First off, a huge Booo for the "God" section. Some would say that defining the entire organization on an article about Bible studies is a little short-sighted; besides, I always thought believing in God was a good thing.

Second, I love the uniforms! If you want to see a real-crap fest, check out Arizona's base colored nightmare.

I'm sure ELM does not need me to defend him but I just can't let 'jordanrising's comment go without saying something. The Rockies are a sports franchise, I really do not need to hear about their beliefs on God, politics, gun control etc.

"I always thought believing in God was a good thing." Believing in God
can be a good thing or a bad thing; how many horrible things have been done in the name of God. If believing in God helps keep you on the straight and narrow, then great. However some of us have no problem knowing whats right and whats wrong without invoking God's name. Hitler believed in God, how'd that work out?

Remember what George Carlin said: "Before every football game in Texas, both teams pray for a victory, but one loses every time."

Just be thankful the Giants never won a championship in the late 70's with those 'beautiful' orange tops!

>check out Arizona's base colored nightmare

What is "base colored"?

Funny, I don't like the Rockies because their success reminds me of the Giants' ineptitude. And yes, it galls me that the Rockies could join the D-backs as World Series winners when the Giants are still looking.

Agent #99: calling in on the ELM shoe-phone.

Oddly enough, I was rooting for the Rockies to beat the D-Backs. Pick your poison I guess?

I'm no Rockies fan but they are a semi-nice story and I dislike them less than I do the D-Backs. It's funny, one of my big reasons that I don't like the D-Backs is I really can't stand their announcers (Grace and Sutton are terrible) and Eric Brynes is overrated IMO.

The Giants don't have to actually score runs to sneak into the playoffs, right? Because if they do have to we might be in trouble.

I was pulling for the Rox because Livan is on the D-backs plus they've already won one World Series, no use risking another one. Plus, the idea of a team that gave up more runs than they scored in a season and watch them get rewarded with a trip to the World Series is abhorent to me.

In any case, GO INDIANS!

"Funny, I don't like the Rockies because their success reminds me of the Giants' ineptitude." Yes, their success is to be lauded. After only 15 years of never winning the division (still hasn't), they squeaked in - wait for it - for their second time into the playoffs in 15 years. They have been in last place or next to last place in 10 of those 15 years, with a cumulative record of 1115-1253, a .471 winning percentage, which averages out to a 76-86 season over the life of their franchise. This is their first season ever to win more than 83 games in a season, and they have been over .500 in 5 of those seasons (one season was 82-80, and two seasons were 83-79).

This reminds me of the innane comment I heard this morning from Ann Killion, columnist of the San Jose Mercury, on KFOG I believe, about how the Rockies are showing how to do it with a low budget. That reminds of a lot of other comments here and on my site: they forget about the 5-10-15 years of crud losing that preceded and feeded their good years now, and think it's all good now just because it's going good right now. No, there is pain involved with any sports success, the pain of sucking before you get good again.

About winning with pitching and defense, I think I referenced the above article from The Hardball Times (very good) when I wrote about how the Giants should continue their focus on pitching, plus in addition I referenced a chapter in Baseball Prospectus's book, Baseball Between the Numbers (great book), which come out after THT's article, with a different take on the Billy Beane question about his excrement and the playoffs, but coming to the same conclusions.

BP did their study with statistical methods that related certain key team metrics with success in the playoffs. What they found was that only three key metrics had a significant link to success in the playoffs, with a fourth metrics with some significance.

One was the strikeout rate of the pitching staff. That's why I've been for keeping Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Misch, and trading away Lowry, plus the focus on getting more and more pitching. You need to kiss a lot of frogs to get the strikeout pitcher.

Another is an ELM favorite, WRXL, and that's for the closer only. That's why I've been hoping Brian Wilson would claim the closer role, he strikes out a lot and if he pitches like he had shown he could, he could be a very effective closer. His season-end nice run in September appears to show that he's ready to take that mantle for us.

The third is FRAA, or Fielding Runs Above Average. In other words, defense. And, in particular, very good defense.

That's it, none of the offensive stats were significant enough. Of course, this is not saying that offense is not important to getting to the playoffs. There's obviously a certain level of excellence you need to accomplish there in order to advance to the playoffs, specifically related to RS and RA.

What it says is that most teams' offense is pretty much on even ground, relative to each other's pitching staff, because they all have been nearly equally successful. The difference is in the pitching and one thing the book pointed out was research in a prior book by BP, which showed that while good hitters can figure out finesse pitchers in the playoffs, they still can't figure out the pitchers with unhittable pitches (hence, again, why I say it's asinine to even suggest trading away Lincecum or Cain, we have a great 1-2 punch, with two pitchers with unhittable pitches, and in a short series, they will be deadly pair for us).

The only offensive stat that has some significance but not at the level of the three above is stolen bases ATTEMPTS (not success, but just attempts). So I guess Randy Winn qualifies as well as Dave Roberts, despite the steep disparity in success.

This all supports what they found first. They first tried correlating runs scored and runs allowed, and runs scored had zero correlation with playoff success, whereas runs allowed had a significant relationship with playoff success. Obviously, pitching and defense is what contributes to runs allowed.

Here is a good quote from that chapter: "The difference probably has to do with the nonlinear nature of run scoring. Scoring runs in baseball requires stringing together singles, walks, and extra-base hits; it doesn't do any good to draw a leadoff walk if you get stuck at first base. Research has indicated that good pitchers do allow their fair share of extra hits and walks when they're facing good hitters. However, the pitchers may be able to distribute those hits evenly enough to mitigate the damage and avoid their translating into increased run scoring; they can render the hitters less than the sum of their parts. It isn't that good pitchers have a structural advantage against good HITTERS, but that good pitchers have a structural advantage against good-hitting TEAMS. That advantage comes to the forefront in the playoffs, when all the teams can hit pretty well." [emphasis by BP]

That's why I've been more strongly for Sabean since I've read this chapter and The Hardball Times article, both spawned by Billy Beane's comment. The team's focus, as espoused in various press conferences over the past couple of years, have been on three things: pitching, defense, speed.

That's why I think he should keep his job long enough to see if he can execute on this strategy. He's made a strong start on it, two years should give us plenty of indication whether it is progressing nicely or not.

For now, he appears to have some of the starting pitching, now the closer, plus some SB, so the last piece of the puzzle will be generating enough offense to get our pitching and defense to the playoffs.

Right now, though, our K/9 is only 11th in the league, dragged down by Zito, Lowry, and Morris this season. With Morris gone, and possibly Lowry, and someone from Sanchez, Misch, and Correia joining the rotation, and Wilson joining the bullpen, the stat should go up significantly in 2008.

I think 2008 will be interesting for how things progress, though not for winning, most probably.

#99, while agreeing with all your comments in general, I must nevertheless point out that Hitler, in fact, hated all religions equally (in his view religions tend to promote disgustingly "weak values" like tolerance and charity) and early on was quite a zealot in attacking Catholicism as well as Jews. Can't recommend the Ian Kershaw 2 volume bio too highly.

obsessivegiantscompulsive, you are correct to point out the last 15 years of rockies suckdom. it shouldn't bother anyone that the rockies are there and the giants are not. statistical analysis has done wonders for many fields, including baseball. if one stares at a spreadsheet long enough, emotional "connects" like uniforms, personality, regional bias, tradition, etc. slowly fade away leaving just the warm certainty of numbers. your post reminds me that the connects are mostly hallucinations - the dudes wearing the black and vanilla uniforms could have easily worn the black and purple if a tryout had gone a different way or a random trade went another way. so why bother getting mad or frustrated, or even pay attention? thanks. you've saved me a few hours in October watching the world series that should really be spent cleaning out my gutters. go warriors.

Did #99 compare the Rockies to Hitler? Ha ha ha.

I was merely pointing out that I found the paragraph regarding the so-called "religious bent" in Colorado's organization a bit odd.

"But the Rockies are known to be a particularly devout organization, and it will be easy for those so inclined to chalk up their amazing run to divine intervention. We will see cloying, pious righteousness ooze from all corners of the nation if the Rockies win the World Series; we will be subjected to the ridiculous, narcissistic notion that God, somehow, chooses sides in North American professional baseball."

This seems to be a straw-man type argument. In fact, ELM is the only person I've heard mention it, save that USA today article a year or so ago.

And, for the record, there are much worse examples of religious fervor in sports than this: Guys are constantly crossing themselves and pointing to the sky after a longball, or whatever. No one's getting on their case about it.

Anyway, my point was imply that the paragraph seemed overly aggressive against a problem that doesn't exist, at least not yet, or in any quantifiable form.

Anyway, keep it up, I love your site. In the meantime, I'll be over here saying a prayer for my Giants' bullpen and #3-4 spots in the lineup next year. :)

JR

P.S. "Base colored," referring to red (which, I believe, is a base color.) The D-Backs uni is, in my humble opinion, a particularly horrendous shade. It's hemmeroid red, which is only a step above "boring." (see half the NFL teams' lackluster grey ensembles)

Re: Obsessive Giants compulsive

Correlation does not equal causation. That study seems somewhat funky to me (but I freely admit that I could be very wrong)

Free bitches.

Kenshin, which study seems funky to you, the BP or THT? Since I mainly discussed the BP one, I assume you meant that one.

It is funky to a degree, because they had to enumerate success in the playoffs, much like how ProTrade pays value for teams doing well. Thus winning round 1 earns a certain amount of points, winning World Series another amount of points. The funkiness, I presume, is how they decided on the numeric values for each.

Yeah, I cannot defend that other than they are more expert at that than I am and would have some "feel" for what would be appropriate. But that is a common method when using regression to relate metrics to non-quantitative results (and I assume you know that, this is for those who don't).

And I understand your point, I know I cross the line on that sometimes, about correlation and causation. At minimum, the BP study found a significant statistical relationship between certain metrics and success as defined by their value system that they designed.

Also, I didn't get into the whole chapter (so as to not annoy BP lawyers more than I have), but another way they demonstrated the relationship was to rank order all the playoff teams by each metric. Doing this also demonstrated that being the best in certain metrics led to winning the World Series (or in one case that they showed, lost to another team with a stronger metric in the same series).

In addition, empirically, I would note the Dodgers success with Koufax and Drysdale during the 60's, the Orioles great rotation in the late 60's and early 70's, plus the D-Backs riding on Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling to win their World Series championship.

Plus, you see that all the time in other sports, albeit they are different in many ways from baseball, but generally it is the teams with good defense who tend to win it all (supplemented, obviously, with good offense). Not perfect, but it certainly increases the odds.

In addition, THT did a study once (and I really wish I had the link easy to access), where they studied how a .900 winning percentage team, using the Pythag formula, would need to do if, first, it scored 5 runs per game, and second, it allowed 5 runs per game. Scoring 5 runs, they only had to allow 1.67 runs per game. Giving up 5 runs, they had to score 15 runs per game. Quite a difference, eh?

The point of the article, if I recall right, is that reducing the runs scored appears to be more highly leveraged, in that given the choice between decreasing runs allowed by 0.2 and increasing runs scored by 0.2, it is more efficient and effective from a W/L perspective, to reduce than to increase.

Thus, that also suggests that focusing on pitching and defense yields more to success (i.e. winning) than offense does.