Stat nerdery

My friends are nerds. I am too, but I am, at times, a sports nerd. I have a friend who is rather anti-sports, and he once questioned me about that, generally claiming it was an impossibility. Oncer I got him to understand a fraction of the stats available for a sport like baseball, he stopped questioning it. Or he stopped for fear I'd toss more statistics at him. One way or the other.

I think baseball, more than almost any other sport, is ideal for the sports nerd. At 162 games in a season, it offers a much larger sample to base statistics off of, and the situation isn't quite as variable as in other sports. A batter is always going to be facing a pitcher with nine guys in the field, and once the ball is in play, that's the play that's going to happen. There's no fast break where he's suddenly hitting to a three man infield. He's not called back to bat again because the runner started towards home too early. It all happens in the play. It's somewhat more simple, less chaotic, than in most popular sports.

Anyway, the whole point of this post came about to today when I was reading a post over at Random Fandom. The point was made that the Diamondbacks have given up more runs this year than they've scored, 105 to 100, and are still six games over .500. I pointed out that if you scratch out Opening Day and the series where the Nationals swept us (combined scores of 37 to 15) we're ahead by 85 to 68. But the theory is suspect, since you can't pick and choose games, etc. So, I decided to look at the numbers a little deeper.

First off, one of the encouraging things, I think, is the offensive production. Win or lose, we're averaging about four and a half runs a game. Where we seem to be having a bit more of a problem is in our pitching. When we win? The other team is averaging 2.78 runs. In a loss? They're pulling in 8.625 runs on average. Even taking out the blowout of Opening Day, they still average over seven and a half. An interesting skew.

But if the pitching keeps us in the game, we've got a good chance. When we hold the opposing team to five runs or fewer, we have a fairly nice 13-2 record, the only two losses being at Washington (5-3) and at San Francisco (4-3). When we let them get six runs or more, though, we're a dismal 1-6, the only exception being an 8-6 victory over the Padres.

So, what does it mean? It's somewhat encouraging, I think. Past few years, we've been scraping wins together, it seems, and only winning with either an exceptional pitching performance, or a stellar offensive explosion. So far, though, we've been able to hold it together, as long as the pitching keeps us in the game. If we can keep this up, we'll have a good season ahead.

But it's that "if" that is the point. What this all really means is not much. The season could, and probably will, shake out much more differently than what the numbers over 20+ games show us. But that's what makes the game interesting.

As a sidenote, I'm annoyed with the Arizona Republic. For the past few games, they've said that the Diamondbacks games ended too late for them to report on it. This includes Wednesday night's game, which, according to the official time, ended around a quarter after 10. Yet, we've got a front page report on the Suns playoff win. When did they finish? About five after 10. Was that ten minutes really such a major difference?