Phillies - Utley = no playoffs

Only a few hours after I postulated that Chase Utley had a 10% chance to break Webb's doubles record, he gets hit by a pitch and breaks his hand. So that record is obviously out the window. Dan Uggla and Magglio Ordonez both have 38 doubles which puts them at a much lower chance, maybe 1%.

On a more concering issues, especially here in Philly, is what will the team do without Utley. It seems from the reports I've heard that best case scenario puts Utley out about 3 weeks. If that happens AND Utley returns to his pre-injury form, then the injury probably only cost the Phillies about 1.5-2 games (I'm completely pulling these numbers out of my ass by the way). Of course, last season they missed the playoffs by 2 games, so that amount is significant.

More realistically, he'll probably miss 4-5 weeks. Remember when the Phillies told us how quickly Brett Myers would return from his injury? And while they're not eliminated from the playoffs, the rest of the team needs to play much better than they have been to make a serious run.

Additionally, the loss of Utley may affect Rollins in his quest for the AB and PA records. Without Utley's bat, he'll get fewer chances, plus Charlie Manuel may move him from the leadoff spot to the 3rd spot (that is pure speculation on my part, I have no evidence of this).

the strange world of the knuckler

While looking through some random stats I noticed that this season Tim Wakefield has started 20 games and is 11-9, meaning he has had 0 no decisions. In the age of 6-7 inning starters this is remarkable. Wakefield has pitched 8 innings once and 7 innings six times. Nothing shocking there. It seems that when he has the lead, his bullpen holds it and when he doesn't have the lead his hitters fail to score.

So I decided to search for the most starts in a season without a no decision. Obviously, this would lead me to some 19th century pitcher who pitched the entire season. And if you're interested, Pud Galvin had 75 starts and 75 decisions in 1883. But he had a relief appearance, so there was 1 game without a decision. The most games with a decision in all of them was Tim Keefe in 1883 with 68.

But thats not too interesting since the usage of pitchers was much different. So I limited my search to 1901 - 2007. This leads me to Dummy Taylor with 45 in 1901. Again, much different pitcher usage. So I'm further refining the search to 1941 - 2007. Our new leader is Lum Harris with 26 in 1942. Who was Lum Harris you ask? I have no clue. He pitched for 5+ seasons and managed a few years, but nothing major of note.

And the next highest season with G = W + L is Wakefield.

Other seasons of note:
Gaylord Perry had a decision in all 40 of his starts in 1972. In his 1 relief appearance he got a save.
Dontrelle Willis had 32 decisions in 34 starts in 2005. The Marlins bullpen blew leads in the other 2 games.
John Smiley had 27 decisions in 28 games in 1997.

So if you're a fan of random, meaningless numbers, root for a decisions every time Wakefield starts which includes tonight.

I also learned in this process that Maddux started 37 games in 1991. Thats a lot of games for a 5 man rotation.

Who wants to be a commissioner?

Being a commissioner seems like it should be a great job. You're in charge of a sport that you presumably love. You get to attend any game of that sport, and probably most of any other sport as well. You know all the owners, players, etc.

But then there is the downside, summed up as public relations. Right now we have Bud Selig dealing with the unpopular Bonds, David Stern dealing with crooked refs, and Roger Goodell dealing with troublesome atheletes. Then you have Gary Bettman dealing with a lack of media attention, but thats a whole different problem.

Steroids are a problem, but I don't want to go into that topic in this post. Also, the majority of people only seem to care when it comes to records. No one pays any attention when Matt Lawton or Jason Grimsley get suspended. The Michael Vick and Pac Man Jones problems in the NFL are stupid individual players and to the NFL's credit, they are quick to suspend players for off-field activities. The NFL as a business is such a juggernaut that they will not be affected as long as they don't let people like Vick play.

The worst of these is obviously the ref betting on basketball games. If there is one thing any sport needs its impartial judges/refs/umps. A ref who does this once is impossible to catch, but those who are consistently altering point spreads can be monitored to some extent. First, if the spreads for games by one ref change more than expected, this can be a problem. Secondly, if the final score (in relation to the spread) does not follow the pattern of other refs, this should also be flagged. Here's a link to an article talking about an example of using data to watch a ref. Warning: its an ESPN article written for the layman, not a statistical article. There is a link to some data for games he reffed, but without the same data for other refs its kind of useless. If I find that data anywhere, I'll be sure to post it.

Of course, basketball is not the first sport to have issues with refs (recall the figure skating fiasco from recent olympics). And if this is truly the only ref involved, the league will be ok, but if not they better have some great PR guys.

I think that basketball is probably one of the most likely sports to be victim to this corruption. Primarily because calling a foul leads directly to points, the amount depends on who shoots the free throws. In baseball, the home plate ump will affect balls and strikes, but other umps have maybe 1 or 2 close plays a game, which is not reliable enough for someone trying to fix a game. Plus, betting in baseball is not nearly what it is for basketball or football. In football, refs can throw flags, but this does not directly lead to points. Plus the point system in football makes games harder to control. If you help the offense, they may score 3 or 7, but you can't necessarily control which one.

Overall, I'd probably still want to be a baseball commissioner, I'd just need to drink more to deal with the stress.

UPDATE - I rarely ever trust online polls, but there is currently a poll on CNN-SI's website asking people to vote for what they think is the worst form of cheating in sports. Option 1 is gambling/point shaving and option 2 is steroids/drugs (steroids are drugs, so I don't entirely get that one) and option 3 is other. As of about 1:15, option 1 has 65% and option 2 has 33%. This is somewhat surprising to me that drugs is getting that many votes. Doing steroids may be cheating, but fixing a sporting event makes it an exhibition, not a sport at all. I wonder how the poll results would differ if the HR record was not in the forefront of the media.

Records records everywhere

A while back I had a post about career records that will likely be broken by current players. Now that we're 60% through the season, its time to look at potential single season records. Note that I'm using the terms record loosely, it does not always mean a positive outcome.

AB & PA - Jimmy Rollins is in a perfect situation to break both of these records. He's curently on pace for 719 ABs (705 is record) and 778 PAs (773 is record). He's leading off for a team that scores a lot of runs, he's healthy (always plays >= 154 games), and his team will likely be in a playoff hunt for the next 5 or 6 weeks. Also, he doesn't walk much allowing him the possibility to break both records. Probability of falling: 30%.

2B - Chase Utley is sitting atop the leaderboard with 41 doubles. This puts him on pace to tie the very old record. Will he? Well, he's also been quite healthy and like Rollins, gets lots of plate appearances. But keeping up the doubles pace is tough. There's a good chance he'll crack 60 for the first time in 70 years, but I put his chances of reaching 67 at 10%.

K (batter) - Adam Dunn holds the top 2 season ever with 195 and 194. As of today (with 120 Ks) he's on pace for 192. With the negative stigma attached to this record, managers have in the past sat players to prevent breaking the record (see Jose Hernandez in 2002). But since Dunn already owns the record, who cares. I'll put his chances right now at about 35%, but we'll keep a eye on his pace as the season progresses.

SF - A less heralded record, Carlos Lee has 13 SFs this year, putting him on pace for 20. The record is held by Gil Hodges with 19. We'll give him a 50% chance.

GIDP - Orlando Hudson has 20 so far, putting him on pace for 32. The record is 36 by Jim Rice. Not too much chance right now, maybe 5%.

SV - A couple of pitchers (Cordero, Valverde) are on pace for about 50-52 saves. This puts them several off of the 57 record. Given more opportunities its possible, but I'd say less that 5% that anyone reaches the record.

If you trust my numbers, and there's no reason for you to do that, the chance that at least one of these records is broken is just over 80%. Maybe I'm a little optimistic here. Of course, Utley's and Rollins' records are correlated since they both need the rest of the team to hit to get plate appearances, but you get the idea.

Dirt

I was having a conversation with my dad recently about the dirt on a baseball field. For those unaware, the largest patch of dirt in the infield extends out from the 1st - 2nd and 2nd - 3rd basepaths. See the picture on this page.

We came to the consensus that the original fields would have had no dirt at all, just grass. Then certain areas would have gotten worn out. Worn grass leads to bad hops and its difficult to maintain, so gradually they replaced those areas with dirt (or stopped reseeding the areas as grass died). Our rationale was that there is no reason for the dirt to go back towards the outfield as much as at does, except that the infielders spend the most time there, which would kill the grass.

Also, this dirt theory explains why the path between 1st and home and the path between 3rd and home is dirt (and in the old days the path between home and the mound).

I'd be interested to hear other theories.

Yankee stadium

I went to the Yankee's game on Saturday night. They scored 17 runs on 20 hits. The last Phillies game I went to, the Phillies scored 13 runs on 23 hits. I see a trend here. And if you're wondering, 23 hits and only 13 runs seems inefficient but its not a record. The Royals in 1990 scored only 11 on 23 hits as did the Pirates in 1970. The biggest difference (H - R) was 15 in 1980 when the Mets scored 7 runs on 22 hits. (All this data is 1957 - present)

So my game of baseball roulette was altered, as the Yankees swapped the day and night pitchers. I watched Matt DeSalvo instead of Kei Igawa. He wasn't pitching well, leaving after 4 2/3. How's that make you feel when your teams scores 17 and you can't earn a win? Of course this is all due to the somewhat arbitrary definition that a started must pitch 5 innings for a win, but its possible (and has happened) that a reliever throws ZERO pitchers and earn a win. BJ Ryan did this in 2003 by picking off the runner at first, then having his team take the lead, and being replaced. (Its difficult to find more instances since a pitcher can retire a baserunner without offically facing a batter, but its hard to tell if he threw any pitches to the batter.)

Another side note. Vizcaino is the pitcher who got the win in the night game of the doubleheader, but he also got the win in the first game which must be a rare feat. In fact, he has 4 wins this year against the Devil Rays (3 in the last 8 days). No other pitcher has more than 2 wins against TB.

Also of note was the I got to see some construction of the new Yankee Stadium. Its obviously very early, but there is a bit of a skeleton of a stadium. Pretty cool.

US Open

So I read an article today that there are currently 6 former women's US Open champions slated to play this year at the Open. The list is Sharapova, V. Williams, S. Williams, Henin, Kuznetsova, and Hingis. This seemed like a lot, so I investigated.

NOTES:
I only went back to the early 80s, since the data is harder to read through prior to that. Also, I am only considering past champions in the draw, not future champions. And I'm only considering singles here, so although Navratilova entered mixed doubles last year, she does not count.


On the men's side, the most in a given year was 6 in 1992, which has Sampras, Lendl, Becker, Edberg, McEnroe and Conners. This year should be 4 assuming Federer, Roddick, Safin and Hewitt do not get hurt. The fewest in a year was 2 in 2003 (Agassi and Hewitt) and 1999 (Agassi and Rafter)

On the women's side, 6 would set the record (at least for recent years). I found 5 instances with 5 former champs (2006, 2005, 2002, 2001, 2000). In 2003, there was only 1 former champion, Lindsay Davenport. This is of course just a freak occurrence, because Hingis had "retired" and if I recall correctly, both Williams sisters were hurt.

I'll replicate this for the other grand slams when I get a chance.

Baseball Roulette

Any time you buy baseball tickets months or even weeks in advance, you have no idea who you'll see pitch. As someone who enjoys a great pitching duel, I'm always hoping for a great match-up.

Then a few days before the game, you go online and see that instead of watching Clemens or Wang, I get to see Kei Igawa. You see, I'm going to the Yankees game saturday night. Now, they are playing the Devil Rays, so the only pitcher worth seeing is Jamie Shields. Instead I get to watch JP Howell. The good news is that the Yankee bats should have a field day. The bad is that the Devil Ray bats will as well and the game could push 4 hours.

So while I didn't luck out this time, I look forward to my next game of baseball roulette with as much excitement as I did this time.

HRs by position

First, a trivia question. Who holds the record for most HRs in a season by a second baseman (at least 50% of games at 2nd)? Answer will follow later.

I was thinking about AROD's season and how many home runs he's on pace for. Then I realized he already has the most single season HRs by a shortstop (57). It turns out the record for most HRs by a third baseman is 49 by Killebrew. He'll very likely pass that and own the record for 2 positions. Obviously I realize most players don't switch positions in their prime, but its interesting anyway. Maybe he wants to learn to play catcher for next year.

So the remaining positions, since I know you're curious. I'll list these in order of how easy they were for me to figure out:

Left - Bonds (73)
First - McGwire (70)
Right - Sosa (66)
Center - Griffey (56)
DH - Ortiz (54)
Catcher - Bench (45)

Pitcher I would have thought to be Ruth, but the most he hit as a full time pitcher was 4. He hit 11 in 1918 and 29 in 1919, but was mainly an outfielder at that point. The correct answer is Wes Ferrell with 9.

For 2nd base, my thought was Hornsby, who maxed out at 42. But the most ever was Davey Johnson with 43. I was quite surprised at this, especially since his second best season was only 18. The most games anyone has played at 2nd with more than 43 HRs was Hank Aaron who hit 44 HRs in 1966 while playing a grand total of 2 games at second. Nobody else on the list is at all a surprise or a fluke season except this one. Very strange.

Summer clay

Recently I posted about the possibility of Federer losing the number 1 ranking at one point this year. Well since then 2 things have happened.

First, Nadal entered the Stuttgart tourny, a rare summer clay court event. Its an International event, so it will replace one of Nadal's current low scoring events. Winning the tounrament will net him 250 - 20 = 230 points. Is he desperate to keep playing on clay? It seems like a strange event for him to play, I would assume he would rather start preparing for the summer hard court events. But maybe he's doing it solely for the points, which for him are virtually guaranteed on clay.

Second, I actually did some further calculations. Even if Nadal wins Stuttgart, and then wins the two masters events (Canada and Cincinnati) and Federer defends none of his masters points, Roger enters the US Open ahead by 500 points. So no chance to pass by then. Now more realistically, lets say Roger loses in the final of both masters events. He would then GAIN points (recall he lost early to Andy Murray in last year's Cincinnati). Then even if Nadal wins both masters, Federer still has a 1200 point lead.

And for the Djokovic fans, he's currently slated to play Umag again, he was finalist there last year so not much chance to gain points. He'll skip Amersfort which he won last year, but he has another international event to replace and he'll only lose about 60 points. But he'll also enter both summer masters events. Last year he only played Cincinnati and lost in the 2nd round. He could easily gain 500 points and put some distance between himself and Roddick for 3rd place.

How to fix ERA

Every baseball game you watch, pitchers are described by the "pitching triple crown" stats, W-L record, ERA and strikeouts. Saves are also used when dealing with a closer.

The problems with W-L record are fairly obvious, they are highly dependent upon the number of runs your team scores. It is very difficult to win when your team scores only 2 and impossible if they score 0.

Strikeouts are of course a useful tool to evaluate pitchers. They measure your ability to get batters out, without the use of fielders. But strikeouts are most informative when combined with walks and innings pitched data.

The third stat is ERA, which has been around for a long time and is highly flawed. Thats what I want to focus on today. ERA is of course 9 * earned runs / innings. They multiply by 9 to make the scale 1 regulation game, although the concept is the same if you only consider earned runs per inning. In fact, in the early days of baseball, complete games were very common and ERA would be very close to earned runs per game for a starter.

My problem comes in the definition of earned runs. Hypothetical (and quite stupid) example. Pitcher gets the first 2 outs of an inning. Next batter reaches base on an error. Next 40 batters hit HRs. The pitcher is charged with 0 ER. Clearly he did not pitch well, but the order of events leads to 0 ER. If he gave up the 40 HRs, then the guy reached by error, he would be charged with 40 ERs. The the top of the 4th for a more realistic example involving 3 HRs.

In case you're curious, since 1957 (the baseball-reference game index only goes back that far) the most runs given up by a pitcher while recording 0 ER was Andy Hawkins in 1989. The Yankees made 6 errors that day. Oddly enough, the following year, Hawkins pitched a no hitter (8 innings, not an official no hitter) while giving up 4 runs, which is also the most in the same time span. I remember watching that game and the fielding was very bad. The Yankees didn't lead the league in errors either year, but when you clump them all in 1 game, bad things happen.

So, my proposed definition would make any runs scored by batters that reached on an error unearned. Batters advancing on errors would be subject to some scorers discretion. All other runs are earned, even after the total number of outs plus batters reached on error is 3 or more. (Other finer details still exist of course. If batter 1 reaches on error, and batter 2 grounds into fielders choice, the pitcher is not responsible for batter 2)

Will this make ERA the greatest stat since sliced bread? Not even close. But it would make it more useful. The big problem, is that to go back and recalculate earned runs would require play by play data which is available for all recent games, but can be difficult to find for earlier baseball. And even with play by play data, automation would not be very easy. By the way, I know that there are many better pitching stats than even my new ERA (should I call it NERA??), but I'm trying to propose a fix for mainstream use. To add a new stat to mainstream use can be excrutiatingly slow and painful.

Also, if I want to evaluate a pitcher's entire defensive baseball ability (pitching + fielding), shouldn't an error by the pitcher have no effect on whether a run is earned or not? If we're interested only in pitching skills, then these should be treated just like any other error, but I think its more informative to hold pitchers accountable for their own mistakes.

Google maps gets better?

Amazingly, the folks at google have done it again. You can now get directions and "customize your route" by changing any of the directions that google recommends. By dragging and dropping to the road you want to take, google will instantly recalculate the route, travel time and distance.

Have an alternative route you want to compare, you can do that.
Want to avoid the game or shore traffic. No problem.
Want a new way to waste 20 minutes at work, well you get the idea.

They also have a relatively new feature called "Distance measurement tool" under the "My Maps" section that allows you to click any number of times on the map and they will calculate the straight line distance between these points. Its not as precise for road travel, but fantastic when considering walking or biking routes. For example, we can learn that from Chickie's & Pete's to the left field entrance at Citizens Bank Park is about 3482 feet (2/3 mile).

Now all they need to do is allow my to imput details as to how fast I drive, when I plan to start my journey, and it can give me a distribution of the length of my trip.

Get ready for the 1190 game winning streak.

That what it would take for the Phillies to get back to .500, now that they have loss number 10,000!!! After holding off the Cardinals on Friday and Saturday, the momentous day arrived yesterday with the 10-2 loss. The Braves will almost certainly be the next to reach the milestone, but we should also watch the Cubs, who are only 53 wins away from 10,000. I get the feeling the organization will do more to embrace this event than the Phillies did for their event.

By the way, towards the end, they were losing 10-0 and I was hoping that would be the final score because it matches the 10,000 number. (Yes I understand 1000-0 would match better, but the Phillies bullpen isn't that bad. Is it?)

270 feet

In case you have noticed, Curtis Granderson is up to 16 triples this year. He's also at 13 HRs, giving him a very good chance to reach 20 2Bs, 20 3Bs and 20 HRs in a single season, joining Mays, Brett, Frank Schulte, and Jim Bottomly.

In this baseball era, 20 triples is rare. Christian Guzman did it in 2000 and Jance Johnson in 1996 and the only 2 in the past 20 years. Granderson is currently on pace for 29 triples, which would be an amazing feat, but not really close to Chief Wilson's record of 36. No one has reached 23 triples since 1930 and no one has gotten to 22 since 1945.

But I've noticed quite a few mentions of him breaking the AL record of 26 set by Sam Crawford and Joe Jackson. There has also been mention of ARod challenging Roger Maris' AL home run record. These records may be broken and they may not, but the it leads me to ask, why bother with AL/NL records? The days of separate leagues are gone and while I think there are still league presidents, they have little authority and the league offices have merged.

So should we even consider these as records? Lets discuss. I'm considering individual records, although most arguments extend to teams.

Is the record meaningful? I vote no since the playing environment is not any different between the leagues. The only possible exception could be the use of a DH in the AL. But this does not effect hitting records and could only effect a few pitching records such as BA against, or ERA. (The AL in recent years scores .25 - .5 more runs per game).

Do the fans care? Off the top of your head, who owns the NL record for doubles? Don't worry if you didn't get it, its Joe Medwick with 64. Who has the NL record in hits? (Lefty O'Doul and Bill Terry). Typically we only know the league records when they were by someone who previously held the major league records, such as Roger Maris.

How do we handle switching leagues? In 1997 (I think), Mark McGwire hit 58 HRs which was not enough for the major league record, but he did it playing 1/2 the season in Oakland and 1/2 in St. Louis. If he had though, he would have set the major league record, but neither league record. This makes very little sense to me, on top of the fact that he was not considered a league leader in 1997.

What about league leaders? Every year there are league leaders that are declared for many categories. But are these really necessary? If I lead the NL in HRs, but finish behind 3 AL hitters, I didn't really lead at all. This also applies to MVP, Cy Young award, etc.

So why keep it this way? Well the obvious reason is tradition. Baseball, like many old organizations, are very slow about change. I'd even suspect that the players association likes having seperate league leaders, which gives twice the number of players that can go into negotiations with these awards.

Baseball is the only league I know of that makes this distinction, and I think its antiquated. When the leagues were really two seperate entities, when most players stayed in one league their entire career, this approach was ok. Now I think we need to change.

The British are coming, the British are coming

Well at least 2 of them.

In case you haven't heard the hype, David Beckham and his possibly more famous wife arrived in the US. Beckham recently signed to play with LA in the MLS. The US sports media is making a big deal about how huge this is for US soccer. Maybe I'm missing something here, but a player thats past his prime and barely playing for his national or club team in Europe is suddenly going to make Americans love soccer??

The truth is that soccer will never be a major spectator sport in the US. The size of its niche will fluctuate, but it will always be a niche sport. The one thing making soccer more popular is the number of Mexican immigrants for whom soccer is number 1 (have you seen the crowd distribution when the US plays Mexico in the US?).

As far as our players, too many people have the attitude that "the US should dominate soccer like it dominates other sports". But all sports are becoming more and more international, which hurts us. We're no longer the dominant basketball country, or even baseball. American tennis had its greats, but now our hopes lie with the Roddick who serves hard and shouldn't step on clay and Blake who just forgets how to play tennis every 3rd match. Hockey has never been our best sport. In fact the only thing we're still clearly the best at is American football, but we're pretty much the only ones playing.

Our national soccer team will never dominate the world scene (unless the government decides to ban every other sport), but we can strive to be consistently one of the top 15 countries, capable of beating anyone on a given day. We're obviously not there yet, but its doable, and in my opinion, David Beckham's presence will have little to no effect on this.

Is Friday the 13th unlucky for the Phillies?

We have tickets for tonight's game against the Cardinals. Will we witness the 10,000th loss? I'm kind of hedging my bets here, if the Phillies win I'll be happy that they started their second half well. If they lose, well then the city can have its "celebration" (I'm using the word very loosely).

Looking back throughout history, the Phillies record on Friday the 13ths is 45-44-1. Yes, that is one tie. This is an improvement over their actual overall winning percentage. But its not that crazy. If we throw out all ties and sample 89 games randomly from the Phillies history, we'd expect to get 45 or more wins about 27.4% of the time. Obviously this has no bearing on tonight's game, but is a fun frivolous stat. And in case you're curious (I know you are), the Phillies lost on Friday April 13th of this year.

In case you're not from Philly or didn't catch it, a local radio station (WMMR) decided that to "honor" the possibly loss, they would get 10,000 marbles (red and white) and throw them down the steps of the art museum (aka "The Rocky Steps"). I'm at work, so I can't go looking for the video of this, but from the sound of it, marbles went EVERYWHERE, including into the road. The inspiration for this was of course the inspiration for a lot of stupid things, Animal House.

UPDATE: Got back from the game. Phillies avoid the loss with 23 hits!!! It was fun and I had my first Schmitter (a tasty sandwich with roast beef, salami, cheese, onion, tomatos and some kind of sauce). Won't be at tomorrow's game, but I'll definitely catch part on TV.

UPDATE #2: I found the link for the dropping of the marbles.

Franchise futility

The Phillies don't play tonight, but this weekend will likely be their 10,000 franchise loss. The city is buzzing.

So what are the marks of futility in other major sports? Keep in mind that no league plays as many games in a season as baseball.

In the NBA, the Golden State Warriors have 2562 losses. The Sacramento Kings are next with 2427

In the NFL, the Arizona Cardinals have 658 losses. The Lions are next with 544.

In the NHL (according to wikipedia), the Maple Leafs and Blackhawks BOTH have exactly 2391 losses, the most in history!!! This is remarkable. However, due to recent rules, we now also have overtime losses, and Chicago takes that tiebreaker 44 - 37.

So congrats to Philadelphia, Chicago, Phoenix, and Oakland. Your teams lose a lot.

Other records to fall

As the HR record is about to fall (see other post for more about this), I began thinking about what other career records could be broken by current players.

Saves - Since Hoffman has the record, he's breaking it with every save he gets, so that doesn't count. Depending on when Hoffman retires, Rivera or Wagner could possibly catch him. Also, watch out for Francisco Rodriguez, who's only 25 years old, on a good team and been a solid closer for 3 years now.

HBP (pitcher) - Not the most prestigous record, but Randy Johnson is only 21 away, and he's been averaging about 10/year. Possible if he keeps playing.

Thats all I can think of for major pitching stats.

Runs - Henderson leads at 2295. If Bonds plays next year as well, he'll likely pass him (currently at 2198). Next reasonable shot is AROD, who's at 1437 and averaging over 120 a year. Again, if he's healthy and plays until 40, there is a good chance he breaks it. Only 3 people have had more runs than him at his age, Mantle, Foxx and Ott. All 3 hit fairly early decline phases.

RBI - see AROD description above

Hits - Don't look at me like I'm crazy, but its possible for this record to fall. Pete Rose sits at 4256, Jeter (33) is at 2267 and AROD (32) is at 2168. Consider (starting with this year) for Jeter hits totals of 215,210,205,200,195,190,185 (a very linear decline). This puts 590 away from the record at age 39. It all depends how well he declines and of course if he wants to play until 42 to get the record, which is about as early as it could happen with any reasonable probability.

Total Bases - Possible for AROD, not likely.

Walks - Just like with saves, Bonds adds to his leading total. No one will catch him.

Strikeouts - Sosa could break Reggie Jackson's record if he plays 2 more seasons after this one. Thome could break it, but he'd probably need about 4 seasons but he's almost 37. If ARod hangs around to break the other records, he could very well take this as well. He's about 1100 away, which will take him 8.5 years at his current pace.

Extra base hits - Bonds will pass Aaron if he plays next season. Arod has a shot as well. This is starting to get repetitive.

HBP (batters) - Biggio is 2 away from tying Hughing Jennings. He should get this soon, although he only has 3 so far this season, way off his normal pace.

Let me know if you can think of any others.

And the new home run king is ...

Well it will be Bonds soon enough. He's 4 away from tying Aaron. So lets assume he passes him, finishes the season with 767 and retires. How long does he keep the title? Lets look at some challengers.

Sosa - Currently at 602 at age 38. Having a poor year, he won't get many more before retiring.
Griffey - Currently at 586 at age 37. He's having a very solid year, should pass 600. But even if he averaged 30 until he's 42 that would still leave him short. Obviously if he wants the record badly enough he may keep trying to play, but his injuries will eventually catch up to him again.
Thomas, Thome, Sheffield - All are about the same age (36-39) and around the same number of home runs (476-501). No chance.
Manny - At 481, age 35. Coming into this year, he's hit at least 33 HRs for the past 9 years, but this year he's on pace for about 20. If this is a true decline, then he's got no chance. If its just an aberation and he returns to normal for the next few years, well he still has almost no chance (although passing 600 is doable).
ARod - Now is where it gets interesting. He's at 494, and turns 32 this month. Lets say he cools off and finished this year with 50 HRs, putting his career total at 514. Lets assume the following number of HRs in the next few years. 40,40,35,30,30,25. I feel this is quite likely conservative, if he's healthy. That puts him (by my magical design) at age 38 with 714. Which means he'd catch Bonds about age 40. Of course, Bonds can make this more difficult by playing another season, but we'll come to that later. So if AROD is healthy, expect Bonds to have the title for about 8 seasons.
Pujols - The only other player with even a tiny probability right now. He's only 27 with 266 HRs. The problem is he's not hitting as well this year. If he keeps up the past few years pace, and not this years, we can talk some more in 5 years when he's AROD's age.

Dawson Street Pub

There's a great little corner bar a few blocks from our house called Dawson Street Pub. The have a very good beer selection with a lot of local stuff on tap, like Victory and Yards(including 3 rotating cask ales). Every year for the all-star game they host a baseball trivia night. This is our second year competing and once again I fell short finishing 4th out of 8 teams which is fairly good considering most team have about 3 people and I'm by myself (Andrea was there for emotional support).

There were some tough questions including several dealing with a player with the most RBIs/HRs/whatever in a given decade. I've always found these difficult since its always a guess, unless some people memorize decade leaderboards. For example, most RBIs in the 90s immediately lead me to think of Juan Gonzalez, but it turns out Albert Belle had about 30 more. Oh well.

Another tough question was to name the top 20 all time in hits. This is easy at first, but you tend to forget certain names (Eddie Collins for example) and assumes others are in the top 20 (Rod Carew) when they are not.

It was fun, but I'll need to brush up some more for next year.

Combining 2 great things ...

Google maps and baseball stadiums.

I've decided to map the ballparks I've been to using google. Blue placemarks are active, green are non-active, and yellow are ballparks I've been to but not for a baseball game (could be another sport or event).

Here's the link.

Tennis rankings

While watching the fantastic Wimbledon final on Sunday I noticed that the announcers kept mentioning the possibility of Nadal taking over the number 1 ranking this year, which would of course be huge considering Federer has been #1 for about 180 weeks in a row. Now I do think Nadal will eventually reach #1, considering he's about 4 or 5 years younger than Federer and also way ahead of the rest of the field (although keep an eye on Djokovic).

(As a side note for our less tennis inclined readers, the rankings consist of the points earned for tournaments within the past 52 weeks. All 4 grand slams and all 9 masters events count even if you did not participate. Then your best 5 international series results are added as well. More prestigous tournaments earn more points.)

So what would it take for Nadal to end the year at #1?

The total ranking points as of today are Fed 7290, Nadal 5225. If we take only the 2007 points earned, Nadal is ahead !!!! 4430 - 4005. The clay court season has obviously helped and there are probably no more clay events that Nadal will play this year. I doubt either will play again before the Toronto Masters in August. The remaining major events are:

Masters - Toronto
Masters - Cincinnati
US Open
Masters - Madrid
Masters - Paris
Masters Cup

The US Open is obviously worth the most points, but 500 for a win at a masters event is still a lot. Last year, neither of them played Paris (the only masters event on carpet). If Nadal improves his hard court performance from last year, I wonder if one or both of them decide to play this event to get an edge on the other. Federer has not played Paris since 2003 and Nadal has never played there. So unless the rankings have gotten very close by then, I don't envision either playing there.

Assuming that both play the other 5 events, it will likely come down to who wins the most of those 5, and with Roger's past success on the hard courts I feel he's got the edge. But if Nadal could pull out the US Open win and strong showings in the other tournaments, we could be looking at a very interesting Masters Cup to end the year.

Overall prediction, Federer takes the US Open and 2 of 3 master hard courts to keep the ranking, but Nadal will close the gap considerably and will pass him sometime during the clay court season in 2008.

9999!!!

With a win on Sunday going into the All-Star break, the Phillies have avoided the dreaded loss for a few more days. Unless the Phillies sweep, the Cardinals will hand the Phillies their 10,000th loss.

For those who are curious, their first loss was on May 1, 1883, also at home to the Providence Grays, a team that folded in 1885. The score was 4-3. At the time, they were known as the Philadelphia Quakers. The Grays pitcher was Old Hoss Radbourn who is known for winning 59 games in 1884 (the most ever in one season). It helps that he started 73 games and finished all of them. In 1883, he only won 48 and I think 8 came against the Phillies, although box scores are not available, so I can't confirm this. I wonder if that is the most wins one pitcher has against the Phillies in a single season. If I had more time I'd try and figure it out.


at Home: 87.5 %
at LA: 10.94 %


7/13 vs. Cardinals 50.0 %
7/14 vs. Cardinals 25.0 %
7/15 vs. Cardinals 12.5 %
7/16 at Dodgers 6.25 %
7/17 at Dodgers 3.125 %
7/18 at Dodgers 1.562 %

Spain pics

Andrea and I recently took a trip to Spain. If you're interested, here are some pics.

Wimbledon

I got to watch some matches this morning before heading in to work. Djokovic was playing Hewitt and although I have not seen much of this him, Djokovic impresses me. He's only 20 (I think) and has climbed to #5 in the world, playing well on different surfaces. I would love to see a semifinal between him and Nadal. The two have met 4 times already this year, Nadal winning twice on clay and splitting the other two on a hard court.

Also, I know the Wimbledon tradition is not to play on the middle Sunday, but the results from this year will hopefully force them to change policies. 3rd round matches that should have been played last Saturday were not finished until yesterday (Wednesday). I understand that its hard to predict the rain sometimes, but if they get one more day of heavy rain, we'll be watching the men's final on Monday.

Thursday update on 10,000

Sitting at 9997, the Phils are off tonight and will play in Colorado this weekend. The loss at home is becoming more and more likely. Also, I'm taking the Nationals series off the board.

at Home: 52.452 %
at LA: 25.908 %
at Colorado: 12.064 %
at SD: 8.325 %


7/6 at Rockies 0%
7/7 at Rockies 0%
7/8 at Rockies 12.064 %
ALL STAR BREAK
7/13 vs. Cardinals 18.309 %
7/14 vs. Cardinals 18.524 %
7/15 vs. Cardinals 15.619 %
7/16 at Dodgers 11.852 %
7/17 at Dodgers 8.394 %
7/18 at Dodgers 5.662 %
7/19 at Padres 3.682 %
7/20 at Padres 2.329 %
7/21 at Padres 1.440 %
7/22 at Padres 0.874 %

9996

With a loss on Monday the Phils sit at 9996. At Colorado (and before the All-Star break) has jumped past San Diego.

Home: 46.22 %
LA: 25.53 %
Colorado: 18.0 %
SD: 10.16 %


7/3 at Astros 0 %
7/4 at Astros 0 %
7/6 at Rockies 0%
7/7 at Rockies 5.954 %
7/8 at Rockies 12.052 %
ALL STAR BREAK
7/13 vs. Cardinals 15.246 %
7/14 vs. Cardinals 15.430 %
7/15 vs. Cardinals 13.664 %
7/16 at Dodgers 11.063 %
7/17 at Dodgers 8.397 %
7/18 at Dodgers 6.070 %
7/19 at Padres 4.224 %
7/20 at Padres 2.850 %
7/21 at Padres 1.875 %
7/22 at Padres 1.207 %
7/24 vs. Nationals 0.764 %
7/25 vs. Nationals 0.476 %
7/26 vs. Nationals 0.292 %

Monday's update, at 9995.

A lousy weekend for the Phils bumps up the probabilities a bit

Home: 41.59 %
LA: 31.17 %
SD: 17.10 %
Colorado: 9.84 %

7/2 at Astros 0 %
7/3 at Astros 0 %
7/4 at Astros 0 %
7/6 at Rockies 0%
7/7 at Rockies 2.762%
7/8 at Rockies 7.074 %
ALL STAR BREAK
7/13 vs. Cardinals 10.869 %
7/14 vs. Cardinals 12.990 %
7/15 vs. Cardinals 13.307 %
7/16 at Dodgers 12.268 %
7/17 at Dodgers 10.473 %
7/18 at Dodgers 8.429 %
7/19 at Padres 6.476 %
7/20 at Padres 4.791 %
7/21 at Padres 3.436 %
7/22 at Padres 2.400 %
7/24 vs. Nationals 1.639 %
7/25 vs. Nationals 1.098 %
7/26 vs. Nationals 0.723 %