Monday, August 26, 2013

The Ballad of Jose Oquendo

Pictured: Jose Oquendo, probably not pitching.

Andrew Koo wrote an article for BP today about position players pitching in extra innings. He noted that 2013 marks the sixth straight year in which this has happened, and chalks it up to increasing reliever specialization: if all your relievers are used to going no more than 2 innings per outing, you're much more likely to run out of pitchers in an 18-inning game. I would add the diminishing run environment -- less offense means that tie games last longer.

But that's not what I'm here to write about. I'm here to write about Jose Oquendo.

On May 14, 1988, Oquendo threw four innings against the Atlanta Braves and picked up the loss in a 7-5, 19-inning affair. Absent any evidence to the contrary, I'm going to claim that Oquendo owns the record for most innings pitched in a single outing by a position player. Let's go through the box score for this and dive into the blissful craziness that was the end of this game.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

How Consistent is Fantasy Football Consistency?

The end of summer means the imminent start of the NFL season. And while players prepare with grueling workouts in 100-degree heat, fans are preparing by spending hours staring at fantasy football preview magazines and webpages and cheat sheets.

The problem facing the fantasy football player is one of prediction: which statistics from the previous season best predict value in the upcoming season. One such measure of performance is a player's consistency -- the variation in the number of points he scores in a given week. Pro Football Reference has previously shown that good teams should prefer more consistent lineups, while weaker teams should prefer less consistent lineups on the theory that their best chance of winning involves a few "lightning in a bottle" weeks.

But how do you determine which players are consistent?