Phillies vs. Mets

Baseball Prospectus, a great web site that caters to NJ ( Nerdy Justin ) had a great piece yesterday on the current three game series between the New York Mets and the Phillies.  You’ll need a memberhip to Baseball Prospectus ( $5 / month ) to read the whole article, but the gist was that the two teams are relatively evenly matched in a number of statistical categories especially pitching depth throughout the team.  The piece has a very technical analysis of how well the Phillies have performed so far compared to how they were expected to at this point based on information such as the total number of runs the team has scored and how many they “should have”.

This short paper on “Regression to the Mean” is helpful in understanding the point made in the article about how Raul Ibanez is likely to perform at a slightly lower level during the remainder of the season than he has so far.

Since the Phillies were unlucky last night, let’s hope they can salvage a 2-1 record for this series and be energized for their return to Philly later this week!

Anti-Capitalism Rant

First off, Congrats to the Phillies for winning the 2008 World Series!  This was a spectacular season, and I’m already looking forward to next year’s games!

I was very disappointed to find that some individuals went online to the Phillies web site earlier today when tickets to a FREE celebratory event at the stadium were made available to Internet users, and requested tickets with no intention of actually going to the event.  Rather, these selfish individuals listed the free tickets on Ebay and Craigs List in the hopes of making a quick buck.

Here is a screen capture of one Ebay listing I find particularly despicable.  It is just as obscene that people are willing to pay over $100 a seat to a “free” event as it is for people to try to make a profit on it.  The person selling these tickets is based in the State of Massachusetts, not anywhere even close to Philadelphia.  If the event is FREE, then the expenses people incur in attending the event would reasonbly include things like train tickets to ride into the city to see the event, food and drinks at the event, and commemorative merchandise sold at or near the event like T-Shirts and hats.  Not admission itself.

Simply disgusting.

Visualization of 2008 World Series Probabilities

Using data derived from mathematical simulations run by Baseball Prospectus, I made this chart in Excel that shows their predictions, by day, of who might win this year’s World Series.

Notice how the Chicago Cubs ( the teal blue line that starts above 30 percent on October 1 ) were quickly eliminated, and now have a (sigh) 0 percent chance of winning this year’s World Series.  The probability for my Phillies, 19.13 percent, isn’t all that bad; it’s the best we’ve had in a LONG time and I’m very excited for this year’s ALCS and NLCS to start up.

J. A. Happ is Worthy!

J. A. Happ - photo from philly.com

Tonight, J. A. Happ earned his first victory pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies, after throwing six shut out innings against the Atlanta Braves.  Hopefully we’ll get to see him pitch more throughout the remainder of this season and in the future, since he rates pretty high on the worthiness meter (in my opinion).  He might even be a candidate for the “GQ” player of the Phillies if he sticks around, just as some people consider David Wright of the Mets to be too “pretty” to be a baseball player.

The Phillies NEED to Win This Weekend

Over the next three days, the Phillies will play a three game series in New York against the Mets.  There are four possible outcomes after these three games are played, and only one of them is acceptable to me.

Consider this table which would show the records of the Phillies and Mets after the three games are played for each possible case:

Games Phillies Win	Phillies Record	Mets Record	Phillies # of Games Behind	Is Phillies’ Goose Cooked ?
0	76-64	82-61	6	Yes
1	77-64	81-62	4	Yes
2	78-64	80-63	2	Partially
3	79-64	79-64	0	No

So, let’s root, root root for the Phil…..lies…. ’cause if they don’t win, it’s a shame!!!

Chase Utley

Angelo Cataldi feels that Chase Utley might be one of the best Philadlephia sports figure ever.  I might just have to agree with him.  I appreciate that a large portion of his argument relates to how Utley is a “class act” player who is friendly to anyone; it’s amazing that this fact is so often overlooked when evaluating prominent individuals.

What Made the Phillies Unlucky?

Was it the green hats?

Or this hypocritical text message that someone was sending on her phone? ( Neil is the worst person to go on a date with he just texts! )

Or was it the frigid 50 degree weather?  Or some other reason?

Who knows?  There’s plenty more chances for my Phillies to win, even if tonight was their off night!

Phillies fans like to dance!

Here’s a cool video of two energetic, drunk (?) Phillies fans dancing to a popular Justin Timberlake song.

F2 6Utley 2 B 6Howard 1

While it’s usually very enjoyable to watch a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park, sometimes poor scoreboard operation or programming impairs my ability to follow the game.  During the most recent game I saw, the score was tied 7-7 Phillies Nationals, and I was interested in seeing statistics on the current batter.   Not only was the batter stats box (Kearns) different from the batter indicated by the batting order indicator (Belliard), there were no stats present in the Kearns stats box except for an obviously incorrect batting average of 3.3.  The inning numbers are misaligned, as are the player numbers and position abbreviations.  Wow!  And this is the major leagues!

Feel free to click the photo to view it full-size.

Florida “Walker” Weather Dampens my Tampa Bay v. Phillies Game

Today, the temperature dropped from the mid 70’s to the low 60’s in a matter of just an hour in Tampa because of heavy rain and thunder. When you’re wearing an Under Armour shirt with a Phillies jersey on top of it, the low 60’s feels cold. At least a few sufficiently worthy baseball players were seen before the game was called after 5 innings of play.

Tampa Player

Tampa Player
Pleasant weather at beginning of game

Bad weather when game was called

They need to learn proper grammar for their signs.

Let’s Go Phillies !