Week 16 NFL Picks: Now from Seoul

I've been living in Seoul for the last two weeks, so I haven't been able to watch any games except for my Giants absolutely destroying the Redskins and looking like a playofff team again. Anyway here are my picks. I told someone I could go 12/16 this week, so hopefully there aren't too many upsets:


12/25: San Diego at Tennessee: SD is always good in December and beat the Titans the last time they faced each other.

12/27: Seattle at Green Bay: Seattle isn't doing anything against the GB defense. If they couldn't stop Josh Freeman, Aaron Rodgers will tear them apart.

Oakland at Cleveland: Terrible terrible matchup. Can't like either team. One of the at least four I will get wrong.

Cincinnati at KC. Bengals will roll. Larry Johnson won't touch the ball enough to get revenge on his own team but ~50yards from him wouldn't be surprising. Bengals win by two touchdowns to beat the spread.

At Atlanta v. Buffalo: This is a Buffalo team that has made it tight against the Patriots and an Atlanta team that hasn't done anything recently. Michael Turner won't be playing either. They don't the spread.

Houston at Miami: I can totally see everything happening in the Jets favor in order to set up:

Jets At Indianapolis: It doesn't matter if the Colts treat this like a preseason game; the Jets won't beat the spread.

Carolina at Giants: Giants will absolutely roll. Carolina isn't good at the big play (NY's biggest weakness) and they just lost their starting QB.

Tampa Bay at at New Orleans: Who dat will crush whoever they start.

Jacksonville at NEP: Jville beats the spread because they can win on the road.

Baltimore at Pittsburgh: Big Ben passes for either ~125 yards or ~350 yards. No doubt they beat the spread.

Denver at Philly: The Broncos are just broken right now. This loss won't hurt them too much in the WC race though.

STL at Arizona: A 14 point spread might be giving way too much credit to the Rams.

Detroit at SF49ers: I <3 Alex Smith. I'm not sure they beat the 13 point spread but it won't ever feel like a close game.

Dallas at Washington: It was SOOOOOOO close to an upset the last time these teams faced eachother. Also Dallas can't run the ball and the only thing the Skins can do is defend against the pass.

edit:

The MNF game will be Bears > Vikings. Forgot about that one.

Week 13 NFL Picks

My predicted winner in bold:

12/3: Jets at Buffalo: This isn't really even a home game for Buffalo, since they're playing at Toronto. TO will be covered by Darrell Reeves the whole game and shouldn't be expected to produce. It must be nice for CFL fans to not have to endure such a long football drought though.

12/6 Games:

Denver at KC: After watching what the Broncos did to my Giants, KC even putting up a fight is unforeseeable. Broncos easily beat the 4.5 point spread.

Pittsburgh at Oakland: There is one thing Oakland does well, and that's defend against the pass. The Steelers are 15th in the NFL in rushing YPG and overly dependent on the pass. Oakland sucks, but they will beat the overly generous 14.5 point spread.

Houston at Jacksonville: I have know what is going on with David Garrard. I drafted him as my backup QB in most leagues but he has just been playing like the football is coated in vaseline. Unless MJD goes absolutely nuts I don't see them doing much against Houston.

Indianapolis at Tennessee: No reason to believe the Colts unbeaten streak will end here.

Philadelphia at Atlanta: An Atlanta team without Michael Turner AND Matt Ryan isn't going to be doing too much against the Philadelphia D. Philly easily beats the spread.

New Orleans at Washington: Considering how badly the Redskins did during their streak of playing teams without a win, they probably won't fare much better against a team with 12 of them. In all fairness, the Redskins do have the top-rated pass defense in the NFL...too bad they can't do anything else. 45 minute game for Brees, Pierre Thomas, and the rest of the Saints' starters.

Tampa Bay at Carolina: It's amazing what rookie Josh Freeman has done so far. However, he's due for an implosion and I can see it coming against the Panthers, whose defense is ranked third in passing yards allowed, in a three-way tie for seventh in interceptions, and tied for 10th with elite defense like the Steelers and Ravens for passing TDs allowed. Furthermore, DeAngelo Williams always turns it on against the Bucs too, rushing for 152 yards against them in their first meeting, and in their two 2008 games he rushed for 213 yards while averaging 7.1 yards per carry.

St. Louis At Chicago: Jay Cutler has to have a good game at some point, right? Even if it's against the team with the 30th worst passing defense in the NFL it stills count. St. Louis will be his slumpbuster as the Bears beat the spread.

Detroit at Cincinnati: I won't be surprised if Cedric Benson and Larry Johnson get more yards than the entire Detroit offense combined.

San Diego at Cleveland: The only real question about this game is if the Chargers care about padding LT's stats enough to leave him on the field past halftime.

San Francisco at Seattle: Alex Smith is the real deal, coming off a career game, and going up against a banged up defense. 49ers roll.

Minnesota at Arizona. Warner will be sitting and Arizona doesn't play well at home.

Dallas at NY Giants: Do-or-die for the Giants and they know it. They'll find their rhythm as Jacobs rushes for 100+ yards, as he has done in two of the last three Cowboys-Giants meetings (and he rushed for 95 in the third).

New England at Miami: The Dolphins have been a big surprise and the Pats' defense has been pretty atrocious, which I guess justifies the 3.5 point spread and Belichick's hatred of his defensive unit. Regardless, I can't see Miami and their lack of a passing threat making this a close game.

12/7 MNF Game:

Baltimore at Green Bay: The Ravens don't play well on the road and Aaron Rodgers is a beast. A beast I tell you!

Number 27

That is all. I can't even express my thoughts coherently right now.

This blog is now devoted to my move to Korea.

A Third Way

Two nights ago, AJ Burnett got absolutely lit up by the Phillies, giving up 6 runs in 2 innings. This was on three days rest, so it was treated as a big shock by the NY media. Of course, about 25% of Burnett's starts are really bad and you never really know what you are going to get. After all, last year he did go 3-0 with a 1.86 ERA on 3-days rest pitching in Toronto. There has been a lot of second guessing as to what Girardi should've done with the pitching rotation and it has centered around two choices:

1) Start Chad Gaudin in Game 5, who hadn't started in over a month and then have AJ and Pettite on full rest start Games 6 and 7 with CC coming out of the pen
2) Stick with the 3-man rotation

But there was a third option, that was of course never considered publicly: treat Game 5 like a spring training game. Why not take advantage of NY's extremely deep bullpen? Have a lineup that looks like:

Two innings of Gaudin...and then completely blowing Charlie Manuel's mind by going:
2IP: Joba
2IP: Robertson
2IP: Hughes
1IP: Rivera
(with doses of Marte and Coke sprinkled in as needed)

I would prefer not to start Gaudin, but Aceves instead. I would just start Gaudin so the trap could be sprung. Gaudin had no place starting against the Phillies anyway; he is absolutely killed by left-handed batting who hit 100 points of OPS higher against him than RHB. The Phillies left-handers would have destroyed him. If he couldn't handle left-handers in the caverns of Petco he definitely couldn't handle them in the bandbox of Philly.

Each of these relievers would be dealing HEAT and it would be a glory to watch.

This couldn't have been any more ineffective than Burnett and the bullpen would be rested due to the off-day in time for Game 6 if it were needed. But it's unfortunate that managers are to risk averse and would rather fail in old-fashioned ways than running the risk of failing in an original way and being crucified for it.

Runner up of the Year pt. 1

Who deserves to win MVP and Cy Young in both leagues is pretty clear-cut. There is absolutely no way Albert Pujols, Joe Mauer, Adam Wainwright and Zach Grienke won't win their respective awards. There shouldn't even be a debate. Well, Carpenter or Wainwright will win NL Cy Young but Carpenter probably won't because there has never been a non-closer who won while pitching fewer than 200 innings. So if he does he win color me surprised.

The real race will be who will come in second. Most interesting is AL MVP. A lot has been written about Jeter vs. Teixera and one of those two will finish second so I'm going to not try and make any arguments about their numbers, which are pretty easy to find, and Teixera posts pretty much the exact same line every year.

Teixera has been good this year. Mark Teixera good. He's posted Gold Glove caliber defense and has impressive range. But defense doesn't matter that much when you play first base. It's the easiest position to play and any position player can be converted to it. You don't even need a good arm. But what's Teixera's true value? Not very high. Something valuable is rare, but every team that was in the AL playoff race had a first baseman who posted similar numbers to Tex. He's competing with four other first basemen who posted lines of around .300/30HRs/100RBIs. Three other 1B had OPS over .900. They also all play for lesser offensive teams so their contributions were more unique. There really isn't anything to separate Teixera from Kendry Morales, Kevin Youklis, Miguel Cabrera, and Justin Morneau, aside from slightly better defense. But fielding at first base isn't that valuable. So first base MVP is a push, with a slight edge to any of them depending on how much you value defense, OBP, and slugging on a weak hitting team. Note to fantasy players: First base will always be really deep so don't waste a first-round pick on a player whose name doesn't rhyme with "Ballhurt Truholes"

How many AL shortstops who played for contending teams posted quality defense to go along with great offensive numbers? Exactly one - Jeter, and that's what makes him the second most valuable player in the American League in 2009.

"An American League Offense in the National League"

I forget who said that, but it seems to be a common theme in discussing the upcoming Phils-Yanks World Series. It also sounds pretty catchy. But it's by no means true.

The Phillies are, without a doubt, the hardest hitting team in the National League. They led the league in runs scored, homers, slugging, and isolated slugging. They're the only team with 4 players who've hit 30+ homers. In the NLCS they outscored the Dodgers 35 to 16, averaging 7 runs per game. ESPN analyst John Kruk, argued on air that the Yankees just won't be able to handle the Phillies "offensive onslaught" and would lose in 6. But are they really an American League caliber offense? Not really. When you consider that the Yankees beat two better hitting teams to get to the Fall Classic the argument that falls apart. The Phillies' knocking the Dodgers out of the park had as much to do with Torre's horrible starting pitcher selection as it did the Phillies' offensive capabilities. I wouldn't even call the Phils an AL East quality offense.

In OPS, the Phillies are fifth in the majors, behind the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, and Rockies. In runs scored they're fourth, behind the Yankees, Angels, and Sox. And they only scored three more runs than the Twins. And for all the power the Phillies lineup has, the Yankees hit 20 more homers and are, I believe, the only team in history with seven players with 20+ home runs. I won't deny their a great hitting team, but in the AL they'd be nothing special.

The Phillies run total is drastically inflated by the fact that they got to face the Nationals (5.02 team ERA) and the Mets (4.46 team ERA) and feast on their terrible pitching 18 times each. Against the Nats, the worst throwing team in MLB, they scored 116 of their 820 runs, almost 1/7th of their total runs even though they only played 1/9th of their games against them. The Phillies team OPS was .880 against the Nats, 100 points higher than their regular season average.

The most damning proof of this is looking at the third-order runs scored from Baseball Prospectus adjusted standings. These take into account the quality of opponents' pitching. The Yankees led the majors in adjusted equivalent runs, with 948. The Phillies scored 791 adjusted equivalent runs, which is good for second in the NL after the Rockies. But it would be good for 5th in the AL East, behind the Yanks, Rays, Sox, and Jays(!). It's 14 runs fewer than the Twins, and 87 runs fewer than the Angels. If they were in the AL, the Phillies would be tied for 8th with the Rangers in adjusted equivalent runs. That puts them...right in the middle of the road in terms of offensive power.

The Phillies have a strong offense, but there's no denying that the Yankees are stronger. It's time for analysts to stop pretending they're a more slugging team than the Yanks.

An IPhone app would have done a better job than Girardi last night

I speak of course of this awesome app

Girardi made so many dumb decisions in game three it was mind boggling. He'd consort his magic binder, which I can only assume is the MLB equivalent of "Ask Madden", and then proceed to help the Angels win the game. The defensive replacement of Damon for Hairston makes little sense. Hairston posted an ultimate zone rating of 0.4 in 2009. Damon posted an -11.2 UZR. That isn't a huge defensive upgrade and certainly not one worth sacrificing the designated hitter for.

This decision led to another bad decision. Mariano was due up in the top of 10th with two outs. So Girardi pinch-hit for him. Why he would do this boggles my mind. There is almost no chance of scoring a run in this situation. The pinch-hitter promptly grounded out. Rather than letting Rivera hit (and maybe hitting a home run, who knows), he had to be taken out of the game after having only pitched an inning.

The Yankees bullpen were settling into a rhythm. David Robertson had recorded two quick and easy outs. But then Girardi looks into his files and decides to pull Robertson and go with Aceves for whatever reason. Aceves promptly comes in and gives up a single and a walk-off double. At least he could have let Robertson try and finish the inning. The bullpen was pretty much empty by that point.

At least Nick Swisher didn't lay down any bunts.

Managers Making Their Team's Worse

This off-season, Tony La Russa will enter into negotiations with the Cardinals regarding his future status with the club. He is also rumored to be considering retirement. This would be in the best interest of the Cardinals, financially and for the club's future success.

TLR has an amazing managerial pedigree. He is third on the all-time managerial wins list with 2,552. He's second in Major League games managed with 4,773. Of all the managers currently in the game, La Russa is certainly the most storied and accomplished manager. In 2007, La Russa signed a 2-year deal worth $8.5million through 2009. That's $4.25 million dollars that the team isn't spending on talent. There is no way he is providing the team with four million dollars worth of wins If the Cards didn't have TLR they could've gotten Bobby Abreu, who would provide a great deal of value to any offense last off-season. Instead, they were weighed down by the manager's contract.

It's not even like TLR is that good a manager. He often hurts the team. He hates to give rookies playing time, even if they're better than the veterans. He manages his bullpen in an extremely inefficient way, bringing in relievers to just face one batter before swapping them out even though it has been shown that the marginal gain is practically zero. He also trusts his closers and uses predefined roles for his relievers too much. Ryan Franklin should've been lifted after the Holliday error and they should've brought in Smoltz or any other reliever, who could have gotten one out without allowing four baserunners. Another mistake he made was not pinch hitting for Carpenter when they were down a run in Game 1, top of the 5th, two outs, and a runner at second. Carp of course struck out. When you're losing, you need offense, not your ace pitcher sticking around making sure that making sure you don't lose by too much.

Joe Torre also does really dumb stuff that costs teams wins, yet he still holds a three-year 13 million dollar contract. He batted his best batter 7th (Matt Kemp and his .850 OPS) for most of the early part of the season. He sent a good number of Dodger relievers to the DL through overwork. He essentially threw Game 3 of the NLCS by starting Kuroda, who hadn't pitched in over a month and had just recovered from a spine injury. Would the Dodgers have also lost if they used Billingsley? Probably, but it would've been much less-risky and embarrassing than using Kuroda.

With Managers regularly executing idiotic moves, how can they justify their salaries? Their jobs should be to manage the players and follow the strategies that allow for maximum success, not to cling to ideas that have been proven ineffective. I have trouble understanding the logic of paying an individual so much money to hurt their team's chance of winning a game.

Why it's Bad to Face Vlad

First off, few things make me happier than:
1) A Yankees sweep
2) Red Sox getting swept

Except of course:
1) A Yankees sweep in the ALDS
2) Red Sox getting swept in the ALDS

Oh and the Giants absolutely stomped all over the Raiders. But that was their game to win, just like Game 3 was the Sox's to win. In what may have been Terry Francona's Grady Little moment, the wheels completely came off in the ninth inning. So I'd just like to thank the Halos and the Boston manager for vanquishing the Sox in the ALDS.

With a one-run lead, two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and first base empty, Jonathon Papelbon intentionally walked Torii Hunter to face former MVP Vladmir Guerrero. I didn't think a team would ever choose to face Guerrero with the bases loaded but that is besides the point. Then again, this is by far the worst year in Vlad's career. He put up a line of .295/.334/.460 and a miserable 50 RBIs after 10 years of reliably putting up an OPS >.900 to go with 30 HRs and 100 RBIs.

Even in this terrible off-year, Guerrero and his .334 OBP would get the tying run in 1/3rd of the time. If he was performing at his career levels, he would get it in 38.6% of the time. With Ellsbury at normal depth, Vlad would've flown and the game would have ended then. But with the center fielder playing no-doubles defense in deep center field, Vlad hit a fastball over the middle of the plate right to shallow center, plating two runners and giving the Angels the lead. Fuentes got the save and the Angels advanced to the ALCS.

I'll never understand why the Red Sox would choose to face Guerrero or why they would play to prevent Vlad from getting to second instead of to first, since what base Vlad ends up at makes no difference in the total number of runs scored. Torii Hunter and his .366 OBP made an out in 63.4% of his plate appearances this season. Why face someone who makes an out in a lower percentage of his plate appearances over him? And it isn't a small difference, Vlad's career OBP is .386 compared to Hunter's .330. John Farrell and Terry Francona were certainly aware of this. For it to have been the correct move to walk Hunter, Boston must have believed that the likelihood of Vlad making an out with the bases loaded was significantly greater than Hunter making one with runners on 2nd and 3rd. If you look at their OBPs (and their comparative ability to drive in runs), it wasn't. It was a dumb decision and they paid the appropriate price.

Also, Papelbon's appearance also demonstrated the meaningless of ERA. When he came in the 8th, TBS noted that he hadn't been charged with an earned run in 26 postseason innings...and Papelbon promptly allowed two inherited runners to score before making an out, raising that streak to 27. And if Ellsbury had been playing at normal depth, that streak would've continued to 28. His ERA is by no means an accurate measure of his performance.

Great day for a New York fan. Looking forward to the ALCS with the Angels.

Leaving Posada Out

Much has been made over Girardi's decision to leave Posada out of the Game 2 lineup. After all, Posada has been a long time post-season presence on the Yankees and who is Burnett to whine his way into having his own personal catcher? Can't the guy just pitch? Well, as we saw during Game 1, poor catcher's defense can be costly and a strong performance from Yankees starting pitchers is necessary for the team's success. Pitching in the playoffs for the first time is already hard enough; why make it harder for Burnett by giving him a batterymate he was so uncomfortable with during the regular season (4.96 ERA in his 16 starts with Posada)? His ERA is 3.28 in 11 starts with Molina.

But what of Posada's offensive contributions? According to the Lineup Analysis tool on Baseball Musings, the Yankees lineup that Girardi used in Game 1 would be expected to score 6.377 runs. Note: the Yankees only averaged 5.648 runs per game during the regular season, due to not using this lineup in most games because of injuries and doing stuff like starting Cody Ransom. How many runs would the lineup used for Game 2 be expected to score? 5.955. But Molina was only going to get 2 or 3 at bats at most before leaving for a pinch-hitter, so really this lineup should be expected to score about six runs...basically giving it the same run expectancy as the lineup containing Posada.

So if you are Girardi, which would you prefer: the extra half-run that Posada is likely to give you if he starts in the six-hole, or saving the 1.7 runs that you get by putting Molina behind the plate with Burnett pitching?

New Blog and some ALDS thoughts

This is my first time blogging; I figure I might as well get a head start before I head to Korea. But first I want to talk about what is on my mind now, well really always on my mind: baseball.

Much has been made about how overly matched the Twins are in the 2009 ALDS. The chances of an upset are really low...so low that you'd have to bet $5 on the Yankees to win $4. They're 3/2 favorites to go to the World Series. But this a playoff series and flukey things happen.

That being said, I think the Vegas oddmakers have it close and the chances of an upset are probably even lower than they have it. And most "upsets" in the World Series have been by teams very close in talent level, based on the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) statistic. When there have been upsets, often parts of the teams' talents are the same. Let's look at some the biggest playoff upsets in recent memory:

The 2006 World Series that one sportswriter said would be "Tigers in 3":
Cardinals: 28.3 WAR
Tigers: 43 WAR
Difference of -14.7. But if you remove pitching from the equation, the Cards and their 21.5 WAR hitting beat the 22.1 WAR hitting Tigers. Good pitchers have off games, and the talent difference over a whole season can be neutralized with a short series. And it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Verlander posted a 5.82 ERA in the postseason, with a 5.73 ERA in the World Series after pitching 186 innings his rookie season.


2004 ALCS:
Red Sox: 55.9 WAR
Yankees: 44.1 WAR
Difference of +11.8 for the team doing the upset

The 2003 World Series:
Marlins: 42.3
Yankees: 57.2 (note: the Red Sox were 61 WAR, so the Yankees beating the Sox was a smaller upset)
Difference of -15. But Josh Beckett and his +3.9 wins got to make two starts, so again over a short series overall talent differences between the pitchers can be reduced. The Marins 22.4 WAR hitters were able to beat the Yanks 27.0 WAR hitters.

2001 World Series:
There is no WAR data for this year, but the Yankees had a team OPS+ of 100 and the Diamondbacks were 94. Yankees team ERA+ was 111 and the Diamondbacks 120 (with Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling posting 157 and 188 ERA+ seasons respectively). It looks like the D-Backs a slightly better team, especially when you factor in that Schilling and Johnson had two starts each. The real upset was the Yankees beating the A's in the ALDS, with their 106 OPS+ and 121 ERA+. Oh, and the A's were leading 2-0 in that series.

There's a clear trend here: when an inferior team beats a superior team, they are usually close in some way or they get lucky (2001).

The Yankees and Twins are not close at all in talent level: The 2009 Yankees fielded a team that is worth 57 WAR, the Twins a 38.2 WAR team. Over the course of a season that predicts a difference of around 19 wins, which is almost exactly what their final record reflects: 103 wins for the Yanks and 86 for the Twins (87 if you count their one game playoff). The Twins won't be able to close the gap with their pitching and the hitting is worse at every position, except of course catcher. But this talent gap is even greater when you consider that the Twins can't use their best pitcher, Scott Baker (+3.5 WAR), until game 4. By then the Yankees should have clinched at the Metrodome anyway. If the Twins beat the Yankees it will be one of the biggest upsets in recent playoffs history, if not the biggest.