put together. It is about 4:45 long and has some pretty funny stuff in it.
Where do NFL teams target when they throw the ball?
and
What’s remarkable is just how short the average pass attempt travels in the air — only 31 percent travel more than 10 yards . (More on that in the link.) It’s an ESPN/ Grantland/ The Triangle/ Kirk Goldsberry piece. There’s lots more detail (and neat graphics) in the article.
Here’s a link to Kirk Goldsberry’s archive page. He does a lot of similar stuff that involves the NBA, NFL, and specific player tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses. For example, here’s a piece focusing on what was going right and wrong for LeBron James during last year’s Finals. “There Is No Red Zone – The NFL’s Scoring Myth” looks at expected points based on down and field position and asks why announcers talk about “The Red Zone” like it’s something significant.
Let’s say the season ended on September 3rd and we were going to vote on the Cy Young Award. Here are the AL WAR leaders according to Baseball-reference. Com:
Let’s assume that is all of the contenders for the award. It is a pretty big spread between 6.2 WAR and 3.9 WAR, so let’s eliminate anyone with a WAR below 5.0. That leaves us with this:
While Iwakuma’s total numbers are good, he really has been pretty pedestrian since about mid-June, so let’s take him off the list. Besides, Felix is really the guy you would rather have on the mound for the Mariners anyway. I am going to eliminate Sanchez for a similar reason – he isn’t the best pitcher on his team. That leaves us with Chris Sale, Max Scherzer, Felix Hernandez and Yu Darvish.
Here is how they stack up:
W-L
ERA
SO
WHIP
ERA+
Chris Sale
10-12
2.97
199
1.055
144
Max Scherzer
19-2
2.88
209
0.940
146
Felix Hernandez
12-9
3.01
200
1.132
122
Yu Darvish
12-6
2.73
236
1.025
151
While Felix is having a good season, he hasn’t been dominating, so he probably finishes #3 or #4 in the voting with Chris Sale occupying the other spot. Sale has been outstanding, but voters will be turned off by his 10-12 record. That leaves it as a battle between Scherzer and Darvish. Both pitch for teams that are heading to the playoffs. Scherzer has benefited from outstanding run support, but he has also been pretty dominating in his own right – his WHIP leads the AL (Darvish is 3rd), he is giving up just under 6.3 hits per 9 innings (Darvish leads the AL with 6.1 per 9), he has a 4.5 to 1 strikeout to walk ration (good for 5th in the AL, Darvish is 8th at 3.9) and has the highest WPA of any starting pitcher in the AL. With how close the stats are between Darvish and Scherzer, it is going to come down to wins for the voters and that 19-2 record looks awfully nice, so Scherzer would win the award.
For clinching their first .500 record since George Bush (the first one, not the second one) was still President and some guy named Bonds was roaming the outfield at Three Rivers Stadium, on astroturf.
I am writing this a couple days in advance, so hopefully I remember to go back and update it.
With about a month to go in the season, the playoff picture is starting to take shape.
In the NL, we have all but decided who is going to be in the playoffs:
The Braves have a 13 game lead on the Nats in the NL East
The Dodgers have an 8.5 game lead on the Diamondbacks in the NL West
The Pirates/Reds/Cardinals (all three teams have virtually identical records) have at least a 15.5 game lead on the Brewers in the NL Central.
The Pirates/Reds/Cardinals have at least a 5 game lead over Arizona for the 2nd NL Wild Card
Really the only thing left to figure out is who ends up relegated to the Wild Card game. Heck, according to ESPN.com, the only NL team with at least a 6% chance of making the playoffs other than the Pirates/Reds/Cardinals/Braves/Dodgers is the Diamondbacks at 18%. Interestingly the only other team with more than a 1% chance of making the playoffs is the Nationals at 5.8%.
At least there is a bit more drama in the AL. There are 5 teams that have a real shot at the Wild Card spots – The A’s/Rangers (whoever does not win the AL West), Red Sox/Rays (whoever does not win the AL East), Indians, Orioles and Yankees. Each one of those teams is at least within 3.5 games of the 2nd Wild Card spot. The Royals were making it interesting, but have faded after losing 7 strait and will have to wait until next year.
On the flip side, I wanted to congratulate Houston on officially being the first team completely eliminated from playoff contention (assuming they lose Wednesday night). In the era of 2 Wild Card spots, to be eliminated before the end of August is something of an accomplishment. I guess it isn’t hard when you have won 33% of your games, have the worst run differential in baseball (by a bunch), have given up the most runs in baseball (quick, name any Astros starting pitcher – I bet you can’t) and have the worst home record in the game.
As for the Mariners – they are on pace to win 73 games (remember when people were picking them to be a wild card team?) I know that Coltrane disagrees with me, but I think that Z gets fired if they don’t win at least 77 games. For those who were overly optimistic about the M’s during spring training, I want to revisit something that I posted earlier this year:
… I would project that the Mariners will probably put up about 4.25 runs a game this season, accounting for the “improved” lineup and the fences moving in. That would be about 688 runs for the season, which means that they would have been 12th in the AL last season instead of last. That might mean that this is a 77 win team instead of a 75 win team.
The Mariners are currently on pace to score 636 runs (3.92 runs a game) which means that my prediction of 4.25 was optimistic. I did peg them as a 75-77 win team, which, barring a big run at the end of the season, is going to be just about where they end up. Now repeat after me: “I will listen to Blaidd Drwg when it comes to the Mariners…”
FlatbreadGarden 