Quantifying Momentum in Major League Baseball
The team that scores first in the MLB wins 69% of the time. That number may feel surprisingly high for a sport that averages just under 4.5 runs per game per team. Why is taking and keeping a lead in baseball so vital?
Photo Credit: Seth Wenig/AP Photo
Opinion: How Can We Evaluate Base Stealing More Precisely?
Consider this scenario: Two players each have 30 base steals and 5 bases caught stealing. With an 86% success rate, both players appear to be helping their teams significantly by risking taking the extra base. However, 35 attempts is quite a small sample size. The standard deviation of the number of stolen bases in this case is 2.07. So, there’s a 2.5% chance that the base-stealer’s true success rate is actually lower than 74%, in which case the advice to that player would be to steal fewer bases. Essentially, for many players, it can be hard to tell If they should steal more or less, purely based on their stolen bases and caught stealing, since the sample sizes are small.
What if we had a metric that would give us even more confidence in telling the players to steal more frequently?
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Should You Use a One-Handed Backhand?
22-year old Italian Lorenzo Musetti had a dream semi-final run in this year’s Wimbledon. Musetti survived a five setter in the second round and knocked off 13-seed Taylor Fritz in five sets in the quarter-final before falling to 24-time grand slam champion Novak Djokovic in straight sets. The young Italian has modeled his game, like many tennis players of his generation, off of the great Roger Federer, copying the Swiss legend’s serve motion to a tee and adopting a one-handed backhand. Musetti is projected to jump from 25th to 16th in the ATP rankings after his Wimbledon run.
In this analysis, I will take a look at the number of one-handed backhands in the ATP top 20 for each of the last 20 years. Is one of tennis’ most beautiful shots actually leading to positive results on the court?
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali
The Second Best Starter in Baseball is a Converted Reliever
Garrett Crochet pitched 72 games and 73 innings as a reliever from 2020 to 2023, missing the entire 2022 season recovering from Tommy John surgery. The White Sox, desperate for starting pitching, saw something they liked in Crochet and gave him a chance to start in 2024. Crochet has not disappointed, ranking 2nd among starting pitchers in xwFIP through June. If traded later this month, he can quickly retool Chicago’s farm system.
At the end of April, Crochet ranked 6th among starters with a 2.98 xwFIP, despite a 6.37 ERA and a 4.20 FIP. At the end of May, Crochet’s ranking was up to 3rd among all pitchers and 1st among starters with a 2.02 xwFIP, despite an ERA of 3.49 and a FIP of 3.00. Now, through June, Crochet is 2nd among starters and 6th among all pitchers with a 2.71 xwFIP, and his ERA and FIP have dropped to 3.02 and 2.47, respectively.
Photo Credit: John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune
Is Yankee Stadium a Lefty-Friendly Ballpark?
Yankee Stadium is well known for the short porch in right field. In fact, the right field in Yankee Stadium is closer to home plate than in any other ballpark, extending from right-center field to the short porch near the right field foul pole.
Can we quantify the advantage of being left-handed in Yankees Stadium? To find out, I’ll take a look at the relative performance of both right-handed and left-handed batters and pitchers in Yankee Stadium (YS) and compare those numbers to the league as a whole.
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer
Why Are Intentional Walks Excluded from wOBA?
wOBA both ignores intentional walks (IBBs) and values hit-by-pitches (HBPs) higher than unintentional walks (uBBs). I’ve frequently had this discussion with my friend and former colleague Rob DeLuca: Can one of our most advanced and run-correlated offensive metrics be improved?
In this analysis, I’ll take a look at all the uBBs, IBBs, and HBPs in 2015-2016, a time when Statcast was separately marking IBBs on a pitch-by-pitch basis, and compare the change in run value for each stat category.
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Where Does The Performance of Top Pitching Prospect Paul Skenes Rank?
Pirates rookie right-hander Paul Skenes has debuted his electric stuff with 30 strikeouts over 4 starts and 22 innings pitched. Skenes, baseball’s number one pitching prospect and number two overall prospect, was drafted 1st overall out of LSU last year. He features a 99 mph 4-seamer, a 94 mph splitter, and an 85 mph slider; and he ranks in the 99th percentile in fastball velocity and the 98th percentile in strikeout rate.
Where does Skenes stack in this month’s xwFIP rankings?
Photo Credit: Jonathan Dyer/USA TODAY Sports
How Should NBA Coaches Use Their Challenges?
For the 2023-24 NBA season, the league adopted a new policy allowing coaches a second challenge if their first challenge results in a successful overturn. NBA coaches successfully challenge out-of-bounds calls at a 77.7% clip; they successfully challenge foul calls at a 53% rate, and on average, they are successful with 59.5% of their challenges.
But what is the optimal challenge strategy for an NBA coach?
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Why Do Lefty Batters Hit into Fewer Double Plays?
Over the last 9+ seasons, MLB pitchers have been able to induce about 1.5 double plays per game—0.75 for each team. Double plays enable pitchers to both get out of major jams and keep their pitch counts manageable.
In this analysis, I’ll examine the difference in the propensity to ground into double plays for righty batters and lefty batters and determine what this could mean for in-game strategy.
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig
The Pitchers with the Best xwFIP: April Edition
This past offseason, I introduced the pitching metric xwFIP in a series of three posts. xwFIP is an advanced fielding independent pitching metric that not only takes into account walks, hit batsmen, strikeouts, and homeruns, but also the xwOBA on batted balls. The metric takes into account nearly 100% of plate appearances in its calculation. Moreoever, I have showcased that it has greater predictive power than each of ERA, wOBA, FIP, xFIP, xwOBA, and SIERA in predicting future run prevention performance of a pitcher.
This season, I’ll be posting the xwFIP leaderboard each month so we can see the starters and relievers that are most likely to have continued success, along with the pitchers who have been lucky and unlucky so far.
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Why Should You Advance Up the Court in Tennis?
Whether you’re a baseline specialist who can endure grueling rallies and outlast your opponent like Djokovic, Nadal, and Medvedev - or a player that prefers to approach the net to finish off points like McEnroe, Edberg, or Federer, your court positioning relative to the baseline and relative to the net is vital. Why is that? Let’s take a look.
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Is the Dodgers' Starting Lineup Optimal?
After winning the offseason by signing two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, Japenese ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and slugger Teoscar Hernandez, while trading for ace Tyler Glasnow, the Dodgers are off to a fast start in 2024 with a 10-5 record, averaging a bludgeoning 5.4 runs per game (PECOTA projects them to average 5.38 this season). It doesn’t look like the team needs any help.
However, is their lineup construction optimal? In this analysis, I will assess if there is room for improvement.
Photo via Baseball Prospectus
Should You Intentionally Foul With a 1-Point Lead to Secure the Final Possession?
Team A is leading Team B by one point. Team B has the ball with 10 seconds to go. If Team B’s two-point field goal percentage is higher than 50%, which is the case for 29 of the 30 teams in the NBA this season, they could be the favorite to win the game, despite trailing by one point. In which situations can an intentional foul by Team A swing the win probability back in their favor?
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How to Quantify Lineup Protection in Baseball
MLB lineup construction is a science that has been developing for over a century. The nuances of ordering hitters include alternating right-handed and left-handed batters to make it more difficult for opposing teams to exploit the platoon advantage, batting your least productive hitter 8th instead of 9th so that the number 9 hitter can act as a second leadoff hitter, and sometimes avoiding batting your best hitter 3rd since that spot is the most likely spot to come up with 2 outs and the bases empty.
In this analysis I’ll discuss lineup protection, that is, the impact that the hitter behind you has on the pitches you face. I’ll use the results of my lineup protection analysis to add another wrinkle to the lineup construction equation.
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Who Will Win the EPL Title - Liverpool, Arsenal, or City?
The EPL title race saw a major shift this past weekend when Liverpool came back from 0-1 down to defeat Brighton 2-1, and Arsenal went into the Etihad and held Manchester City to a scoreless draw.
In this analysis, I’ll use the last two seasons of EPL matches to rank the three contenders, considering the strength of opponent, final score, and each team’s expected goals scored (xG) based on the shots that they took/allowed in each match. I will then predict the match outcomes of the final nine weeks of the season and determine how likely each team is to capture the Premier League title.
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Which Kickers Are Best Prepared for the NFL’s New Kickoff Rules?
The NFL has approved a new set of kickoff rules for the 2024-25 season, with the goals of increasing the number of kick returns from the all-time low mark of 22% last season and reducing the velocity of player collisions on kickoffs. The XFL sported a 97% kick-return-rate last season under this kickoff format, so one of the game’s most exciting plays is likely to return to the forefront.
In this analysis I’ll discuss how the new kickoff rules will change kicking strategy, and determine which kickers are the best prepared to adjust to the new rules.
Photo Credit: The Miami Herald
A Relative Value Comparison of Goal Scorers and Goalies in Hockey
Conventional hockey wisdom puts the goalie as the most important player on the ice, akin to the quarterback in football or the point guard in basketball. In my first hockey analysis for The Paraball Notes, I’ll evaluate the NHL’s goalies and goal scorers to determine at which points in the player value distribution this conventional wisdom holds true. My ultimate objective is to find the relative value of goal scorers versus goalies.
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Paraball’s March Madness Bracket
The brackets are in and one of the most exciting weeks of sports is about to begin! This year’s March Madness tournament features top seeded UConn, looking to defend its title and become the eighth program to repeat as national champions—the first to do so since Florida in 2007. The bracket also features some potential Cinderella teams that have had tremendous seasons in weaker conferences. Who will come out on top?
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Who Are the Best Defensive Outfielders in the MLB?
When evaluating an outfielder’s ability to track and catch fly balls, two of the factors we look at most closely are the outfielder’s jump and the outfielder’s speed. Statcast breaks an outfielder’s jump down into three components: reaction for the first 1.5 seconds, burst for the next 1.5 seconds, and route efficiency for the first 3 seconds.
In this analysis I’ll determine which factors are the most important for an outfielder’s success, and use those factors to project the top defensive outfielders in 2024.
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Which Pitching Staff Has the Most Diverse Set of Release Points?
A pitching staff featuring a varied range of release points provides an additional way to unsettle an opposing lineup. In this analysis, I will measure the release point diversity of both right-handed and left-handed pitchers on each team from 2023, to pinpoint the teams that lead the way in this strategy and those that trail behind.
Photo Credit: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press