Small excerpt from a book I'm working on... "Betting Baseball 2010"

A few days ago I promised that I would write a few details that I'm going to include in next year's baseball betting book called "Betting Baseball 2010".

Oddly enough, if you take a look at the Wikipedia formala for determining OBA (opponents batting average), and if you were to look around in many baseball forums and/or at MLB.com; you'll find, that the two formulas will garner different final results. Now, I pride myself in being a realist. And, I'm also a big advocate of the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid).

Just to keep things very simple, I'm going to use a pitcher that has a solid number of total innings pitched for the season, instead of a guy that might have 80.1 or 80.2. We will take a guy that's pitching tonight for an example (June 19, 2009), and the pitcher is going to be Pittsburgh Pirate Ross Ohlendorf.

According to MLB.com, Mr. Ohlendorf is allowing players to bat .265 against him. Now if you were to utilize the Wikipedia formula, then, that number would be marginally higher. My formula (which is extremely rudimentary), incorporates the fact that there is almost never a single team that has a fielding percentage lower than .970.

This means, that there is never more than a 3% chance per ball in play (in any given game, or throughout the course of the season), that a team is going to make an error within the parameters of a game and/or a season. Example: The 4 worst teams in baseball, from a fielding perspective (Arizona, Seattle, Florida, Washington), are all currently sitting at .976.

Back on point...

Ross Ohlendorf, has pitched a grand total of 77 innings this season, and this equates to (77 x 3), or 231 total outs garnered. Now, if you add to that number his total base on balls (which is 22), and his total number of strikeouts (which is 39); you will arrive at a grand total of 292. Additionally, young Mr. Ohlendorf has allowed 76 total hits. Now if you divide 76 by 292 you'll come up with a .260 OBA. Then, if you add an additional 3 points to this number (accounting for the maximum chance of errors made); you'll now derive a final tally of .263, and in my humble opinion (mathematically speaking), this will give you the most accurate computation.

In addition, simply dividing (76) by the sole number of outs garnered (231); would lead you to a derived OBA of .329. Quite the disparity, wouldn't you agree? Now, this segues nicely into another one of my original "Tuttle Betting Theorems". .329 minus .263 is a differential of .066, and .066 x 27 = 1.782. Now, 1.782 x 4.5 equates to approximately 8.019.

Using that 8.019 derivative; you now have discerned the absolute maximum runs allowed said pitcher would give up, if he were to pitch poorly for a full 9 innings. Now we all know that a manager is not going to allow a pitcher that is pitching poorly to go a full 9 innings. So, by simply formulating an aggregate (of average innings pitched per start), one can "predict" how many runs said pitcher should give up, in his next start.

Still using young Mr. Ohlendorf as my guinea pig; he has pitched precisely 5.9 (or an estimated 6) innings per, during his 13 starts this season. 8.019 x 6 = 48.11 divided by 18 (the total number of outs that one would garner over 6 innings), would give us an exact number of of 2.67.

Now that you have this number at your disposal, and in conjunction with my progression/regression theorem; you'll now have the ability to predict, in advance, the total number of runs any pitcher should allow; if they do not meet or exceed their statistical capabilities.

In Ohlendorf's last game (vs. Detroit), he pitched 6 full innings, and in doing so he only had 1 "bad" inning. As we all know there are 9 innings to a game, thus making each inning equate to approximately 11%. So, Ohlendorf should regress by 27.50% (5.5 x 5). 27.50 divided by 6.0 equals 4.58. So, 4.58 + 2.67 = 7.25 + (his current ERA, which is at 4.56) = 11.81/2 = 5.90, and the amount of runs Ohlendorf should allow, tonight, if he were to pitch 6 full innings. Which means, if he were to not make it out of the 5th (hypothetically speaking); then he probably will wind up allowing 4 or 5 runs, guaranteed.

So in closing, given the fact that Colorado has won 13 of their last 14, and the fact that pitcher Jason Marquis (of Colorado) is the ultimate "Jekyll and Hyde" type pitcher; I believe that the "over 10" in this contest, CANNOT LOSE!!!



Signed,
Joseph J Tuttle