Games of the Day

Jakob Junis faces Chris Sale as the Royals battle the Red Sox in Boston. Junis shows improved control this season with just seven walks in 32 1/3 innings. The down side of being in the strike zone more is allowing eight home runs so far, one of the highest totals in the majors. Sale has only seen 17 left-handed batters this season, but righties are hitting just .196/.248/.366 against him.

The Braves and Mets fight for the top spot in the NL East as Sean Newcomb faces Noah Syndergaard. Newcomb struck out 34 batters in 27 2/3 innings, but that hasn’t prevented hits. Opponents have a .255 BA against him. Syndergaard, with 46 K in 34 2/3 innings allowed a .226 BA. High strikeout rates with hits is a feature of this season.

The Yankees and Astros play game two of their four-game series with Jordan Montgomery facing Justin Verlander. Left-handed batters are 0 for 11 against Montgomery this season with no walks. They do put the ball in play, as he only recorded two Ks against lefties. Verlander is showing better control than his career numbers, with only eight walks in 39 2/3 innings.

Finally, injuries put a lot of pressure on the Dodgers pitching staff to prevent runs, and Clayton Kershaw gets the ball tonight. He takes on Matt Koch of the Diamondbacks. Kershaw is getting hammered this year by the lefties he’s seeing, 10 for 32 with three home runs. Through 2017, lefties were hitting .190/.243/.308 against Kershaw. Koch in his brief 2018 stint held opponents to a 1 for 12 with runners in scoring position.

Enjoy!

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Players of the Month

Offensive player of the month is a tough call. Aaron Judge posted the best OBP of the month, .478, with lots of hits and lots of power. Mookie Betts slugged .797 to lead the majors in that category, hitting eight home runs and 10 doubles. That would put him on a pace for over 100 extra-base hits on the season. Right on his tail is Didi Gregorius, with 10 home runs and six doubles. Gregorius drove in 30 runs with his power. It was a good month for up the middle players hitting for power, as Javier Baez and Ozzie Albies picked up a high number of extra-base hits, Albies reaching 30.

I’m going with Betts for his combination of getting on base and hitting for power, and his three stolen bases without getting caught. Mookie Betts is the Baseball Musings Offensive Player of the Month for April 2018!

There were some very impressive ERAs in the month, with Carlos Martinez leading the way with a 0.50 mark. He combined a high strikeout rate with just one home run allowed to keep opponents off the plate. Gerrit Cole posted about the best combination of three-true outcomes, with 13.18 K per 9, 1.73 walks 9, and 0.65 HR per 9. A 1.73 ERA is very good as well, and he pitched the most innings in the month.

Gerrit Cole is the Baseball Musings Pitcher of the Month for April 2018!

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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 updated the models, and the results of those tests are here.

For 2018, 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.

I have been asked to expand the list to the top 25 players for an econometric project.

First, the Log5 Method picks:

0.321 — Andrelton Simmons batting against Alexander Cobb.
0.304 — Mike Trout batting against Alexander Cobb.
0.299 — Shohei Ohtani batting against Alexander Cobb.
0.298 — Howie Kendrick batting against Chad Kuhl.
0.296 — Trea Turner batting against Chad Kuhl.
0.296 — Albert Pujols batting against Alexander Cobb.
0.294 — Starlin Castro batting against Zach Eflin.
0.294 — Rene Rivera batting against Alexander Cobb.
0.293 — Jose Altuve batting against Jordan Montgomery.
0.291 — Nick Castellanos batting against Chris Archer.
0.290 — Zack Cozart batting against Alexander Cobb.
0.288 — Albert Almora batting against Jonathan Gray.
0.286 — Jefry Marte batting against Alexander Cobb.
0.285 — J.T. Realmuto batting against Zach Eflin.
0.284 — Javier Baez batting against Jonathan Gray.
0.282 — Jean Segura batting against Andrew Triggs.
0.282 — Michael Brantley batting against Doug Fister.
0.281 — Ian Kinsler batting against Alexander Cobb.
0.280 — Miguel Cabrera batting against Chris Archer.
0.280 — Justin Upton batting against Alexander Cobb.
0.280 — Dee Gordon batting against Andrew Triggs.
0.279 — Asdrubal Cabrera batting against Sean Newcomb.
0.278 — Manny Machado batting against Nicholas Tropeano.
0.274 — Lorenzo Cain batting against Homer Bailey.
0.273 — Thomas Pham batting against James Shields.
0.273 — Martin Prado batting against Zach Eflin.

Yesterday, Jordan Zimmermann and Sonny Gray pitched very well. If you went with players from the Rays or the Yankees, you probably had a bad day. That’s the problem with good pitchers in long-term slumps, every once in a while they come out of them for a game. Today that pitcher is Alex Cobb. He’s allowed 30 hits in 11 2/3 innings. The Angels should hit well against him, unless he picks today to mend his problem.

Here is how the NN with Park ranks the players:

0.293, 0.738 — Jose Altuve batting against Jordan Montgomery.
0.294, 0.715 — Starlin Castro batting against Zach Eflin.
0.282, 0.714 — Jean Segura batting against Andrew Triggs.
0.321, 0.712 — Andrelton Simmons batting against Alexander Cobb.
0.280, 0.710 — Dee Gordon batting against Andrew Triggs.
0.296, 0.705 — Trea Turner batting against Chad Kuhl.
0.285, 0.704 — J.T. Realmuto batting against Zach Eflin.
0.298, 0.703 — Howie Kendrick batting against Chad Kuhl.
0.282, 0.700 — Michael Brantley batting against Doug Fister.
0.291, 0.696 — Nick Castellanos batting against Chris Archer.
0.272, 0.696 — Jose Ramirez batting against Doug Fister.
0.288, 0.695 — Albert Almora batting against Jonathan Gray.
0.258, 0.692 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Kyle Hendricks.
0.250, 0.692 — J.D. Martinez batting against Jakob Junis.
0.271, 0.692 — Ender Inciarte batting against Noah Syndergaard.
0.279, 0.691 — Asdrubal Cabrera batting against Sean Newcomb.
0.278, 0.691 — Manny Machado batting against Nicholas Tropeano.
0.274, 0.690 — Lorenzo Cain batting against Homer Bailey.
0.273, 0.690 — Martin Prado batting against Zach Eflin.
0.304, 0.689 — Mike Trout batting against Alexander Cobb.
0.266, 0.687 — Jose Abreu batting against Michael Wacha.
0.284, 0.684 — Javier Baez batting against Jonathan Gray.
0.272, 0.684 — Jose Martinez batting against James Shields.
0.267, 0.682 — Marcell Ozuna batting against James Shields.
0.273, 0.682 — Thomas Pham batting against James Shields.
0.269, 0.682 — Paul DeJong batting against James Shields.

The NN does a better job of looking at a poor number from a pitcher, especially a start of the season poor number, and putting it in context. Jose Altuve is once again the pick of the day, as his regressed 2018 hit average stands at .307. His actual hit average is .313. Simmons is the consensus first choice.

Remember, your best pick will fail about 25% of the time. Good luck!

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Best Batter Today

There is a bit of a shakeup in the top five today at the Baseball Musings Batter Rankings. Mike Trout remains on top, but Didi Gregorius falls out of the top five, dropping to seventh. Jose Ramirez, with two hits Monday night, moves into second place. Tommy Pham, Aaron Judge, and Manny Machado round out the top five.

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Tuesday Update

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

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The Slammin’s Sox

Xander Bogaerts hit a grand slam for the Red Sox this evening, their sixth in the month of April. That ties the expansion era record for grand slams in a month. The 1996 Expos hit six in April, the 1999 Indians hit six in May, and the 2006 Mets hit six in August.

The Red Sox beat the Royals 10-6 in a game that featured nine extra-base hits.

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“What Did You Sell That For…..?”

I have to start this post with a story.

Some years ago, I was the executive assistant to one of the top executives in IBM.  We were sitting down for our morning meeting to review the day and our priorities.  He had just returned from the office after several days in the field with sales people and customers.

I asked him, “How did the visits go?”  It was all the excuse he needed to go on a rampage.

“I was visiting this sales team and they were really excited about a big deal they had closed.  I asked, ‘What did you sell it for?’  Their answer was, ‘About $15 million….’!”

His frustration was he wanted to understand what the customer was trying to achieve, what problem/opportunity they were trying to address.  In this case, the right answer would have been, “We are helping them with a new wire transfer system.  Their current process is manual, it takes them a lot of time to complete each transaction and the transactions are skyrocketing.  We will help them achieve……..”

In the years since, both as an executive and consultant, I’ve asked similar questions of thousands of sales people.  Too often, the answer is very similar to the response my boss got, “It was a $1M deal, the ARR is $500K….”

The responses usually focus on the result for the sales person, not the result for the customer.

Too often, managers asking the same question are only interested in the result the sales person will get–knowing that it’s a $1M deal or ARR of $500K is all they care about.

But this question has real power–it’s something managers should be asking about every deal–not just one deals, but deals that are in the pipeline.

Perhaps variants to “What did you sell that for…,” might be “What are they buying that for….?”

The power of asking this is helping the sales person understand what the customer is trying to achieve and why it’s important to them.

The power of this type of question is that if forces the sales person to understand what the customer’s problem is, what they are trying to achieve,

Being able to answer this singe question in a substantive way requires the sales person to ask the customer the right questions–not just about needs and requirements, but about the problem, opportunity, and what the customer is trying to achieve.

Managers asking this question on every deal will start forcing behavioral changes with the sales people.  It will force them to search for the answer in their conversations with customers. It will improve their ability to engage the customer in ways that are meaningful to the customer.  It will improve their ability to create value with the customer.

Every executive and manager needs to make some variant of this question part of every conversation about deals.

“What are they buying this for…..?”

“What did you sell this for….?”

 

Related Posts:

• What Did You Sell That For?
• Do You Know The Answers To These Three Questions?
• What Did You Sell That For?
• Five Questions
• What’s Next?

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