Willie Harris in right field?

I like Willie Harris. I’m sure he is excellent in the clubhouse. He can’t play baseball anymore. His batting average dropped below .180 last night. He couldn’t get to a ball down the line that a younger man would have had. He also made a complete bonehead play after his legs failed him. All little leaguers are taught not to dive for a ball if you don’t have back-up. (This is especially true for corner outfielders down the lines!) Willie dove for a ball on the line, missed it, then laid on the ground until Adam Kennedy raced 75 yards from second base to the right field wall to retrieve the ball. What a disaster. I guess Harris was winded from the run to the line. Maybe he is a relative of Albert Haynesworth. Whatever the case, he should have been pulled from the game on the spot. It was inexcusable to dive for a ball on the line, and it was worse to take a siesta while teammates and opponents sprinted around the field.

Willie also just plain missed another ball. He jumped near the wall to catch a ball that was a foot and a half on the other side of his glove. He had plenty of time to get there, he just went to the wrong place.

Age gets to all of us. We can’t see as well as we used to, and we can’t run as fast as we used to. It’s time to stop playing Willie Harris. He is an old baseball player, with rapidly diminishing skills. Let’s see what the younger guys can do.

Pitcher as a Pinch Hitter?

In a classic give-up move, Manager Jim Riggleman used pitcher Jason Marquis as a pinch hitter. The Nats are so short on talent, they can’t even muster a proper pinch hitter. This team didn’t try last night. Every Nats fan (there were plenty of Cubs fans in attendance) got ripped off.

Time to give up the tickets?

Aside from April 2009 and April 2010, this team has been a .333 ball club for the last 3 years. There have only been two games this year when tickets were hard to come by – Strasburg’s first game and the Phillies DC home opener (thanks Kasten). Is it time to stop buying season tickets? Maybe the best thing to do is to check the line-up before heading to the park. If the Nats are going to field a major league team, go ahead and buy a ticket. If they put out last night’s line-up and you feel like going out, there are plenty of great restaurants down town.

Updates

Hopefully I’ll get back to regularly updating the blog this week. I want to watch a few games to get back into the flow of things. And of course, I’ll be there Thursday night to watch Zimmermann’s return.

From Opening Day through June 22, Clippard allowed 47 opposing batters to reach base in 45 2/3 innings. But in six appearances since then, he’s allowed a staggering 18 batters to reach in only 5 2/3 innings. He’s also allowed 10 runs (seven earned), raising his ERA from 1.58 to 2.63.

Other than injury, what could cause Clippard to struggle like this? I looked at the Pitch F/X data, and was shocked by what I saw. According to Pitch F/X, Tyler Clippard has not thrown a curve ball since May 19th. Here is my post from Federal Baseball.

Breakdown by Pitch Type

Using Zuckerman’s dates, I broke down Clippard’s pitches by type. Through June 22nd, Clippard threw 744 pitches. I threw out 3 intentional balls, reducing the pitch sample to 741 pitches. Here’s the breakdown with total pitches in ():

Through June 22, 2010:

• 52.77 % Fastball (308)
• 28.42% Change (211)
• 12.15% Slider (90)
• 5.26% Curve (39)
• 1.75% Cutter (13)

In his last 6 outings Clippard threw 132 pitches – removing pitch outs and intentional balls, he threw 119 pitches.

June 23rd Through July 8th, 2010:

• 50.42% Fastball (60)
• 26.05% Change (31)
• 10.92% Slider (13)
• 0.00% Curve (0)
• 12.61% Cutter (15)

You can see that Clippard has been trying to get some movement by throwing the cut fastball significantly more than he did to start the year. In fact, he has thrown more cutters in these last 2 weeks than he did in the first 2 1/2 months. The problem is that the cutter doesn’t really offer that much of a change in velocity. The average Clippard fastball lights the gun at 92.23 MPH. His cutter clocks in at 87.09 MPH. By comparison, when Clippard was throwing his curve, the average speed was 75.99 MPH.

Less Movement on Everything

One other great feature of Pitch F/X – it computes and stores the largest deviation of movement from a straight line trajectory (in inches) for each pitch. It also computes and stores the direction of the deviation. So, a perfectly straight pitch has a deviation of 0 – the greater the deviation, the greater the movement.

Looking at the Clippard’s deviation on a pitch type basis, I noticed that the difference between the lowest and highest deviations have substantially narrowed since June 23rd.

Change Up

Prior to June 23rd, Clippard’s change up dropped anywhere from 3.8 to 8 inches – a 4.2 inch delta. In his last 6 outings, Clippard’s change up has dropped anywhere from 5 to 7.8 inches – a 2.8 inch delta. That extra inch and a half doesn’t seem like much, but it appears to have been enough to keep hitters off balance.

Slider

Even more amazing is the change in Clippard’s slider. At the beginning of the year, Clippard’s slider moved 4.2 to 14.4 inches, a 10.2 inch delta. Since June 23rd, the slider has moved 11.3 to 14 inches, a 3.7 inch delta. For whatever reason, early in the season Clippard was able to throw sliders with a huge variance in break. He hasn’t been able to do that in the last couple of weeks.

What’s Going On?

What’s going on? That’s the million dollar question. Obviously, Clippard and/or the Nats coaching staff have changed Clippard’s approach to pitching over the last few weeks. His pitches don’t break like they did early in the season. He has stopped throwing his curve ball. Given the early season success, I’d be shocked if Clippard changed his approach for any reason other than injury. Hopefully it is nothing more than overuse. Maybe a few games off sandwiched around the All-Star break will heal whatever ails him. The Nats don’t need another pitcher on the DL.

Solo Home Runs

How are the Nats doing compared to the rest of the league in Solo Home Runs? Through June 29th, the Nats have 44 solo home runs, placing them 11th in MLB. The MLB average is 40 solo home runs. That’s obviously not a game breaker.

Errors

The Nats lead the league in errors – 69 vs the league average 48. By comparison, the Twins only have 28 errors at this point in the season. In fielding percentage, the Nats are again last – .977 vs .983 league average. The Twins’ fielding percentage is a sterling .990.

Winning Percentage

According to the arguments then – there should be a direct correlation between Home Runs with runners on, errors, and winning percentage. Here’s a plot of all three values.

The light green bars indicate the percentage of home runs each team hits that score at least 2 runs. The dark green bars display the percentage of runs allowed that are unearned. The light blue line shows the winning percentage of each team. As you can see, these values don’t correlate. If any one value correlated to winning percentage, there would be a gradual increase in bar height from left to right.

Fixing the Problem

Some teams, like St. Louis, have fielding issues, but still manage to score more runs than their opponents. Other teams, like Tampa Bay, hit a high percentage of solo home runs, yet still win more games than they lose. Atlanta is the only team that currently makes a lot of errors, doesn’t score a lot of runs, and still wins a lot of games.

So here is the improbable task for the remainder of 2010:

• The Nats need better defense – it’s hard to win when you  give the other teams free runs. However, it’s not impossible – St. Louis, Texas and Atlanta are winning games with a weak defense.
• The Nats need to score more runs – it would be great if the Nats started hitting more home runs with runners on. But, Atlanta and Tampa Bay have shown you can win without a lot of 2 and 3 run home runs.
• The Nats need to stop making mental mistakes – getting picked off base, throwing to the wrong bag. They are reducing their own total bases, while increasing their opponents.

Fixing just one of these problems will help, but won’t turn the Nats into a contender.

The Washington Nationals offense has been mired in a month long slump. Every day, the Nats make opposing pitchers look like a combo Bob Gibson, Greg Maddux, and Cy Young. How bad is the offense? Are they significantly underperforming, or have they run into a string of pitchers on top of their games?

Here’s my post from Federal Baseball that looks at the last 25 days:

Computing the Data:

I went through the box scores of the Nats’ last 25 games. I pulled the opposing team’s actual ERA for each game. Next, I computed each opposing pitcher’s ERA at the start of the game. From that data. I prorated each pitcher’s contribution to that game, to come up with the expected opposing ERA for each game.

For example, if the Nats faced a team where the starter pitched 6 innings, a reliever pitched 2 innings, and a closer pitched 1 inning, I computed the expected ERA to be 6/9*Starter ERA + 2/9 Reliever ERA + 1/9 Closer ERA.  This allowed me to use the expected ERA for that game played on that day, as opposed to a “team average” ERA, or an ERA computed 3 weeks after the game was played.

Actual vs Expected

With that in mind, here’s the actual vs expected opposing team’s ERA over the last 25 games, on a game by game basis. ERA is on the left, Nats opponents on the bottom:

As you can see, the Nats have only scored more earned runs than expected 7 times in the last 25 games. (The 14 runs game against Houston was the game where Roy Oswalt was tossed after 2.1 innings.).

Delta from Expected ERA

Here is the delta from the expected ERA:

It’s pretty clear that the Nats offense hasn’t run into a string of Aces. The expected ERA of the teams faced ranged from a low of 2.139 to a high of 6.140. The fact is (dropping the highest and lowest deltas), the Nats have scored on average .953 fewer earned runs than expected in the last 25 games.

Problems

The reasons are many: Nyjer Morgan leads the team in Plate Appearances, but has struggled to get on base. He has also struggled to stay on base, leading MLB in Caught Stealing. At this point, he is an out 7 times out of every 10 plate appearances, and he gets a lot of plate appearances. Cristian Guzman has seen his batting average drop .025 points during this time frame.

Where’s the calvary?

Unfortunately, the Nats only have one solid bat on the bench. Mike Morse has had an excellent season (.390/.457/.634). For whatever reason, Jim Riggleman elects to sit Morse in favor of Nyjer Morgan (.247/.309/.323) and Willie Harris (.152/.242/.324). In fact, Riggleman has given Willie Harris 12 Pinch Hit appearances during this slump to Morse’s 5.

Looking at the minor’s, there doesn’t appear to be anyone knocking on the door. The Nats still have holes in their minor leagues – there won’t be any calvalry this year.

Mike Rizzo’s philosophy is that the majors are where you produce, the minors are where you work things out. Right now, guys aren’t producing. It’s time to try something different.

On June 17th, the Wall Street Journal had an excellent piece (here) discussing major league umpires, Stephen Strasburg, and Pitch F/X. In it David Biderman wrote:

According to a consensus of umpires, a good umpire will make one bad call on a pitch every two innings—or about four or five per game.

Let’s look at the Pitch F/X data for the game Saturday.

There were 247 pitches thrown Saturday. Batters did not swing at 134 pitches, leaving the outcome to the discretion of the plate umpire. Out of those 134 calls, Holbrook called 29 strikes that Pitch F/X noted as outside of the zone, and called 8 pitches balls that were inside the zone.  Here’s a look at the pitches Holbrook called strikes. (I highlighted pitches called strike 3 with a diamond symbol):

Maybe if you are a pitcher’s mom, you would enjoy seeing pitches 4-5 inches off of the plate called as strikes. I’m sure Ryan Zimmerman (diamond symbol waaaaaaay outside of the strike zone) didn’t.

The umpire’s union complains that k-Zone’s and the like are unfair because batters come in all sizes. Pitch F/X actually stores the top and bottom of the strike zone with each pitch. Also last time I checked, the plate didn’t widen and shrink with each pitch. There shouldn’t be any discussion whether a ball catches part of the plate or not. Clearly Holbrook had his own rulebook yesterday.

I can almost live with Greg Gibson’s botched call at first against Nyjer Morgan. I can’t live with an umpire making up his own strike zone. With MLB attendance down this year, the league needs to do as much as they can to make the game enjoyable. Watching batters struggle with an extra wide strike zone is not my idea of enjoyment. Listening to announcers tell me that the players need to adjust to an umpire’s strike zone is nonsense. The umpire needs to call the strike zone according to the rules. If he can’t do that, get another umpire, or better yet, use Pitch F/X live to call the zone.

The league could turn Pitch F/X on tomorrow for balls and strikes if they wanted. I know the league cowers at the feet of the umpire’s union, but at this point, a change needs to be made. Even lifelong baseball fans are going to stop watching games like these.

]]> http://natsstats.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/umpires-and-technology/feed/ 5 38.922362 -77.390513 38.922362 -77.390513 natsstats Holbrook Called Strikes http://natsstats.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/washington-nationals-john-lannans-disappearing-sinker/ http://natsstats.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/washington-nationals-john-lannans-disappearing-sinker/#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:36:38 +0000 Jay Eward http://natsstats.wordpress.com/?p=790 ]]> For the last several years, John Lannan has been a solid starting pitcher for the Nats. He has relied on a two seam (sinking) fastball to produce ground balls. Even when he has allowed runners to reach base, he has been able to get out of jams by inducing batters to ground into double plays. This year has been a different story. He’s struggled to get batters to hit ground balls. He’s entered the death spiral of starting pitchers – he’s struggled to get batters out, which has forced him to pitch to additional batters each inning, which has forced him to throw too many pitches, which has forced him to leave games early. Let’s compare Lannan’s 2010 effort to his Pitch F/X data from 2009.

Identifying a Sinker

Several years ago, John Walsh wrote an excellent piece in The Hardball Times titled “In Search of the Sinker“. In it, Walsh described how he used the GameDay/Pitch F/X data to classify the sinker based on vertical movement. In short, he notes that a sinker is a fastball that drops 5-10 inches more than a four seam fastball.  Using that same math, we can look at the drop on Lannan’s sinkers.  We can also break the drop in to smaller groupings, 5-10 inches more than a four seamer, 2-5 inches more, and < 2 inches more than a four seam fastball. In this post, when you read that a sinker drops 5 inches, understand that it drops 5 inches more than a four seamer, not 5 inches total from the mound to the plate.

Lannan’s Totals

A quick look at the data identifies the problem. In 2009, 57% of the two seam fastballs Lannan threw dropped 5-10 inches more than his four seam fastball. In 2010, the rate falls to 43%. Here’s the data:

It’s pretty easy to see the problem – major league batters can adjust to a ball dropping 2-5 inches more than a four seamer much easier than they can a ball dropping 5-10 inches more than the four seamer.

2009 Sinkers In Play

Because Lannan’s two seamer had a lot of drop in 2009, batters tended to hit ground balls. In 2009, 70% of Lannan’s two seamers put in play resulted in ground balls. Here’s the breakdown:

• 5-10 inch drop – 109 Balls In Play – 70%
• 2-5 inch drop   – 45 Balls in play    - 29%
• <2 inch drop    - 1 Ball in Play         – 0%

Here’s what batters did in 2009 when they hit Lannan’s two seam fastball:

You can see that the result of less drop is a higher rate of balls hit in the air. In 2009, Lannan had a big drop on his two seam fastball. Because of this, 61% of all two seam fastballs put in play were ground balls.

2010 Sinkers in Play

2010 is a different story. Lannan’s two seam fastball doesn’t have the sink on it this year that it did in 2009. Here’s the 2010 breakdown of two seamers in play:

• 5-10 inch drop – 55 Balls In Play – 51%
• 2-5 inch drop   – 50 Balls in play  - 46%
• <2 inch drop    - 3 Balls in Play     –  3%

Here’s the 2010 result of two seam fastballs in play:

At this point in the season, Lannan’s two seam fastball has resulted in a ground ball in play rate of only 44%. That’s a huge drop off from 2009.

Because John Lannan isn’t a strike out pitcher, he has no means to recover when he’s getting pounded. He basically has to keep throwing pitches that batters can hit until Riggleman pulls him from the game. This problem isn’t going to go away until Lannan finds the adjustment to make the two seamer sink again.

On Sunday, Stephen Strasburg pitched his 2nd career MLB game, giving up 2 hits and 5 walks while piling up 8 strikeouts in 5.1 innings. Although Strasburg was frustrated with his performance, and even more frustrated with the dangerous mound conditions in Cleveland, it was still an excellent effort for the Nats rookie.

In his first game, Strasburg threw 94 pitches to 24 batters – 11 lefties and 13 righties. In addition to his blazing four seam fastball, Strasburg tended to throw his two-seamer to lefties and his curveball to righties. (For those of you who missed my full breakdown of game one – click here). Against the Indians, Strasburg threw to 95 pitches to 23 batters – 18 lefties and 5 righties. Did this different mix of lefty and righty batters impact his pitch selection? Here’s my post from Federal Baseball:

Pitch Breakdown

Here’s the breakdown of the 95 pitches Strasburg threw to the Indians:

• 38 Four Seam Fastball
• 22 Two Seam Fastball
• 22 Curve Balls
• 13 Change Ups

Four Seam Fastball

Two Seam Fastball

Strasburg threw his two-seamer between 94 MPH and 98.7 MPH, with an average speed of 96.27 MPH. This is a little more than 1 MPH faster than the two seamers he threw to the Pirates.

Strasburg struggled to find the zone with his two seamer. The Indians lefties only swung at 2 of the 16 two seamers that they saw. 12 pitches were balls, 2 were called strikes, one was a missed bunt attempt, and 1 was a bunt ground out to third.

Curve Ball

Strasburg threw his curve ball in the 82.1 MPH to 85.1 MPH range, at an average speed of 83.62 MPH. This is 1-2 MPH faster than he threw against the pirates.

It was interesting to see Strasburg throw the curve ball to lefties. We really didn’t get to see that against the Pirates. Strasburg threw 15 curveballs to the Indians lefties – 9 for balls and 6 for strikes. No Indians batter put a Strasburg curve ball in play.

Change Up

Strasburg threw 13 changes from 88.2 MPH to 93.1 MPH, at an average speed of 91.3 MPH. This is a wider range than he threw in game one – against the Pirates he threw the change from 89 MPH to 91.6 MPH.

His change didn’t have nearly the sink on it against the Indians as it did against the Pirates, but he threw a higher percentage for strikes.

All in all – another dominating performance from Strasburg. He gave up two hits – a 97.4 MPH four seam fastball that Carlos Santana flared to right, and 99.7 MPH four seam fastball that Travis Hafner ripped for a home run. He’s faced 47 batters, striking out 22 – that’s right – his strikeouts per nine innings is now a ridiculous 16.05. By comparison, Ubaldo Jimenez has a K/9 of 8.1. Strasburg’s ERA now stands at 2.19, which would place him in 5th place for Major League starters if he had enough innings pitched.

Next up - Mark Buehrle and the White Sox – Friday night 7:05 PM. If you don’t have tickets yet, by them now!

Greg Fiume - Getty Images

Washington Nationals phenom Stephen Strasburg set the baseball world on fire Tuesday night with his record breaking debut. Those of us lucky enough to attend sat, stood, jumped, and screamed in disbelief as Strasburg threw one of the all-time great games. The stadium scoreboard twice flashed the century mark on four seam fastballs. Pirates‘ batters were lucky to leave the batter’s box without pulling a muscle, their swings contorted to helpless flailing. Now that the dust has settled, let’s look at the Pitch F/X data to see what we can learn about the wunderkind. Here’s my post from Federal Baseball.

Pitch Breakdown

Strasburg threw 94 pitches. Here is the Pitch F/X breakdown:

• 49 Four Seam Fastballs
• 9 Two Seam Fastballs
• 25 Curve Balls
• 11 Change-Ups

Four Seam Fastballs

Strasburg’s Four Seam Fastball was his bread and butter pitch. He threw it in the range of 96 MPH to 100.1 MPH. The average speed was 98.03 MPH, the median was 98.0 MPH. Here is the Pitch F/X breakdown of Strasburg’s Four Seam Fastballs. (Remember Pitch F/X saves data from the umpires point of view – right handed batters on the left, left handed batters on the right.)

As you can see, Strasburg moved the four seamer around on right handers, working both inside and out. For the most part, Strasburg threw the four seamer away from lefties. The exception was Garrett Jones, who almost lost a finger on an up and in fastball (97.1 MPH). The two pitches you see on this graph that were up and in to lefties were both to Jones. Although Strasburg didn’t get a scouting report before the game, Pudge obviously took advantage of the veteran catcher’s knowledge of Jones, who twice struck out swinging, and grounded into a double play. Interestingly, notice how Strasburg kept the Four Seamer down in the strike zone. A lot of pitchers with blazing fastballs throw that pitch above the zone, figuring that batters will swing but be unable to adjust to the location. Strasburg threw it for strikes, and the Pirates’ batters still couldn’t adjust.

Two Seam Fastballs

According to Pitch F/X, Strasburg only threw 9 Two Seam fastballs, and only 1 to a right hander. The minimum speed was 95.3 MPH, the max was 97.4 MPH.

Again, Strasburg worked away from the lefty batters, only throwing 2 two seamers in the strike zone to left handed hitters. The two seamer had unbelievable run away from the lefties. Of the 8 two seamers thrown to lefties, only Garrett Jones put a ball in play – a ground ball double play. Lastings Milledge was the only righty to see the two seamer, which he fouled off.

Curve Balls

Stephen Strasburg threw 25 curve balls, with a range of 81.2 MPH to 83.8 MPH.

Much in the same way he threw the two seamer to lefties, Strasburg threw several curve balls low and away to righties, inducing them to flail at pitches they had no hope of reaching. Even more impressive, Strasburg threw the knee-buckler for strikes more than half of the time (16 strikes, 7 Balls, 1 ground out to 1st base, and 1 single to right.)

Change Ups

Strasburg’s change-up would be a major league sinker for most pitchers. He threw the pitch from 89 MPH to 91.6 MPH, with excellent drop.

As you can see, Strasburg did not use his change-up as a strike pitch – he used it as a change of pace. Unfortunately, he left one change-up a little too close to the zone, which Delwyn Young hit for a home run (shown here as a red dot slightly below the center of the strike zone.) That change-up was also the third change-up Young saw that game. In retrospect, they went to the well one time too many with that pitch against Young.

Pitch Sequence

If one particular pitch sequence defined the night, it was Delwyn Young’s first plate appearance.

1. 99.1 MPH Four Seam Fastball – Called Strike
2. 91.4 MPH Change-Up – Ball
3. 90.8 MPH Change-Up – Foul Ball
4. 100.1 MPH Four Seam Fastball – Ball
5. 83.4 MPH Curve Ball – Swinging Strike 3

Strasburg threw his curve ball 17 MPH slower than the previous fastball. Nobody can adjust to that.

Summary

There really isn’t anything that captain obvious hasn’t already said about Stephen Strasburg. He had great control of 4 pitches, he threw too hard for batters to adjust, he worked the location, and was an absolute joy to watch. I can’t wait for his next game.

How to Determine Correlation

For you linear regression fans, I used R-Squared to determine the correlation. For everyone else, R-Squared is a term used to show how well a math model can predict other values in the model. An R-Squared value of 1.0 means a perfect correlation. An R-Squared value of 0.0 means there is no correlation at all.

Slugging Percentage

As you may expect, there was very little correlation between SLG and Out Rate. R-Squared was 0.2834. The main variable here is that batters can have a high slugging percentage by getting a lot of extra base hits, while still making a lot of outs. Here’s the chart.

Batting Average

Out Rate had a little more correlation to AVG, but not enough to be predictive. The main variable that prevents AVG to correlate with Out Rate is walks. R-Squared was 0.3599.

Runs Per Plate Appearance

Runs per Plate Appearance had an R-Squared of 0.4206. There are too many variables in RPA (where you bat in the order, who bats behind you, number of outs when reached base, etc) for RPA to have any meaningful correlation to Out Rate.

OPS

The R-Squared for OPS was 0.5388. OPS does not correlate for the same reasons that we saw with SLG – batters can have a high OPS by getting a lot of extra base hits, while still making a lot of outs.

On Base Percentage

As you would expect, OBP had the highest correlation to Out Rate, with an R-Squared of 0.8118. The two variables that cause the correlation to drop are caught stealing, and Grounding in to Double Plays.

You can see here that the players who threw off the correlation are the players with the most CS’s and GDPs:

• Ryan Zimmerman – 8 GDP
• Cristian Guzman 4 GDP, 2 CS
• Pudge Rodriguez – 10 GDP, 1 CS
• Nyjer Morgan – 2 GDP, 8 CS
• Willie Harris 3 GDP, 2 CS.

Through June 2nd, 13 teams have played more road games than home games, 13 have had played home games than road games, and 4 have had an even split. For the most part, the imbalance is what you would expect – warm weather and domed stadium teams have played more home games, and cold weather teams have played more road games. There are a few notable exceptions, which defy any logical explanation.

Home Weighted Schedules

The two teams with the most home games through June 2nd are the Florida Marlins (makes sense) and the BOSTON RED SOX (?). Why do the Red Sox get a front loaded schedule to start the season? They have 8 more home games than road games. I’m sure there are many conspiracy theories to explain this scheduling quirk, but there isn’t a meteorological one. I never really considered Boston a warm weather city. ESPN must like to show Fenway in April. You will also see balmy Cincinnati with 6 extra home games. I don’t remember ESPN in Cincy for a ball-game though.

Here are the teams with more home games than away. This list is ordered by home/away percentage.  At this point in the season, the Giants have played the highest percentage of games at home.

1. San Francisco – Warm
2. Boston – ????
3. Florida – Warm
4. Houston – Warm/Roof
5. San Diego – Warm
6. Cincinnati – ????
7. Seattle – Warm/Roof
8. Los Angeles Angels – Warm
9. Texas Rangers – Warm
10. New York Mets – The mets will be at an even 28-28 after June 3rd
11. Minnesota Twins – New Stadium
12. Chicago Cubs – 1 Game Extra in Wrigley
13. Toronto Blue Jays – Roof

Balanced Schedules

Here are the teams that have played an equal number of home and away games:

1. Detroit
2. Chicago White Sox
3. Tampa Bay
4. Oakland

It seems that, if you were scheduling by weather, you would want Tampa Bay (Dome) and Oakland (Warm) to get a few more home games early in the year. I guess it was more logical in the minds of MLB to spend 8 extra games in Fenway than to shiver in the air conditioning at Tropicana Field.

Road Weighted Schedules

These teams have been early road warriors. The Orioles have played on the road 10 more times than they’ve played at home. That is an exhausting start to the season. This list is ranked by percentage, with the lowest home percentage at the top.

1. Baltimore
2. Arizona – ????
3. Cleveland
4. Philadelphia
5. Washington
6. Milwaukee – ????
7. Colorado
8. New York Yankees
9. Atlanta – ????
10. Pittsburgh
11. Kansas City
12. St. Louis
13. Los Angeles Dodgers

Again, most of these cities on the list are cold North/Northeast/Mid-West cities. I have trouble understanding the Diamondback’s schedule. They are a warm climate team with a retractable roof stadium. I know with an unbalanced schedule that it’s hard to build a reasonable schedule, but you would think the geniuses in the league offices could figure out a way to play a few more April games in Phoenix.

What Does it Mean?

Back to the original question – is there any correlation between the home/away schedule and the win/loss record of each team? Here’s a graph showing the correlation between home game percentages and winning percentages.

In this graph, the dashed line represents the perfect correlation between home games and wins. If each team won an equal number of games as home games played, each team would fall on this line. The light blue line is the linear weighted trend-line for the graph. As you can see, there is very little correlation between the winning percentages of teams and the percentage of games played at home. The Yankees, Brave, Dodgers, Cardinals, and Phillies all have above .500 records while playing more road games than home games. In fact, the Phillies have played a higher percentage of road games than the Nats through June 2nd. The Astros and Managers have managed to play significantly below .500 while playing several extra home games.

This is bad news for Nats fans hoping the Nats will hit a mid-season win streak with a couple of extended home stands. Hopefully the Nats will turn it around with better pitching (Stephen Strasburg, Scott Olsen) and the healthy return of Pudge Rodriguez.  While we are at it, a right fielder with a bat would be a big help. Unfortunately, home games alone won’t move the Nats back above .500.