Checking in on Tim Lincecum

A month ago I wrote an article looking at changes in San Francisco Giants' starting pitcher Tim Lincecum's pitch command and velocity this season.  In particular, I found that the velocity on his fastball and slider had decreased by about a mile per hour, and that the average distance of his pitches from the edge of the strikezone had increased--assuming that, generally, pitches near the edge of the strikezone are better than those in the middle or nowhere near it.

Since the all-star break, though, Lincecum's ERA, at least, has been a respectable 3.66.  Have his command and speed improved as well?

It turns out that his speed is the same as earlier this year, with a fastball averaging around 90.4 mph, and about a mile per hour slower than last year.  So, no improvement on that front.

His average distance from the edge of the strikezone, on the other hand, has gotten a bit better--it's been at .940*, as compared to .923 last year and .961 for the first half of 2012**.

So, long story short, there are some signs that his pitching might be picking up but nothing conclusive.


By the way, I'll be announcing results from the second contest and introducing the third one in the next day or two.

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The value for the second half of this year is only statistically significantly different from the value from last year, and from the value for the first half of this year, at the p= .30 level--so the jury's out on this one.

Checking in on the Giants' lineup

Earlier a wrote a few posts on what the SF Giants' optimal starting lineup should be using Basim, a baseball simulator I wrote.  A lot has changed since then, though--Posey has become much better, Blanco and Pagan have cooled off, and Hunter Pence and Marco Scutaro have joined the club.  So, what should the Giants' lineup look like now?  What lineup do I hope they start tonight?

First off, here was my guess at their best lineup (once again assumin Zito is the pitcher):

1.  Buster Posey
2.  Brandon Belt
3. Melky Cabrera
4. Pablo Sandoval
5. Hunter Pence
6. Marco Scutaro
7. Angel Pagan
8. Brandon Crawford
9. Barry Zito

Running this lineup through the simulator*, it scored an average of 4.03 runs per game.

I then found that a random lineup (i.e. random ordering of the nine players) scored about 3.89 runs per game.  The lineups that the simulator liked the best generally had Posey, Belt, Cabrera, or Pence batting leadoff, which is unsurprising--each has either a high OBP or a high ground into double play rate that would be very painful in the heart of the order.  The single lineup that the simulator liked best** was the following:

1. Buster Posey
2. Angel Pagan
3. Hunter Pence
4. Brandon Belt
5. Melky Cabrera
6. Marco Scutaro
7. Pablo Sandoval
8. Brandon Crawford
9. Barry Zito

It scored an average of about 4.035 runs per game***.


I then looked at two lineups that were close to what I predict the Giants will run; they differ only in whether the Giants play Theriot or Crawford; the lineup Pagan, Scutaro, Cabrera, Posey Sandoval, Pence, Belt Theriot, Zito scored an average of 3.96 runs per game, while the same lineup but with Crawford batting for Theriot scored 4.00 runs per game on average.  So, it seems like about half the difference between my lineup and the one with Theriot just comes fromt the fact that Craword is better than Theriot.

Anyway, here's to hoping the Giants will do something smart.

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*: For Pence and Scutaro I used their pre-Giants numbers.

**: This should be taken with a grain of salt--to actually find the best would take days of simulation; treat this as a lineup that is pretty close to the best.

***: FWIW, the ten best starting lineups, according to the simulatr (with the same caveat as **), in the form (lineup, average runs scored by lineup per game): [(['Buster Posey', 'Melky Cabrera', 'Brandon Belt', 'Marco Scutaro', 'Hunter Pence', 'Pablo Sandoval', 'Angel Pagan', 'Brandon Crawford', 'Barry Zito'], 4.0152400000000004), (['Brandon Belt', 'Buster Posey', 'Pablo Sandoval', 'Melky Cabrera', 'Hunter Pence', 'Angel Pagan', 'Brandon Crawford', 'Barry Zito', 'Marco Scutaro'], 4.0168675), (['Melky Cabrera', 'Buster Posey', 'Brandon Belt', 'Marco Scutaro', 'Pablo Sandoval', 'Brandon Crawford', 'Angel Pagan', 'Hunter Pence', 'Barry Zito'], 4.0179150000000003), (['Brandon Belt', 'Buster Posey', 'Pablo Sandoval', 'Melky Cabrera', 'Hunter Pence', 'Brandon Crawford', 'Angel Pagan', 'Marco Scutaro', 'Barry Zito'], 4.0218325000000004), (['Melky Cabrera', 'Brandon Belt', 'Marco Scutaro', 'Pablo Sandoval', 'Angel Pagan', 'Hunter Pence', 'Buster Posey', 'Brandon Crawford', 'Barry Zito'], 4.0219899999999997), (['Hunter Pence', 'Marco Scutaro', 'Buster Posey', 'Pablo Sandoval', 'Brandon Belt', 'Melky Cabrera', 'Angel Pagan', 'Brandon Crawford', 'Barry Zito'], 4.0253224999999997), (['Brandon Belt', 'Hunter Pence', 'Pablo Sandoval', 'Angel Pagan', 'Melky Cabrera', 'Brandon Crawford', 'Marco Scutaro', 'Buster Posey', 'Barry Zito'], 4.0315525000000001), (['Hunter Pence', 'Angel Pagan', 'Brandon Belt', 'Melky Cabrera', 'Buster Posey', 'Pablo Sandoval', 'Marco Scutaro', 'Brandon Crawford', 'Barry Zito'], 4.0322525000000002), (['Marco Scutaro', 'Pablo Sandoval', 'Brandon Belt', 'Melky Cabrera', 'Buster Posey', 'Hunter Pence', 'Brandon Crawford', 'Angel Pagan', 'Barry Zito'], 4.0353874999999997), (['Buster Posey', 'Angel Pagan', 'Hunter Pence', 'Brandon Belt', 'Melky Cabrera', 'Marco Scutaro', 'Pablo Sandoval', 'Brandon Crawford', 'Barry Zito'], 4.0365225000000002)]

Second contest ends tonight (Monday night)

Last week I announced the second contest, to solve this intimidating puzzle:

Details are at the first link.  So far no one has fully solved it, so send in your partial solutions--they'll probably make it to the top three.

The contest ends tonight (Monday night) at 11:59 pm.  I'll announce the third contest sometime Tuesday.

Swing Vote!

Hey everyone. Sam made a post a couple weeks ago analyzing votes (and money) for congressional elections. This is a post about analyzing votes for US Presidential elections. This is the result of a 2am conversation-calculation with Sam and a mutual friend Gary Wang. Also, we base a lot of intermediate steps in the result comes from the website FiveThirtyEight.

The question we're going to try to answer is the following. You are Joe Smith from Iowa (or, insert your favorite state here), who decides to stay home on November 6, election day. What's the probability you wake up the next morning, open up Google News, and feel really stupid? Or more succinctly, what's the probability that a single vote in Iowa will make the difference in November?

Traditionball: the most unenlightened area of baseball strategy

About ten years ago, baseball started to undergo a statistical revolution: youth became valued, OPS was born, and walks finally became valued.  Fast forward a decade and OPS is now a mainstream stat, multiple sites are constructing competing ways to summarize the total value of a player, and even in baseball clubhouses sabermetrics are the new cool kid on the block.

But there are still a few areas of baseball strategy stuck in the dark ages of gut instincts and wild speculation, and chief among them is use of pitchers.

Right now it baseball there are three types of pitchers: starters, relievers, and closers.  Starters come in to pitch the start of the game, stay in for at least five innings, and are eventually taken out.  They pitch every five days.  Closers come in in the ninth inning with a lead of between one and three runs.  They never pitch more than an inning, and never come in otherwise.  Middle relievers pitch in between starters and closers.

These roles bear an uncanny resemblance to two of the stupidest pitching statistics, wins and saves.

This system is, of course, not close to optimal.  Frequent pitching changes at the beginning of the game would allow a manager to get better matchups, keep pitchers fresher from stopping them from having to throw too many pitches in one day, and allow pitchers to throw however many pitches is best for them--not a bimodal distribution with centers at fifteen and one hundred.

It would also give an NL team another advantage--they could always pinch hit for their pitchers (or at least as long as it wasn't a two out, none on situation).

I'll look at the first effects in a later post, but for now, how much would always pinch hitting help?

Well, first I found the number of runs scored by an average NL lineup from 2011 using Basim; it was 3.799.

Then, I substituted the average substitute player for the league in for the ninth spot in the lineup; Basim then simulated it and found an average of 4.006 runs per game.

That's roughly a 3.2 win difference right there--the difference between a .500 team and a .520 team.


It's true, of course, that implementing such a system could incite a revolt from pitchers--but it seems like there is too much to be gained for it to be worth ignoring as a manager.

Utilitarianism, part 6: To do, or not to do

This is the sixth post in a series about utilitarianism.  For an introduction, see the first post.  For a look at total vs. average utilitarianism, see here.  For a discussion of act vs. rule, hedonistic vs two level, and classical vs. negative utilitarianism, see here.  For a response to the utility monster and repugnant conclusion, see here.  And for a look at whether to count lives not yet in being, see here.


Also, note that I'm now putting page breaks in the middle of my posts so that you can see more than one on the front page...
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I'm going to start off by making a note about something slightly different from the content of this post.  Earlier, I defined a philosophy as a preference ordering on all possible universes; the ordering had to be transitive, reflexive, etc.  Basically, a philosophy is something that compares any two possible universes;  in other words, it tells you which options are the best (if you have complete information, that is).  Perhaps for you a philosophy is something different.  Maybe it's something that compares some situations but doesn't say anything about other comparisons.  Maybe it's a binary function that calls all actions either morally permissable or impermissable.  Maybe it is a framwork to look at actions that doesn't necssarily tell you which are best, but instead some other difficult to define properties of them.  Probabily it's a mechanism to justify your current way of life.  Anyway, if you don't think a philosophy should be a preference ordering on possible universes, there's probably very little I can do to convince you, just as if you think faith is more important than evidence or that gut instincts are more important that statistics in baseball there's probably little I can do to convince you.  But from now on I am using that definition, and will look critically upon philosophies that fail to create a preference ordering.

Act and Omission

Anyway, there is a large debate in philosophy about whether taking an action should be treated asymetrically from failing to take an action--the act/omission distinction.  There are many phrasings of the problem, but here is one of the more famous ones: the trolley problem.  The trolley problem is a thought experiment in which you, the actor, are near some trolley tracks.  The tracks split, and past the split there are currently five people tied to one of the tracks, and three tied to the other.  You're standing next to the lever which controls which path the trolley takes; in the first version of the problem the lever is currently such that three people will do, and in the second version of the problem the lever is currently such that the trolley will run over and kill the five people.  A trolley is coming.  You have time to pull the lever, if you want, but not to untie any of the people.  In the first version it's pretty clear you don't pull the lever--not only are you causing the death of five people, but you're only saving three by doing it.  But how about the seond version?  Do you pull the lever and switch the trolley, kiling three other people, or not do anything and let the first five people die?  That is, do you act, or not?  And should morality treat the omission of action, which results in two extra deaths, the same way it would the action of killing two people?  In other words, are these two scenarios the same?  Does it matter which way the lever is currently pointing?

Contest Number Two: Two Degrees of Separation

Last week I introduced the contest of the week: each week I will propose a contest, and award Shadow-points to the winners; every two months the person with the most Shadow-points (in the period) will geet their name posted on the side of the blog, a $2 reward, and the chance to write any article they want for the blog.  The results of the first week's contest are here.

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I'm going to try to alternate types of contests, so this week's will be a little bit different from last week's.  This week, the contest is a word puzzle of sorts.  The first person to solve it will get first place, second person second place, etc.

Without further ado, here's the puzzle:

Two Degress of Separation*