Jay M. Nunez

Thursday, June 1, 2017

The Mets Mess

Mike Vaccaro cuts through the side shows to get to the heart of the Mets problem:

See, that’s the problem for the Mets.

Once you throw Mr. Met under the bus, and once you reach the conclusion that Mendy the Ball Boy isn’t part of some vast conspiracy to undermine them, then this is the only thing that stares back at you if you are the Mets: calamity.

They have played 52 games. That is no longer a small sample size. That is, in fact, two games shy of one-third of a season. And they are playing at a clip that would yield a 72-90 record. They are six games under .500 with an awful lot of tricky games awaiting in June. They need a GPS to find the Nationals right now, and thanks to three awfully hot teams out West in the Dodgers, Rockies and Diamondbacks, even the notion of a wild card is starting to look like it may require a Giants-in-1951 or Yankees-in-1978 push to get there.

I am not surprised, I thought the pundits, and the Mets themselves, were too optimistic about this team:

There is no youth among the position players, which means very little chance of upside. Who on this team is going to break out and produce a five or six WAR season? Even if someone like Yoenis Cespedes gets back to that level, it might be wiped out by declines among the other veterans.

That said, they should not need to score many runs to win, if the rotation stays healthy. Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler could rival the Nationals’ three and four starters, but their health issues lowers the probability of that happening. New York is going to need a lot of luck in close games to make the playoffs.

The are 7-9 in one-run game, so the luck has not bee there so far.

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Adam Wainwright pitched his fourth excellent start in a row as he held the Dodgers scoreless through six innings as the Cardinals win 2-0. Wainwright owned a 6.37 ERA after seven starts, thanks to higher walk and home run rates than usual for the starter. Since then, he allowed one run in 26 1/3 innings. His walks remain high, 10 in that time period, but he has not allowed a home run. In fact, he limited the opposition to just 16 hits.

Wainwright returning to ace form should give St. Louis a nice boost for the rest of the season.

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Games of the Day

Chase Anderson takes on Zack Wheeler as the Brewers finish their road trip against the Mets. Anderson owns a 5.54 ERA on the road compared to a 2.12 ERA at home, as he gives up many more hits away. Opponents are hitting .297 against Anderson when he is on the road, .215 at home. Wheeler’s been hurt a bit with runners in scoring position. He is pretty consistent, opponents hitting in the mid .230s against him in most situations, but that goes up to .300 with men in scoring position.

Boston and Baltimore start a battle for second place in the AL East as Eduardo Rodriguez takes on Wade Miley. Rodriguez is about halfway to his 2016 innings total, and the big improvement in his ERA comes from limiting home runs. He allowed 1.3 HR per 9 IP in 2016, 0.8 HR per 9 IP this season. Miley owns a 0.92 ERA at home, covering four starts and 19 2/3 innings. He is 0-2 in those games, however, as his luck was mostly bad.

Enjoy!

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Players of the Month

The starting point for the offensive player of the month is OBP. If a hitter does not make outs, he is likely having a pretty good month. I set the minimum PA to 90, and the first thing I noticed was that the person at the top of the chart only had 64 PA. I thought I typed in the minimum PA wrong, but then noticed this was Mike Trout, who walked 22 times, was hit by a pitch three times, and hit two sacrifice flies for 91 PA. He also got on base to the tune of .484. He was just ahead of Joey Votto at .472. A large number of players posted OBPs of .400 or better in May.

Trout also posted the highest slugging percentage of the month at .797. What’s really amazing about that number is that Trout hit just .297. So he posted a .500 isolated power. Fourteen of his nineteen hits went for extra bases. If the opposition had not taken the bat out of his hands seven times with intentional walks, he might have driven in over 30 runs in the month. My main problem with picking Trout this month is that he only played 20 games. So he didn’t have as much a chance as other players to regress to the mean. Still, it was an impressive 20 games.

No one hit .400 in the month, but Carlos Correa topped the BA chart with a .386 mark. Correa was near the top of the OPB and slugging charts, too. He played a lot, collecting 39 hits and 14 walks. He scored 24 runs and drove in 26, both setting and clearing the table. Justin Bour led the majors with 11 home runs, and Charlie Blackmon gets the extra-base distribution award, as he hit six doubles, a major league leading five triples, and six home runs. Correa had the best overall line, however, so Carlos Correa wins Baseball Musings Offensive Player of the Month for May 2017.

On the pitching side Lance McCullers blew away the field in terms of ERA, posting a 0.99 mark in 36 1/3 innings. Note that is a low innings total for six starts. The Astros do not allow him to go deep in games. His three-true outcomes are all good, but none of them blow you away as top notch. Chris Archer led the majors in K per 9 IP with 13.05 K/9, with Chris Sale and Max Scherzer also coming in above 12 K per nine IP. None of them dominated all three categories. The best might have been Jeff Samardzija, with a 10.84/0.22/0.89 K/BB/HR per nine line.

It is tough to argue with McCullers’s ERA this month. Lance McCullers wins Baseball Musings Pitcher of the Month for May 2017.

Congratulations to both Astros! The team went 22-7 in the month, and those two players were a big reason.

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Beat the Streak Picks

Here are the top picks my programs produced for use in Beat the Streak. This post mostly explains the ideas behind the calculations. In addition, this post shows tests on the Neural Network (NN). This post discusses an NN that includes the ballpark. I recently updated the models, and the results of those tests are here.

For 2017, I am just going to publish the Log5 hit averages and the NN probabilities with parks factored in. I am keeping track of the results here. I added a graph that gives a visual representation of the probability and success each day.

First, the Log5 Method picks:

0.316 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Yovani Gallardo
0.302 — Corey Seager batting against Adam Wainwright
0.299 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Wade Miley
0.299 — Jean Segura batting against Kyle Freeland
0.296 — David Peralta batting against Jeff Locke
0.296 — Chris Owings batting against Jeff Locke
0.291 — Chris Taylor batting against Adam Wainwright
0.289 — Brandon Drury batting against Jeff Locke
0.289 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Yovani Gallardo
0.287 — Adrian Gonzalez batting against Adam Wainwright

Justin Turner against Wainwright came out at .337, but Turner remains on the disabled list, so Blackmon gets the top spot.

Here is how the NN with Park ranks the players:

0.316, 0.745 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Yovani Gallardo.
0.299, 0.740 — Jean Segura batting against Kyle Freeland.
0.299, 0.739 — Xander Bogaerts batting against Wade Miley.
0.296, 0.723 — David Peralta batting against Jeff Locke.
0.289, 0.717 — DJ LeMahieu batting against Yovani Gallardo.
0.302, 0.716 — Corey Seager batting against Adam Wainwright.
0.296, 0.715 — Chris Owings batting against Jeff Locke.
0.289, 0.712 — Brandon Drury batting against Jeff Locke.
0.260, 0.699 — Dee Gordon batting against Zack Greinke.
0.283, 0.698 — Gerardo Parra batting against Yovani Gallardo.

Blackmon is the unanimous pick, and it’s a good day to choose someone from the Rockies or the Diamondbacks. As always, your best pick will fail to get a hit about 25% of the time.

Here is the daily list of active streaks of plate appearances without a hit:

Batter	PA since Last Hit
Michael Freeman	29
Raul Mondesi	23
Jarrod Saltalamacchia	23
Johnny Cueto	23
Cameron Rupp	22
Tyler Anderson	22
Scott Feldman	21
Brian McCann	20
Kyle Higashioka	20
Conor Gillaspie	19
Chris Carter	19
Manny Machado	18
Ben Revere	18
Christopher Herrmann	18
Devin Mesoraco	18
Zack Greinke	16
Kyle Hendricks	16
Ben Zobrist	16
Trevor Plouffe	15
Greg Bird	15
Mike Foltynewicz	15
Anthony Rizzo	15
Emilio Bonifacio	14
Denard Span	14
Michael Wacha	14
Julio Teheran	14
Kevin Pillar	14
Ian Happ	14
Brandon McCarthy	14
Cristhian Adames	14
Robert Gsellman	14
Francisco Cervelli	14
Chad Kuhl	13
Bartolo Colon	13
Drew Butera	13
Josh Bell	13
Raimel Tapia	13
Hanley Ramirez	13
Bryce Harper	12
Nolan Fontana	12
Andrew Benintendi	12
Brandon Moss	12
Leonys Martin	12
Sandy Leon	12
Jose Reyes	12
Eduardo Escobar	12
Matt Garza	12
Cody Bellinger	12
Matt Moore	11
Zack Wheeler	11
Ryan Rua	11
Craig Gentry	11
Lance Lynn	11
Danny Ortiz	11
Kevin Plawecki	11
Timothy Adleman	11
Starling Marte	11
Nicholas Franklin	10
Thomas Koehler	10
Zach Davies	10
Kennys Vargas	10
Ryan Braun	10
Yandy Diaz	10
Scott Van Slyke	10
Trevor Williams	10
Jered Weaver	10
Lonnie Chisenhall	10
Alex Wood	10
Justin Smoak	10
Stuart Turner	10
Erik Gonzalez	10
Matthew Szczur	10
Luis Sardinas	10
Tyler Collins	10

Good luck!

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Thursday Update

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

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How Does Your Customer Make Money?

Recently, I was in a discussion with a group of sales people. I posed the question, “How does your customer make money?”

Most of them responded with what their customers did, for example: “They’re a SaaS company, they manufacture products for this market, they are a services provider……”

They knew some basics about the customers, their products, and so forth, but they struggled to get to any detail about how their customers made money.

I asked them, “What is your customer’s business model,” which is a more obscure way of asking how they make money. Most of the people in the group struggled with this.

Understanding how our customers make money (even if our customers are government or not for profit) is critical for us in selling to them. Their business strategies, priorities, investments, organizational structures, product plans, operations, sales/marketing/customer service, talent management, and financial decisions are all driven by the answer to the question, “How does your customer make money?”

If we can answer that question, at some level of detail, then we have the ability to connect and engage the customer in more impactful ways. We know what drives much of their decision making.

Without knowing the answer to the question, we don’t know how to position our products and solutions. Because we always have to answer the question— “How does what we do help our customers make money?” We can’t just answer that question in a casual way. We can’t leave it to the customer to figure out–after all, why should they take the time? We always have to answer the question of what we can do for our customers in the context of how they make money.

Some think, “We only have an impact in one function or department,” or “In the scheme of things our impact on the corporation is very small…” But connecting the dots between our impact and the ability to impact the way our customers make money is critical. As our sponsors within the customer look to justify their decision, they will be challenged with that question. We have to equip them with the information to answer it.

Do you know how your customers make money?

Do you know how you help your customers make money?

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