Okay.  I know I’m not stirring up much controversy here, but I do have a fun toy to share.  I wrote a couple of weeks ago that Tiger would likely hold the number one ranking for most of this year, but that someone might be able to take it in the last couple of months.

I would like to now take that statement back.  For someone to be a “Challenger” this year, as defined in my last post, they would need to hold the top spot for ten weeks.  That isn’t going to happen.

The Numbers

I put together a spreadsheet that lets you enter the year and week for any point after the British Open.  Assuming Tiger has not played, it will show you his projected score for that week.  What does it show us?  Simple, in week 43 of this year, Tiger will have a score of 14.73.  Looking at the World Golf Rankings, that is five points higher than the current number two, Phil Mickelson at 9.64.

In fact, Tiger won’t drop below Phil’s score until Week 8 of 2009.  That is the end of February.  Tiger won’t drop below 10 until Valentines Day.

Now if Phil isn’t up to the job, there is still the matter of who will step up next.  Who knows?  There are still 5-6months of golf to play before we can expect someone to charge.  Don’t get me wrong, somebody can go on a tear and claim the top spot by year’s end. Tiger will be down to 11.66 in 2009, which is achievable.  It will take somebody stepping forward and not everybody taking turns winning.

Let’s see if the PGA Championship can clarify things at all.

Shortly after my last post on this topic, Derek Jacques posted a follow-up post titled Still Stranded.  I just got to read it today as it is a locked-down article and I’m not a subscriber.  It is a free trial this week, so if you aren’t a Baseball Prospectus subscriber, hurry on down and read it.

Derek looks at several additional methods that were presented as feedback to his article, including my LOBR (R/LOB).  I was pretty pleased with that.  When he compared the results, the correlation of my method, 0.87, using data back to 1971 was highest of those using LOB (or BLOB).  The correlation of TOB to runs was much higher (called BRE in my last post), but that is to be expected (obvious statement #2 from the last post) and wasn’t the point of the original question.  All those numbers for 2007 are in my last post as well as in Derek’s 2nd article, just with different headers.

What is a Good LOB?

The original question in the article Stranded!, from BP reader JP, was:

Does the ‘Left on Base’ Statistic have any correlation to a team’s offensive success or failure?

My answer is simple.  YES!!!  However, just don’t look at the raw number.  Compare it to the Runs.  If the ratio, LOBR, is greater that 2:3 (R/LOB > .67) then your team did a decent job, win or lose.  If they perform higher than that over the course of the year, they’ll likely be in the top half in Runs Scored.

Looking at the All-Star game this year, the score was 4-3 for the American League.  However, the LOBR wasn’t pretty for either team.  The AL had a LOBR of 0.235 and the NL had a LOBR of 0.273.  The NL had the better LOBR, but it was horrible and only a slight advantage.

In a more day-to-day measure, the Braves just played a three game set to the Nationals.  Here are their LOBR stats (LOB).  Guess which games they won.

• Braves 1.400 to Nats 0.857
• 0.250 to 1.000
• 0.545 to 1.250

If you said that the Braves won the first game and then lost the next two to the Nats, you are correct.  In the first game, the LOB is pretty close, as was the score, 7-6.  In the second game, the LOB was the same, but when you look at the LOBR, you can tell that the score wasn’t close.  It wasn’t as it was 8-2.  The third one finished with a nastier score of 15-6.

These games are a perfect example of looking at LOB in context.  By itself, it doesn’t mean much.  When you use Runs, you can then determine if your team is failing to get those runs around.  The Nationals had a higher LOB in two of the games, the big blowout and the one that they lost.  In the smaller blowout, both teams had the same number of runs.  The Nationals were more efficient (1.074 LOBR for the Nats vs 0.625 for the Braves) in the series and won it.

More runners is still key and will always give a better correlation, especially over time.  LOBR will give you instant feedback on how effective your offense was firing on any given day, or for the whole season.

I don’t follow golf very much. I usually turn in to the The Open Championship, aka the British Open (love the bunkers). I also tune in when someone is about to do something historic, like Greg Norman challenging at The Open Championship in 2008 or Tiger in a playoff on only one knee.

Which brings us to the big question, who is the next number one? Tiger still holds the spot, even after not playing for a month. The results of the The Open Championship are unlikely to change the leader board, except to bring Tiger closer to the pack.

If you look at the current standings, Phil Mickelson is best positioned to take the spot. I have my doubts about his ability to pull it off. He isn’t doing well at the British this weekend. He cleared the cut by two strokes, but was eight strokes back with a +8. He then hit 6 over the last two days and should finish well out of it.

After Phil, it is wide open. Whoever wants it more can take it, so it will be interesting to see.

A Historical Look

Grabbing numbers of weeks in the top spot, I’ve thrown a little graphic showing the Leaders (most weeks at #1), Challengers (10+ weeks or 2 times at #1), and Notables (at least one week at #1) per year. It isn’t meant to show the best player each year, but to give an indication of dominance in the golfing world.

As you can see, Greg Norman and Tiger Woods have dominated the charts since the rankings came out in 1986. Vijay Singh would have a stronger showing except his time at the top was over two years and I selected calendar years. Vijay is the victim of the methodology that I chose. Many would argue that he was the best player of 1994, and I would probably have to agree.

The chart really expresses dominance. Tiger I knew. Greg Norman also dominated, which I thought, but didn’t understand the scope. Nick Faldo had a decent run for a few years, but he didn’t define an era. He was just a break from Greg.

Tiger already has this year wrapped-up. The question is whether anyone can perform well enough to hit the challenger level, or will they be left at Notable. I expect at least one person to hit the Challenger status this year and maybe even a new Champion for next year. We could see a fair amount of turmoil for a while as it will probably take Tiger at least 6-7 months to challenge for the top spot, most likely longer.

I can’t wait to see who will actually pull this out.

[Edit 2008-07-21: Looked at the updated ratings after The Open Championship. No real changes except that Padraig Harrington has moved into 3rd place, noticeably in front of the pack. Tiger still has 2x Phil's score in 2nd and 3x over Harrington.]

Recently, Derek Jacques at Baseball Prospectus wrote a great article called Stranded! It’s focus was trying to determine if the Batters Left on Base (BLOB) statistic for a team was a measure of offensive success or failure. It was a fascinating article. It confirmed some common sense and completely missed the crux of the matter. I sent him a quick note and I will share and elaborate here.

The Obvious

Let’s cover the obvious. The more people that you put on base, Total on Base (TOB), the more people will score. It is a simple concept that powers Batting Average (AVG) and On Base Percentage (OBP). Derek ran some numbers for about 918 teams over the course of 25+ seasons and sure enough, there was a strong correlation.

Next bit of logic, the more people that you put on base, the more people that you leave there. Very simple. If you, on average, got 40% of your base runners home, then you would have a higher BLOB with 2000 base runners than with 1900 base runners. The numbers confirm the correlation, not as strong as with runs, but strong.

Finally, he compared the number of Runs with BLOB. This also had a strong correlation, but it was the weakest of the three. This may seem to indicate that a high BLOB is good. Well, over the course of a season it isn’t bad as it indicates more men on base which leads to more Runs.

Derek then concludes that saying a high BLOB, while frustrating, may be a good thing. This is where I pick it up.

Base Running Efficiency

I decided to check the ratio of Runs to BLOB in 2007. Derek used numbers from 2007 for his quick illustration, and I’m going to use the same numbers, mostly because I have them readily accessible from Derek’s article.

The more Runs a team scored, the higher the ratio. What is very interesting was that the ratio for the majors last year was .666. That means for every two LOB, a team scored a Run. Those that fell below that ratio, faired poorly. The top 15 teams all had ratios higher than .666. Of the bottom 15, only the Blue Jays ranked at 17, had a score above the mark. They came in at .677, but were in the bottom 25% in TOB. Back to obvious statement number 2, more on base, more runs. Let’s call this the Left on Base Ratio (LOBR)

To look at it another way, the lower scoring teams got 33-35% of their base runners around to score. The higher scoring teams, around 40%. The number 15 team, the Tampa Bay Rays, got 37.3% of their runners across. Their ratio of Runs to Everyone that scored more than them (756 Runs) had a better ratio of getting those runners home. Only 1 of the remaining 15 teams below them had a better rate. Let’s call this Base Runner Efficiency (BRE).

Here is a quick chart with all the numbers for 2007. Totals for the majors are at the bottom.

One thing that you realize, and can enter the obvious discussion, the more people a team can get on base, the better they are at getting them home. The very act of getting on base can push existing runners closer to home, or the rest of the way there.

What can we do with this in evaluating our daily frustration? Let’s look at a recent slate of games apply the norms for the majors to the games.

Any Given Day

Here a a chart showing the Teams, Runs, BLOB, LOBR, and Result for Sunday, May 18 2008 I’ve paired the teams from each game together, Winner and then Loser.

Go National League! 8-6 on Sunday. What we are looking at though is the LOBR. Here is the average for the Winners and Losers:

• Winner LOBR: 0.935
• Loser LOBR: 0.543

The Winning teams did leave an average of one extra runner on base. However, they scored twice as many runs, winning by an average score of 7 to 3. It was a good day for all the teams as the overall ratio for the day was 0.754.

A quick note of exceptional games:

• Boston over Milwaukee (11-7 Runs, 9-2 BLOB). The Brewers were very efficient in getting their people home. However, the Red Sox got them by volume and were still over the 0.666 average at 1.222.
• St. Louis over Tampa Bay (5-4, 16-5) Another case of sheer volume. Tampa did a great job, they just needed more.
• Houston over Texas (5-4, 9-3) Just like the St. Louis game, just smaller LOBR numbers. Two one-run games. Reinforces the importance of getting on people to start the process.

The other 12 games went to the winner in LOBR. If I had a full database, I’d pull more games in and see how it all maps out. In any case, this can serve as a starting point in understanding the role of BLOB in greater detail.

Last month I ranked the organizations based upon some prospect lists out there. It wasn’t complete and had obvious room for error, but it was a quick and dirty approach.

Yesterday, Kevin Goldstein over at Baseball Prospectus completed his ranking of top minor league baseball organizations. I’m going to look at his top 19 (as those are the only ones I can see without paying) and compare them to my list to see how my methodology panned out. You can look at the bottom 15 list as well, the first 4 for free.

Of the ones that are on both lists, all are within 6 spots of my ranking, though the Mariners are already at least 9 spots out. I measured a standard deviation of 3.9 and an average miss of about 3 spots. Overall I would say that the correlation is pretty good. My bottom 6 didn’t crack his top 19 and our top 7 were the same, though with some changed positions. I did note that as things got further from the top spots the greater the variation between the two.

The Braves and Nationals each moved up one spot. No new news, but no bad news either.

The good news for Nationals’ fans is that the ranking for last year was 30. There is room for hope in a few years. They also have a shot a decent, and signable, pick this June with the number 9 slot. Just think, in 2011 they can be fighting with the Braves and Mets.

Why the Difference in the Two?

The differences seem to fall into two major categories. One is that some organizations with a lot of solid prospects, have a backlog at one position. That hurt an organization in BP’s rating system. The reverse of this is of course the organization with solid prospects everywhere. I may be able to modify my methodology to take this into account to a certain degree. Maybe I can give less credit for each subsequent player at any given position. I’ll have to play with it before next year.

The second major reason that some organizations, like the Athletics, have what is a large number of young talent that will be cracking the top 100 next year. Others, like the Reds, are top heavy. After their big guys, things are a little sparse. That is just a weakness to my methodology. If you want quick and dirty, little things will pop-up.

So, Doug Segrest of The Birmingham News decided to play a simulation tourney, the SoS Playoffs II, to determine the best SEC teams of the last 12 years. Setting the tournament up like a mini World Cup tournament, he structured it as follows:

• Four groups of five teams each (20 teams total).
• Each group plays a home-home set against each opponent for a total of 8 eight each.
• The top two teams in each group advances to the quarterfinals.
• From there it is single elimination to the finals with each game played at a “neutral” site.

Each game is run using the NCAA Football SimMatchup tool at WhatIfSports. It is a fun little device. He takes the first outcome and then captures the box scores. It only goes back to 1996 in stats, thus the limitation in this bit of entertainment.

As a little disclaimer, I started this post about halfway through the Quarterfinals, so I had no idea of the results when I started.

Group Play

I’m not going to dwell too much on this phase as it was just trying to get us from 20 to 8 teams. You can see the group results for yourself. Some highlights:

• Georgia went 0-3.
• Florida and LSU each sent 3 teams to the quarters, though LSU was the 2nd place team in all three of the groups it advances out of. Florida won two groups.
• The undefeated 2004 Auburn Tigers and the 1998 National Champion Tennessee Volunteers were the other two teams to advance, both winning their groups handily.

The Quarterfinals

Three LSU teams and three Florida teams tackle the single entries from Auburn and Tennessee. The only thing we knew for sure going in was that one of the Florida teams was going to lose (they were paired up).

• 2001 Florida defeats 2007 LSU, 37-13: Pretty much a domination. I think that LSU is better than their numbers when healthy on defense. Glen Dorsey is a beast that was hampered this year, which hurt the numbers. I don’t want to take away from the Gators though, they were tough that year, only losing two close games at Auburn (23-20) and at home against Tennessee(34-32).
• 1998 Tennessee defeats 2003 LSU, 30-0: Ouch! That had to hurt. The Volunteers cruise to victory. So much for the two LSU National Champions.
• 2004 Auburn defeats 2005 LSU, 42-0: It gets worse for LSU as they finish-up 0-3 in the playoffs. LSU didn’t do well in the Group play, with the 2005 version the only team to crack .500 at 5-3. Auburn’s win shows that that going undefeated actually means something here, unlike in 2004(Someone was going to get hosed that year, I just wish it hadn’t been Auburn).
• 1998 Florida defeats 1996 Florida, 16-12: Spurrier won another one, but that was a given. The only noteworthy thing here is that this was the closest game of the quarters and that the 96 Gators, National Champs, lost to a 5th ranked Gators team. Of course, the 98 Gators two losses came against the two teams that played for the National Championship.

All-in-all, there were no upsets, unless you are an LSU fan. The four group winners advanced. I imagine that on the field, there would have been one upset. Still fun though.

The Semis

A pair of Florida teams and two National Champs made it this far, with the 2004 Tigers being the odd man out. Let’s see what happened.

• 2001 Florida defeats 1998 Tennessee, 45-16: Florida rolls onward in what was a . I went to the site and ran it 10+ times. Tennessee only won once in a collection of games that favored blow-out scores. Every blowout favored Florida, including a 50-10 annihilation. The numbers just don’t like the Volunteers on this one.
• 2004 Auburn defeats 1998 Florida, 32-7: The highest scoring team of this little tourney only scored 7 against the 2004 Auburn Tigers. I wasn’t surprised at the result, having run this simulation before this game, but the score was a little more lopsided than I would have guessed. That’s what the numbers will do to you though.

The Final

Time for an Auburn-Florida showdown. This is only appropriate as it was Auburn that caused the most trouble for Spurrier. Auburn was the first (1994), and second (1999) SEC team to win in the Swamp after he took over after the 1989 season. Auburn was one of two only teams, the other being Tennessee, to beat him this 2001 version of the Gators. Looking back, it is a shame they don’t still play every year.

• 2001 Florida defeats 2004 Auburn, 33-15: After leading at halftime, Auburn was blanked 23-0 in the second half. Having followed the SEC this long, I have trouble with that possibility. Not saying Florida wouldn’t have rallied for the win. Far from it. I imagine a 33-28 victory would have been more likely for Florida against Tommy’s Tigers.

That’s it. It was interesting. Like all simulations, enjoy it for entertainment but with a grain of salt. In college football, emotion can rule the day. Without playing it on the field, you never know.

I just ran both Boise State and Oklahoma from 2006 through the simulator and OK won 4 of the 5 times, including the first. We all know how that one turned out. I’m not saying that Auburn should have beaten Florida. I’m saying that neither of those two teams may have made it that far.

This is happening all over, but Auburn just got its first commitment for the 2009 class. The kid is barely through the midway point of his junior year of high school. The only reason that this commitment might actually mean anything is that his uncle is Antonio Coleman, a returning starter on the defensive line.

Family ties aside, this is just nuts. It is also reality and it is only going to get crazier.