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Sunday, August 21, 2005Breaking down the Angels' recordThe Angels have been fairly inconsistent this year (rarely winning more than three games in a row, but also rarely losing more than 3 games in a row), so I decided to find out if there was some sort of a day of the week correlation:
Since Mondays are always Game 1's, and Fridays are mostly Game 1's (although, occasionally Game 2's), it appears that they do best in the first game of a series. Of course, Tuesdays and Thursdays can also be Game 1's, I then decided to look and see how they have done by game in a series:Day Record Monday 11-3 Tuesday 9-10 Wednesday 9-10 Thursday 7-5 Friday 13-6 Saturday 12-9 Sunday 10-10 Well, that looks pretty convincing that the Angels play best in the first game of a series. So, I decided to also parse season series records just to see what those are like, too:Game Record One 30-10 Two 20-20 Three 19-19 Four 2-4 Well, this is the type of thing that makes it look like Game 1 of a series really seems to be a difference. The most common Game 1's would be Game 1, Game 4, Game 7, and Game 10, winning records all.Game Record One 13-5 Two 7-11 Three 7-11 Four 10-2 Five 7-5 Six 8-4 Seven 5-4 Eight 5-2 Nine 2-4 Ten 4-1 Eleven 2-1 Twelve 1-2 Thirteen 0-1 This could be some sort of evidence that teams quickly figure out how to beat the Angels lineup once they have seen them (I suppose one could parse their runs scored in these games to find out if that is the case...maybe I will do that when I am on an airplane or something). It could also have to do with pitching, however, because starting pitchers differ day-to-day much more than lineups, it would be difficult to make a correlation. Of course, this comes with the caveat that it could mean absolutely nothing. Small sample sizes, no controls were used, etc. If we pretend that it is a lineup thing, it could be due to the lag that scouting reports have in regards to real performance (such as, people probably felt Steve Finley was some sort of a threat even until August...now, however, everyone knows he is not...once you have seen him in a series, you may realize how weak he is in the field and at bat). That might leave you to expect that their record should get worse in each season series as it goes on, however, the lineup will fluctuate much more between series (guys going on the DL, etc.) than within one, so it can be much more difficult to compare those records. |
