Monthly Archives: May 2016

MLB

Losing Consecutively

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The Twins starting the season with a nine-game losing streak was not good. Good teams don't lose a lot of games and even more so don't lose them in long streaks. That got me wondering about how teams with losing streaks fared overall.

It was pointed out here that the Twins streak was more noteworthy because it started the season so it looks even worse. Baseball-Reference only allows searching from the beginning of the season if you want to include all teams over all years so that's the best quick investigations can do. In order to search throughout the season, some work needed to be done.

I processed every season in the modern era through last year and grouped all games together by their streaks. A stretch that went WLLWWW would be a one-game winning streak, a two-game losing streak, and a three-game winning streak. Some brief spot checking of last year's data showed the streaks were properly classified. I merged that with the season results for those seasons in order to associate how teams did given a streak of a certain length.

To start, I decided to look at the range of results for teams with at least a losing streak of every length. The full dataset contains every season since 1900. Here are the number of seasons that contained a losing streak of this length from 1900 through 2015.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 23
2117 2116 2102 1896 1469 1014 605 377 210 130 73 43 27 19 9 2 4 3 4 4 1 1

First thing that popped out to me was the 2117 seasons with a one-game losing streak but 2116 seasons with a two-game losing streak. I checked the data to find the season, looked it up and determined it was right. If you want to know which team it is, the answer is at the bottom.

I did not want to have to normalize the seasons to match 162-game seasons nor have to deal with seasons shortened by a strike so I processed only the 162-game seasons. Converting that to a box plot for a pretty picture gives us this.

Boxplot of seasons with a losing streak of a given length

The widths of the box plots represent the number of seasons. The total number of seasons in the data set are 1234. In tabular form it looks like the following.

Losing streak length Seasons with that streak 95th percentile 75th percentile Median 25th percentile 5th percentile
1 1234 109 89 81.0 73.0 50
2 1234 109 89 81.0 73.0 50
3 1232 109 89 81.0 72.5 50
4 1121 109 88 80.0 72.0 50
5 882 109 86 78.0 70.0 50
6 605 108 84 76.0 68.0 50
7 361 102 82 75.0 67.0 51
8 229 103 82 73.0 66.0 43
9 121 95 77 71.0 64.0 51
10 66 92 76 68.0 64.0 50
11 37 89 76 68.0 62.0 43
12 23 91 73 67.0 59.0 53
13 12 77 70 67.0 63.0 60
14 7 70 66 63.0 60.5 60
15 4 65 60 53.0 51.0 51
17 3 67 64 61.0 50.5 40
19 2 57 57 56.5 56.0 56
20 1 52 52 52.0 52.0 52
21 1 54 54 54.0 54.0 54

Nothing knowing except the Twins having a nine-game losing streak, we would expect them to finish with 71 wins. We do know more than that and the preseason projections were not as kind to project the Twins for 81 wins. Many of them were closer to the high 70s so somewhere between the median and 25th percentile marks seems a more likely scenario.

I did another check on what happens if the losing streak happens in the first quarter of the season but the results are very similar. The sample size also becomes a problem as you get into the longer streaks. So I am skipping that and moving on to postseason probabilities.

It was already known at the beginning of the season that reaching the postseason would be unlikely. Well, losing nine straight hurts that a lot.

Probability of reaching postseason

Note the "0" does not mean did not lose at all but instead is a placeholder to mean the average for all seasons.

Good thing they avoided losing ten games instead of nine, unless they managed to stretch it to eleven games. Not much to say here other than don't lose a lot of games if you want to make the postseason.

Spoiler: Postseason probability data SelectShow

In conclusion, don't expect good things this year. The team started out with marginal chances for reaching 81 wins and now they're trying to do it in 153 games.

 

 

 

Spoiler: Team that never had a two-game losing streak SelectShow
Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–May 5

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Chief Bender (1884)
Bob Cerv (1926)
Bing Russell (1926)
Red Robbins (1928)
Jose Pagan (1935)
Tommy Helms (1941)
John Donaldson (1943)
Larry Hisle (1947)
Ron Oester (1956)
Charles Nagy (1967)
Hideki Irabu (1969)
Mike Redmond (1971)

Better known for his role as Deputy Clem Foster on “Bonanza”, outfielder Bing Russell played minor league baseball from 1948-1949.  He is the father of actor (and minor league player) Kurt Russell and the grandfather of major league player Matt Franco.

Spencer “Red” Robbins was a minor league player for fourteen years.  He then spent many years in the Twins’ organization, most of them as a scout (1963-1986).

 We would also like to wish a happy birthday to Mrs. Rhubarb_Runner.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–May 5 →

2016 Twins Game Logs

Game 27: Twins at Astros

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Tonight please tune in for the latest chapter in Who will have more career wins: Jose Berrios or Alex Meyer?  Last night Berrios finally took the lead with a dominant 5.1-inning outing in a 6-2 victory over the Houston Astros. With that victory, Berrios (career: 1-1) now has a one win lead over Meyer.  But don’t worry Alex Meyer (career: 0-3) fans, he will be facing those same said hapless Astros and odds are pretty good we will once again be tied with both pitchers finally getting their first MLB victory.  Is Alex Meyer up to the challenge in his first Major League start?  Can he stay neck-and-neck with the phenom?  First pitch at 7:10p with DicknRoy calling the game.

Keeping Track

Happy Birthday–May 3

George Gore (1857)
Garry Herrmann (1859)
Eppa Rixey (1891)
Red Ruffing (1905)
Goose Tatum (1921)
Chuck Hinton (1934)
Chris Cannizzaro (1938)
Davey Lopes (1945)
Dan Iassogna (1969)
Darren Dreifort (1972)
Ryan Dempster (1977)
Ben Revere (1988)

Garry Herrmann was the president of the Cincinnati Reds from 1903-1920 and was chair of the National Commission from its creation in 1903 until the commissioner's office was created in 1920.  It is puzzling that he is not in the Hall of Fame.

Better known as a member of the Harlem Globetrotters, Goose Tatum played in the Negro Leagues for several years in the 1940s.

Dan Iassogna has been a major league umpire since 1999.

Continue reading Happy Birthday–May 3 →

First Monday Book Day

What’s Your Pie Chart?

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No, I’m not going to do the same pie chart survey that nibs did for FMD a bit ago, as enjoyable as it was. I’m thinking more about the range of books we each read as individuals.

For those who contribute to the First(ish) Monday Book Day discussions, I see what you’re reading at any given moment. But how would you characterize your reading? Mostly fiction? Split between fiction and nonfiction? What type of fiction? Do you gravitate toward classics or do you seek out what’s new? Now, “all of them” is of course an acceptable answer to this question.

I’m doing a bit of traveling this month, and the other day I was telling a coworker about what books I'm taking with me. In case I finish need a break from Infinite Jest, I picked up a couple of books from the library. One is a work of young adult nonfiction about Shostakovich and the other is a non-young adult nonfiction book about the origins of the Civil Rights movement in Minnesota (non-young is totally a term, right?). My coworker commented that I seem to read a lot of nonfiction.

The conversation got me thinking about what my own reading looks like from the outside. The current batch of books is perhaps not especially representative of how I see my own reading. I found nibs’s comment in the most recent FMD about not seeking out much new music interesting--I don’t recall seeking out much in the way of reading material after the jalapeño was born, excepting books about babies, breastfeeding, sleep, and all that good stuff. My brain was just so overloaded trying to make the transition to being a parent that I couldn’t take in anything else. Meanwhile, one of my great memories of my maternity leave with the peperoncino is tearing through book after book, many of them young adult fiction.

I’m an inconsistent reader. I get ambitious, I take breaks. I get books from the library only to end up returning them on their due date not having gotten through a single page. But I also adore the experience of reading, and I get nearly as excited about talking about books as I do about reading them. (Which you can probably tell right now, as you’re silently saying, “Pepper, just wrap this damn thing up already, would you?")

The featured image for this post is a pie chart of my current reading habits. Feel free to share a pie chart of your own along with whatever it is you've been reading lately.

Fun fact: my first attempt at the pie chart added up to a total of 130%. Perhaps I need to read more books about math?

Minnesota Twins

2016 Series 9: Tigers 3, Twins 0

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It's getting rather annoying to continue writing "Twins 0" for the series recaps.

The bad:
* Runs prevention. The Tigers averaged 6.3 runs/game.
* Run scoring. The Twins topped out at five runs. Five runs is good but not as a high-water mark. You don't win many games averaging 2.7 runs a game.
* The catchers. Suzuki had a hit and walk on Friday. That was it for both catchers.

The good:
* Duffey. After a short start that wasn't related to performance, Duffey did well enough in his start. Four runs is not good but the peripherals were all fine.
* May. His K/9 did drop over the weekend but it is at 13.8. The walk rate will keep him from being elite but no one can hit his pitches. *Checks his league leading 5 WP* Or know where they're going.

The very good:
* Mauer-Sano-Park. All three raised their OPS over the weekend. That stretch is turning into a solid middle of the order. Mauer leads the team, easily, with 1.1 rWAR. Park is next at 0.6.