A few lineup notes
posted in 2008 Spring Training |I’ll just expand a bit on the right-handed pitcher splits post below. You’ll note I placed Pudge Rodriguez eighth, rather than the ninth most expected him to bat. That’s because Jim Leyland said Pudge is batting eighth. Generally, well, I’d expect the worst batter to hit ninth where he’ll get the least at-bats and be further away from slowing down on what the top of the batting order has started.
Bilfer examined this at Detroit Tigers Weblog using David Pinto’s lineup analysis tool and found some interesting results. It doesn’t really matter all that much.
If Pudge is eighth, if Pudge is ninth; if Miguel Cabrera is third, if Miguel Cabrera is fifth, it doesn’t matter from the statistical standpoint. No matter what, the tool projects the Tigers to score about 5.2 to 5.3 runs per game with that lineup (about 842 runs for the season) using Baseball Prospectus’ projections. Like Bilfer, I think BP was a bit too pessimistic with its forecasts for offensive production, though the system does prove pretty reliable no matter what I think.
In any case, the point is, the numbers changed by at most 16 runs for the season based on changes to the batting order. So, statistically speaking, it’s really not that big a deal who bats where.
Sphere It
Yeah, I don’t fully understand how BP comes up with some of the predictions. I was just thumbing through it and I think they have Verlander winning 12 or 13 games this year. Seems quite a bit low. I still love their stuff, but sometimes it doesn’t really add up.
The thing about PECOTA is, it’s going to be right on sometimes, it’s going to be wrong sometimes, and if we knew which was which, we’d make a lot of money. Overall, its’ a pretty decent system. You just have to tweak it’s results a bit.
I think it doesn’t like Verlander because he pitches better than his peripherals and it keeps thinking he’ll come back to them. Fair or not? you decide. If you check my archives — all new program doing them thanks to a tip from Bilfer — you’ll find some posts about PECOTA and BP from last January-March and, looking back, the system did pretty good.
Me, I think Verlander is closer to 17-20 wins and the Tigers, when tweaked properly, are closer to 95 than t0 89. It was a bit too pessimistic last year too.