bukie

But you'd be okay with them trading 7 guys for a closer? Yes, that's exactly what I said. What this thread really needed was a semantics argument.

Wow, the Mets traded seven players for two relievers and an OF equivalent of Endy Chavez (who they traded away in the deal)? And somehow this was a good trade for the Mets? I'd be furious if the Cubs traded seven guys for a setup man.

The thing that makes the ACC somewhat unique this year is there aren't even any below average teams. The worst team in the conference is Duke, which is ranked 55th in the Sagarin predictors. NC State (59), Maryland (64), Virginia (51), Wake Forest (31), Miami (37), Boston College (27), North Carolina (24), Clemson (20), Georgia Tech (26), Virginia Tech (23) and Florida State (21) make up the rest of the conference. Using the ELO ratings, the teams are even higher. Comparing teams evenly top to bottom, or even weighted more to the middle of the conference, the ACC comes out really high overall this year. Sure, no top 10 teams, but all 12 teams are in the upper half of the FBS.

For the people who couldn't care less about the numbers, here's a set of power rankings based on my calculations: 1. San Jose 2. Boston 3. Minnesota 4. Chicago 5. Detroit 6. Vancouver 7. Pittsburgh 8. Montreal 9. New Jersey 10. Philadelphia 11. Anaheim 12. Washington 13. NY Rangers 14. Ottawa 15. Calgary 16. Los Angeles 17. Edmonton 18. St. Louis 19. Buffalo 20. Nashville 21. Colorado 22. Columbus 23. Florida 24. Phoenix 25. Toronto 26. Carolina 27. Atlanta 28. Dallas 29. NY Islanders 30. Tampa Bay

Even more stat geekery... Thanks to Kyle, I started thinking about a possible way to do a pythagorean based on goal differential. In baseball, the Pythagorean expected value for a team is calculated by (Runs Scored)^2 ------------------------------------------- (Runs Scored)^2 + (Runs Allowed)^2 That works for baseball because the average team is at .500. However, as has been discussed, a winning percentage is impossible to calculate accurately, because teams are awarded for overtime losses, meaning not every game has an equal weight. So, I calculated the average number of points per game to be approximately 1.125, or 9/8. So, I decided to come up with a slight variation on pythagorean with the average PPG factored in (which will, obviously, fluctuate from week to week and even year to year). To calculate the pythagorean estimated points for a team, then, I went with the following formula: (Goals Scored)^2 ------------------------------------ * (Total Possible Points) * (Average PPG) (Goals Scored)^2 + (Goals Allowed)^2 ...with the total possible points being twice the number of games played (i.e. a win every game). That produced what I'll call Pythagorean Points (PYPs). This was interesting, but still a little misleading, because there was a variation on the number of games each team played. So, for example, the Hawks PYP was 33.9, while Vancouver's was 36.2, but Vancouver had played 3 additional games, so on average the Hawks were still doing better. So, I took it a step further, and calculated the Pythagorean PPG (PY-PPG) in an effort to gauge the effective point rate of each team for comparison. Very similar to the prior formula: (Goals Scored)^2 ------------------------------------ * (Average PPG) (Goals Scored)^2 + (Goals Allowed)^2 So, finally, I ran PYP and PY-PPG on every team, and calculated the difference between the expected and actual values (a negative value for Diff means they are under-performing their expectation, and a positive value means they are over-performing their expectation), and then sorted the teams in order of PY-PPG (the expected point rate based on pythagorean) to come up with the Adjusted NHL Standings: Eastern Conference Teams Division Games Points GF GA PPG PYP Diff PY-PPG PPG-Diff Boston Northeast 27 42 94 59 1.556 43.6 -1.6 1.614 -0.059 Pittsburgh Atlantic 27 34 87 75 1.259 34.9 -0.9 1.291 -0.031 Montreal Northeast 26 35 79 69 1.346 33.2 1.8 1.276 0.070 New Jersey Atlantic 24 30 70 63 1.250 29.8 0.2 1.243 0.007 Philadelphia Atlantic 26 32 84 78 1.231 31.4 0.6 1.208 0.023 Washington Southeast 28 33 88 86 1.179 32.2 0.8 1.151 0.028 NY Rangers Atlantic 30 38 77 76 1.267 34.2 3.8 1.140 0.127 Ottawa Northeast 25 25 63 63 1.000 28.1 -3.1 1.125 -0.125 Buffalo Northeast 27 29 74 79 1.074 28.4 0.6 1.052 0.023 Florida Southeast 27 27 67 76 1.000 26.6 0.4 0.984 0.016 Toronto Northeast 28 26 84 98 0.929 26.7 -0.7 0.953 -0.024 Carolina Southeast 28 29 71 83 1.036 26.6 2.4 0.951 0.085 Atlanta Southeast 26 21 77 93 0.808 23.8 -2.8 0.915 -0.107 NY Islanders Atlantic 27 22 70 94 0.815 21.7 0.3 0.803 0.012 Tampa Bay Southeast 27 20 63 88 0.741 20.6 -0.6 0.762 -0.022 Western Conference Teams Division Games Points GF GA PPG PYP Diff PY-PPG PPG-Diff San Jose Pacific 27 46 102 64 1.704 43.6 2.4 1.614 0.089 Minnesota Northwest 26 31 72 56 1.192 36.5 -5.5 1.402 -0.210 Chicago Central 25 31 90 73 1.240 33.9 -2.9 1.357 -0.117 Detroit Central 26 40 95 80 1.538 34.2 5.8 1.316 0.222 Vancouver Northwest 28 33 86 74 1.179 36.2 -3.2 1.293 -0.114 Anaheim Pacific 28 33 82 79 1.179 32.7 0.3 1.167 0.012 Calgary Northwest 27 33 80 80 1.222 30.4 2.6 1.125 0.097 Los Angeles Pacific 26 26 69 72 1.000 28.0 -2.0 1.077 -0.077 Edmonton Northwest 26 28 74 78 1.077 27.7 0.3 1.066 0.011 St. Louis Central 26 27 76 81 1.038 27.4 -0.4 1.053 -0.015 Nashville Central 27 30 77 85 1.111 27.4 2.6 1.014 0.097 Colorado Northwest 27 27 72 80 1.000 27.2 -0.2 1.007 -0.007 Columbus Central 27 25 76 86 0.926 26.6 -1.6 0.987 -0.061 Phoenix Pacific 27 26 69 79 0.963 26.3 -0.3 0.974 -0.011 Dallas Pacific 26 24 72 93 0.923 21.9 2.1 0.843 0.080 Interesting data, but take it with a grain of salt, as I currently have no idea how much this fluctuates from day to day, let alone week to week. However, according to the data: - Minnesota is the team most under-performing their statistics, by a wide margin over the Blackhawks and Senators - Detroit is the team most over-performing their statistics, by a wide margin over the Rangers.

The trouble with doing a pythagorean system is it will come up with an equivalent winning percentage, which just doesn't work with hockey. Or maybe it will if I modify the rate calculations slightly and do it based on current points / possible points.

I'm probably in the minority, but I liked the system they went with for a year where they awarded 3 points for a regulation win, 2 for an OT win/SOW, and 1 for an OT/SOL. It was too hard for the average consumer to keep up with, though, on the whole. At least then all games are weighted equally, and teams would actually go for the win in regulation since it meant something extra.

SOLs screw with the winning % system, since it's technically a loss for one team and a win for the other, and yet an extra point is awarded. what I'm asking is why not ditch SOL's, make it a straight up W-L record and go with win %? Because the league still wants to reward a team for pushing a game past regulation.

SOLs screw with the winning % system, since it's technically a loss for one team and a win for the other, and yet an extra point is awarded.

Addendum: NHL average (1.125 points per team per game) roughly translates to earning 9 points every 8 games, or going 4-3-1/3-2-3/2-1-5/1-0-7 in every 8 game stretch. EDIT: I do believe that only the Blackhawks have the ability to go 1-0-7 in an 8 game stretch.

Warning: math geek stuff ahead... I was curious how the average NHL team was doing so far in terms of points (W-L-OTL) per game, since games award 2 points overall for a regulation game and 3 for an overtime game. Through calculations, I found the NHL averaging 1.13 points per game per team. So, any team above that rate is doing better than average, and any team below that rate is doing below average. So, how are the NHL teams doing? Here's the rewritten conference standings, in order of points per game: Eastern Conference Teams P-Rate ------------------------------ Boston 1.556 Montreal 1.346 NY Rangers 1.267 Pittsburgh 1.259 New Jersey 1.250 Philadelphia 1.231 Washington 1.178 Buffalo 1.074 Carolina 1.036 Ottawa 1.000 Florida 1.000 Toronto 0.929 NY Islanders 0.815 Atlanta 0.808 Tampa Bay 0.741 Western Conference Teams P-Rate ------------------------------ San Jose 1.704 Detroit 1.538 Chicago 1.240 Calgary 1.222 Minnesota 1.192 Vancouver 1.179 Anaheim 1.179 Nashville 1.111 Edmonton 1.077 St. Louis 1.038 Colorado 1.000 Los Angeles 1.000 Phoenix 0.963 Columbus 0.926 Dallas 0.923 Some notes based on the data: - There are currently 14 teams playing above average, 7 in each league. Obviously, since just over half the league makes the playoffs, a team is going to have to be darn near close to average to make the playoffs. - San Jose is a clear step above everyone else. There's more difference between them and the second tier of teams (Detroit and Boston) than there is between the 3 seed in the West and missing the playoffs entirely. - There's actually a pretty clear "top 7" in the East right now, all teams fairly safe bets right now to make the playoffs even if they fall off slightly (Washington mostly because someone has to win that division, and they're pretty clear favorites). - After the top 2, the West is pretty up in the air, in general. Even the last place team, Dallas, isn't that far out of playoff contention.

Big Ten teams are involved in 6 of my top 7 confidence picks. Just horrible matchups all around for them this year. And great matchups for the SEC.

My biggest concern are those matchups where one team is clearly, clearly better, but they've already phoned in the season. (like, S. Florida vs. Memphis or ND vs. Hawaii)

Could be the year for NW to make the NCAAs.

Yeah, if the Lions win, all of a sudden the NFC North swings from "Vikings in the drivers' seat" to complete chaos.

I agree on MSU. When they were ranked 5 or whatever it was to start the year I was shocked. Any team a year removed from losing to a team as bad as Iowa (especially Iowa, they were terrible) and Penn State were last year shouldn't be in the top ten the next year. On top of that they've struggled against some teams they shouldn't be struggling against, IPFW and Witchita State, and got smoked by Maryland on a neutral floor, a team in which the much inferior Wolverines only lost to by five on their court. So, yeah, Michigan State is overrated and they have been since 2005. I think they are still ranking high in the rankings to start the year because of Izzo and being really good in the late 90's early 2000's. According to today's Pomeroy ratings, 7 of the 11 Big Ten teams (Illinois, MSU, PSU, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin) are between the 40th and 68th best teams in the country. Granted, it also indicates that Northwestern is the 29th best team in the country and the third best in the Big Ten, so take it all in perspective. As Sagarin goes: 20. Ohio State 21. Purdue 36. Illinois 39. Michigan State 41. Wisconsin 42. Northwestern 64. Michigan 67. Penn State 70. Iowa 86. Minnesota 184. Indiana

That's fine when the outcome is unknown but in this comparison when the outcome is known, and with the figures we are talking about, I think it is a different story. An out is also a known outcome. Yes, a HR is obviously better than a walk with all other things equal, because a HR contributes equally as a walk to the OBP. Making an out essentially means you've ended 1/27 of the game. Not making an out means you've extended the game without limitation.

It's difficult to get past tradition, which really undervalues the out. The HR is also a lot more exciting and produces more instant gratification than merely not making an out. It's true though, the out is the most valuable commodity in baseball, since the very mechanics of the game are based on a limited number of them.

The biggest thing that will hurt middle Big Ten teams like Illinois, Penn State, Northwestern, Minnesota, and even Michigan is the perception of weakness in the conference. The BT/ACC challenge is technically meaningless in terms of overall conference strength, but winning that challenge this year would've meant a lot for the public perception of the conference. Stupid Illini.

I have a feeling that there are going to be a lot of teams between 8-10 and 10-8 in the Big Ten this year. Could be the kind of year where nobody has fewer than 5-6 losses in conference.

EqA: Brian Giles: .314 Ryan Braun: .294 RARP Giles: 47.6 Braun: 35.6 Yes, Giles was a better overall player than Braun last year. So was Aramis Ramirez, actually, although that comparison is a lot closer.

If anything, the BT/ACC challenge this year shows how deep the Big Ten really is, except for IU. Also, the Big Ten has no really great teams, just a lot of decent to good teams. Purdue and MSU are likely better than they played (although MSU has looked bad twice already this year), but it should be an interesting year in conference with 10 competitive teams.

Duke's greatest strengths over the years has been limiting the turnovers they commit and limiting their opponents from shooting 3's. Purdue's team thrives on creating turnovers and shooting 3's. It was an awful matchup for Purdue. Purdue isn't as bad as they looked last night, and Duke isn't as good as they looked.

They're a bubble team at least, which is more than they were last year.

In order of who I think deserves it most: 1. Rickey Henderson 2. Bert Blyleven 3. Mark McGwire (Frankly, at this point, I don't care anymore. Everyone knows he did Andro when it wasn't against the rules, and he was a memorable slugger in the 90's. His status deserves it even if you choose to completely ignore his stats.) 4. Alan Trammell 5. Tim Raines 6. Dale Murphy 7. Andre Dawson 8. Mark Grace 9. Jim Rice 10. Lee Smith I'd probably limit it to the first 5 that truly deserve entry, though.