Sox Therapy: I learned how to write a Monte Carlo sim in Excel

Who says nothing good came out of the epic Sox collapse of aught-eleven?

Here’s your data.  To make things a little cleaner, I’m not using as many different team quality scenarios.  I have the pessimistic scenario, wherein the Sox are a terrible club (.48 ExpWP), and the Rays and Angels are very good (.6 and .57 ExpWP), I have the BPro W3% scenario, where the Sox at .61 lead the Rays and Angels at .57 and .53, and a parity scenario where the Sox at .55 are a bit behind the Rays and Angels at ...

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Sox Therapy: Errors

I’m of the opinion that the Red Sox have actually gotten tight and have actually been affected by the pressure.  As per the post a week ago, I don’t think that this means the team is screwed - slumps and choking events can end, human beings can get themselves together, and events can turn out ok.  I’m still confident that these are professional baseball players who are likely to play professional baseball well when they take the field.

But I think that out on the field, the Red Sox have been ...

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Sox Therapy: The Red Sox may lose the Wild Card

I don’t foresee myself having a lot of time to talk baseball in the next week, so y’all ought to have a thread.  The chance of the Red Sox losing the Wild Card to the Rays is now somewhere 15 and 25%, and a lot of it depends on how well the Yankees play in their seven games with the Rays and three with the Sox.  Today we are all Yankee fans.  So even if the Sox do hang on, this has happened, and it is horrible.

Here are the numbers from the old log5 for the remaining schedule spreadsheet.  I’m ...

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SABR - BBTF Chapter: Save the Date: 2012 SABR Convention in Minneapolis

Our next national convention will be held June 27-July 1, 2012, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The Twins are scheduled to play host to the Kansas City Royals in a weekend series at Target Field, which opened in 2010. In addition, a trip is tentatively planned to see a St. Paul Saints minor league game.

It wasn’t the weekend that I would have preferred (too close to Paula’s birthday) but we’ll make it work.

Sox Therapy: In which I listen to Theo Epstein’s public statements

Theo gave an interview to WEEI this morning, helpfully transcribed at the Globe Extra Bases blog. I like what he had to say about the losing streak.

On if the bad play becomes contagious throughout the team: "It seems that way. It's hard to tell whether it actually is. It probably is to a small extent and beyond that it's just seems that way when so many things aren't going well. I do think that when you have a run of bad starting pitching, it does obviously impact the bullpen, and has a ...

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Sox Therapy: So you say you want to piss your pants, well, you know (pt 2)

I’ve recently been posting some aggressively optimistic things about the Red Sox, even as they stumble awkwardly down the stretch like some sort of drunken Kevin Youkilis. I’d like to explain myself in a bit more detail, after yet another ugly loss. There have been numbers tossed around in the other threads which were clearly based on a poorly calibrated PNOOMA system. 75% chance the Sox make the playoffs. No, it’s 85%. All while the BPro numbers still hold around 99%. One of the ...Read More...

Hall of Merit: Most Meritorious Player: 1964 Results

Congratulations to Willie Mays, who was 1964's Most Meritorious Player by a substantial majority.

                  1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9     10     Pts
Willie Mays       11    2                                                      193
Dick Allen         2    6     3     2                                          177
Ron Santo               3     5     3     1                                    154
Dean Chance             1     5     2     1     2     2 ...

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Hall of Merit: Most Meritorious Player: 1965 Discussion

In the American League, a long era of Yankee dominance was ended when the Minnesota Twins grabbed the pennant. The race retained its rather one-sided flavour in that Minnesota were clearly the team to beat. After 4 July, they were never out of first place. However, their strongest challenger varied throughout the season. Chicago took the role at first, then Baltimore and Cleveland. Baltimore managed to sustain their challenge for longest, but after a brief run for the top by Detroit, it was ...Read More...

Sox Therapy: Call me Dr. Cliff Jinxtable

Today the Red Sox playoff odds on the BP postseason report broke over 99.95% and are listed at 100%. I think it’s time to start talking about the playoffs. There are a lot of different topics worth covering, and this isn’t meant to cover all of them. We can do playoff roster and bench player stuff later, it’ll be fun, but the outcomes probably won’t matter much. What will probably matter is who pitches in a Game 4 and who pitches in the 7th inning. The big problem with the Red ...Read More...

Sox Therapy: A Series of Imaginable Significance

Unlike Terry Francona and Joe Girardi, I care who wins the American League East pennant. The three-game series between their clubs, which begins tonight in Boston, will shape that pennant race in important ways. This would be a bigger deal if either the Red Sox or Yankees, as organizations, appeared to care about the outcome of the race. With both teams secure in their playoff berths, barring historic meltdowns, we are unlikely to see three games managed with any particular intensity. But I ...Read More...