July 24th, 2013

Today's slate.

The Big Hurst - Chad Gaudin

skoormit - Jorge De La Rosa

La Osa Rosa - Ervin Santana


The Big Hurst: I couldn't pull the trigger on Gaudin in his last start.  This week, I'm pulling it.  But I'm probably late to the party.  Other notables: Sanchez, Chen, or Leake, just to document that I feel weird picking Gaudin.  Meanwhile, La Osa Rosa mentioned the other day that she was considering picking every day based solely on the best ERA at the time.  That made me think.  We've already covered a couple of times that we're doing better than a completely random monkey.  But are we doing better than a trained monkey who would stubbornly pick based on ERA?  I'm relieved that the answer seems to be "yes".
   I went back to May 7, the beginning of the blog, and used this method every day to pick a pitcher and write down the number of points this stubborn monkey would've gotten.  I decided that the monkey wouldn't pick pitchers with only a couple of starts and I resolved all close calls in the monkey's favor.  I think these are the results:
  • May 7, Harvey, 1.56, 5 points
  • May 9, Corbin, 1.80, 4 points
  • May 10, Iwakuma, 1.61, 2 points
  • May 15, Miller, 1.58, 4 points
  • May 20, Kershaw/Miller, 1.40, 4 points (resolved in favor of the monkey)
  • May 23, McAllister, 2.65, 2 points
  • May 28, Harvey, 1.93, 2 points
  • June 10, Kershaw, 1.93, 2 points
  • June 15, Kershaw, 1.88, 3 points
  • June 19, Westbrook, 2.05, 1 point
  • June 23, Harvey, 2.16, 4 points
  • June 24, Lee, 2.53, 4 points
  • June 26, Kershaw, 2.06, 1 point
  • June 28, Harvey, 2.05, 5 points
  • June 29, Turner, 1.97, 3 points
  • July 2, Kershaw, 2.08, 4 points
  • July 7, Kershaw, 1.93, 3 points
  • July 8, Locke, 2.12, 2 points
  • July 9, Wainwright, 2.36, 3 points
  • July 10, Liriano, 2.20, 5 points
  • July 13, Hernandez, 2.69, 2 points
  • July 21, Kershaw, 1.98, 1 point
   I think that's 66 points in 74 tries, for a rate of 0.89 points/selection.  Before the all-star break, I think it was 65 points in 69 tries, for a rate of 0.94 points/selection.  That's better than random, but not as good as our top rates.  This makes me feel a little better about how we're doing.
   This work also makes me realize that there may be errors in our "detailed scoring" page.  I'm going to go back later today and audit it for accuracy.
La Osa Rosa: Ervin Santana. He’s the only man I trust anymore. Besides Brad Miller, shortstop for the Seattle Mariners. I have high hopes for Brad this season.
The Big Hurst: I think we had some errors in the number of selections on the "detailed scoring" page. I just changed mine from 71 to 74, skoormit's from 63 to 64, and Rosa's from 52 to 53.  I think this changes the leader back to skoormit, by the slimmest of margins.  If you think anything's wrong, fix it or let me know.  Also, if you think your score is wrong, let me know.  I didn't audit the points at all.
skoormit: Sing with me, please:
The monkey beats the Bear,
the monkey beats the Bear,
Leo DiCaprio, the monkey beats the Bear.
The Big Hurst: Holy cow, I believe the Astros announcers at KBME just used the terms "batting average on balls in play" and "quantify" and "regress to the mean".

RESULTS

The Big Hurst: I was correctly uneasy about Gaudin.  But Chen, Sanchez, or Leake wouldn't have been better.  Just give me the Lead Balloon of Dazed and Confused-dom.  We needed a 77 to get points today, which I think is the most brutal day so far.  Four games of 80+.  And according to YCPB, this was the best start of Strasburg's career by a decent margin.

 

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