While watching MLB.TV last night I saw a good idea for a possible BarrelFire matchup. Viewers could vote on the Marquee matchup of the night. Basically they take a starting pitcher, select a batter from the opposing team lineup and determine what is the best Pitcher vs Batter Matchup of the night.
Last night they featured the Strasburg v. Stanton matchup as the Nationals faced off against the Marlins. I started thinking how to score this to determine who would win.
The first approach would be to come up with a scoring system assigning various values to matchup outcomes like H, Strikeout, Walk, K, etc. Quickly I realized that would be a lot of work for just a BarrelFire. Then it hit me. Someone has done all the legwork for me. I went over to http://www.fangraphs.com and looked at the box score. They have a metric called WPA which stands for Win Probability Added. You can read the details here.
Anyway so now if I just sum up the WPA for each time the batter faced the selcted pitcher we could come up with a scoring system that determines who won the matchup. If the sum of the WPA is positive the batter wins, if the sum is negative then the pitcher wins.
Taking the Marquee Matchup last night Strasburg v Stanton here is how it shakes out.
First AB Stanton singled to left added .012 to Win Probability. Second AB Stanton flied out to center with 2 outs and runners on 1B and 2B for a -.031 WPA. Strasburg was pulled in the 3rd inning so they only faced off twice. Net WPA was -0.019 so Strasburg won this matchup. Stanton's fly out to center with 2 men on was the deciding AB.
Thoughts? I will watch a few more of these matchups and you may start seeing them as BarrelFires
Last night they featured the Strasburg v. Stanton matchup as the Nationals faced off against the Marlins. I started thinking how to score this to determine who would win.
The first approach would be to come up with a scoring system assigning various values to matchup outcomes like H, Strikeout, Walk, K, etc. Quickly I realized that would be a lot of work for just a BarrelFire. Then it hit me. Someone has done all the legwork for me. I went over to http://www.fangraphs.com and looked at the box score. They have a metric called WPA which stands for Win Probability Added. You can read the details here.
Anyway so now if I just sum up the WPA for each time the batter faced the selcted pitcher we could come up with a scoring system that determines who won the matchup. If the sum of the WPA is positive the batter wins, if the sum is negative then the pitcher wins.
Taking the Marquee Matchup last night Strasburg v Stanton here is how it shakes out.
First AB Stanton singled to left added .012 to Win Probability. Second AB Stanton flied out to center with 2 outs and runners on 1B and 2B for a -.031 WPA. Strasburg was pulled in the 3rd inning so they only faced off twice. Net WPA was -0.019 so Strasburg won this matchup. Stanton's fly out to center with 2 men on was the deciding AB.
Thoughts? I will watch a few more of these matchups and you may start seeing them as BarrelFires
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