NorthOf49

KingKat's writing (and real) name is Andre Godin. NJH's writing name is Nikolai Ballevski.

AL MVP: Josh Donaldson Donaldson leads the American League in context-based offensive statistics like RE24 and WPA, and exceeded his primary opponent, Mike Trout, in defensive value according to UZR and DRS. His context-free aggregate stats (e.g. wRC+, WAR) are comparable to Trout and the other league leaders and he exceeded the values of those other players when considering context. Donaldson will win the award and some will brand that as a function of his team making the playoffs, but I really do believe that he was more valuable to the Blue Jays than Trout was to the Angels in 2015. NL MVP: Bryce Harper What is there to say? Harper had a season for the ages, no matter whether situational context is considered. Anthony Rizzo led the National League in WPA, piling up over a win more than Harper, but to me that's not enough to exceed the total value provided by Harper's great season. WPA is a good stat that tells a story but it can devalue important run-scoring activity that occurs early in games. Harper's production with runners on base (wRC+ of 195) and in scoring position (163) were great, fueling that outstanding 79.31 RE24 runs total. AL Cy Young: Chris Sale I explained my thoughts on this race here: http://www.breakingblue.ca/2015/09/29/chris-sale-and-a-different-way-to-look-at-the-al-cy-young-race/ . I believe that Chris Sale is the league's best pitcher. NL Cy Young: Clayton Kershaw By similar reasoning, I believe that Kershaw is clearly the National League's best pitcher. He is having an absolutely monstrous season. Arrieta and Greinke really only have ERA arguments over Kershaw, and I don't put a lot of stock in those arguments when it comes to determining the best pitcher. AL Manager of the Year: Kevin Cash I was really impressed by Cash this season, including how he frequently pulled pitchers after the second time through the order. He seems to get along with the players and have a good handle on soft skills too. NL Manager of the Year: Bruce Bochy It's crazy that Bochy hasn't won this award with the Giants yet! He's proven year after year that he's a great manager. AL Rookie of the Year: Francisco Lindor Lindor piled up a ton of value and was the most outstanding rookie in the AL this season. NL Rookie of the Year: Kris Bryant There's not much debate here. Bryant is even a fringe candidate for MVP. World Series: Dodgers over Blue Jays

Thanks KK, I did some cleanup on those sentences and then posted the article to reddit: You can upvote it if you have an account I'll post my award picks soon. GD and KK, you can do the same if you're up for it. Maybe we could do world series picks too? We could go with a grid of awards/WS picks and then a few paragraphs explaining the picks.

Alright I posted this: http://www.breakingblue.ca/2015/10/06/three-interesting-statistical-themes-of-the-blue-jays-2015-season/ I'll try to do my awards picks and short paragraphs later in the afternoon. I (obviously) already know who I'm picking.

Alright I'll write these up today if I have time. I'm also going to be releasing a "5 Statistical Themes of the Blue Jays' 2015 Season" article, likely in the afternoon today.

R is pretty cool and definitely something that I'm going to keep learning. It's nice that we use it in many of my stats courses. I know that JFAS uses it pretty extensively. GD is getting into it too. I actually have the book by Max Marchi that Petti talks about in that article. Making graphics using it can be difficult but is necessary since Excel charts aren't customizable enough. I've been getting better at it. I'm actually taking an Economics of Sports class this term and had an assignment where I needed to investigate the relationship between winning and attendance for a major sports team. Here's one of the graphics I came up with for my report (which was about the Astros): I think it looks pretty good. I'd like to work more R graphics into my future articles and will keep using it for analysis. Definitely! You can just let us know what you need once you're ready. I think I'm going to write an article in the next day about theoretical Cy Young stuff.

Alright it's up! http://www.breakingblue.ca/2015/09/21/fantasy-keeper-pitching-sleepers-for-2016/ Edit: I just tied CC in posts, with 31

I'll have the pitching sleepers article up by mid-day tomorrow. I've already decided on the pitchers and have some time in the morning to write it up.

That's a good idea. We did something similar for pre-season predictions and it worked well since it was fast to create and allowed us to share opinions. We should probably wait until the last few days of the season to make our decisions, since there's still some baseball left.

Nice! I could definitely write something on pitchers.

MGL is always tweeting about it and sequencing, so I'm always thinking about it too lol. The zone numbers provide a pretty clear illustration of it. The difference between throwing in the zone and not throwing in the zone is usually pretty marginal, because pitchers and hitters are close to the Nash equilibrium. All pitchers have a greater ability to throw the ball in the zone than most people think. They throw it out of the zone 55% because they're incentivized to, not because it's the limit of their zone-throwing ability.

Mention how Shapiro is reunited with Jason Pare. And yes, tomorrow would be great/necessary. My zone stuff is going great! There's a lot of game theory involved in zone throwing. On 3-2 and 0-0, ball in zone vs. not doesn't matter much.

The franchise is saved!! Not even hyperbole. GD, get it up tomorrow. We need content and this is an easy article.

Yes, you would save the graph as a picture and then upload it into your post. Estrada's true-talent BABIP probably isn't that close to his .234 mark. Steamer has .279 going forward.

No. I will now.

I just wrote a Sanchez article about him in the pen vs. rotation! I think an article about Osuna's future could be good. It's pretty obvious to anyone smart that Osuna has a better shot than Sanchez as a starter. So maybe a could article could be breaking down Osuna and explaining that he has three pitches and good control.

Is anyone going to publish something today?

Someone could write a hot take about the Travis-Sportsnet suit thing. Would get plenty of clicks.

I meant that you should just have a scatter plot of every reliever in baseball with 30 innings, by xFIP- and SwStr. You don't need the pitcher names to be on an axis. Include labels for Blue Jays. Okay. Maybe have a longer title with a phrase that sort of answers the question?

A Morosi tweet? Yuck lol. He picked the Marlins and Padres to win their divisions. Kind of a click-bait headline too. There's nothing wrong with Osuna.

In Excel you can just highlight both columns and then do "insert scatter." Try again! You can make all the numbers decimals by changing all of the number formats to General (instead of Percentage). I like the idea of cutting down on fluffy words and emphasizing the charts, since bullpens are fickle and there's not that much to say on top of the numbers.

Have you guys been following the DRA stat discussion? Tango, MGL and friends have been poking holes in it, and the BP people (Judge, Pavlidis, Turkenkopf) haven't responded that well. The stat has flaws that aren't well-addressed and BP is making changes but not being that transparent. It's just interesting to see how high-level statistics get made, and how all of the internet sabermetrics community is connected and thinks about the same issues. Here's the thread on Tango's blog: http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/comments/dra-and-occams-razor Then there are recent updates here: http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/comments/dra-component-run-values

The robot already told us that they know Hendriks is good and that Gibby is dumn. Baubau, how did you pick the relievers being used in the analysis? Is it just the best other relievers + Jays relievers? I think you could get the point across better using a scatterplot. Maybe overlay one of xFIP/SIERA with SwStr%. I would just pick one of xFIP and SIERA and roll with that, since they do the same thing. Also, 3D charts are hard to read. I like the charts that compare teams, though. Hendriks' swinging strike rate is fine. He has such good command and may be a neutral batted ball guy out of the pen.

Admin, can we get Intentional Wok involved? He is smart (is doing well and makes good comments in the Premier League) and offered to be an editor in the main board thread.

There, I just wrote 800 words on a bus + subway from my phone, with news and notes for the team. I'll probably use this format going forward. Very easy to write and you can still be analytical.