Baseball Knowledge 101: DIPS > ERA

While the final hours before the trade deadline slip away and the Astros continue to put their head in the sand (believing that acquiring Randy Wolf and LaTroy Hawkins makes us a play off contending team), instead of restocking the farm by selling everything they can, you can sit back and dig into the how's and why's of DIPS. You'll also learn why Tim Purpura is just a total idiot.

When we last checked in on pitching, we ran you through the how’s and why’s of ERA’s deficiencies. Evan had the harder of our two tasks in breaking down ERA vs. explaining DIPS. It’s easy to explain how DIPS works and why it is that their measures most accurately capture the true skill level of a pitcher’s performance through it’s methodology, but it’s incredibly difficult to explain why ERA is a faulty statistic in general, because there so many variables that are captured by ERA that are irrelevant (scorer bias) and luck dependent (LD%, HR/FB%, etc.). Today, I will try and bring you deeper into what I consider sabermetrics most valuable contribution to baseball: defense independent metrics (defense independent pitching, luck independent pitching, and fielding independent pitching). For reasons hopefully to explicated clearly below, these metrics all do a far better job of capturing the true skill and performance of a pitcher than ERA, W-L, single rate stats (K/9, BB/9, WHIP, etc.), or even the aforementioned Support-Neutral family of statistics. While rate stats (except for WHIP) accurately gage a singular skill of a pitcher, they don’t tell us about his entire skill set. ERA and W-L, as previously discussed, are poor, to down right awful, at gauging a pitcher’s skill level. Even the Support-Neutral family of statistics is still hampered by many of the same things that ERA is, because while it gives a better feel for how a single pitching performance by a pitcher helped his team stay in a game to win it, it can’t tell us whether that pitching performance was strong or weak based on the pitcher’s ability or a the variety of randomly varying factors that impact a pitching performance.

As alluded to by Evan, the vein of pitching-analysis we’re venturing down today was inspired by the BABIP/ERA phenomenon, first observed by Voros McCracken. In his original article on DIPS, Voros surmised that, “there is little if any difference among major-league pitchers in their ability to prevent hits on balls hit in the field of play." This bold statement has since been heavily amended, but can be restated as something akin to: Major-league pitchers have little control over their ability to prevent line-drives which heavily affects their BABIP, where as they show a significant ability to control GB, IF, and FB, they however show little ability to control the outcome of any batted-ball. I know that just took out 3/4 of the kinds of balls in play and then reassigned them to the pitcher’s responsibility category. Which given our treatment of BABIP last time seems either counter-intuitive or like we were lying. Hopefully I’ll be able to clear it up.

When originally proposed by Voros the first time, he labeled the following pitching categories defense independent:

BB K HBP IBB HR

Those are all categories which are truly defense independent statistics as only the pitcher can cause/allow them to occur. The first incarnation of DIPS worked by finding the rate at which these statistics occurred for a pitcher and then subtracting out how many batters faced would have walked, struck out, been hit, intentionally walked, or homered from the total number of batters faced. From there he broke down singles, doubles, triples, and outs for each pitcher and set the rate at which these occurred to the league average BABIP. He did this because, prior to further investigation by many different analysts, it seemed like BABIP truly was out of the pitcher’s control entirely. What he had left was the number of BB, K, HBP, HR, IBB, 1B, 2B, 3B, and outs for a pitcher that would have occurred all things equal. With that he assigned each event a run value (what they were, I’m not sure, but I imagine it was the standard BaseRuns) to then calculate the number of Runs Allowed by a pitcher with the new numbers. This would result in a DIPS ERA, which could really be thought of as a DIPS RAA (runs allowed average). The measurement is still somewhat valuable as a quick way to see whether an extreme ERA is valid or not and is now cited as FIP (fielding independent pitching).

Understandably this was controversial, because conventional baseball wisdom assumed pitchers could control hits allowed. In order to prove/disprove Voros’ assertion, the last seven years has seen a tremendous amount of research go into DIPS. The results have yielded a more nuanced understanding of the batter/pitcher match-up and the subsequent dividing line between pitching and defense.

As up to date as I have seen it, here is how DIPS is calculated to reflect the more nuanced truth that has come to light since Voros’ original proposition of BABIP as pure chance.

A pitcher is assigned a league average LD%, reflecting that statistically LD’s are uncontrollable according to year to year correlations (Source). This luck-less amount of line-drives are then subtracted from the pitchers’ number of batted-balls. Next, the rate at which a pitcher surrendered Ground balls, Infield-flies (IF), Outfield-flies (OF), and bunts. Then, to correct for the role that defense plays in each of the kinds of batted balls, league average results are applied to them. So if 30 of GB% fall singles and the pitcher in question, after the adjustments, was given 100 GB’s, then he’d be credited for 30 singles. The resulting 70 would have the same thing done for 2B, 3B, HR, outs, double plays, and reached on error (ROE). The same for his adjusted number of LD, IF, OF, and bunts. With the pitcher’s new line of corrected K’s, BB’s, IBB’s, HBP, 1B, 2B, 3B, HR, ROE, and outs, a defense independent Runs Allowed is then calculated by assigning a run value to each event via BaseRuns. This methodology is DIPS 3.0.

The question that remains (if you’re still even reading) is why is it valid to count LD% as luck, but GB% and IF% and OF% as pitching skill? To this end, I will stick with Mitchel Litchman’s study of the year to year correlation of differnt types of balls in play to bolster DIPS 3.0’s methodology. Litchman studied pitchers, over a 10 year period (1993-2002), who changed teams to study their batted-ball data. Why those who changed teams? In Litchman’s words it is so “we have essentially removed the home park and defensive influences from the correlations.” His study involved over 100 pitchers who had a minimum of 300 balls in play in the consecutive seasons -- a large sample size to say the least. He than ran the year to year correlation on the different kinds of batted balls. His results indicated that pitchers show absolutely no control over LD’s, but exhibited a good degree of consistency (i.e. control) in IF, OF, and GB (each factor was listed from least amount of control to strongest.

So hopefully that clears up why it is that when we calculate a DIPS, the LD% is automatically league average, and then the pitchers own individual rate of surrendering IF, OF, and GB is left alone. However there is one issue that probably is still lingering in your mind. If GB, IF, and OF are under the control of a pitcher then why does DIPS 3.0 then assign league average rates of results to each batted-ball type (i.e. Why say if a GB goes for a single a league average 57% of the time and a pitcher surrendered 100 GB, therefore 57 defense independent GB singles, instead of however many singles he actually surrendered on GB?)? Again, we have to look back to Litchman who determined through the same study I’ve already discussed, that while pitchers show the ability to control what kinds of batted balls they allow, they show almost no control over the rate at which those balls in play go for outs. If pitchers cannot control the rate at which their batted balls go for outs, then they cannot reasonably be expected to control the outcome of the balls in play that do not go for outs. Thus, DIPS 3.0 corrects that.

Alright, we’ve come a long way. What we’ve covered so far, is that from the initial assertion that BABIP is completely a factor of luck (that the only pitcher/batter outcomes a pitcher determines is BB, K, IBB, and HBP), further research revealed that pitchers can control the kinds of balls in play they allow, just not there outcomes. I wouldn’t doubt that you’re wondering: “What the hell does that even mean, aren’t you saying the same thing which just some qualifiers?” Ok, probably not thinking that, but I did. While the outcome of batted balls are out of a pitcher’s hands, except for line-drives they can control the type of ball put in play. Since certain kinds of batted balls go for differing levels of hits/outs more often than others, pitcher’s can -- in a sense -- control their destinies. All they can do however is increase or decrease the probability that ball in play goes for an out, because (as I noted earlier) Litchman’s work indicates that increasing or decreasing outs on balls in play is not a skill pitcher’s possess. Instead, it is one that the defense backing him possess. Thus, DIPS corrects the outcomes of batted-ball types to league average, in order to neutralize the role that defense plays in a pitcher’s skill domain.

What DIPS leaves a GM, Manager, Scout, Fantasy Baseball Player, or Fan with is a metric that captures the actual skill level of the pitcher. It has been adjusted to remove luck and the abilities of others from obscuring the work of a pitcher. How can we be sure of this? Because, DIPS 3.0 has a correlation of .8 with the next year’s ERA, where as ERA has a year-to-year correlation of .374 with itself. A word of caution to DIPS in any shape or form is that they are not an explanatory stat unless you dig deeper into to why there is a differential between ERA and DIPS. Although it is a predictive stat, it is only truly useful at predicting pitchers ERA given the proper context for their DIPS-ERA differential. Things like injuries, command problems, or poor pitch sequencing can all serve to artificially skew the DIPS-ERA differential while not being the result of chance. On the whole though, looking at pitcher’s with positive DIPS-ERA differentials portends to poor future performance. One $120 million oversight by an organization refusing to employ sabermetric analysis in player evaluation is the infamous Barry Zito. In his contract year, Zito posted a 3.83 ERA, but it was deflated largely due to a ridiculous 78.5% LOB%, which was reflect in his 4.65 DIPS. Brian Sabean could and should have easily been able to observe that Zito’s continued success depended on strong defense, as both his IF% had fell of the table as well as a steadily decling K/9, and that such a pitcher, no matter his past performance levels, does not warrant a $120 million contract.

Now before Astros fans start ridiculing the Giants, let’s not forget December 2006, when Jason Jennings came to town. Purpura traded for Jennings off the strength of his 2006 3.78 which for Coors Field is probably like saying Roger Clemens had a 1.87 ERA in 2005. However it, like Zito’s ERA, was deflated due to a totally unsustanable HR rate, which is represented in his 2006 DIPS of 4.61. Would anybody else like to have Willy T, Jason Hirsch or Taylor Bucholtz still in light of this? (DIPS 3.0 Source, you have to go to the bottom and open the spread sheet). **Side Note, you could do the exact same thing with Woody Williams, 2006 ERA: 3.65, 2006: DIPS: 5.03...eeesssshhh** It works the other way too, the quickest example I could find was Freddy Garcia from 2004-2005. 2004 saw him post a dismal 4.64 ERA, whereas DIPS 3.0 had him at a 3.54. In 2005, Garcia posted 3.54 ERA. Not too shabby DIPS 3.0.

Ok, that was exhaustive for me and I’m sure for you. We’ll save LIPS for next time and jam it in with pitch/fx, which actually makes a good deal of sense to do. Addendum number two the syllabus should read: “DIPS > ERA” and “The Next Frontier: LIPS and pitch/fx.

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Examining the Wizard: Long Balls and Luck

**UPDATE - Links Fixed, I hate Blogger**

So I found another tool to throw at the Roy Oswalt mystery. It’s called Hit Tracker and it’s an incredible tool. Basically, it corrects for wind, atmospherics, and probably some more stuff, to say how far the ball would have traveled. It then categorizes HR by the following categories:

No Doubters - the HR cleared the fence by 20 vertical feet and landed at least 50 feet past the fence.

Just Enough - the HR cleared the fence by less than 10 vertical feet and landed less than once fence height length beyond the fence. It’s just snuck out.

Lucky - the HR wouldn’t have gotten out if it had been hit on 70 degree, calm day.

Plenty - Not a Just Enough or No Doubter HR.

So with that in mind, lets look at the 18 HR that Roy Oswalt has allowed, because, as we noted, he’s been especially unlucky with the HR ball this year. Given that we’re chalking some of this up to luck, we should expect him to have a fair amount of HR due to luck (i.e. Just Enoughs or Lucky HRs).

Just Enoughs: 3 HR

Plenty but Lucky: 2

Just Enoughs that were Lucky: 1

So, of the 18 HR balls that Roy Oswalt has surrendered, 6 could have just as easily stayed in the park if there was the slightest change in any variable. While this information doesn’t change the fact that Roy has struggled or explain why he has, it does provide credence to the idea that his HR/FB rate is inflated due to luck. Hopefully a Roy Oswalt with a healthy hip abductor and his luck/statistical randomness due to correct will emerge and be an effective Roy Oswalt in the 2nd Half. Perhaps one that decides to wave his no trade clause in the off-season and nets us some top prospects/major league ready players, too.

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Examining the Wizard: Roy Oswalt, a Case Study in Luck

Today, I was excited to see this article from The Hardball Times. For those of you who are too lazy to click the link and read the article, I’ll quickly summarize. The article looked at pitchers who were the unluckiest so far this season; measuring their rate stats against league averages to define unlucky. Astros fans should not be surprised to find out that Roy Oswalt was the most unlucky pitcher in terms of HR/FB (Home Runs per Fly Ball), posting an absolutely astounding 21.05% HR/FB so far this season. The article by, Derek Carty, goes on to normalize Oswalt’s (and the other pitchers listed in the article’s) outlandish rates stats back to league average levels, plug it into a very complex formula, and determine Oswalt (and company’s) LIPS ERA (Luck Independent ERA). Carty finds that by normalizing Roy Oswalt’s HR/FB back to league-average, Roy Oswalt owns a LIPS ERA of 4.08. Not an outstanding ERA, but I don’t think any Astros fan would quibble with having Roy Oswalt’s ERA be 1.30 earned runs lower.

The LIPS ERA concept works, because by-in-large, things like BABIP, HR/FB, and LD% are largely beyond the pitcher’s control (See above linked articles and this one for supporting evidence). However, what does the knowledge that Roy Oswalt has been unlucky tell Astros fans, or fantasy owners for that matter, about what to expect? Thankfully, Derek Carty again, provides some insight into a favored term bandied on this blog “the law of averages” or “regression to the mean”. Once again, for those to lazy to click the link, essentially we can expect Roy Oswalt to surrender HR/FB at a rate consistent with his career levels from here on out, meaning somewhere around 9% HR/FB, ( he’s never exceeded 12.9%).

To dig further than just discussions of luck and regression to the mean, I was graciously given Roy Oswalt’s pitch-result data from the talented and majestic Josh Kalk. Honestly, I cannot thank him enough for helping me, who knows absolutely nothing about database coding, for providing this data. While I had just about anything you’d ever want to know (and a lot you wouldn’t about) Roy Oswalt’s every pitch in 2008; save his last two starts (tonight’s start included) due to when I actually obtained the info. I’ve isolated only the pitches that resulted in HR, since that’s what we’re looking at (click here for an explanation of the data):



Quickly, here are the pitch averages for all of the available data on Roy Oswalt for 2007:



And then his 2008 pitch averages:



Clearly, movement is down on his Fastball (FB) and slider this year. Velocity does not seem to be the issue for Roy on his fastball in terms of HR allowed either. Of the 11 FB’s that turned into HR in 2008 for Roy, the average speed was 93.23 MPH (min: 91.62 max: 95.61), so that’s clearly not the issues as evident by just looking at his 2007 average. His movement on the FB’s that turned into HR: -4.09 in. X (min: -1.44 in. max: -8.16); 6.00 in. Y (min: 1.99 in. max: 10.85). There’s not as much life on the FB’s that became HR this year by comparison to Roy Oswalt’s 2007 numbers and on the whole his movement is just down. This probably explains his overall decline in strikeout related rate stats, but I don’t know that it really explains why he’s just getting crushed so much. However, I get the feeling that 11 FB's is just far to small of a sample size to say anything meaningful about. In fact if anyone can see any clear trait from the FB velocity or movement from the chart that indicates he's doing something that's allowing his HR spike, please speak up.

Note: I’m ignoring the three sliders, because his slider is just God awful this year, but not the issue apparently.

In my last attempt to decipher the enigma that is Roy Oswalt in 2008, I cited the fact that his release point seems excessively bunched, most likely in an effort not to tip his pitches, thus causing him to lose life on his pitches. While my initial conclusion from that observation was that it must be his slider that is getting pounded was wrong, I none the less stand by the observation as providing insight into his struggles to date.

Tonight, however, I am offering another observation. Looking back at Roy Oswalt’s HR pitches, all of but three of the fourteen pitches have one thing in common: men on base. While it is clearly a limited sample size, perhaps either pitching from the stretch, or the distraction of holding runners is causing Roy to throw pitches that are a bit more crushable. Food for thought at least. While it’s not an earth shattering observation, the pitch/fx data of his HR pitches revealed no other apparent trend. Oddly though, his 50/50 split of RHB/LHB going yard is elevated for his career 75/53 RHB/LHB HR split. There wasn’t a meaningful home/road split for the HR’s either.

Having spent the entirety of the game researching and writing this article, we saw some dominant pitching from Roy Oswalt tonight, but the Ryan Braun long ball makes it 17 HR the season. During the post game so far I’ve heard a lot of discussion centering around Roy Oswalt trying to pitch to contact more vs. trying to strike guys out. Our first attempt to discern what was ailing Roy Oswalt revealed little in the way of evidence that Roy was attempting to pitch to contact from his numbers, but there are probably short comings in trying to prove or disprove pitching philosophy from limited statistics. After an exhaustive combing of pitch/fx data, I’m left scratching my head. It seems that although pitch/fx is an incredible tool that is sure to further revolutionize baseball analysis, it also seems to support the assertion that pitchers have little control over their BABIP, DIPS, HR/FB, LD%, etc. If this is the case, we can only have one logical expectation of Roy Oswalt from here on out: that he should pitch in-line with his career numbers. Astros fans should rejoice and fantasy owners should do what they can to acquire him.

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Reporting the Facts

Note: This is our centennial post.

This probably comes off as fair-weatheredness following a trouncing by the big bats of Philly, but it’s been something I’ve been tracking for two weeks, and it seems to be a trend that is holding. The Astros are a lucky team right now. As you’ll recall, I’ve touched on XW-L formula’s serval times this season, specifically here and here. The ‘Stros currently sit on a 29-23 record, good for 3rd in the NL Central -- a scant 1.5 games behind the first place Cubs. However, using PW-L from The Hardball Times, we see that the NL Central’s standings look a little different. The Astros own a PW-L record of 26-26, the Cubs a 32-18 record. That’s big difference. That’s a meaningful difference too if it’s attributable to luck and luck alone.

Thankfully, I don’t believe it necessarilly is all luck. While the Astros triple split of: .266/.327/.426 is a solid line that has produced a 4.87 R/G, the pitching staff has allowed 4.79 R.G (note: this does not include Sunday’s trouncing, it seemed like it would just skew the data too much). This is why our PW-L recorde calls for us to be a .500 team, which intutitevely makes sense (If you really want to kill the buzz of the Astros contending, you can look at the more detailed adjusted W-L records from Baseball Prospectus. Our saving grace has been our ability to make our hits count which is evident by our NL leading BA/RISP of .286 compared to our actuall .266 AVG. 50+ games into the season, it seems fair to say that we much just have some sort of element of clutchness on our team (something that might just acount for the difference in our W-L and adjusted W-L records). However, our entire pitching staff’s inability to keep the ball in the park, stands to wreck our offense’s chances of winning balls games for us, as we continue to lead MLB with 1.4 HR/9. Combined with below averagae K/9 and BB/9, the HR have to stop or it won't matter how good our bats and gloves are.

It just food for thought, something to keep an eye on and be aware of. We’ve seen some special performances so far this season and it’s a team with the talent to keep pulling it off. Our pitching has to hold or we’ll become a .500 team with no real shot at contending quickly (or worse of you look at the 3rd order wins at BPro). I believe the ‘Stros are contenders, but I felt like I owed it to anyone who reads this blog to apprise them of what the numbers say.

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Playing by "The Book"

Yesterday, I had the very delightful treat of sitting 4 rows back on the third-base line, just passed the Rockies Dugout. The seats were excellent, the company the best, and the Astros come-back victory was frustrating, but incredible. While I could hem and haw about how I don't like the current line-up, in the end, line-ups aren't that important (see: Billy Martin). Instead, I'm going to focus on the bottom of the 8th.

Brian Fuentes came into the ball game, which was a good omen for me, because the last time I was at Minute Maid and he came into the ball game, Mark Loretta hit a walk-off HR. His first batter, Hunter Pence. If ever Pence was going to get a big hit, it was against the erratic lefty, and after a 1-2 count, he hit a flier into Center for a single. In comes JR Towles, he of the .429/.636/.857 split stat against lefties, with the Astros looking at a .783 Run-Expectancy (the number of runs expected to score, given the historic data of runner's scoring in that exact game state, in this case, a runner on 1st, with no outs) and a Win-Expectancy of 41.1% (meaning that historically, a home team trailing by two-runs in the bottom of the 8th inning that get their lead runner on with no outs have gone on to win 41.1% of the time). So in steps a man who slugs over .800 against lefties, hits of .400 against lefties, and gets on base an astounding 64% of the time...AGAINST LEFTIES. Seriously, just read through line again...that makes Barry Bonds drool. So what does Coop do...he throws the book at Fuentes and calls for the Sac-Bunt.

ANECDOTE: So I see Towles square to bunt, and an a few obscenities fly. My virulent anger is further stoked by the fact that the numbers I just quoted you loomed on the jumbotron in Right as JR squared to bunt. My question is: Does Coop need his Rx changed on the glasses, because as I saw it we had a man who crushes lefties, facing a a lefty who is known for his struggles; what more could the man ask for? Everyone around me was perplexed and I will now attempt to explain:

a)Why I was livid
and
b)Exactly how lucky we got

So Towles drops down a bunt, is thrown out at first and Pence is safe at second. The Astros now had a Run-Expectancy (RE) of .699 and Win-Expectancy (WE) of 36.6%. We let a person who has just one of the most distinct split-stats possible against Left-Handed Pitching drop down and sacrifice bunt to decrease our odds of tying the game and decrease our odds of winning the game, while facing a LEFT-HANDED PITCHER!!! On what planet does that make sense? Say Towles simply got a hit, or just a walk that moves Pence to second with no outs, our RE would have been 1.38, meaning we would have doubled the RE.

There we were, Pence on Second, 1 out, and in comes Mark Loretta to Pinch-Hit, he draws a 4-0 BB, which because it was the sloppiest pitching of the day, incensed me even more, given that we WASTED an out when Fuentes was struggles-city. So with Loretta on First and Pence still on second, the WE goes to 41.2%. Please think about that for a second. We wasted an out to get back to the exact same WE. We also wasted an out to get the RE to .888. So one out later we've added to the probability that we'll tie the game, marginally.

In comes Michael Bourn, who as a left-handed hitter has .179/.273/.503 against left-handed pitching...Mario Mendoza, eat your heart out. I guess it's hard to fault Coop for not pinch-hitting for Bourn given that I can't think of who we could have put up there and Bourn's obvious defensive value...but still, I'm hung up on the fact that he made Towles create an out when Towles CRUSHES lefties. So Bourn, grounds into a 1-3, but moves Loretta and Pence over. Runners on 2nd and 3rd, 2 outs. The RE is .611. Yes, we are now at the lowest point of the inning as far as RE goes, and our WE is 34%. Are you beginning to comprehend the insane cost of that Sac-Bunt and of that precious out that was WASTED?

What happened next could be called clutch, but I've already done a far bit of talking about clutch and luck, so I'm calling it Luck. Kaz Matsui worked the count full and then banged out a single to left field. Hunter Pence and Mark Loretta score. Our WE sky-rockets from 34% to 84% on that single. Remember too that we had an expected Run value of .611 runs, and managed to drive in two, and the later 3 on Tejada's double. We got insanely lucky. Just look at the graph of our WE throughout the game. Whether you believe in clutch or luck, you have to admit, what happened was highly improbable (which, of course, the numbers attest too). 2-out rallies happen, but they're luck more than skill. Players who crush left-handed pitching generally crush left-handed pitching, no matter what.

Of course everyone who had heard me curse Cecil Cooper for calling for that bunt gave me some form of a smug-I-told-you-so type look, but at least you and I know that we just lucked out. More than that we all have a better appreciation for the supreme value of an out.

Sources:
http://www.fangraphs.com/plays.aspx?date=2008-04-20&team=Astros&dh=0
http://www.baseball-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=4842

**UPDATE**
Wholly unrelated to the post, but absolutely incredible nonetheless:

The Best Chicago Cubs rant, EVER

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Dude, you're blowing it

"Dude, you're blowing it," was the favorite line of a dude-bra friend of mine who graduated last year, but Jose Valverde can congratulate himself on eliciting the phrase from me, with 96% of a loss tonight. 8 innings of shut out baseball by Chacon, only to have Coop pull him from the game with a scant 109 pitches...WHY? Whatever Cooper's idiocy, Valverde's absolutely dismal performance can be blamed on no one but himself. Last week I suggested that luck is a large part of the game, while I hold firm to that claim, tonight, Valverde made his own luck with abysmal pitching. Here's to hoping he figures himself out, SOON.

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Let it out

Sometimes, you just gotta vent. Sabermetrics are fine and dandy. Stephen and I usually write objective, statistically based articles that we hope make people think and perhaps look a little more into the subject.

This is not one of those articles.

After "watching" the game on MLB.com, he and I both came to the same conclusion: this team looks the same as it always has. Sporadic hitting. A bullpen that can't hold a lead or positive momentum. In the end: losses to the Cardinals. Change the players, the general manager, the manager. Same 'ol, same 'ol.

Yes. They battled back. But the Cardinals do not have the talent we do. Brad Thompson, Braden Looper, Todd Wellemeyer. Come on now. We're not sending Smoltz, Glavine and Maddux out there either, but we knew that coming in. Ed Wade built this team around offense and our bullpen. Six hits on offense. Three earned runs in five innings of relief work, including four walks and two homeruns. Worst of all, we let their most legitimate, proven bat beat us. Albert Pujols is to the Juice Box what Leif Erikson was to the Eastern seaboard of Canada. He comes uninvited and does what he pleases with whomever he pleases.

As long as THE homerun, THE Lidge crouch afterwards, and Andy Pettitte's look of horror and exasperated "On my God" live on in Houston sports infamy, seemingly so too will the inability of the Astros to ever truly assert their will on those teams that we consider our rivals. The Cardinals came in as a team that was out manned on paper, yet they walk away with another series win.

In the next few days, we will post an article detailing the Astros first ten games of the season. Three up, seven down. Not quite the start we were looking for, but Michael Bourn and Miguel Tejada have impressed. Bourn changes the complexion of the game with only a slight lead off of first base. Tejada snagged victory from near defeat, both with his glove and bat on Monday. Starting pitching has been on the whole a bright spot, and I'll delve into the specifics more in the aforementioned Re-cap article. There is a lot of work to be done. Thankfully, the cliche holds: it's a marathon, not a sprint.

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What's Luck got do to with it?

Thinking about Cve's quote of the night from last night (see below), I decided to check the Astros X W-L, which as MLB computes is: Expected won-loss record based on runs scored and runs allowed, using this formula: RS^1.82/((RS^1.82)+(RA^1.82)). Currently the Astros have an X W-L of 4-4. Which means we should have an extra win, or should we?

The formula MLB uses was created by legendary Sabermetrics guru, Bill James. It gives us an approximation of how a team should have performed. There are, of course, limitations to X W-L and one has to look no further than the 2007 Diamondbacks to see that (90-72 W-L to 79-83 X W-L). The Diamondbacks played a lot of very close ball games last year, which is why Jose Valverde was able to lead the National League in saves. In comparing the Diamondbacks W-L to X W-L we can see they were either very lucky or very clutch -- where you fall depends on whether you believe clutchness exists or does not (click the link if you really want to make up your mind).

So with that in mind, and with Cve's thought that the Astros seem to have the tools to be a slightly above average team (which is all it takes to win the NL Central) in mind, what does that ellusive win that the Astros should have represent? I assert that it in fact represents bad luck. For the Astros to be successful this season, a lot of things will have to go our way. Backe and Wandy have to pitch career years, Roy has to be Roy (which he hasn't been so far), and our hitters have to hit well and all of that has to occur simultaneously. That simultaneous provision is the luck factor that I feel accounts for that 1 win we are deficit. Thus far, it has been hit or miss as far as it all coming together, but if that win we are deficit is truly just a result of bad luck, then I think we're ok. Why? Because luck evens out over time (see the law of large numbers, or averages). We've seen all of those factors I discussed so far this season, we just haven't seen the together so far. If they exist, then they should; and when they do, X W-L says, so far, that we should be a .500 team.

Who knows, with a little luck in our favor, we're a few wins above .500 and maybe, just maybe, we're in a play-off hunt. Of course, I am looking waaaaaaayyyyy to far into the futher as we have only played 8 games, but it's food for thought none the less. So I guess Cve's fundamental question of whether have "faith and hope" in the Astros is too loyal or not can't be answered yet, but lady luck has a lot do with it. So, do we feel lucky? Do we? (Sorry, that was a poorly done Clint Eastwood reference).

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On Park Factors and Luck

**UPDATE 10:31AM** The links are fixed. Sorry, apparently blogger has changed since last year, annoyingly. Sorry for the inconvenience .

Things improved tonight,

That’s as far as I had gotten with this post when Chieto Jr. was down 1-2 to Trevor Hoffman. I was about to write, “but we still couldn’t put up a W,” or something similar to that. I guess having watched all of our hits get nabbed down the lines, or Greg Maddux’s forty-two year-old body being more nimble and agile than $16 million-a-year-lard-ass Carlos Lee amble around left-field and miss balls, got me down. But, that is the beauty of this game, the clock has 27 ticks, but their the out. Though, we were perilously close to that 27th tick, Hoffman cracked. I won’t go play-by-play, but on a night where Geoff Blum got the first home run of our season and Lance Berkman stole 3rd, the hits finally fell for us and we won in improbable fashion after a ridiculous Hunter Pence single and 3-run Lance Berkman BOMB.


Perhaps I got my pessimism at school, because in talking with some friends this morning, I heard a lot of negative comments about how our offense was lacking; so I decided I’d try to rationalize our short comings at the plate. There are two things we have had working against us this series Park Factors and luck.

Park Factor has definitely been our main nemesis. Since 2001, Petco Park has had a negative Park Factor, meaning it’s suppressed offense. In most of those years, it’s been the worst, or within a thousandth of a point of the worst park in all of MLB to score runs. There are many reasons for this and mainly the fact(s) that its at sea-level and right on the coast which means the air loaded with moisture. The air is just dense, which creates friction, and prevents the ball from carrying. Compounding that is that it’s a big yard. So to recap: dense air that slows a ball trapped in a huge field; Petco is the anti-Coors Field. It has been suppressing offense by at least 15% year since 2001 and last year it did so to a the tune of 24.5%. So there you have it, in we came with a team built to score runs through a powerful 2-6 and their power was sapped in that glorious sea-side air. To further our woes, we faced two of the best pitchers in the NL last year.

Now for the luck part. BABIP is a measure of how lucky and unlucky a pitcher/batter is. To be short and sweet, we were way unlucky, posting a .185 BABIP (for those to lazy to click the link, an average BABIP is about .290). So it stood to reason that we were bound to start having some of those liners, long fly balls, and gappers fall/go for hits/homers. The good news is that tonight they did. The better news, it looked like we got robbed still.

So we have a W on the books for 2008 and a chance to finish the first series at .500. Thing we have to all hope for is that our BABIP rises, but our pitchers find continued success out of Petco and it’s pitcher friendly park factor for the rest of the 160 games in front of us (though last year Minute Maid suppressed runs by 10%, so who knows?).

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