Home Cookin'!

[Edwards Kings]

A person whose opinion I respect very nicely told me recently to watch out for my natural (nerdy...my words) predisposion towards analysis paralysis. I am going to try to do that, but three things need to happen:



1) I need to find an edge in several categories over all of you...ladies and gentlemen...if I hope to challenge. Number crunching comes naturally to me (sad), so I hope my analysis, along with my good looks and charm, will get me that edge.

2) One of those categories is Wins. There is a general consensus amoungst the pundits that Wins are just not predictable, but I would like to de-risk as much as possible. I have not been successful to date.

3) Spring training needs to get into full swing ASAP, so I will have to spend my time following player health, performance and position battles.



Until that time, I have added a ring to Dantes' universe (actually I enjoy it...my wife promises I will not have to watch "American Idol" try-outs if I keep my "discoveries" to myself!).



My latest bit of fun is looking at Wins by Starters (WbS) at Home and on the Road compared with Total Team Wins. I only have one years (2006) worth of data, so I do not know if some of this holds and that is where some of my friends here can help if they are willing to share (if not, I certainly understand competitive edge).



As I expected, the AL had the top five teams in '06 with WbS (DET, NYY, CHW, MIN, OAK). Now, I think everyone can agree that most teams take advantage of playing at home, even those who play in hitters parks (CHW for example won 54% of their total wins at home, same as the MLB average).



I did note one surprising stat. As far as how many (as a percent) of the Team Home Wins went to Starters, compared to how many Team Road Wins went to Starters, I would have expected that the percentage would be higher for Starters at Home. In '06 anyway, this was not the case. Starters won 69% of the home wins, but a little over 73% of the road wins.



My questions to any of you willing to weigh in are:



1) Is this propensity for Starters to capture a higher percentage of the Road Wins something you have noticed in past?

2) Given the varables (ballpark changes, management changes, staff changes, defense changes, etc.) that have to be tracked, is there any consistency year over year on how the teams support their starters on the road? For example, CLE Starters won 85% of the team road victories last year, but SEA starters only won 56%. Some level of predictablity on Road starts could be valuable.

3) Do team stats matter or is it a pitcher by pitcher proposition?



Anyway, before my boss figures out what I REALLY do for a living, I wanted to toss this example of my mind candy out for discussion.



[ February 02, 2007, 07:36 AM: Message edited by: Edwards Kings ]