Author Archives: Geoff

About Geoff

Dad, hacker, fantasy sports entrepreneur.

Reviewing the FiveThirtyEight 2018 Election Forecasts

Posted on 14 November, 2018 by Geoff

Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com published forecasts of the 2018 mid-term elections, predicting the outcome of races for House, Senate, and Governor. The site also made it easy to download their projection data, and so I’d like to look at their forecasts and … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Projections | Leave a comment

Reverse Platoon Splits – Before and After

Posted on 30 October, 2018 by Geoff

Tom Tango asked someone to see what players with at least a 30-point wOBA reverse platoon split in their first 2500 plate appearances did for the rest of their careers, and Sean Foreman kindly provided split data from his database. So I … Continue reading →

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Professional Standings Now Available on RotoValue

Posted on 10 June, 2018 by Geoff

RotoValue now also shows professional standings for both MLB and NBA. And, like the fantasy standings pages, you can customize them to any date range you like. So if you want to see how your team has done since a particular … Continue reading →

Posted in Major League Baseball, NBA Basketball | Comments Off on Professional Standings Now Available on RotoValue

One Player, Two Kinds of Stats: Handling Shohei Ohtani

Posted on 21 February, 2018 by Geoff

This year the Angels signed Shohei Ohtani, the young Japanese star who played both as a pitcher and outfielder for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters of the Japanese Pacific League. As in Japan, Ohtani is expected to continue to play extensively … Continue reading →

Posted in Fantasy Strategy, Major League Baseball | Comments Off on One Player, Two Kinds of Stats: Handling Shohei Ohtani

Fighting the Last War

Posted on 28 May, 2017 by Geoff

This week’s Riddler at FiveThirtyEight reruns a puzzle initially run back in February. The game is a “war” between two warlords fighting over 10 castles. Each warlord has 100 soldiers, and the 10 castles are worth from 1 to 10 points each. … Continue reading →

Posted in Riddler, Software | Comments Off on Fighting the Last War

#FixTheWin

Posted on 7 May, 2017 by Geoff

A few years back Brian Kenney introduced the hashtag #KillTheWin, which still lives on. Baseball fans point out egregious cases of a pitcher getting a win in a game despite pitching poorly. While the win might have been a useful … Continue reading →

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Comparing Projected HR leaders to actual

Posted on 2 March, 2017 by Geoff

Tom Tango asked an interesting question on Twitter yesterday: The odds of the projected HR leader actually leading the league is an interesting question. I’ve been doing projections since 2011, so I thought I’d sweep my database for the RotoValue … Continue reading →

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Count von Count Riddler

Posted on 18 September, 2016 by Geoff

I periodically attempt the FiveThirtyEight Riddler, edited by Oliver Roeder. This week he’s actually presenting two, a shorter “Riddler Express”, and a more time consuming “Riddler Classic”. The Sesame Street character Count von Count likes to, well, count, and he … Continue reading →

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Pirate Riddler

Posted on 5 June, 2016 by Geoff

This week’s FiveThirtyEight Riddler is a logic puzzle. Assume 10 “Perfectly Rational Pirate Logicians”. The pirates have found 10 gold pieces, and the puzzle is to figure out how they will allocate the loot among themselves. There are several constraints. First, the … Continue reading →

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FiveThirtyEight Baseball Division Champs Puzzle

Posted on 29 May, 2016 by Geoff

Update: I’ve added a link to the Perl progam I used to do these simulations. Oliver Roeder presents a weekly puzzler on FiveThirtyEight, and this week it was a baseball-themed puzzle. Assume a sport (say, “baseball”) in which each team plays 162 games … Continue reading →

Posted in Major League Baseball, Riddler, Sabermetrics | Comments Off on FiveThirtyEight Baseball Division Champs Puzzle