Brewers dominate these teams at home
Miller Park
Brewers fans are hopeful that past history will be a good omen for the first week of the 2015 season.
Milwaukee will open their campaign with home games against the Colorado Rockies and Pittsburgh Pirates. Since 1970 when the Brewers came to Milwaukee, the Brewers have a winning percentage of .600 or better at home against three opponents: Colorado, Pittsburgh and Toronto.
Let’s look at the home and road winning percentages for the Brewers against the other 29 MLB teams. Specifically, let’s see which teams the Brewers play better at home than on the road. Topping the list are the Rockies; the Brewers have a .600 winning percentage (36-24) in games at home and a .344 winning percentage (21-40) in games in Colorado. That’s a difference of .256, tops of any opponent.
Here’s a look at the home and road record of the Brewers versus each team, ranked by the biggest disparity in those contests. (All numbers are based on games from 1970-2014; does not include games in Seattle in 1969 when the franchise was known as the Seattle Pilots)
Team, Winning Pct. at home/Winning Pct. on road, Difference
Colorado… .600/.344 +.256
Houston… .571/.367 +.204
N.Y. Yankees… .564/.365 +.199
Pittsburgh… .645/.478 +.167
Washington… .590/.424 +.166
Oakland… .548/.383 +.165
San Diego… .524/.364 +.160
Philadelphia… .484/.357 +.127
Miami… .569/.469 +.100
Kansas City… .497/.409 +.088
San Francisco… .500/.414 +.086
Boston… .505/.420 +.085
Cincinnati… .515/.430 +.085
Seattle… .551/.475 +.076
Toronto… .609/.542 +.067
Minnesota… .523/.459 +.064
Chicago White Sox… .494/.438 +.056
Atlanta… .429/.377 +.052
Chicago Cubs… .533/.485 +.048
Baltimore… .447/.403 +.044
L.A. Angels… .497/.459 +.038
Cleveland… .526/.490 +.036
Detroit… .498/.463 +.035
Tampa Bay… .333/.333 .000
L.A. Dodgers… .418/.436 -.018
St. Louis… .407/.445 -.038
Texas… ..518/.558 -.040
Arizona… .474/.541 -.067
N.Y. Mets… .382/.492 -.110
The Brewers have their best overall winning percentage against the Blue Jays, winning .575 of their games against Toronto. Their best home record is against the Pirates; the Brewers have won 64.5% of their games at home against the Pirates. Their best road winning percentage is against Texas; the Brewers have a .558 winning percentage in away games versus the Rangers.
Milwaukee’s worst overall record is against Tampa Bay, although the two teams have only played nine games. The Brew Crew is 3-6 (.333) against the Rays. Take the Rays out of the equation and the worst overall record is against Atlanta. The Brewers have a paltry .402 winning percentage versus the Braves in their history. Their worst home record is versus the Mets (.382), while the worst road record is against the Rockies (.344).
Follow Jerry on Twitter @StatsonTapp
Inside the Numbers: Starting Field Position in the NFL this season
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If you’ve watched any number of NFL games on TV, you’ve likely heard more than a few announcers mention about a team’s field position. We all know that field position is important to an NFL team. But here’s the question… How important is field position to a team? And more specifically, how important is a team’s starting field position to their success?
Just as a refresher, starting field position is where an offensive team takes over possession of the ball from their opponents. If your team is receiving a kick-off and it goes for a touchback, your team gets the ball at their own 20-yard-line. Starting field position… your own 20-yard-line. If your team intercepts a pass and it is returned to the opponents’ 34-yard-line, your team’s starting field position is the opponents’ 34-yard-line (by the way, great starting field position).
With that lesson out of the way, let’s get back to the task at hand: The importance of starting field position. To put some numbers to this question, let’s look at the first six weeks of the 2013 season. By tracking every starting field position in every possession in the 92 NFL games played to date, we can analyze the importance of where on the field a team starts their offensive possession… and if they scored.
What did we discover? Here’s a breakdown of where (yard-line) the 2,095 offensive possession started and if a team scored on that possession.
Starting field position possessions Score (FG or TD) percentage
Own 1 to 10 38 scores in 158 possessions 24.1%
Own 11 to 20 92 scores in 344 possessions 26.7%
Own 20 to 29 287 scores in 968 possessions 29.6%
Own 30 to 39 86 scores in 237 possessions 36.3%
Own 40 to 49 62 scores in 157 possessions 39.5%
Midfield to opponents’ 40 53 scores in 101 possessions 52.5%
Opponents’ 39 or better 112 scores in 130 possessions 86.2%
Reading the above chart we see that a team that started at their own 20 to 29 scored 287 times in 968 possessions, or just under 30% of the time. Teams that started at their opponents’ 39-yard-line or better scored in 112 of the 130 possessions (an 86.2% success rate).
Here’s a couple more points of interest:
* Teams that started their possession at their own 19-yard-line or worse scored only 25.9% of the time. Teams that started their possession at their own 30-yard-line or better scored on 313 of 625 possessions, 50%.
* Teams this year that started every possession at their own 39-yard-line or worse in a game won only seven and lost 18, a .280 winning percentage. Teams this year that started at least two possessions in a game in their opponents’ territory have won 51 games and lost only 14, a .785 winning percentage.
Does starting field position matter? You bet… but then you already knew that.
Follow Jerry on Twitter @StatsonTapp
99 Stats Until Kickoff (#59) Do NFL teams have better records when they play in their own time zone?
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
From May 30 and every day until September 5… the start of the 2013 NFL season… Sports Stats ‘on Tapp’ will publish “99 Stats Until Kickoff” a daily dose of NFL stats that will get you ready for the 2013 NFL season.)
Periodically you will hear football commentators talk about a team on the east coast taking a road trip to the west coast to play a foe and how the travel may affect their performance (or vice versa).
To see if there is any significant difference between teams playing in their own time zone versus traveling to other time zones to play, I looked at the last five seasons in the NFL and tracked how well teams played within their own time zone and how well they played outside their time zone.
The findings? There is a difference. Case in point: Look below at the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers, who play in an eastern time zone city, were 49-17 (a .742 winning percentage) in games they played in the eastern time zone. But when the Steelers had to travel out of their time zone, they were only 4-10 in those five years, a .286 winning percentage. That’s a difference of .456 percentage points. That difference was the largest of any team in this five-year analysis.
All total, of the 32 NFL teams, 26 played better in their own time zones versus playing outside their time zone. To quantify it, NFL teams in the last five season were 951-832-3 (.533 winning percentage) when they played in their own time zone and 327-446-1 (.423 winning percentage) when they played outside their time zone, a difference of .110 percentage points.
Following is a look at each NFL team and their win-loss record when they played games in their own time zone and their record outside their time zone in the last five seasons (2008-12).
EASTERN TIME ZONE In time zone Outside time zone Difference
Atlanta 45-17 .726 11-7 .611 + .115
Baltimore 46-20 .697 8-6 .571 + .126
Buffalo 23-42 .354 6-9 .400 – .046
Carolina 27-34 .443 8-11 .421 + .022
Cincinnati 31-36-1 .463 6-6 .500 – .037
Cleveland 20-48 .294 3-9 .250 + .044
Detroit 18-34 .346 4-24 .143 + .203
Indianapolis 37-23 .617 12-8 .600 + .017
Jacksonville 23-37 .383 4-16 .200 + .183
Miami 31-33 .484 7-9 .438 + .046
New England 50-15 .769 10-5 .667 + .102
New York Giants 37-24 .607 11-8 .579 + .028
New York Jets 38-27 .585 5-10 .333 + .252
Philadelphia 35-26-1 .573 7-11 .389 + .184
Pittsburgh 49-17 .742 4-10 .286 + .456
Tampa Bay 23-36 .390 10-11 .476 + .086
Washington 24-40 .375 9-7 .563 – .188
CENTRAL TIME ZONE In time zone Outside time zone Difference
Chicago 31-24 .564 14-11 .560 + .004
Dallas 27-21 .563 15-17 .469 + .094
Green Bay 40-16 .714 13-11 .542 + .172
Houston 31-19 .620 14-16 .467 + .153
Kansas City 16-28 .364 9-27 .250 + .114
Minnesota 31-24 .564 10-15 .400 + .164
New Orleans 34-15 .694 18-13 .581 + .113
St. Louis 11-35 .239 8-25-1 .250 – .011
Tennessee 29-22 .569 13-16 .448 + .121
MOUNTAIN TIME ZONE In time zone Outside time zone Difference
Arizona 24-16 .600 13-27 .325 + .275
Denver 21-20 .512 20-19 .513 – .001
PACIFIC TIME ZONE In time zone Outside time zone Difference
Oakland 17-29 .370 13-21 .382 – .012
San Diego 29-17 .630 16-18 .471 + .159
San Francisco 29-15-1 .656 16-19 .457 + .199
Seattle 24-22 .522 10-24 .294 + .228
“99 Stats Before Kickoff” (Stats you need to know before the start of the 2013 NFL season) is available from e-book publisher Smashwords. Go to www.smashwords.com to download a copy, including a pdf version which can be viewed on your home computer. Cost is $2.99
99 Stats Until Kickoff (#44) How many points did it take to win a regular-season game in 2012?
From May 30 and every day until September 5… the start of the 2013 NFL season… Sports Stats ‘on Tapp’ will publish “99 Stats Until Kickoff” a daily dose of NFL stats that will get you ready for the 2013 NFL season.)
How many points does an NFL team need to score to win on a consistent basis? Looking at the 256 regular season games from last season, here’s a breakdown of win-loss records when teams scored in a certain range of points in a game.
Points, Record when teams scored that range of points
0-9 points: 3-44 .064
10-19 points: 32-115 .218
20-29 points: 106-78-2 .575
30-39 points: 84-17 .832
40-49 points: 22-1 .957
50 points or more: 8-0 1.000
Here are a few additional stats:
* The most frequent scores were 13 points (teams scored 13 points in 37 games) and 24 points (teams scored 24 points in 37 games) Next was 23 points, which was scored by 34 teams last year.
* Teams that scored 25 or more points in a game were 161-35, an .821 winning percentage.
* Teams that scored under 25 points usually had a losing record, but teams had winning records in three point totals less than 25 points… teams were 7-6 when scoring 19 points; 20-14 when scoring 23 points; and 21-14-2 when scoring 24 points.
* Most points scored to lose a game last year was 41. Fewest points to win a game was seven.
* Teams were 35-194 (.180) when they scored under 20 points.
* Teams that scored 35 or more points in a game were 61-3 (.953).
Follow Jerry on Twitter @StatsonTapp
SIX STATS you might not know about… NFL Conference Championship Games
Image via Wikipedia
“SIX STATS…” is a bonus feature of Sports Stats ‘on Tapp’ and is published every Friday.
(Note: The following stats reflect the NFC and AFC Conference Championship games that have been played since the 1970 merger of the NFL and AFL… 41 years, a total of 82 games.)
1. The home team has won 55 and lost 27 in conference championship games (a .671 winning percentage). In the last five conference championship weekends, the home teams are 8-2. In the 41 seasons, there has been only twice where the home teams have both lost: 1992 and 1997.
2. In 26 of the 82 games (31.7%) the game has been decided by eight points or less. Ten of the 82 games were decided by three points or less; 15 of the 82 were decided by 20 points or more. In the last five seasons, six of the 10 conference championship games have been decided by one score (eight points or less).
3. Teams that scored less than 20 points in a conference championship game since 1970 has won only 13 and lost 64 (a .169 winning percentage). Teams that scored 30 or more points have won 30 and lost only 2 (a .938 winning percentage). The only teams to score 30 or more points in a conference championship game since 1970 and lose? Cleveland in 1987 when they scored 33 in their loss to Denver; and in 2006 when the Patriots scored 34 in their loss to the Colts.
4. Teams that had the better regular season record have won the conference championship game 52 times and lost 19 (a .732 winning percentage). In 11 games the teams playing for the conference championship had the same regular season record.
5. Scoring more points the playoff game the weekend prior to the conference championship is not a big factor in determining who will win the conference title game. The team that scored more points of the two conference championship game foes the previous week won 42 and lost 36 (in four cases the teams scored the exact number of points the previous week).
6. Winning the playoff game the weekend prior to the conference championship by a bigger margin than your conference championship game foe was a little bit more of a determining factor to who wins the conference championship game. The team that won the divisional playoff game by a bigger margin the week before won 51 times and lost 25 (a .671 winning percentage). In six cases the conference championship game teams won by the same margin the previous week.
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