BAP wins the pennant!

So I get an email from Paul Sporer, who has a great blog that's even younger than mine, and he basically says, "Hey, I think you're on to something with BAP, but you need more data". He's right of course, and I knew that, but was trying to avoid it. Anyway, I'm so pleased to get a positive response to anything I write that I tell him "Yeah, I'm going to have the BAP scores for every game tomorrow".

Just a plain ridiculous statement on my part. I currently have a research team of one, which consists of myself, and if I plan to do a daily blog, I can't spend three hours putting stats together for each entry. While doing every game would be the most thorough, it is not necessary to start there to see if BAP works. I didn't do a good job yesterday of explaining why I picked the Cards - Padres game to introduce BAP, so I'm going to explain it now, and at the same time explain why I don't need to do every game at this point. Here it is:

BAP is largely OBP and SLG based. OBP and SLG are great stats, much more useful than batting average, and if you look at the OBP or SLG for both teams in most games, you will be able to tell who the winner is. Because BAP relies so heavily on both of them, it makes sense that in any game where there is a significant difference in the score, all three percentages will come out in favor of the winner. What I'm hoping BAP does is fill in the missing pieces, and gets the games right that the others miss. The beautiful part about the STL - SD game was that STL had more hits, a higher SLG, and an equal OBP, but lost the game. BAP had SD with a better percentage, the only of the three to do so.

Today, I'm going to give all three percentages for any one-run games, and any game where the loser had the same amount or more hits than the winner. By doing this, I'm using the games that would be the hardest to predict for any statistic. This leave me with six games - Florida at Atlanta, Philly at the Cubs, Pittsburgh at Cincinnati, Houston at Milwaukee, The White Sox at Toronto, and Anaheim at Texas.

There has been a slight change in the formula. I like to call it The Grudzielanek Rule, named after the Cubs second baseman who led off an inning yesterday with a double, only to get thrown out attempting to stretch it into a triple. It seemed wrong to subtract only one base for a runner erased, when he was going to get credit for two bases when counting total bases. So now the formula is this:

BAP = # of bases advanced / # of plate appearances
where bases advanced equals total bases + walks + HBP + extra bases gained - bases gained by a baserunner lost.

If you want to see how I came up with extra bases gained, see yesterday's entry.

Here we go!

Philadelphia 3 Chicago 0
OBP - Phi .257, Chi . 206
SLG - Phi .333, Chi .194
BAP - Phi .457, Chi. .206

All three get the winner right.

Houston 3 Milwaukee 2 (11 innings)
OBP - Hou .238, Mil .279
SLG - Hou .316, Mil .289
BAP - Hou .326, Mil .273

OBP gets it wrong.

Texas 12 Anaheim 9
OBP - Ana .435, Tex .429
SLG - Ana .700, Tex .571
BAP - Ana .848, Tex .976

Only BAP gets it right.

Pittsburgh 6 Cincinnati 5
OBP - Pit .390, Cin .350
SLG - Pit .622, Cin .405
BAP - Pit .690, Cin .439

All three get the winner right.

Florida 5 Atlanta 4 (12 innings)
OBP - Flo .367, Atl .255
SLG - Flo .444, Atl .214
BAP - Flo .560, Atl .319

All three get the winner right.

Chicago 7 Toronto 6
OBP - Chi .395, Tor .341
SLG - Chi .405, Tor .486
BAP - Chi .698, Tor. .610

SLG gets it wrong.

If you're scoring at home (or as Keith Olberman used to say, "or even if you're alone"), the final standings, in the hardest games to analyze, are:

BAP 6-0
OBP 4-2
SLG 4-2

BAP wins the pennant! BAP wins the pennant! It's Unbelievable! BAP goes undefeated, and in all six games, BAP shows the largest difference between the winner and loser. So far, it seems as though BAP can interpret game data better than OBP or SLG. Someone please prove this wrong, before I get too excited.

Tomorrow, we'll give the scores again, but instead of explaining the rules, we'll show some of the more ridiculous game scenarios. If it doesn't get more entertaining soon, my wife is going to stop visiting the site, and she's my most loyal reader.

Check out Paul's blog For Rich or Sporer



Comments? Counseling?