October 21, 2018

2018 World Series Preview, Dodgers Versus Red Sox

The 2018 World Series features two of the most popular teams in baseball, the Los Angels Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox. I supsect Fox is very happy. Here is how the two teams compare offensively, ranked in the respective leagues:

Team Offense, (League Ranks)
Statistic Los Angeles Dodgers Boston Red Sox
Runs/Game 4.93 (1st) 5.41 (1st)
Batting Avg. .250 (8th) .268 (1st)
OBP .333 (2nd-T) .339 (1st)
Slugging Pct. .442 (1st) .453 (1st)
Home Runs 235 (1st) 208 (6th)
Stolen Base % 76% (4th) 80% (1st-T)

 

Both did a great job of scoring runs, because both teams did a great job of getting on base and hitting for power. They achieved those two average ranking in different ways. The Red Sox OBP is made up of more hits, while the Dodgers got there with a high number. The Dodgers isolated power is higher as well, meaning there is a lower proportion of singles in the power. Los Angeles is a walk and wallop team, while the Red Sox offensive is more diverse.

Now for the pitching:

Team Pitching, (League Ranks)
Statistic Los Angeles Dodgers Boston Red Sox
Earned Run Avg. 3.38 (1st) 3.75 (3rd)
Runs Allowed/Game 3.74 (1st) 3.99 (2nd)
Strikeouts per 9 IP 9.5 (1st) 9.6 (3rd)
Walks per 9 IP 2.6 (1st) 3.2 (9th)
Home Runs per 200 IP 24.3 (8th-T) 21.4 (3rd)
BABIP .286 (3rd) .295 (6th-T)

 

Both teams are excellent at preventing runs. Each team does own a weakness, however. The Dodgers tend to allow a high rate of home runs. The Red Sox allow a high rate of walks. Note that the Red Sox weakness plays into the Dodgers offense, that builds their OBP on a high walk rate. The Red Sox hit a good number of home runs, so the Dodgers tendency to allow dingers may not hurt them as much. Boston may not stop the walk, but they appear poised to stop the wallop.

What the Dodgers might stop is the Red Sox ability to post a high batting average. The Dodgers are very good at turning batted balls into outs, so the non-home run balls in play by Boston give the Dodgers defense a chance to shine. If the Dodgers can stop Boston’s in-play hits and walks, they make the Red Sox dependent on the home run, a relative offensive weakness for them.

Note that the Boston pitcher have a higher strikeout rate than the Dodgers, despite the Dodgers pitching in a league where the pitcher bats.

I see it as a very close series. I’ll give Boston a 55% chance of winning, mostly due to home field advantage.

I wrote a neural network today today to see if it could provide some insight to which team might win the World Series. I fed it the following six averages per plate appearances for the AL and NL team, both for the batters and opponent batters:

  1. Singles
  2. Doubles
  3. Triples
  4. Home Runs
  5. Walks + HBP
  6. Strikeouts

So 24 parameters in all, and I use them to calculate the probability of the NL team winning. I used the last 16 seasons of data, so it was a small sample size. What is nice is that the last 16 years were split evenly between the AL and NL, so if the results were around 50%, then there isn’t a lot of information in those numbers. That’s pretty much what I saw. However, the NN does give the Red Sox a 53.8% chance of winning the series, which given the few seasons I tested, is very high.

The action starts Tuesday night with two great teams led by two great tacticians. I’m looking forward to these game.

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