Day 19: Updated Vegas Percentages

Each remaining team's chance of winning the World Series, according to the Vegas lines:

I guessed it would be BOS 36%, COL 36%, CLE 28%. The fact that they won by ten may have contributed to the Red Sox jumping up higher than I expected. It's also possible that I was just completely wrong.

Below is a graph of each team's WS% throughout the series. BOS is in red, CLE in blue. The first number is their % before G1, the second before G2, and so on.

Both teams peaked at exactly 47.5%, the Sox when they were up 1-0, and the Tribe when they were up 3-1. Now we're about where were were before G1. Both teams' percentages are actually slightly lower than at the start of the series. This is because before the NLCS the NL (ARI + COL) was at 34.2%, and Colorado is now at 37.8%.

So here's each team's chance of winning this series before each game:

So, after 22 hours and 24 minutes of baseball*, we're pretty much right back where we started. The Red Sox were -170 to win the series when it began, and are -170 to win tonight.

OK, enough of that. Why did Victor feel the need to run around the bases as slowly as possible after his HR in the top of the second? I understand he was upset with the strike zone in the first (although I'm not sure that was warranted). But walking around the bases is showing up the Red Sox- there's no place for that. I'm probably one of the biggest Victor Martinez fans alive (did you know he won the Carolina League MVP in 2001?), but that was ridiculous.

I have no idea what happened to Rafael Perez. He has faced 13 Red Sox this series; they are 7/11, with two walks, and two HRs. He hasn't recorded a single strikeout.

Oh, and apparently Paul Byrd took HGH (via TBL). Although it may have been for medical reasons. Take from this what you wish.

One final game primer up a little later, then the live-blog.


*The average time of game has been 3 hours and 44 minutes. That's not particularly fast, but remember G2 was 5 hours 14 minutes. So the other five games have averaged 3 hours, 24 minutes. I guess that's because most of them haven't been close, but considering the circumstances (the games are on FOX), that's pretty speedy.

FOX Is A Red Sox Fan

To this point, the playoffs have been fairly boring. Three sweeps in the NL, seven total ALDS games, and an ALCS that could end in 5. The best game over the past three weeks was probably the Wild Card tiebreaker between the Rockies and Padres, which isn't even technically a playoff game.

Coincidentally, this is also TBS' first year of broadcasting playoff baseball. It's not going so well- the NLCS got worse ratings than the final Little League World Series game.

Amazingly, the biggest ratings disaster of the postseason may be still to come. Tonight, the Indians try to clinch the AL Pennant in Game 5 against the Red Sox. With Beckett pitching for the Sox, they're favored to win. You can be sure that's what the people at FOX are rooting for. Regardless of how long the series goes, the World Series won't start until next Wednesday. That means if the Indians win tonight, there will be five days with no baseball before the World Series begins.

A Red Sox-Rockies WS would probably get better ratings than Indians-Rockies, so there's also that factor. Last year, the Series got a 10.1 rating, which edged out '01 and '05 as the lowest ever. A Rockies-Indians World Series after a five-day layoff would likely do even worse than that. Maybe that would cause FOX to reconsider this ridiculous, unnecessary off-day between Games 4 and 5 of the ALCS.

Photo: Over the Monster.

The Fox Effect, Part Two: 5 or 7?

I'm fairly new to this whole blogging thing, and never know how people are going to react to what I write. Sometimes people draw completely different conclusions from my posts than what I was trying to get at, which is always interesting.

But other times, like with last week's post about FOX effecting postseason playoff rotations, people take things one step further that I did, making points that never even occurred to me.

There were two ways in which people furthered my analysis. The first was Rob Neyer's post (Insider only), titled "Playoffs clearly just a money grab".

"First we have these ridiculous roster expansions in September, and then we'll have crazy postseason schedules that change the equation and (potentially) push the World Series into November. I know I've asked this before, and the answer is always the same, but how much money is enough? I mean, really?"

I didn't get into this in my original post, but FOX wanting to start the World Series on a week night was of course about money, as is made clear in this ESPN article:

"A Wednesday allows baseball to avoid playing on Friday, which is TV's second-least watched night after Saturday."

What I found funny was MLB president Bob DuPuy's quote later in the article:

"'The additional off-days throughout the postseason will give us greater flexibility to facilitate travel and protect against poor weather,' DuPuy said."

Ah, of course. That was the reason for this.

Anyway, both Foul Balls (when this was first announced) and Obscure Sports Quarterly (last week) echoed this sentiment:

"But the real reason they're moving back the World Series? Baseball is going to make the first round Divisional Series a best-of-7 instead of the current best-of-5 format. Owners have been asking for this for the last few years for a few reasons. One being that the better team tends to win more in a seven game series than a five, but the most important reason is extra games mean more income."

Well, it certainly would increase MLB's revenue. But what effect would it have on how often the superior team wins? Let's find out.

I assumed the current leaders make the playoffs, and for the NL Central I just made the Brewers and Cubs into a single entity. We also need to determine the strength of each team. I did this by combining third order win percentage (found here, explained here), and actual win percentage. The percentages I used are on the right.

So then I made this program where I can just plug in each team's W%, and it tells me how often they would win either a five game or seven game series. The table on the left is how often each team would advance to each round with the current format; on the right are the percentages if the first round was switched to seven games.

I thought it was interesting that I used almost the same W% for the Mets and Yankees, yet the Mets are significantly higher- that's the NL for you.

Going to seven games really doesn't change things all that much. The Red Sox have been by far the best team this season. If the first round were increased to 7 games, they'd increase their chances of beating the Indians by 1.6%. They would gain 0.6% on their WS%.

I would like MLB to change the first round to seven games- that would mean more baseball, and less off days that eliminate the need for fourth starters. But if MLB did so the result (as well as the intention, obviously) would be to deepen their pockets, rather ensure that the best team wins.

These fantastic pictures were taken from Deadspin and Zero to Six Figures.

The Fox Effect

Back in May, Major League Baseball announced that the playoffs would be structured differently this year, in hopes for higher TV ratings on FOX. The big headline to come out of this was "World Series to start on a Wednesday".

Which is great and all, but I think everybody ignored the bigger story here. The WS is starting four days later than usual, and the regular season is ending the same time it always does (on a Sunday; this year it's September 30).

Those four extra days have a huge effect on how the Division Series and League Series are scheduled. Here's the Division Series schedule:

The first three series are five games over seven days, so those six teams will have the option of bringing their ace back on three days rest for Game 4. The only thing different from normal there is that if they did that, they would then have their #2 starter available on full rest for Game 5.

The thing that's interesting here is the "AL B" series. Five games over eight days? That's closer to an NBA schedule than MLB. This opens up all kinds of options.

The first, and most dramatic, is that a team could actually bring their ace back for Game 3 on three days rest. This would only happen if they were down 2-0, and even then it wouldn't make much sense. This is because that team would still need their #3 starter for Game 4, and then the could bring their #2 back for Game 5. So that situation won't (or, at least shouldn't) arise.

What this does to is eliminate the need for a fourth starter entirely. The team's top two starters will each be available on full rest for Games 4 and 5, respectively. So what effect will this have?

Let's see what changes this will have in the rotations of the four teams that (I think) are going to make the playoffs in the AL.

Boston Red Sox
(For the purposes of this exercise, I'm assuming that Buchholz won't be in the rotation.)

Boston's top two starters are clearly Beckett and Matsuzaka. Schilling is probably third, and Wakefield is 4th. So if the Sox end up in this series, Beckett and Matsuzaka will be taking Wakefield's innings.

Beckett and Daisuke have an average ERA of 3.70, while Wakefield is at 4.16, a difference of 0.46.

New York Yankees

The Yankees' top two guys, Wang and Pettitte, both have ERAs right about 3.80. I'm asssuming Clemens would go third, and Hughes would be after him. Hughes is a hard guy to gauge- his ERA is 5.65, but his fielding independent ERA is 4.48, and BP has his QERA (which includes his minor league innings this year) at 3.83. I'll put him at 4.10, which is a difference of 0.30 from Wang and Pettitte.

Cleveland Indians

Well, this one is easy. Sabathia and Carmona are easily 1-2, with ERAs of 3.24 and 3.31, respectively. Westbrook (4.43, but 2.30 over his last eight starts) is their #3. So that makes Byrd fourth, and he has a 4.19 ERA. They Indians benefit enormously from this, as the difference between him and Sabathia/Carmona is 0.92.

LAnaheim Angels

The Angels' top two are extremely strong, with Cy Young contenders Lackey (3.26) and Escobar (2.99). Weaver comes in third, at 3.79. I would think they'd throw Joe Saunders (3.62 ERA, 3.73 FIP) after that, so their difference is a pretty significant 0.53.

So that concludes my extremely unscientific analysis. This much is clear though- the Indians would get a huge boost from being put in that series, as there is a huge drop off in their rotation after Westbrook. Because of all the uncertainty, it's unclear what effect on the Yankees' rotation would be, but it would most likely be small. And Boston and Anaheim would benefit by about a half run on ERA.

Pictures taken from Zap2It, Boston.com, and AOL Sports.