Sabermetric Tuesday - August 12, 2008

Good Morning! Week 20 is here and the talk around all major media outlets has already turned to playoff races. Before you know it, the leaves will be changing, Fox will be running annoying ads for its upcoming fall lineup, and Tim McCarver will be driving you to the edge of insanity (once again).

The next six weeks will be especially magnified as teams jockey for position at the top of their standings. Of course, the remaining schedule has huge fantasy implications, especially in head-to-head leagues. Winning the coveted fantasy championship trophy for your league may come down to the match-ups your players have in the remaining days of the season.

So, I decided to take a closer look at the strength of schedule for each of the big league clubs. This was no easy task. Schedule look-ups and identifying the statistics necessary to judge "strength" was quite the arduous task. While in no way do I claim this to be a fool-proof method of judging the remaining Win/Loss records for teams, I do think its a relatively accurate portrayal at schedule difficulty.

The Setup

Here's how it works. I accumulated Winning Percentage, Team Runs Scored, Team Runs Allowed, Team Batting Average, and Team OPS (On-Base Percentage Plus Slugging Percentage) for all teams. For each category, I ranked the team's performance relative to the rest of the league. So, since the Rangers lead the American League in runs scored and there are 14 teams in the league, they get a 14 (its a reverse ranking in actuality). The reverse is true as well. With the Oakland A's ranking last in runs scored, they rank as a 1. I performed this analysis for each of the above categories and average that rank across all columns to come up with a blended average rank. As I always, I have included the master data for your reference.

Then, I created a matrix that illustrates the remaining games left to be played by each specific team from August 15th until the end of the season.

Using the average ranking and the number of games left to be played, I weighted the strength of schedule. So, if a team plays the best team in the league 9 times, that would have more weighting than only playing the team 3 times. After accumulating those statistics, I then performed one final ranking to determine the full extent of schedule strength. Sounds complicated? Its easier than it sounds (and looks) and I believe it captures the difficulty in the remaining schedule per team.

The Results

Team	Rank (1 Being Easiest, 14 Being Most Difficult)
Arizona	13
Atlanta	9
Chicago	6
Cincy	1
Colorado	16
Florida	7
Houston	3
Los Angeles	15
Milwaukee	8
New York	5
Philly	10
Pittsburgh	4
San Diego	12
San Fran	11
St. Louis	14
Washington	2

Conclusion

In conclusion, in never hurts to slice the data one more way to gain an advantage down the home stretch in your league. When considering starting or benching players, pitching-and-ditching, or squeezing in a trade before the deadline, consider a team's schedule for the rest of the season. It could just be the ticket you need to carry you over the top.

-- Joe

jribando@fantistics.com