Kenley Jansen comes in at the start of the ninth to defend a 5-0 Dodgers lead over the Rockies. He gives up back-to-back home runs to Nolan Arenado and Trevor Story, most likely since he wanted to create a save situation. 
Jansen did suffer this year from the long ball, allowing eleven home runs in 70 2/3 innings this season, the worst rate of his career.
Max Muncy hurts the Rockies again, as he homers one out after a Joc Pederson double to double the Dodgers lead to 4-0. Muncy scored two and drove in two.
Meanwhile, Walker Buehler is throwing a no-hitter through five innings, having walked two.
Max Muncy reaches base on a strikeout in the bottom of the fourth, and Cody Bellinger makes the Rockies pay with a two-run homer. The runs are unearned, but they still count as the Dodgers take a 2-0 lead.
On the next play, David Dahl misplays a Yasiel Puig single into a double, and the Dodgers keep the inning alive.
The Brewers get to Cubs reliever Justin Wilson in the eighth inning to set up the go-ahead runs, then Steve Cishek comes in to give up a single to give the Brewers the lead. Both these pitchers have the weakness of walking batters, but neither allows a lot of hits. Today, batters went 3 for 3, and that was the difference in the game.
The Brewers bullpen finished strong. Four relievers allowed two hits and a walk in 3 1/3 innings, striking out five.
Christian Yelich went 3 for 4 with an RBI to win the batting title with a .326 BA. He fell just short of both the RBI and HR titles.
Congratulations to the Brewers on their second NL Central title!
The Brewers play the Cubs for the NL Central title, the loser hosting the wild card game Tuesday night. Jhoulys Chacin takes on Jose Quintana. Chacin made four starts against the Cubs in 2018, posting a 1.59 ERA. He held them to 15 hits and one home run in 22 2/3 innings, striking out 27. Quintana made six starts against the Brewers, posting a 2.17 ERA. He allowed five home runs in 37 1/3 innings, accounting for seven of the nine runs against him.
Later, The Rockies play the Dodgers for the NL West title, the loser traveling to the mid-west for the wild card game. German Marquez takes on Walker Buehler. Marquez made three starts against the Dodgers, posting a 2.57 ERA. He only allowed two runs in 15 innings at Dodger Stadium, however, both on solo home runs. Buehler posted a 2.61 ERA in five starts against the Rockies, including three starts in Colorado. He allowed three of his 11 runs at home.
It seems all four teams are putting a quality pitcher with success against the opponent on the mound today.
Enjoy!
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:
Going with the top ten today, as there are only two games.
0.276 — Justin Turner batting against German Marquez.
0.273 — Christian Yelich batting against Jose Quintana.
0.272 — Matt Kemp batting against German Marquez.
0.271 — Manny Machado batting against German Marquez.
0.267 — Daniel Murphy batting against Jhoulys Chacin.
0.266 — Lorenzo Cain batting against Jose Quintana.
0.264 — David Freese batting against German Marquez.
0.250 — Javier Baez batting against Jhoulys Chacin.
0.249 — Albert Almora batting against Jhoulys Chacin.
0.249 — Yasiel Puig batting against German Marquez.
Turner is 2 for 11 career versus Marquez, but with just one strikeout.
Note that Chacin is not the official starter. If Milwaukee announces someone else and I have time, I’ll try to rerun these numbers.
Here is how the NN with Park ranks the players:
0.267, 0.717 — Daniel Murphy batting against Jhoulys Chacin.
0.273, 0.701 — Christian Yelich batting against Jose Quintana.
0.276, 0.698 — Justin Turner batting against German Marquez.
0.266, 0.694 — Lorenzo Cain batting against Jose Quintana.
0.272, 0.692 — Matt Kemp batting against German Marquez.
0.271, 0.688 — Manny Machado batting against German Marquez.
0.249, 0.684 — Albert Almora batting against Jhoulys Chacin.
0.250, 0.682 — Javier Baez batting against Jhoulys Chacin.
0.236, 0.679 — Charlie Blackmon batting against Walker Buehler.
0.264, 0.673 — David Freese batting against German Marquez.
Yelich and Turner tie for consensus first choice. I might go with Yelich and Murphy due to playing in Wrigley Field.
There will be a post-season beat the streak contest with the chance to win $2000.
Remember, your best pick will fail about 25% of the time. Good luck!
We all know the importance of focus, of eliminating distractions. I’ve written about it in this blog. Book after book, blog posts all preach the concepts of disciplined focus, minimizing distraction, keeping our eyes on our goals, keeping our eyes on the ball.
It’s very important, too few people do this–generally top performers are viciously focused.
But sometimes this focus is limiting, we become prisoners of our own experiences.
Sometimes, we gain new perspectives, we get new ideas, we consider alternatives we might never have considered when we look at things completely outside what we normally do.
Studying an industry or market completely different—and distant from the markets you normally focus on can give us new ideas to consider applying to what we do.
Some years ago, I facilitated an “innovation” workshop between two disparate groups. One group came out the the semiconductor industry, they sat on one side of the table in their blue shirts/khakis. The other group was in an extreme sports business, they sat at the other side of the table, wearing torn T-shirts, motorcycle leathers, full sleeves of tattoos, and the visible piercings were in interesting places.
As we started, each side discussed some of the things they did in their businesses, some things they did to innovate, and a variety of approaches to engaging customers, learning and engaging customers.
As the conversations progressed, each side learned huge things from the other. What was common and standard practice for the extreme sports folks, was new and innovative to the semiconductor team–and vice versa.
Each group found new ideas to innovate simply by adopting what had been common practice in a distant industry and adapting it for their own organization. I have called this “artful plagiarism.”
There are other things we can do to broaden our perspectives, reading materials far outside what we normally read. If you normally read books on sales/marketing; try reading history, philosophy, great works of literature. Alternatively, next time you are about to jump on an airplane, go to the newsstand and pick up 2-3 magazines you would never read.
Go to a trade show or conference that’s not directly related to your company or your job.
When you are on the road/traveling, take a few hours and do something different–go to a museum or gallery, understand the history of the place you are visiting.
In projects within your own company/organization, invite people from different functions to participate.
In addition to learning things new, broadening our perspectives, finding new ideas in non-traditional places—I’ve found it a huge amount of fun and source of energy.
Sometimes, perhaps in a disciplined and structured way, it’s good to take your eyes of the goal. We might find new ways of achieving them.
