Archive for the 'Stat Challenge' Category

Here's a bit of a challenge for you.

I'm looking for players who have hit a walk off home run and then led off the next game with a homer. Bonus points if it happened in the 2 games of a double header. Extra bonus points for a player whose walk-off was at home and lead-off shot on the road.

Let's see what you have.

This is a weekly stat contest. Even if you've never played before, you can enter and try to win!

Week 6 considers games from Monday May 10 through Sunday May 16. You must post your entry for Week 5 in the comments to this post before the first pitch of the week, scheduled for 7:05 PM ET on Monday. (No day games on this particular Monday, meaning you have extra time to enter.)

Questions:

1. Total team HR by Mariners, Astros, Indians, Braves, and Athletics (at this writing, these are the 5 teams with the fewest homers in the majors.)

2. Highest game score posted by any Giants starting pitcher

3. Total RBI by National League #8 hitters (includes any player hitting in the #8 spot, such as pinch-hitters.)

4. Total bases by Kelly Johnson, ARI

5. Total earned runs allowed by Cardinals pitching staff

Koma beat me to it by posting the results elsewhere but I have confirmed his calculations.

First, the answers:

1. Total stolen base attempts against Red Sox pitching (pickoffs scored officially as caught stealing also count): Answer: 5. This was sort of a trick question by me. After what Texas did do the Red Sox, I expected a lot of high guesses but I also expected the actual number to be lowish due to regression to the mean. The number was low, and this question basically determined the winner. The average guess was about 13!

2. Total plate appearances by David Ortiz: 16

3. Total of the top 2 run totals as a team by the Brewers (for example, in the last 7 days the answer would be 31, for the 20 they scored yesterday and the 11 they scored 4 days ago.): 22

4. Total innings pitched by Phillies' starting pitchers other than Roy Halladay. Any possible relief appearances by pitchers who normally are starters do not count. Let's go with the total sum of IP, with that final total rounded down to a full number of innings. In other words, if there are 7 games and each starting pitcher happens to go 5.2 innings, I will add 5.2 + 5.2 + 5.2...(etc) to total 39.2 IP, and then round that final total down to 39. I will not round each starter's individual innings.: 23

5. Total bases by Nelson Cruz, TEX: 1. Cruz went on the disabled list right when this week started. The average guess was 16.

Here are the official results:

T1. Jaheigel 21 (2)
T1. Josh W 21 (2)
3. Brian O 24
4. KennO 25
5T. Omer 26
5T. Johnny Twisto 26 (2)

That's two wins in four weeks by Jaheigel, and now Josh W has one first-place and one second-place finish. These folks plus Johnny Twisto join Mark, BSK, and Koma with 2 top-5 finishes so far.

For fun, let's see what the results would have been if we ignore Question 5 about Nelson Cruz:

1. Jaheigel 7
2. Brian O 8
3T. Josh W 12
3T. Omer 12
3T. Fhomess 12

And if we ignore Question 1 about stolen base attempts against the Red Sox:

1. Josh W 16
2. Omer 18
3. Jaheigel 19
4T. KennO 20
4T. RichardKC

I will also mention Toby J, who guessed a great 7 on Q#1 and 8 on Q#5 but way overestimated David Ortiz's plate appearances.

This week we are going low, low, low.

Week 5 considers games from Monday May 3 through Sunday May 9. You must post your entry for Week 5 in the comments to this post before the first pitch of the week, scheduled for 7:05 PM ET on Monday. (No day games on this particular Monday, meaning you have extra time to enter.)

Questions:

1) Total number of complete games pitched by all teams excluding rain-shortened games

2) Total number of games in which both teams score at least 10 runs (such a game counts as 1, not 2 because 2 teams are involved.)

3) Total number of games in which each team steals at least one base

4) Total homers combined for Billy Butler and Jose Guillen, both KCR

5) Total saves combined for Matt Capps, WSN and David Aardsma, SEA

These are going to be some small numbers so I wouldn't be surprised to see our winner come in with a total under 10.

Note: all Stat Challenge posts are now tagged with the Stat Challenge category. If you click on that category name at the bottom of this post, you can see all posts in this group.
OK, here are the answers to the Week 3 questions:

1. Total home runs by all teams - 165

2. Total strikeouts by Mark Reynolds, ARI - 6 (surprisingly low)

3. Total number of bases (i.e. total bases) by Magglio Ornodez, DET - 9

4. Total wins by the Astros - 5 (surprisingly high)

5. Highest number of hits achieved by any one team in any one game - a whopping 25 by the Brewers in this game

Our top 5 finishers for the week are:

1. Mark - 19 (2)
2T. Josh W - 22
2T. Trokenmatt - 22
4T. BSK - 27 (2)
4T. Koma - 27 (2)

What are the (2)'s? these are players who have now appeared in the Top 5 two different times. I will try to keep track of recurring winners, but you guys seem to be doing a good job of that too.

Incidentally, this week's challenge was dominated by question #1 since it was such a large number. Basically, if you did badly on that question, then you did badly overall. If we eliminate question #1 from consideration and redo the rankings, here are the (unofficial) winners:

1. Hysteria1978 - 9
2. Branden - 10
3. Mark - 13
4T. Mstew - 14
4T. Redsauce - 14
4T. Jen - 14

Way to go Mark. You place high on the list either way.

I'm hoping for 50 entries this week. This is a weekly contest, so it doesn't matter if you have played at all so far. Enter this time. Please feel free to post a link to this contest on your own blog.

Here we go with Week 4 of the Stat Challenge. If you want to read the full rules, check out the Week 1 post.

Week 4 considers games from Monday April 26 through Sunday May 2. You must post your entry for Week 4 in the comments to this post before the first pitch of the week, scheduled for 7:10 PM ET on Monday. (No day games on this particular Monday, meaning you have extra time to enter.)

Post your guesses for the following in Week 4:

1. Total stolen base attempts against Red Sox pitching (pickoffs scored officially as caught stealing also count)

2. Total plate appearances by David Ortiz

3. Total of the top 2 run totals as a team by the Brewers (for example, in the last 7 days the answer would be 31, for the 20 they scored yesterday and the 11 they scored 4 days ago.)

4. Total innings pitched by Phillies' starting pitchers other than Roy Halladay. Any possible relief appearances by pitchers who normally are starters do not count. Let's go with the total sum of IP, with that final total rounded down to a full number of innings. In other words, if there are 7 games and each starting pitcher happens to go 5.2 innings, I will add 5.2 + 5.2 + 5.2...(etc) to total 39.2 IP, and then round that final total down to 39. I will not round each starter's individual innings.

5. Total bases by Nelson Cruz, TEX

OK, here are the answers to last week's questions:

1. Total number of hits for White Sox as a team: 56 (this ended up being pretty interesting as they had two games with 14+ hits and one game with 1 hit!)

2. Total number of relief pitcher appearances for the Dodgers: 25

3. Total number of walkoff wins in regulation by all teams (i.e. wins inthe bottom of the ninth inning): 5

4. Total RBI for Ryan Howard, PHI: 4

5. Total plate appearances for Jose Reyes, NYM: 35 (this number was boosted by the 20-inning game)

The top 5 scores for this week (with lowest score being best) were:

1. Jahiegel - 15
2. Mark - 17
3. BSK - 18
4. Dunnowhat2type - 22
5. Johnny Twisto - 23

Both Jahiegel and BSK nailed the White Sox' 56 hits exactly. Dunnowhat2type was the only person to guess as high as 30 for Reyes' plate appearances.

By averaging all of the guesses and then scoring them, we come up with a score of 34. Only 9 entries actually scored better than 34, showing the power of average thinking.

You have a little more than an hour to participate in this week's stat challenge. Go to the post here and make your entry in the comments.

(With the dwindling response for Week 2, this is going to be the final week for the Stat Challenge unless we get more participation. If you want this feature to continue, please participate and maybe even suggest it to a few friends. This is a weekly contest so it doesn't matter if you participated previously.)

For rules, check out the Week 1 post.

Week 3 considers games from Monday April 19 through Sunday April 25th. You must post your entry for Week 3 in the comments to this post before the first pitch of the week, scheduled for 11:05 AM ET on Monday. (That's an early start time on Monday due to the Patriots Day holiday in Massachusetts.)

Post your guesses for the following in Week 3:

1. Total home runs by all teams

2. Total strikeouts by Mark Reynolds, ARI

3. Total number of bases (i.e. total bases) by Magglio Ornodez, DET

4. Total wins by the Astros

5. Highest number of hits achieved by any one team in any one game

Here are the results to Week 1 of the stat challenge.

First, the answers:

1) Innings pitched for Johan Santana, rounded down to full innings: 11

2) Total plate appearances by Mike Lowell, Jason Varitek, and Jeremy Hermida: 16

3) Hits by Rick Ankiel: 9

4) Total wins by the Pirates and the Nationals: 6

5) Total strikeouts by Twins pitchers while pitching in save situations: 3

We had 29 entries and here are the best scores:

1. Kris - 9 points

2. Robert - 10 points

3. TJH - 10 points

4. Koma - 10 points

5. Tim Lee - 11 points

Two thirds of the entries got 16 points or fewer, so many people did well. There were a couple of entries that did way worse than the rest due to bad guesses on question #2.

Incidentally, the average of all 29 entries, using fractional points, yielded a score of 9.79, nearly the best of everybody. That means that altogether as a community, we're doing pretty well.

Congrats Kris on winning the first stat challenge!