American
League
East (+10)
New York
Yankees
The Yankees have a fairly decent rotation, but their batting lineup needs to improve for them to win the division. 80-82
Baltimore
Orioles
The Orioles' roster largely remained unchanged in the offseason, which would possibly be a good idea if they had a great roster, as their roster is currently constructed however, I think that the Orioles will run out of some of their recent streaks of luck, to a certain extent, this season. 82-80
Toronto Blue
Jays
Toronto made a few decent moves in the offseason, but they still need to improve their pitching to be a great team. 86-76
Boston Red Sox
Boston has become a bit of a younger team, and I think will improve this season, but they will likely need to catch a few breaks to be playoff contenders. 82-80
Tampa Bay Rays
The Rays largely stayed pat with their previously constructed roster, I expect a slight uptick in wins this season. 85-77
Central (-4)
Kansas City
Royals
Despite my affinity for the Royals, I think that the Royals are destined to regress to the mean by a few games this season. 85-77
Detroit Tigers
Detroit's rotation looks somewhat iffy for the first time in a few years, but their batting should keep the Tigers quite competitive. 86-76
Minnesota
Twins
The Twins are in a fairly tough division and their talent does not appear to match the level of most of their opponents. 74-88
Cleveland
Indians
Some experts think that Cleveland has a great chance to capture the AL Central, but I do not happen to be an expert, and I also predict that Cleveland will remain mired in mediocrity this season due to their youth. 81-81
Chicago White
Sox
Other than Chris Sale, the White Sox kind of struggle across the board. 75-87
West (+10)
Texas Rangers
The rotation could be better, but the batting lineup looks to be a little better than last season. 74-88
Oakland Athletics
It will be odd to see Billy Butler in an A's uniform. The A's are perpetually underrated by most people, and it appears that it has happened again this season. 89-73
Los Angeles
Angels
The Angels seemed to trade away a few too many prospects in the offseason, but their present outlooks look fairly good. 92-70
Seattle
Mariners
Behind a very competent starting pitching rotation the Mariners appear to be poised to make a run at the playoffs. 88-74
Houston Astros
The Astros may actually create a bit of drama in a number of their games this season. 72-90
National
League
East (-8)
Atlanta Braves
Atlanta's offense looked very poor last season and it will likely continue to have some serious problems. 75-87
New York Mets
The Mets have a few good starting pitchers, but aside from that strong point they seem to be lacking in great selling points. 75-87
Washington
Nationals
The Nationals only have a few problems, and compared to the rest of their division they stick out as a model team to follow. 90-72
Philadelphia
Phillies
While the Phillies' outlooks do not look good for this season, due to regression alone I think that they will at least be competitive in their division, outside of the Nationals. 75-87
Miami Marlins
The Marlins should simply be a fairly competitive team this season. 82-80
Central (+3)
Milwaukee
Brewers
The Brewers look to be a slightly below average team. 77-85
St. Louis
Cardinals
The Cardinals only have a few problems on their roster and, as such the Cardinals should compete for, and capture, the division title. 85-77
Cincinnati
Reds
The Reds should be competing for the division crown again this year. 81-81
Pittsburgh
Pirates
The Pirates should regress to the mean a bit this season. 83-79
Chicago Cubs
With the expertise of Manager Maddon, I expect the Cubs to field a very competitive team for the first time in a fair number of seasons. 82-80
West (-11)
Los Angeles
Dodgers
The Dodgers have a dominant starting pitching lineup and should produce enough wins to be one of the top teams in the NL. 92-70
San Francisco
Giants
The reigning MLB champions look to be on the wrong side of the playoff bubble this season. 83-79
Colorado
Rockies
The porous starting pitching should improve slightly, but, even despite that improvement and the stellar middle of the batting rotation, the Rockies should only remain competitive this season. 75-87
San Diego
Padres
It appears that according to most people the Padres are expected to improve this season, I fail to see where their confidence in this team is coming from. 75-87
Arizona
Diamondbacks
The Diamondbacks appear to be headed for another disappointing season. 69-93
Sports and Issues
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Basketball Isn't Easy - The 2014 NBA Finals
1 Spurs vs 2 Heat
Predicted Rockets over Pacers in 6 (That looks great now..). Heat in 5 (I needed a high variance pick in the WoW contest, otherwise I likely would have said Heat in 6.). and the actual result was Spurs in a very convincing 5.
The NBA Finals
First of all, let's give it up for the parity in the NBA. Two seasons ago likely the two best teams in the NBA went head to head and last season, again the two best teams likely went head to head. /golf clap Moving along now...
The Spurs scored fewer than 100 points only six times in the entire playoffs and three of those games were against the Mavericks.
It would be kind of interesting to see which players performed at greater and lesser levels as opposed to last season's finals, but I am fairly happy with the amount of content that I have for this year's finals, and it would likely take a fair while to peruse through the differences between the two series. It would also be interesting to take a look as to how I would attempt to beat the Heat or the Spurs if I was an opposing coach. However, due to time constraints, that will not be happening at the moment either.
There are still a fair amount of improvements and tweaks that can be made to the data sets and statistics that I put gather and put forth, but, overall, I was happy with the level of improvement that I made from last season's NBA Finals.
One quick note, Bonner only ended up with .01 total usage, so he shouldn't have even been charted as an individual player (His data sets should have been put in the Random Spurs data sets.) since he would provide very unreliable data.
I find it extremely impressive that every Spurs' player happens to have an expected pps of over 1. And then, of course, their actual pps is even more impressive with the average random shot by a Spurs' player resulting in an average point result of 1.22. Every main Spurs' player overachieved, except for Diaw. On the whole, the Spurs' offense overachieved by about 7%.
Miami, on the other hand, underachieved by around 10% and scored .12 fewer points per shot than they should have over the course of the series (which I would think is a fairly uncommon level of under-achievement over the course of a series). For those with serious playing minutes, the Heat only had Lebron and Lewis hit approximately equal to what they should have hit, every other player underachieved the levels they should have performed at. The Heat won the quality shot battle again this year, 84% to 78%.
Green and Leonard were quite impressive in their levels of defensive quality, had a high usage rate, and helped to defend almost a third of the Heat's shot attempts. One of the aspects of basketball that I have not find a way to properly integrate is good passing/assists, as such, Diaw has a fairly bad rating for the series, but his passing was, at times, fairly integral to the Spurs' offense.
I was a little surprised to see Allen struggle so much defensively, I thought that he was generally closer to an average defender. It was also a bit surprising to see that over the course of the series Lebron was a slightly below average defender. If it had not been for Bosh, Anderson, and Lewis putting up decent defensive ratings and their combined defensive usage of .32, then Miami would have had a completely porous defense.. Instead the Heat only had a mostly porous defense.
San Antonio outperformed their expected play by approximately 4%. Having an entire team that has a TEV equal to or above 1.00 is quite impressive. And then most of the Spurs' player's TAV numbers are somewhat ridiculous. Green, Leonard, Mills, and Splitter had a TAV in between 1.20 to 1.30, having a TAV at 1.10 is slightly above average, but having one above 1.20 is impressive.
The way that I selected my MVP award this year (Though the proper selection is kind of obvious both here and in the real world.) is =(CX136*CR136*CX136)/1.3... Or at least that is what the formula looks like (For Belinelli anyways).. No, actually though, those numbers simply just represent total usage multiplied by actual value^2 which is then all prorated, so in this case that simply means that formula represents (Total Usage*Actual Value^2)/1.3, or in base form, (TU*AV^2)/U (where U stands for an unknown number).
Leonard carries the MVP vote away comfortably, and it would have been a landslide victory for him had it not been for Duncan. Green and Mils could have been more serious MVP contenders had their usage rates been higher.
Meanwhile, the Heat underperformed the level that they should have achieved by nearly 6%. On the bright side, Cole, Chalmers, and Wade all should have performed semi-significantly better, on the downside, even with that improvement they still should have been playing very few minutes in the series.
I almost think that I should go with an MVP value of (TU*AV^3)/U because I do not like that Wade gets the 4th most MVP votes for the Heat, despite being their LVP. This problem results because total usage has a somewhat significant margin of impact on votes that a player receives and Wade had the second highest TU rate on the Heat.
James and Bosh run away with the MVP votes, with James procuring a solid victory. In the single IoS numbers, James claims the overall MVP of the series, albeit barely, but since the Spurs obviously won the series, a .01 differential should certainly be overlooked and the overall MVP of the series should be given to Kawhi Leonard.
Thanks for reading.
Predicted Rockets over Pacers in 6 (That looks great now..). Heat in 5 (I needed a high variance pick in the WoW contest, otherwise I likely would have said Heat in 6.). and the actual result was Spurs in a very convincing 5.
The NBA Finals
First of all, let's give it up for the parity in the NBA. Two seasons ago likely the two best teams in the NBA went head to head and last season, again the two best teams likely went head to head. /golf clap Moving along now...
The Spurs scored fewer than 100 points only six times in the entire playoffs and three of those games were against the Mavericks.
| Total Points | Total Points | Per Game Average | |||
| Expected Result | Actual Result | ER | AR | ||
| Miami Heat | 468.7 | 458 | 93.74 | 91.6 | |
| San Antonio Spurs | 513.7 | 527 | 102.74 | 105.4 | |
| Difference pro Spurs | 45 | 69 | 9 | 13.8 | |
| If Wade and Chalmers had their playing time cut in half | and given to more competent teammates. | ||||
| Previous point total including Wade and Chalmers | 69.05 | ||||
| New point total | 86.93 | (I am uncertain if I did this part entirely correctly or not) | |||
| Net gain of approximately 18 points for Heat | 17.87 | ||||
| Pure Heat Expected Total | 720.36 | ||||
| Pure Spurs Expected Total | 744.70 | ||||
| Differential | 24.00 |
It would be kind of interesting to see which players performed at greater and lesser levels as opposed to last season's finals, but I am fairly happy with the amount of content that I have for this year's finals, and it would likely take a fair while to peruse through the differences between the two series. It would also be interesting to take a look as to how I would attempt to beat the Heat or the Spurs if I was an opposing coach. However, due to time constraints, that will not be happening at the moment either.
| SAN ANTONIO SPURS | Total Expected Points | Expected points per shot | Actual points | Actual points per shot | 'Overachiever' | Offensive Usage | Quality Shot % | |
| Belinelli | 19.73 | 1.23 | 20.00 | 1.25 | 1.01 | .05 | .88 | |
| Bonner | 1.30 | 1.30 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 1.54 | .00 | 1.00 | |
| Diaw | 33.49 | 1.12 | 25.00 | .83 | .75 | .08 | .77 | |
| Duncan | 51.60 | 1.17 | 54.00 | 1.23 | 1.05 | .12 | .84 | |
| Ginobli | 54.08 | 1.15 | 58.00 | 1.23 | 1.07 | .13 | .77 | |
| Green | 41.07 | 1.21 | 43.00 | 1.26 | 1.05 | .10 | .85 | |
| Leonard | 60.04 | 1.20 | 69.00 | 1.38 | 1.15 | .14 | .86 | |
| Parker | 72.14 | 1.02 | 78.00 | 1.10 | 1.08 | .20 | .62 | |
| Mills | 39.92 | 1.11 | 51.00 | 1.42 | 1.28 | .10 | .72 | |
| Splitter | 26.01 | 1.30 | 27.00 | 1.35 | 1.04 | .06 | 1.00 | |
| Random Spurs | 7.01 | 1.17 | 6.00 | 1.00 | .86 | .02 | .83 | |
| Team Totals | 406.39 | 1.14 | 433.00 | 1.22 | 1.07 | 1.00 | .78 | |
One quick note, Bonner only ended up with .01 total usage, so he shouldn't have even been charted as an individual player (His data sets should have been put in the Random Spurs data sets.) since he would provide very unreliable data.
|
| Expected points per shot | Actual points | Actual points per shot | 'Overachiever' | Offensive Usage | Quality Shot % | |||
| Allen | 46.86 | 1.23 | 41.00 | 1.08 | .87 | .11 | .89 | |||
| Anderson | 8.30 | 1.19 | 6.00 | .86 | .72 | .02 | .86 | |||
| Battier | 2.04 | 1.02 | .00 | .00 | .00 | .01 | .50 | |||
| Bosh | 61.85 | 1.21 | 58.00 | 1.14 | .94 | .15 | .88 | |||
| Chalmers | 23.35 | 1.11 | 15.00 | .71 | .64 | .06 | .76 | |||
| Cole | 21.21 | 1.12 | 15.00 | .79 | .71 | .06 | .74 | |||
| James | 108.01 | 1.24 | 110.00 | 1.26 | 1.02 | .26 | .92 | |||
| Lewis | 38.63 | 1.29 | 39.00 | 1.30 | 1.01 | .09 | .97 | |||
| Wade | 65.89 | 1.06 | 54.00 | .87 | .82 | .18 | .69 | |||
| Jones | 5.74 | 1.15 | 11.00 | 2.20 | 1.92 | .01 | .80 | |||
| RR | 19.61 | 1.15 | 12.00 | .71 | .61 | .05 | .76 | |||
| Team Totals | 401.49 | 1.18 | 361.00 | 1.06 | .90 | 1.00 | .84 | |||
Miami, on the other hand, underachieved by around 10% and scored .12 fewer points per shot than they should have over the course of the series (which I would think is a fairly uncommon level of under-achievement over the course of a series). For those with serious playing minutes, the Heat only had Lebron and Lewis hit approximately equal to what they should have hit, every other player underachieved the levels they should have performed at. The Heat won the quality shot battle again this year, 84% to 78%.
| SAN ANTONIO SPURS. | Defensive R | D# Usage | Total Usage | ||
Greater than 1 means a better
| |||||
| Belinelli | .91 | .03 | .04 | ||
| Bonner | 1.13 | .02 | .01 | ||
| Diaw | .97 | .11 | .10 | ||
| Duncan | 1.05 | .20 | .16 | ||
| Ginobli | .82 | .09 | .11 | ||
| Green | 1.24 | .12 | .11 | ||
| Leonard | 1.18 | .20 | .17 | ||
| Parker | .98 | .09 | .14 | ||
| Mills | 1.04 | .05 | .07 | ||
| Splitter | 1.12 | .10 | .08 | ||
| Random Spurs | .78 | .01 | .01 | ||
| Team Totals | 1.06 | 1.00 | 1.00 |
Green and Leonard were quite impressive in their levels of defensive quality, had a high usage rate, and helped to defend almost a third of the Heat's shot attempts. One of the aspects of basketball that I have not find a way to properly integrate is good passing/assists, as such, Diaw has a fairly bad rating for the series, but his passing was, at times, fairly integral to the Spurs' offense.
| Miami Heat | Defensive Rating | Defensive Usage | Total Usage |
| Allen | .91 | .10 | .11 |
| Anderson | 1.17 | .09 | .05 |
| Battier | .97 | .04 | .02 |
| Bosh | 1.16 | .14 | .15 |
| Chalmers | .95 | .10 | .08 |
| Cole | .86 | .07 | .06 |
| James | .99 | .12 | .19 |
| Lewis | 1.06 | .09 | .09 |
| Wade | .82 | .14 | .16 |
| Jones | .78 | .01 | .01 |
| RH | .93 | .10 | .07 |
| Team Totals | .98 | 1.00 | 1.00 |
I was a little surprised to see Allen struggle so much defensively, I thought that he was generally closer to an average defender. It was also a bit surprising to see that over the course of the series Lebron was a slightly below average defender. If it had not been for Bosh, Anderson, and Lewis putting up decent defensive ratings and their combined defensive usage of .32, then Miami would have had a completely porous defense.. Instead the Heat only had a mostly porous defense.
| SAN ANTONIO SPURS | (Actual Ortg and Drtg combined with modulated 'prorated' effects of each) | (Expected Ortg and Actual Drtg combined with modulated 'prorated' effects of each) | (MVP vote) [And prorated] | |
| Total Expected Value (TEV) | Total Actual Value (TAV) | Impact on Series | Double Impact | |
| Belinelli | 1.12 | 1.13 | .04 | .03 |
| Bonner | 1.15 | 1.24 | .01 | .01 |
| Diaw | 1.04 | .91 | .09 | .06 |
| Duncan | 1.10 | 1.12 | .18 | .16 |
| Ginobli | 1.02 | 1.07 | .12 | .10 |
| Green | 1.22 | 1.25 | .13 | .13 |
| Leonard | 1.19 | 1.27 | .21 | .21 |
| Parker | 1.00 | 1.06 | .15 | .13 |
| Mills | 1.09 | 1.30 | .10 | .10 |
| Splitter | 1.19 | 1.20 | .09 | .09 |
| Random Spurs | .00 | .00 | ||
| Team Totals | 1.10 | 1.14 | 1.12 | 1.00 |
San Antonio outperformed their expected play by approximately 4%. Having an entire team that has a TEV equal to or above 1.00 is quite impressive. And then most of the Spurs' player's TAV numbers are somewhat ridiculous. Green, Leonard, Mills, and Splitter had a TAV in between 1.20 to 1.30, having a TAV at 1.10 is slightly above average, but having one above 1.20 is impressive.
The way that I selected my MVP award this year (Though the proper selection is kind of obvious both here and in the real world.) is =(CX136*CR136*CX136)/1.3... Or at least that is what the formula looks like (For Belinelli anyways).. No, actually though, those numbers simply just represent total usage multiplied by actual value^2 which is then all prorated, so in this case that simply means that formula represents (Total Usage*Actual Value^2)/1.3, or in base form, (TU*AV^2)/U (where U stands for an unknown number).
Leonard carries the MVP vote away comfortably, and it would have been a landslide victory for him had it not been for Duncan. Green and Mils could have been more serious MVP contenders had their usage rates been higher.
| (MVP vote) [And prorated] | ||||||
| TEV | TAV | Impact on Series | Double Impact | ||
| Allen | 1.08 | 1.00 | .11 | .10 | ||
| Anderson | 1.17 | 1.11 | .06 | .06 | ||
| Battier | .97 | .83 | .02 | .01 | ||
| Bosh | 1.19 | 1.15 | .17 | .18 | ||
| Chalmers | 1.01 | .86 | .07 | .06 | ||
| Cole | .97 | .83 | .05 | .04 | ||
| James | 1.16 | 1.18 | .22 | .24 | ||
| Lewis | 1.17 | 1.18 | .11 | .12 | ||
| Wade | .96 | .85 | .14 | .11 | ||
| Jones | 1.01 | 1.67 | .02 | .03 | ||
| RR | 1.01 | .85 | .06 | .05 | ||
| Team Totals | 1.08 | 1.02 | 1.02 | 1.00 |
Meanwhile, the Heat underperformed the level that they should have achieved by nearly 6%. On the bright side, Cole, Chalmers, and Wade all should have performed semi-significantly better, on the downside, even with that improvement they still should have been playing very few minutes in the series.
I almost think that I should go with an MVP value of (TU*AV^3)/U because I do not like that Wade gets the 4th most MVP votes for the Heat, despite being their LVP. This problem results because total usage has a somewhat significant margin of impact on votes that a player receives and Wade had the second highest TU rate on the Heat.
James and Bosh run away with the MVP votes, with James procuring a solid victory. In the single IoS numbers, James claims the overall MVP of the series, albeit barely, but since the Spurs obviously won the series, a .01 differential should certainly be overlooked and the overall MVP of the series should be given to Kawhi Leonard.
Thanks for reading.
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