BASEBALL INSIGHT
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
About Baseball Insight content:
What exactly is SITE3 anyway?
Why don't you tell me who to bet on?
Why isn't Joe Unknown listed with the pitchers?
Why worry about run scoring
averages?
Why do you record the Logs the way you do?
Why don't you update the stats every day
or every hour or every second?
About baseball gambling generally
What is the best stat to use for predictions?
Why doesn't ERA tell you who is going to win?
Why is the money line so confusing?
About baseball & statistics generally
How do you figure the ERA?
Why don't you use medians instead of means?
About BASEBALL INSIGHT & The Friendly Editor
How and when and why did Baseball
Insight get started?
Are old Logs and books still available?
We get more questions about SITE3 than
anything else in the newsletter. It accompanies the 3-year pitcher W-L & ERA v. an
opponent. Site3 pares the 3-year into home or road starts, and what appears depends on
where the series of games is being played. It is keyed to the current schedule. Site3 is a
response to the "how does he do in this ballpark?" question, although it does
not specifically answer that question. Ballparks change and pitchers move from team to
team. The closest we can do without "hand-carving'" every site3 we publish is to
key to opponent and home or road. NOTE: when a pitcher is traded his home park changes.
Andy Pettitte pitched for New York prior to going to Houston. If it were keyed only
to ballpark he would appear to have no home starts against any other team, because he had
never, for instance, faced the Dodgers in Houston, only his earlier home parks. Instead,
his home games are used, on the theory that some information is better than a succession
of 0-0 0.00 for all his (or any other traded pitcher's) home games.
Second most common question is some form of
"Why don't you just tell us who to bet on?" Well, that is just not the
purpose of Baseball Insight. Your Friendly Editor bets for fun and profit. "I cannot
understand how I enjoy it if someone tells me who to bet on. Others may feel differently,
but I would rather credit myself for winning and blame myself for losing than be spreading
credit/blame among others. Ain't no fun otherwise and I would never learn anything just
following another's advice about bets.. Beyond that, my limited experience providing picks
for others 12-15 years ago was mostly negative. I became tired of taking it upon myself to
get up early enough day-in-and-day-out to assess all the games in time to prescribe for
others. Many of those who pick games for others have long subscribed to Baseball Insight,
and we are not going to be competing with them anytime soon."
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Joe Unknown, a rookie just up or a career
bullpen pitcher making a single start does not have much of a history anyway. Sometimes it
is better to list pitchers who have some kind of record rather than listing
a series of 0-0 0.00 stats. This is especially true in the first couple of weeks of the
season. There are enough of those 0-0 guys anyway. If they hang around and accumulate a
record it could be useful and will be published.
Run scoring averages are
very helpful to totals betting, although certainly not the "key" to winning.
They are helpful to us in understanding the "why" behind some kinds of won-loss
records. If in May two teams are 5-1 at home v. lefthanders, and one gets 4.4 runs per
game and the other gets 7.1, we are looking at two completely different reasons for that
winning record. Make that record 1-5 (or 3-3) with the same run averages and different
pictures emerge.
The Logs began as the database used to
create Baseball Insight - and that is still the case. The logs reflect what was necessary
or desirable from that perspective. Several years passed before they were sold in any
form. There have been only a few changes over the years. Most common question is why odds
on the favorite and underdog use the same numbers ( e.g. -1.30 on fav, 1.30 on 'dog in
same game). That is to minimize errors and make it a bit easier to check the daily data
entry - so a "1.30 game" is that for both teams. In any line result figure,
compilation, or chart, the underdog gets +1.20 added when it wins a game at the 1.30
level, +1.30 for a 1.40 game won. etc.
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Updating the stats takes time and
there is only one Friendly Editor (Phil Erwin) to do it. In order to put the stats up on
the net we have to enter all the games, check them, revise the schedule and starting
pitchers, run the programs, edit the results into HTML so your browser can read it, be
sure links are working, FTP all that stuff (30 teams remember) to our web host, and cross
our fingers that some gremlin doesn't screw things up. Whew! As the FE likes to eat &
sleep & engage in non-baseball human activities, he promises only a couple of updates
a week. We list the next two series, in case something goes wrong or there is unforeseen
delay in updating. The paper-US mail edition is only once a week, remember. In
6 years we
have not missed a web update, and the only tardy edition of Baseball Insight was one day
late in August, 1985.
There is no such thing as the best stat to use for predictions.
There is no magic number. Many veteran subscribers like the
Site3 stat. Others swear by the Homev.lefts, etc. breakdowns. Statistics are snapshots of
a moving target anyway. Numbers can point us toward or away from something, but are not
the entire answer. One of your Friendly Editor's favorite useful stats is never published
in Baseball Insight but is in your newspaper every day - the last 10 games column, a
one-second way to see who has been playing well lately.
ERA doesn't tell you who is going to win
because it is not supposed to. It is a measure of pitching effectiveness. Better
measures may surely be devised, but ERA has the beauty and benefit of being in long use,
being easily and commonly understood, and effectively measuring what it is designed to
measure: the average number of earned runs a pitcher gives up per nine innings of work.
Any single statistic is a shorthand way of saying something, and cannot answer everything.
If ERA told us who had or was going to win, we would not need W-L.
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Get used to it! The money line seems
confusing because many gamblers come from the pointspread games, football and hoops.
At least the stated lines these days are mostly uniform with the -1.40 type of line, as
opposed to the 7 to 5 or the old Western 10 to 7 style of line. Horse players are used to
dealing with odds and often get into baseball lines easier than football bettors.
Think of the line as percentages if you want. If you are betting on that -1.40 favorite,
take a hand calculator and divide 1.40 by 2.40 to get .5833 - You are saying there is a
greater than 58.3% chance that the favorite team will win. The underdog in the same game
is +1.30 divided by 2.30 for .5652, then subtract from 1.00 to get .4348 for 43.5% chance.
You must think the 'dog has better than a 43.5% chance to bet on it. After a while you
develop a feel for the line.
Earned Run Average is earned runs
divided by innings pitched, times 9. An easier way may be earned runs times 9 divided by
innings pitched. 4 ER in 8 IP is 4*9/8 = 4.50. Like many baseball conventions, it comes
from the 19th century, when a pitcher started and finished most 9-inning games.
Medians and means say different
things statistically, and many bettors say medians should be used - especially in place of
run scoring averages, but also sometimes in place of the standard ERA. Your Friendly
Editor toys with the idea of changing means to median in a few places, but the problems
are big. Because most people already know or think they know what an "average"
is, they resist learning anything new. Any change from the traditional or familiar has to
be explained and explained and explained again. Then it has to be defended and defended
and defended. Till you are blue in the face. Then many of the people who say they 'get it'
do not get it, and, most importantly to us, will no longer be customers.
Baseball Insight started when Phil Erwin discovered his main baseball interest was when and why teams win and lose
games. Because there was little in the way of information relating to that, he started
keeping his own stats. Then he discovered gamblers were interested in the same things, and
that there were few publications for the baseball gamblers. Baseball Insight started in
1982 and is still going and going …
Past Logs are best on disk. One-year,
three-year, and ten-year versions of the database are available. Sent in both dBase
5.0 .dbf files, Excel (.xls) and ascii or dos .txt files, for the one year,
3-year, and
10-year. Now always sent on CD-Rom. We do not sell programs, but the databases will go into
most spreadsheet or database programs (Excel, Access). Paper versions are in the Annuals
($19.95 each for which have the prior season Logs). See order page: www.baseball-insight.com/order1.htm
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