First Quarter Reporting: NL Central

I feel St. Louis is going to win the NL Central division with relative ease because its strengths play so well in a division in which the other five teams have mirror image weaknesses. Even allowing for some interleague differences, essentially all six teams play the same opponents. Given that, how are the Cardinals possibly going to be outscored by other NL Central offenses? Through 40 games, the Cardinals are the only team in the division whose batters walk more than the league average. The same batters also strike out at the lowest rate in the division. Those skills tend to stabilize very quickly so it’s safe to assume that even before they hit the ball, the Cardinals will own a sizeable competitive advantage versus their peers for the entire year.

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First Quarter Reporting: NL East

As a life-long Phillies fan, I watched most of the games the Phillies played in April and the lack of extra-base hits generated by a line up without Chase Utley and Ron Howard was maddening. On the other hand, for mid-90s film buffs, by the time the month ended I was sure that when they make the documentary film of the Phillies 2012 season, Cameron Crowe would direct it and it would star Matt Dillon and Bridget Fonda.

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First Quarter Reporting: AL West

I run my model before every game is played and it’s based off of the same information that goes into the preseason projections. In doing so, I take the starting line up of each team, including that night’s starting pitcher, and estimate how many games that particular configuration of talent would win if it played all 162 games. (For instance, behind Yu Darvish in his last start, the Rangers sported, by my calculations, a 104-win line up.) I averaged the sum of those wins for the Texas’ first 40 games and calculate the Rangers, on average, sent a 96-win team on the field each game. Yet, I only estimated those same players would win 88 games over the course of the season.

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First Quarter Reporting: AL Central

Consider two pitching staffs of two teams, Team A and Team B. Team B has recorded more strikeouts, therefore fewer opposing batters hit balls into the field of play. Edge to the pitching staff of Team B. Team B walks fewer people, and by a material amount. Players that don’t walk can’t score on subsequent hits. Edge to Team B. Of the balls that were hit into play, exactly the same percentage were hit on the ground and for all intents and purposes the same percentage of fly balls were hit to the outfield. However the line drive and pop up rates are different. Line drives fall for hits more often than any other type of hit while pop ups are always caught (Mets fielders excepted.) Due to fewer line drives allowed and more pop ups induced, a final, significant edge goes to Team B’s pitching staff. Which team has given up more runs?

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First Quarter Reporting: AL East

As soon as the New Year’s holiday ends and the American economy begins another calendar year, stock market observers can count on being assaulted by headline writers and business commentators using the phrase “As January goes, so goes the year.” The problem with that belief is that the data is often misused. To learn that the market stands a strong chance of being up at the end of the year after January has been up doesn’t mean much because, of course, the market already has a head start. It turns out that when you exclude January’s results, the predictive effect of the next eleven months weakens considerably, and there is a debate as to whether there is any predictive power to the first month of trading.

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