Phillies radio silliness

There's a commercial which airs on Phillies radio broadcasts. Since I dislike Comcast, but am addicted to the Internet, I'm willing to pay them for high-speed Internet access but not for cable TV. This means I listen to Phillies games on the radio.

Anyway, there's a commercial for Citizens Bank (who own the naming rights to Citizens Bank Park, where the Phillies play) that regularly airs during these broadcasts. It goes something like this (I'm paraphrasing, but the "math" is correct):

Did you ever notice how important the number seven is to the Phillies? They've won seven National League East division titles. There are seven letters in Ashburn, Schmidt, and Carlton. Thirty-two Hall of Famers played for the Phillies. Divide by the number of runs scored in a grand slam and, yes, you get eight. Subtract the number on Whitey's back and what do you get. Seven!

The voice then proceeds to tell us how Citizens Bank is open seven days a week. Which I suppose would be nice to know if I didn't do basically all my banking at ATMs anyway.

But I think the commercial is intended to make fun of people who jump through hoops like this to make the numbers work out. And seven is a small number and therefore easy to manufacture by the manipulation of other small numbers, or so I noted on July 7, 2007.

ten thousand pennies

Philadelphia Fish & Company is running a promotion in which, once the Phillies lose their ten-thousandth game, anybody who brings in ten thousand pennies can get a dinner for ten.

This is from the Don Polec's World segment on WPVI's 6 PM newscast yesterday. (To see the actual segment, look at the menu under the "Action News on demand".) The guy who came up with the promotion, Kevin Meeker, says it comes from an ancient Greek tradition -- when the ancient Greeks had lost ten thousand men in battle, they had a feast of fish and it was believed to bring them good luck.

(To answer the obvious question -- you actually have to bring ten thousand pennies. You can't just show up with a $100 bill. And they have to be rolled. He wants people to suffer.)

The Phillies are currently at 9999 losses. The probability of the Phillies' ten-thousandth loss tonight, which I originally looked at here and re-examined here and here? Just under 40%. The full distribution -- which is now nothing more than the distribution of the time until the team's next loss is as follows:

Jul 13	v. Cardinals	0.394329
Jul 14	v. Cardinals	0.238834
Jul 15	v. Cardinals	0.144655
Jul 16	@ Dodgers	0.130046
Jul 17	@ Dodgers	0.053929
Jul 18	@ Dodgers	0.022364
Jul 19	@ Padres	0.009184
Jul 20	@ Padres	0.003861
Jul 21	@ Padres	0.001623
Jul 22	@ Padres	0.000682
Jul 24	v. Nationals	0.000174
Jul 25	v. Nationals	0.000113
Jul 26	v. Nationals	0.000073
Jul 27	v. Pirates	0.000048
Jul 28	v. Pirates	0.000031
Jul 29	v. Pirates	0.000020
Jul 30	@ Cubs	0.000018
Jul 31	@ Cubs	0.000009
Aug 01	@ Cubs	0.000004
Aug 02	@ Cubs	0.000002
Aug 03	@ Brewers	0.000001
Aug 04	@ Brewers	0.000001

And how much do ten thousand pennies weigh? Twenty-five kilograms, or about fifty-five pounds.

10000 losses, yet again

I posted a couple weeks ago a forecast of the date of the 10,000th Phillies loss, which I updated on Tuesday. My traffic-tracking software tells me that these have been my most-viewed and fourth-most-viewed pages, respectively. In particular I wondered what the chances were that I'd witness this historic event. I have tickets for July 13. The July 14 game will be televised nationally on FOX, the July 15 on ESPN; I'm certain the announcers will mention it, either as "the Phillies have just lost their 10,000th game" or "the Phillies are trying to avoid losing their 10,000th game" depending on how things play out.

Since then, the Phillies have won three and lost seven; as of the original post they'd lost 9,991 games all-time, so now they're up to 9,998 losses. They need two more for 10,000.

They play tonight, then again tomorrow, then after that not until Friday (which is when I have tickets). Who knows, I might see it.

Here are the probabilities now:

Jul 08	@ Rockies	0.257245
Jul 13	v. Cardinals	0.197124
Jul 14	v. Cardinals	0.157155
Jul 15	v. Cardinals	0.118057
Jul 16	@ Dodgers	0.126696
Jul 17	@ Dodgers	0.071025
Jul 18	@ Dodgers	0.037119
Jul 19	@ Padres	0.018392
Jul 20	@ Padres	0.009024
Jul 21	@ Padres	0.004337
Jul 22	@ Padres	0.002051
Jul 24	v. Nationals	0.000582
Jul 25	v. Nationals	0.000392
Jul 26	v. Nationals	0.000264
Jul 27	v. Pirates	0.000180
Jul 28	v. Pirates	0.000120
Jul 29	v. Pirates	0.000080
Jul 30	@ Cubs	0.000074
Jul 31	@ Cubs	0.000039
Aug 01	@ Cubs	0.000021
Aug 02	@ Cubs	0.000011
Aug 03	@ Brewers	0.000007
Aug 04	@ Brewers	0.000003
Aug 05	@ Brewers	0.000001

The single most likely game is now tomorrow's game; not surprisingly the Phillies have roughly a one-in-four chance of losing tonight and tomorrow afternoon and just getting this whole mess over with. There's almost a fifty-fifty shot of it coming during the Cardinals series (47.2%, to be exact); a 26.4% chance of it happening on the West Coast swing, which is when I originally thought it would happen; and an 0.6% chance of it happening it after their return from the West Coast.

By the way, current records for all teams are available at baseball-reference.com. The only team to have 10,000 wins so far are the Giants, with 10,150; the Cubs will most likely be next to reach that milestone, with 9,943. The Braves will be the next to cross the 10,000-loss line, but they're 320 short so it'll take a few years.

If you noticed that those are all National League teams, that's not a coincidence. The Phillies, Giants, Cubs, and Braves started play in 1883, 1883, 1876, and 1876 respectively; the eight original AL teams -- today's Orioles, Red Sox, White Sox, Indians, Tigers, Twins, Yankees, and A's -- all started in 1901, when that league was founded.)

The Phillies aren't the team with the lowest winning percentage, not by a long shot; they're .468 all-time. The Rangers, Rockies, and Padres are a bit worse at .467, .466, and .463; the Devil Rays are .398 all time. But they're all expansion teams, and expansion teams are historically bad the Phillies do have the worst winning percentage of the original sixteen teams. (The original NL is the Braves, Phillies, Cubs, Cardinals, Dodgers, Giants, Reds, and Pirates.) You can see online the standings of the the eight original AL teams and NL teams graphed since 1901. It won't surprise anyone to learn the Yankees are the best AL team in that time, and the Giants are only a bit less surprisingly the best NL team.

10,000 losses: an update

A week ago, I posted a forecast of the date of the 10,000th Phillies loss. In particular I wondered what the chances were that I'd witness this historic event. I have tickets for July 13.

Since then, the Phillies have won two and lost five (including dropping three out of four to the Mets, which was particularly galling because New York fans have started coming down to Philly in large number for the games). At the time that I wrote that previous post, the Phillies had 9,991 losses; now they have 9,996, so there are four more to go.

Fortunately, the 10,000th loss can't come tomorrow, on July 4; even if they lose tonight's game (which is just getting underway) and tomorrow's, that'll "only" be 9,998. The earliest the 10,000th loss could come is against the Rockies on Saturday.

But here are the probabilities now:

Jul 03	@ Astros	0.000000
Jul 04	@ Astros	0.000000
Jul 06	@ Rockies	0.000000
Jul 07	@ Rockies	0.047428
Jul 08	@ Rockies	0.110681
Jul 13	v. Cardinals	0.117107
Jul 14	v. Cardinals	0.121772
Jul 15	v. Cardinals	0.115521
Jul 16	@ Dodgers	0.152669
Jul 17	@ Dodgers	0.118578
Jul 18	@ Dodgers	0.083456
Jul 19	@ Padres	0.054027
Jul 20	@ Padres	0.033566
Jul 21	@ Padres	0.019969
Jul 22	@ Padres	0.011472
Jul 24	v. Nationals	0.003890
Jul 25	v. Nationals	0.002815
Jul 26	v. Nationals	0.002028
Jul 27	v. Pirates	0.001477
Jul 28	v. Pirates	0.001050
Jul 29	v. Pirates	0.000744
Jul 30	@ Cubs	0.000736
Jul 31	@ Cubs	0.000431
Aug 01	@ Cubs	0.000250
Aug 02	@ Cubs	0.000144
Aug 03	@ Brewers	0.000099
Aug 04	@ Brewers	0.000048
Aug 05	@ Brewers	0.000023
Aug 07	v. Marlins	0.000007
Aug 08	v. Marlins	0.000005
Aug 09	v. Marlins	0.000003
Aug 10	v. Braves	0.000002
Aug 11	v. Braves	0.000001
Aug 12	v. Braves	0.000001
Aug 14	@ Nationals	0.000000

In particular, the peak now looks like the Cardinals series; there's a 35% chance of it happening in those three days, and nearly a one-in-eight chance I'll witness the historic event in person. My original prediction had a 66.8% chance of it happening on the West Coast swing July 16-22; now it's only 46.3%. The effect is still helped by the fact that the Dodgers and Padres are strong teams; notice that the probability decreases from the 14th to the 15th and then increases from the 15th to the 16th, and that the 10,000th loss is three times as likely to come on the 22nd as on the 24th. And the distribution doesn't stretch nearly as far into the future; the first game which has a chance of less than one in two million to be the 10000th loss (which rounds to zero) is August 14 in the current simulation, versus August 27 when I ran the numbers last week.

In other baseball-milestone news, Clay Davenport of Baseball Prospectus made a prediction in May that Barry Bonds was most likely to hit his 756th home run in mid-June, with a probability of 80% that he'd have done it by now. He's up to 751. This is because he got off to a slow start. If I had to guess, I'd predict as follows: Bonds has hit 17 home runs in his team's first 81 games. (The Giants are currently playing their 81st game, and are in the fourth innings; Bonds hit a home run in the first. I'm assuming he doesn't hit any more tonight.) So it'll take him 81 * 5/17 = 24 more games to reach the record, which projects to July 31 against the Dodgers. This sort of logic is notoriously bad; it's the sort of logic that says that since a player hits 12 home runs in April he'll hit 72 for the season, or that a team that starts its season by winning three out of four will go on to have a 122-40 record, when of course there's really regression to the mean. But it seems at least somewhat sound in this case.

the 10,000th Phillies loss will come on the West Coast

Walking around this morning, I saw the Philadelphia Weekly's cover story: Losing proposition. This is an article about how the Phillies are very close to having ten thousand losses. The New York Times made fun of us a couple weeks ago (but the Times mocks anything involving Philadelphia). There are sites like Countdown to 10000 and Celebrate 10000 in honor of it. They sell T-shirts. Some people claim the 10,000th loss was in June of 2005, against the Red Sox -- but this is only true if you count the Worcester Worcesters of 1880-1882 as being the Phillies. They're not.
(Yes, the Worcester Worcesters. Some sources call them the Brown Stockings, but I like calling them the Worcesters because it shows even less ingenuity in naming than the name "Phillies" does.)
There are three facebook groups. (I wonder if there's a myspace group; the link goes to a paper that's been circulating about the class differences between Facebook and Myspace.)
Then I remembered that I have Phillies tickets for their game against the Cardinals on July 13th, the first game after the All-Star break.
I got to thinking -- what are the chances that I'd see the Phillies' ten thousandth loss? They've lost 9,991 games so far; they've got nine more to go.
Surely the 10,000th loss is a historic moment in all of professional sports. No team has lost this many games. (The San Francisco (formerly New York) Giants have won 10,000.)
It's not so hard to compute this. What I needed to know was the probability that the Phillies lose each particular game. This can be found via a method which for some cryptic reason is called the "log5 method", which I learned about from this article from Diamond Mind which computed the probabilities that each of the 2002 playoff teams would win the World Series. The method is as follows: if team A wins p_A of its games, and team B wins p_B of its games, then the probability that team A wins in any given game against team B is
p_A(1-p_B) / (p_A(1-p_B) + p_B(1-p_A).
The best justification for this formula is that it works when you test it on actual data. (Actual baseball data, that is; I'm not sure if it's good for other sports.) But an intuitive justification for it is as follows: you have two coins, coin A and coin B. Each coin has "win" on one side and "loss" on the other. Coin A comes up "win" with probability p_A, and coin B comes up "win" with probability p_B. To simulate a game, flip the two coins. If one comes up "win" and one comes up "loss", that gives you the outcome of the game; if they both come up the same, flip again. Notice that the formula passes a couple sanity checks. If p_A = 0, then it always gives 0 -- that is, if a team never wins, then its probability of winning against any opponent is zero. If p_B = 1/2, then it just gives p_A -- so a team which is playing aginst average teams performs how it usually performs.
To adjust for home field advantage, I added 0.02 to the home team's winning percentage and subtracted 0.02 from the visiting team's winning percentage; this is the method used at Baseball Prospectus' postseason odds simulation, which I'll have more to say about later.
So, for example, the Phillies play the Reds tonight, in Philadelphia. The Reds have won 29 games and lost 48, so their winning percentage is .377; we replace this with .357 since the Reds will be playing on the road. The Phillies have won 40 and lost 36, so their winning percentage is .526; we replace this with .546 since they're playing at home. The formula tells us that the Reds' chance of winning tonight is
(.357)(1-.546) / ((.357)(1-.546) + (.546)(1-.357))
which is 0.315. This is the Phillies' chance of losing, which is what I'm interested in.
So after tonight, the Phillies will have eight losses to go with probability 0.315; they'll have nine losses to go with probability 1-0.315, or 0.685.
They'll play the Reds again tomorrow night. After that game, they have seven losses to go with probability (0.315)² = 0.099; they have eight losses to go with probability (.315)(.685)+(.685)(.315) = .432; they have nine losses to go with probability (0.685)² = 0.469.
Thus, I set up a spreadsheet which calculates the probability that after each game, they have 9, 8, 7, ..., 1 losses to go. The probability of the Phillies getting their ten-thousandth loss on a certain day is the probability that they have 9,999 losses before that day ("1 loss to go"), times the probability of losing that day.
The results are as follows. The rows in red are home games, following the same color scheme as the sorted schedule. The winning percentages are from mlb.com standings as of June 27.

Date	Opponent	Chance of 10,000th loss
Jun 27	v. Reds	0.000000
Jun 28	v. Reds	0.000000
Jun 29	v. Mets	0.000000
Jun 29	v. Mets	0.000000
Jun 30	v. Mets	0.000000
Jul 01	v. Mets	0.000000
Jul 02	@ Astros	0.000000
Jul 03	@ Astros	0.000000
Jul 04	@ Astros	0.000467
Jul 06	@ Rockies	0.002946
Jul 07	@ Rockies	0.009603
Jul 08	@ Rockies	0.021746
Jul 13	v. Cardinals	0.030071
Jul 14	v. Cardinals	0.041621
Jul 15	v. Cardinals	0.052571
Jul 16	@ Dodgers	0.091757
Jul 17	@ Dodgers	0.106722
Jul 18	@ Dodgers	0.112506
Jul 19	@ Padres	0.108077
Jul 20	@ Padres	0.097745
Jul 21	@ Padres	0.083264
Jul 22	@ Padres	0.067340
Jul 24	v. Nationals	0.031618
Jul 25	v. Nationals	0.026675
Jul 26	v. Nationals	0.022282
Jul 27	v. Pirates	0.018717
Jul 28	v. Pirates	0.015312
Jul 29	v. Pirates	0.012425
Jul 30	@ Cubs	0.014016
Jul 31	@ Cubs	0.010085
Aug 01	@ Cubs	0.007142
Aug 02	@ Cubs	0.004984
Aug 03	@ Brewers	0.004103
Aug 04	@ Brewers	0.002533
Aug 05	@ Brewers	0.001533
Aug 07	v. Marlins	0.000613
Aug 08	v. Marlins	0.000441
Aug 09	v. Marlins	0.000317
Aug 10	v. Braves	0.000251
Aug 11	v. Braves	0.000171
Aug 12	v. Braves	0.000115
Aug 14	@ Nationals	0.000074
Aug 15	@ Nationals	0.000051
Aug 16	@ Nationals	0.000034
Aug 17	@ Pirates	0.000024
Aug 18	@ Pirates	0.000016
Aug 19	@ Pirates	0.000011
Aug 21	v. Padres	0.000008
Aug 22	v. Padres	0.000005
Aug 23	v. Padres	0.000003
Aug 24	v. Dodgers	0.000002
Aug 25	v. Dodgers	0.000001
Aug 26	v. Dodgers	0.000001
Aug 27	v. Mets	0.000000

So it appears most likely that the Phillies will have their ten-thousandth loss on the West Coast, between July 16 and July 22; there's a 66.8% chance of it happening in those seven games. This is where you'd "naturally" expect things to peak anyway -- since the team loses about half the time, you'd expect it to take them 18 games in order to lose 9. That road trip is the 16th through 22nd games if we start counting from today. Plus, they'll be on the road, and the Dodgers and Padres are both good teams. It actually surprised me to see that the 10,000th loss is nearly twice as likely in the first game of that road trip (July 16 @ Dodgers) than in the last game of the preceding homestand (July 15 v. Cardinals), and similarly for the last game of the road trip (July 22) and the first game back (July 24). The soonest it can happen, as of this writing, is July 4, if they lose the next nine -- that would seem somehow appropriate, given what happened in Philadelphia on a long-ago July 4. The tail of the distribution is long -- there's always that slim chance that the Phillies could get ridiculously hot and stretch this out for thirty games or more. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

And I've only got a three percent chance of seeing this historic moment on the 13th of July. I hope I don't see it, because that would mean the Phillies would only win four out of their next thirteen.

edit (Friday, 2:39 pm): Frank athot dogs and beer features a similar analysis.