MLB 6/17/17

Late getting home but thanks to the rain delay I guess I still have time to say (type) a few words. Godley has hit the major circuit this year like an experienced pro with a 6-1 quality start and 5-2 head to head results. The skills and composure are such that he needs fear no team and no park. Eickhoff has struggled badly, maybe the sophomore jinx where everyone knows what you have now, but maybe also a lack of confidence or execution. He may settle in yet this year or come out better next year, but none of that speculation is applicable today, and today’s results are what we care about. No knock on the young man, he may have a fine career, but the evidence is not there TODAY.

We don’t need a write up concerning the offenses. Everyone knows the Diamondbacks is much better and has a much higher potential today.

What I will address is home field advantage and starting pitcher home/road dichotomies. Both are vastly overrated and distort bettor’s views of the true probability in any given game.

Home field advantage is a very important aspect of college football and basketball, far less in pro football and basketball, and almost insignificant in MLB. Not totally, but close.

SABRmetric fans are always screaming about things that must regress to the mean. Sometimes I agree with them, sometimes not, but remember this about HFA and pitcher’s H/A stats in MLB. Both will “regress toward the mean”. In other words, water seeks its own level. Teams like Arizona and Baltimore will not finish the season with wildly different H/A dichotomies. In both cases they will step it up on the road and cool slightly at home, and those numbers, by the end of September, will look much closer to whatever overall win percentage they end the season with. Water seeking its own level.

The same can be said for major league pitcher individual stats. Water will seek its own level and those stats will not be so far apart at the end of September as they are now, when, for one thing, sample sizes are still relatively small and bettors are not inclined to forgive a bad road performance in April when the guy has had three or four solid road appearances since then.

Time marches on, teams and individuals both change during a season, and recent performance is much more indicative of today’s performance than games in April. Those games still have meaning but my methodology slowly phases them out to the point of irrelevance. I don’t consider myself a stupid man, but I do subscribe to the K.I.S.S. philosophy, Keep It Simple, Stupid.  

The two most dominant factors in any baseball game are pitching and hitting and those two combined are 95% of the battle. H/A, H/A stats, umpires, roofs open or closed, ball girls buck teeth, etc., etc., are all much smaller considerations.