Okay, so today I decided to dive into something I’ve been curious about for a while: predicting home runs in baseball. I’m no stats wizard, but I figured I could cobble something together. It’s just for fun, really – my “daily home run predictor.”
The Idea
I wanted something simple. Something I could check every morning and get a quick idea of who might go yard that day. I’m not trying to beat Vegas here, just have a little fun with it.
Gathering Data
First things first, I needed data. Lots of it. I figured I needed some basic stats, nothing too fancy.
- Batter Stats: I looked at things like recent home runs, maybe home runs in the last week or so. Also, overall home run percentage for the season seemed important.
- Pitcher Stats: I needed to know how often the pitcher gives up home runs. So, their home runs allowed per game, or something similar.
- Park Factors: Some ballparks are just easier to hit home runs in, right? I needed to factor that in somehow.
Building My “System”
I didn’t use any fancy machine learning. I started by poking around some baseball stats websites, grabbing the data and throwing it into a spreadsheet. Honestly, the hardest part was just figuring out where to find all this stuff in a format I could use. It took some digging!
Once I had the data, I started playing around. I gave each factor a “weight” – basically, how important I thought it was. For example, I figured the pitcher’s tendency to give up home runs was more important than the batter’s recent hot streak. So, the pitcher’s stats got a bigger weight.
It was all pretty rough. I just multiplied each stat by its weight, added them all up, and got a “score” for each batter-pitcher matchup. The higher the score, the more likely I thought a home run was. No science, all guesswork, really.
Testing and Tweaking
Then came the fun part – seeing if it actually worked. For a few days, I tracked the actual games and compared them to my predictions. Of course, it was way off a lot of the time. But every now and then, it would nail one, and that was pretty cool!
I kept tweaking the weights, trying to get it a little better. Moved some numbers around, added a couple of other stats I found. It’s still a work in progress, for sure. Sometimes my “system” is wildly successful, then the very next day I get them all wrong.
The Result (So Far)
It’s definitely not perfect. It’s more like a slightly educated guess than a real prediction. I am still not sure I am adding any real value other than just looking at the basic stats.
But hey, it’s been a fun little project. I’ve learned a bit more about baseball stats, and it gives me something to check each morning. Maybe one day I’ll actually crack the code, but for now, I’m happy with my little home run guessing game.
