Re: Stats Gone Wild! Plus Triple-Play Bonus

M C Hamster wrote:
> On 13 May 2008 09:53:02 -0500, M C Hamster
> <davolson@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 12 May 2008 21:27:40 -0700, Blinky the Shark
>> <no.spam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>
>>> M C Hamster wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 12 May 2008 20:00:20 -0700, Blinky the Shark
>>>> <no.spam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Stats guys in the basebal booth rule.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm watching the Angels and the White Sox.  Each team has a
>>>>> player in the game whose last name starts with "Q".  The Real
>>>>> Stats Guy came up with this: no two players whose names begin
>>>>> with "Q" have ever homered in the same major league game.
>>>>>
>>>>> BlinkyBonusPanel:  A Cleveland player got an unassisted triple
>>>>> play today. The last one was performed in 2007.  I wonder if 
>>>>> this
>>>>> indicates a trend, since in over a hundred years of major 
>>>>> league
>>>>> ball today's was only the 14th. :)  BonusBonus:  Cleveland 
>>>>> also
>>>>> had the first two, in 1909 and 1920. They are the alpha and 
>>>>> omega
>>>>> of unassisted triple plays; but had none in between.
>>>>
>>>> The Stats guys must have sent it out over the national wire,
>>>> because the Cubs announcer mentioned the same thing tonight 
>>>> (about
>>>> the Cleveland triple plays).
>>>
>>> I got the the triple-play item from UPI online.
>>>
>>>> Here's the list.  (Obviously not including tonight's.)
>>>> http://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/feats8.shtml
>>>>
>>>> From it, the years they occurred (going backwards) are:
>>>>
>>>> 2008
>>>> 2007
>>>> 2003
>>>> 2000
>>>> 1994
>>>> 1992
>>>> 1968
>>>> 1927
>>>> 1927
>>>> 1925
>>>> 1923
>>>> 1923
>>>> 1920
>>>> 1909
>>>>
>>>> It's quite astounding that only one occurred in the period from
>>>> 1927 to 1992.    I'm completely at a loss to explain this, or 
>>>> why
>>>> the sudden increase in frequency since the 1990s.  Unless it's
>>>> steroids.
>>>
>>> Yeah, that's an amazing hole in the middle of the list, after 
>>> seven
>>> in the 18-year span after the first one.  The 1968-1992 gap is
>>> noticeable, too.
>>
>> You can, in part, explain why they are more frequent now than 
>> they
>> were prior to the 1961 baseball expansion of franchises, since 
>> there
>> are simply many more games played each season now than then. But 
>> that
>> doesn't explain the sudden reappearance of the unassisted triple 
>> play
>> in 1992, and its continued appearance since then.    And the 
>> question
>> of the huge gap after 1927 remains unexplained.
>
> Since an unassisted triple play almost always (perhaps always, I'm 
> not
> sure) involves 2 (or 3) men on base who are running on the pitch, 
> and
> it appears that stolen base frequency was much higher in the early
> 20th century (from 1900-1920, e.g.), that could explain the flurry 
> of
> these in the early 1900s.  They dropped off (well, more than that,
> they went totally extinct) during the 1930-1990 era when base 
> stealing
> was less prevalent, then picked up again with the much larger 
> number
> of games being played plus perhaps a pickup in base stealing.
>
> This is more a theoretical construct than a strong data-based
> analysis.  A friend has said these data are right, but I haven't
> really checked them myself.

It's likely that something's going on.

I simulated 2000 sequences of 108 years (1901 to 2008) and in 8 of 
them there's a gap as long as from 1927 to 1968. [boring details 
below]

Baseball expansion hits in 1962 (?) with the move from 8 to 10 teams 
(Mets, Astros ...)

Base stealing hits about the same time as expansion with Maury Wills 
stealing 104 in 1962. However, this is NOT break Ty Cobb's record of 
96 stolen bases because the number of games in the season had gone 
from 154 to 162, and Wills' 97th stolen base occurred after the 
154th game.

Lou Brock then took up the mantle. Brock was traded from Cubs to the 
Cardinals in 1964 in one of the great trades of all time [snicker], 
and went on to steal 118 bases in 1974 -- breaking both Cobb's and 
Wills' records.

Brock went on to market the Brockabrella: 
http://www.yardbarker.com/author/user_photo/9971


-- 
Mike Kruger
"You have to be careful if you are reckless." - Richard M. Daley


Boring details:  I ignored baseball expansion and treated each year 
as an entity.  Based on the fact that there are 14 occurrances in 
108 years, I estimated a poisson mean of .129 per year. Then each 
year can have 0, 1, 2, etc. triple plays based on that poisson mean. 
Once 108 years are simulated, it's a simple matter to count the 
largest string of zero years (which can be any set of years, not 
just 1928-1967).

I did this 2,000 times, which is enough to get the idea that this is 
rare but not terribly impossible under random cir***stances.