We got a few autographs in the Spring edition of the A’s Magazine and our Spring Training ball. Gio Gonzales, Daric Barton, Josh Outman, Rajai Davis, Cliff Pennington and Corey Wimberly.  Not really any big names, but guys to watch in the future.  I don’t think I got any great pictures, though I did get a few of Reggie Jackson who was in his full practice gear.

The game went well for the A’s, who had a 5-0 lead leaving the first inning.  Both teams were shut down until the sixth, when the Diamondbacks were able to score two off of Vince Mazzaro and then another  in the seventh.   The A’s did score four more in the middle of that and two more in the seventh with help by a Josh Donaldson triple and a solo home run by Aaron Cunningham.  The final score was 11-3.

After the game, we headed back to the hotel for a short bit before leaving for Jobing.com Arena to watch the visiting Sharks take on the Phoenix Coyotes.  We were a little late and missed the first goal, but they saved two more Phoenix goals for when we were in our seats.  The Sharks were down 3-0 going into the first intermission, and were only able to score one in the second period.  As they have done more than a few times this year, the Sharks scored twice to tie the game in the third.  Unfortunately, a really bad interference call on Cheechoo by the referee resulted in a Sharks penalty and the Coyotes capitalized to score with thirty seconds to go in the game and take a 4-3 lead.

Hunter was a little less excited today than he was yesterday.  Still, he smiled at people when they would talk to him.  While getting autographs down near the field, Hunter got to shake Daric Barton’s hand.  I wish I had been able to take a picture of that.  Everyone though he was so cute at the hockey game in the Sharks jacket that we borrowed from his cousins.

Tomorrow we go to Out of Africa, a wild animal park about 90 minutes north of Phoenix.  We’re going to try and get there early so we can possibly drive up to Sedona for dinner and check out the views.

I follow a great NFL stats blog called Advanced NFL Stats, that uses live win-probability modeling to determine which of the two teams is most likely to win. This football off-season the author of that blog has started looking at other sports, hockey being one of them. The post on March 9th was his first about modeling hockey games. In the post, he describes the Poisson equation and how to determine the probability of a team scoring or allowing a certain amount of goals, and through that, the possibility of them winning games.  Go ahead and read his post. I’ll wait….. OK! So I thought it might be neat to see what the Sharks numbers were…

To recap,the Poisson equation looks like this,

Pr = ((x^k) * e^(-x)) / k!

where x is the average goals over the time period of 60 minutes, k is the particular goal amount in question, and Pr is the percent chance of it happening.

He uses the Boston Bruins as the example team.  Their average goals scored in 60 minutes is 3.3, while they allow 2.2 goals.  After going through the whole process, he comes to the conclusion that they win 60% of their games and tie 15.8% at the end of regulation.  Assuming the team wins in overtime about 50% of the time, then the Bruins chance to win any particular game is 60% plus 7.9%, or 67.9%.  Before today’s games, they were at 67 games played and 43 wins, or 64.2%.  Like the Pythagorean Theorem in baseball, the Poisson number shows that the Bruins might be a better team than their record shows.

So what about the Sharks?  I took the Poisson equation using the Sharks goals for (3.26) and goals against (2.45) as of this morning.  Here’s the graph.

Sharks Poisson Numbers thru March 12 2009

If you’re a fan of the team, you like the high red line on the left hand side, and the teal line’s peak to be closer to the right.

I charted the 81 different possibilities of zero to eight goals by either team and used the values from the above data to figure out the possibility of that outcome happening.

At the end I’ve added up the percentages for a win, loss and tie at the end of regulation.

Like with the Bruins, we can assume that the Sharks win half of their overtime games, or 8.1%.  Add that to the win percentage, and you get 62.4%.  As of this morning, the Sharks were at 43 wins in 65 games, or 66.2%.   Based on these numbers, their projection being lower than the actual shows the Sharks may not be quite as good as their record shows.

That’s it.  The Sharks are performing better than they are expected to based on the amount of goals scored and goals allowed.  Over long enough period of time, I would expect the Sharks to drop closer to their projected numbers, as I would expect the Bruins to rise to theirs.  This doesn’t bode well for the Team in Teal, but it’s a good thing they still play the games!

Something interesting to do next would be to figure out the numbers compare for each month, or even from the beginning of the season until the slump started.  Did the slump drag down their numbers?  There may not be enough results in the pool to get reliable numbers, but it would still be fun to see nonetheless.