Presenting... The Good Phight's All-Time Phillies Tournament

by jonk on Dec 28, 2006 2:07 AM EST in News

We have chosen 68 of the best Phillies players from four different eras to go up against each other, in a head to head, no holds barred, cage match to see who is, in fact, the best Phillies player of all time (well, up until today). As a loyal reader of The Good Phight (and even if you aren't so loyal), you can fill out your bracket of who you think will win and send it in to us to win one of the many fabulous prizes we have in line for you.

The players we have chosen will be playing head to head using Strategic Baseball Simulator (sbs-baseball.com). All their statistics will be normalized to 1980 (baseball's apex in my opinion) and only one will survive. We will finally be able to see if a team full of Steve Jeltz's can beat a team full of Richie Ashburns (I have my money on Jeltz, he has the intangibles).

We will be accepting entries until Sunday, January 8th. That Monday we will be running the first simulations and posting the results. The scoring is simple.

Choose the correct team and you get a specified number of points:

Play-In and first round:
1 point

Second Round:
2 points

Sweet 16:
4 points

Great 8:
5 points

Final Four:
8 points

Champion:
10 points

Any ties will result in a flipped coin or whomever I like the best.

To play, just click on "The Good Phight's All-Time Phillies Tournament" link on the left hand side and save the excel spreadsheet locally. Fill out your choices (double check them) and then send them to thegoodphight@gmail.com. All we need is your email address, but will need more if you are chosen as a winner.

Thank you for participating and check back often to find out how your players are doing.

Tweet Comment 12 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

hot link

Click the link on the right sidebar, or just download the file here.

by WholeCamels on Dec 28, 2006 6:38 AM EST reply actions

LEFT

LEFT sidebar, damnit.

by WholeCamels on Dec 28, 2006 6:43 AM EST up reply actions

Rules

Can we expand a bit on the criteria being used in the simulation? Is it just a straight RC/27 type tool, where whoever has the best stats normalized to 1980 wins? Or is there something else involved, like luck or another similar factor?

Also, what are we looking at, stats-wise? Best Phillies season? Career totals? Career totals only as a Phillie?

I just went to fill out the bracket and realized I didn't know what to base my decisions on; hence, I figured I'd ask.

by Alex Falzone on Dec 28, 2006 11:10 AM EST reply actions

position?

Also, how much do we take into consideration which position they played? And how much does career matter vs. average season/potential?

by PhDave on Dec 28, 2006 11:14 AM EST up reply actions

Criteria

I haven't looked at how it handles the in game mechanism, but there is an entire document dedicated to it. I do know there is a degree of variance (as you would expect), and one player slightly better than another won't win every game. I ran enough simulations and the Jeltzs did beat Schmiddty...once. Schmidt had like 72 errors that game, but it happens.

The input for each player is a basic line of ABs, hits, 2Bs, 3Bs, HRs, BBs, Ks, RBIs, SBs, CSs, and FP (fielding percentage). I have gone through a complete process of normalizing the data to what makes sense and balanced it to give longtime Phillies an advantage over short time players.

Basically, I set their line based on their average stats over the course of 650 plate appearances. Then I modified them based on the number of years on the Phillies. Thus, Mike Schmidt got a little increase to his already gawdy stats while Ryan Howard saw a slight reduction. Time as a Phillie won't be a major contributor to the end result, but I wanted to add it as a factor.

Another balancing feature is Fielding Percentage. I had to make a LOT of assumptions here and basically presumed all players fielded their position at a 99% clip (while not true, it helped balance the game as the errors pile up). I then discounted that percentage or added to it on where they fell on the fielding spectrum. SSs field 1B at 100% while 1B field SS position at a 93% clip (seems high, but there are still a ton of errors). Catchers end up benefitting the most because I ranked them next to SS on the defensive scale. I call it the Craig Biggio effect. It still didn't cause too much of an impact. Some players, like Schmidt, I adjusted an extra percentage in their favor just based on subjective analysis. You have to tinker a bit to make it work right.

As of right now, no games have been played. Each series will be a best of 3. I decided to use 3 instead of 5 to add a bit of variation as the best teams were winning at close to a 95% clip in a best of 5. Players were ranked based on a modified OPS based on games played. There was no favortism (despite people thinking I gave Abreu an advantage). He really was easily the #1 seed. There were a couple players, like Howard, that needed some adjustment since he has played at such a high level for such a short period of time, but I haven't seen any objections to his positioning yet.

Oh, and this is just career as a Philly for all these players and the statistics based on it. Thus, Jim Thome being ranked lower than many lesser players. I used a modified Brett Myers as the pitcher (normalized to 1980) for all teams but that should, hopefully, have no impact.

If there is anything else anyone wants to know, I'll be happy to delve deeper into the process and my choices.

by jonk on Dec 28, 2006 7:06 PM EST reply actions

re

This will certainly be fun.

Huge Tiny Mistake

by pacino on Dec 28, 2006 7:42 PM EST reply actions

thanks!

I'm looking forward to it.

by PhDave on Dec 28, 2006 8:12 PM EST reply actions

Just Noticed...

Will Bunch is advertising this on Attytood:

http://www.attytood.com/2006/12/thank_god_for_sports.html

by PhDave on Dec 28, 2006 11:57 PM EST reply actions

Still don't see...

how Sliding Billy only gets an 8th seed. Six seasons isn't that short, is it? I could see him making the final 8 based on peak alone... except for his second round matchup. Not that I'm telling anyone how to fill out their brackets.

I'm assuming there was no special discounting of 19th century stats, since Big Ed got a 1 seed.

by The Navigator on Jan 2, 2007 1:31 PM EST reply actions

But wait -

you divided them into four brackets based on era - so maybe there is some discounting after all for everybody in the "60 Years of Crap" [which is way harsh - seems to me the 1913-1917 teams accomplished just as much as the 1949-1953 teams]? Or are you just taking Adjusted OPS+ from baseballreference.com or some other site, and letting that stat do the work of making any normalizations to 1980?

by The Navigator on Jan 2, 2007 1:43 PM EST up reply actions

Hamilton

Click here, go to his stats, and click "Neutralize Stats".

His adjusted stats make him Luis Castillo in his prime - ~.310 / .410 / .390.

Good, but not fantastic.

by Shore on Jan 2, 2007 1:45 PM EST up reply actions

but

does that cover his whole career? Looks to me like, as least by park-adjusted OPS+, his best six years almost coincided with the years he spent with the Phils - and I gather we're only using stats-as-a-Phillie for this exercise. If baseballreference.com has him with a adjusted OPS+ better than 150 for five of his six years in red pinstripes, surely that's better than Luis Castillo, who's topped out at 110 and only bettered 100 in three seasons?

Maybe I just don't fully understand what they're doing with the normalizations. Anyway, doing the normalization as you suggest, I get Billy's seasons (1890-1895) vs. Luis Castillo's best consecutive six (2000-2005) for neutralized OPS as:

Billy Luis
761 796
801 692
800 748
887 797
894 732
863 795

So, for his career, you're right, his career average is like peak Castillo - but the Phils got Hamilton's peak, not his downside, and peak Hamilton was more like Pat Burrell without the 2002.

by The Navigator on Jan 2, 2007 5:21 PM EST up reply actions