{"id":9716,"date":"2014-09-04T15:34:55","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T19:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=9716"},"modified":"2014-09-04T15:34:55","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T19:34:55","slug":"statistics-deception-and-boswell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=9716","title":{"rendered":"Statistics, Deception and Boswell"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_7806\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/KershawClayton-unk-via-wiki.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7806\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7806\" alt=\"In case you weren't aware, Clayton Kershaw is really good.  Photo via wiki.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/KershawClayton-unk-via-wiki.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"257\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-7806\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">In case you weren&#8217;t aware, Clayton Kershaw is really good. Photo via wiki.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Was casually reading <strong>Tom Boswell<\/strong>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/sports\/nationals\/for-national-league-contenders-playoff-goal-should-be-clear-avoid-clayton-kershaw\/2014\/09\/03\/9dfd0598-3380-11e4-a723-fa3895a25d02_story.html\">article in the post<\/a> today (which can be summarized as &#8220;1,000 words on why you don&#8217;t want to face <strong>Clayton Kershaw<\/strong> in the playoffs, duh) and he posted the following intriguing statistic as part of his argument:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In games started by Kershaw, the Dodgers are 19-4<\/li>\n<li>In games NOT started by Kershaw, the Dodgers are 59-58<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ergo, the Dodgers are really beatable when they don&#8217;t throw Kershaw.<\/p>\n<p>This sounded like a great stat.\u00a0 Until you dive a little deeper and you do the same analysis for our own first place\/better record than the Dodgers team.<\/p>\n<p>Los Angeles is, as of the moment of this writing, 78-62.\u00a0 By starter, their team record breaks down like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Kershaw: 19-4<\/li>\n<li>Ryu: 15-9<\/li>\n<li>Greinke: 14-13<\/li>\n<li>Haren: 13-14<\/li>\n<li>Beckett: 9-11<\/li>\n<li>Other randoms: 8-11<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All others besides Kershaw and Ryu: 44-49<br \/>\nAll others but Kershaw: 59-58<\/p>\n<p>Pretty compelling, eh? They&#8217;re a losing team when not throwing one of their two aces in Kershaw or <strong>Hyun-jin Ryu<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 Surprisingly, the team under their supposed #2 <strong>Zack Grienke<\/strong> sports just a .500 record on the year through 27 starts despite his known quality.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Lets do the same analysis for the Nationals, currently sporting a better record of 79-59 and having just beaten the Dodgers two out of three at their house.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s the Nats team record under each starter this year:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Zimmerman: 19-9<\/li>\n<li>Fister: 14-7<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Gio: 13-10<\/li>\n<li>Stras: 16-13<\/li>\n<li>Roark: 15-12<\/li>\n<li>Jordan: 1-4<\/li>\n<li>Treinen: 1-4<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All others besides Zimmermann and Fister: 46-43.<\/p>\n<p>Hmm.\u00a0 So, much like the Dodgers, if you play the Nats and you&#8217;re not facing one of OUR two best pitchers, we&#8217;re basically a .500 team.<\/p>\n<p>I guess the point is this: in a sport where a team that is winning 57% of its games has the best record in the majors, the margins for winning and losing are pretty slim.\u00a0 Or maybe the point is this: you can use stats to support pretty much whatever hypothesis you wish to postulate.<\/p>\n<p>I think everyone knows that beating Kershaw is nearly impossible, and facing him twice in a short series may be the difference between advancing and going home.\u00a0 But then again, this is the same Kershaw who has (believe it or not) a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/gl.cgi?id=kershcl01&amp;t=p&amp;year=0&amp;post=1\">career 4.23 ERA<\/a> in the post-season and got hammered by the Cardinals for 7 runs in 4 innings in last\u00a0 year&#8217;s NLCS.\u00a0\u00a0 I guess that&#8217;s why they play the games.<\/p>\n<p>But, I think it is also safe to say that the series in Los Angeles showed why it&#8217;d be one heck of an NLCS if the seedings held and the two top NL teams\u00a0 held form in the divisional series.\u00a0 Lets hope it comes to pass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Was casually reading Tom Boswell&#8216;s article in the post today (which can be summarized as &#8220;1,000 words on why you don&#8217;t want to face Clayton Kershaw in the playoffs, duh) and he posted the following intriguing statistic as part of his argument: In games started by Kershaw, the Dodgers are 19-4 In games NOT started [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1693,426,983,241,385,2018,43,50,38,77,24,125,254],"class_list":["post-9716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","tag-blake-treinen","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-dan-haren","tag-doug-fister","tag-gio-gonzalez","tag-hyun-jin-ryu","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-josh-beckett","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-tanner-roark","tag-taylor-jordan","tag-tom-boswell","tag-zack-greinke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9716"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9718,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9716\/revisions\/9718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}