 This is covering the spread. Here are your hosts Jim Saunas and Dr. Ed Fang What is going on everybody? Welcome into covering the spread That's right here on the fan duo podcast network and numberfire.com where today we are previewing the 2020 Major League Baseball season which starts tomorrow With Dan Zimborski and Fangrass breaking down his zipped projections for this year the impact of a 60 game season and a couple of beds He likes for this year. My name is Jim Saunas I am a senior writer and analyst for numberfire.com joined here as always by Ed Fang You can find his work over at thepowerang.com. Ed, we were off last week for the first time since the show started got a week to Recharge a bit. How you feeling today with sports finally back tomorrow. I guess other sports finally back I'm feeling pretty good. We never missed the show through the pandemic like we just did one with NFL Draft We did not miss a single show. We every week. We had a show. I think I'm 90 percent sure Wow. All right. I know it's weird We even did one the week I had COVID I guess I guess we did it you had it Thursday I think yeah, which is a day after we'd recorded and then I think you had recovered because I think I was texting you about it and I Think I was texting with you about the all the weekend about it And we were you were like good to go by that next week somehow, which is still interesting But hey, we didn't miss a show despite you getting home. We made it I think we should we should have a pin for the next show that says, you know didn't miss a show through the pandemic, but right Oh, yeah We owe big congratulations to you Jim for tying the knot last week. Yeah, absolutely It was a lot of fun It was definitely different than the initial plans because it's generally hard to have a wedding with Social distancing in place, but we went we did it outside. We did it with just 10 people We did it on the shores of Lake Michigan. So that was fun Had my stepdad be the officiant so we could have one less person we had to have tag along with us So it worked out really well. I was I was very happy with that I mean, you'd hope you'd be happy with a wedding, but I think that it was nice to Have the wedding but also feel pretty safe in my mind that we weren't putting people in danger And we'll do the actual reception the full reception with everyone dancing and stuff like that next year instead. So thank you I appreciate that. Yeah, but it was a it was definitely fun. And how was your week off? Oh, it was good Set by Lake did nothing. That's the that's the goal man That is always the goal regardless of whether or not you're off or off that is always the goal later today We're in talk with Dan and Zimborski. You can find him on Twitter at D Zimborski spelling on the last name is s z y m B o r s k i he's a senior writer for fangrass and the creator of the zips projection system We're gonna talk with Dan, but this year's MLB season the impact of a 60 game schedule What that does to the variance? What zips does for variance normally during a full season We're discuss some teams that Dan thinks some teams and players Dan thinks can take advantage of the condensed season Dan was actually like good enough to talk to me on my show when I had like no listeners on it No listener radio show back in Albert Lee, Minnesota like back in the day So not surprised he was nice. It's nice. That's come on the show But I definitely appreciative of Dan lending his time, especially when things are so busy right now And are you gonna be you still a tiger's fan or do you have any rooting interests for baseball this year? Where where are you leaning there? Yeah, I mean, I'm usually just a fan of the sport But yeah, you know, there's no pressure being a tiger's or lion's fan So the issue is like I'm a twins man and it's it's a shortened season and of the teams that lose With it being a smaller smaller sample twins are on that list. That's not that fun I was in Illinois this this past week for the wedding and they have some mobile sports betting So I did place a wager on the Chicago White Sox to kind of hedge my emotional bets But you know that was beneficial, but it definitely does not help teams like the twins when things are like this We're talking with zant with Dan about that in just a little bit But first for years number fires premium subscription service has provided our users with expert analysis Survivor pool tools and most importantly the fantasy football draft kit all for up to 49 99 per month Now as a way of saying thank you to our community for your support Number fires rolling out a new premium package for just 999 a month That will provide you with all the sports betting and daily fantasy tools You need year-round and the best part is the expert analysis those survivor tools And yes, even the draft kit are now free head to number fire comm to check out the new and improved site and take advantage of The premium package today Let's pause now to bring in Dan and Zimborsky once again Find all of his work over at fangrass.com and check out his it's projections right there We're gonna talk with Dan about the upcoming MLB season in which teams may be able to take advantage of the shortened schedule covering the present Let's welcome Dan Zimborsky into covering the spread Dan I appreciate it. I know that you're probably swamped with baseball starting up tomorrow. How you doing today? Pretty good. How are you guys? I'm just happy that that I am swamped with baseball instead of swamp with no baseball Has been the case for the last, you know, four months now Yeah, it's been wild and it's it feels kind of surreal honestly that it's actually here because I feel like I've been expecting some sort of weird snag and by the weird snag I mean a literal pandemic to like trip things up by the time we got to this point, but it hasn't happened yet But I got asked like what did you do to fill the time? I know you're kind of video game guy Is that where you mostly went to fill the void for the past couple of months or what were you doing? I guess in that in the intro. Well, there was still a lot of baseball writing to do It was just a little harder to think up ideas I I'm always happy that I'm not a beat guy because they had it the roughest because they you know They're they're reporting on the day in day out So it wasn't quite as bad for me as for some other people, but I mean I'd be I was still employed Covering a sport that didn't really exist So so it makes me feel like I'm employed again, which is always a good feeling Yes, I can concur on that one employment is generally a plus But for sure it was definitely strange to try to to fill that void. Do you feel like an extra level of excitement this year knowing that we've been waiting for all this time and dragging out the anticipation for so long I mean, I'm pretty excited. There's you know Because of the pandemic going around there's always kind of that feeling in the back of my head But I'm more confident than most Because some people seem to have kind of the baseline that to be a successful season major league major league baseball has to have nobody Contracting COVID-19, but I think that's kind of an unreasonable baseline. I mean the baseline for a cancer Treatment isn't that it cures everybody It's just can baseball keep players safer than they would be otherwise And I think that if they can I mean it was a rough start when that you know the first weekend where nobody were like Four or five teams or three or four teams had nobody show up to test the players that was a rocky start a little worrisome but if You know the six positive tests last weekend if they can keep that up Then we can have a season and it'll be cool because there's not much happening Except for COVID-19. So it'll be cool to have something happening Absolutely, that's a great point Dan and and I think I think it was Adam Silver that you know Acknowledged that there's going to be positive cases But he didn't necessarily have like a number in his head I don't know what the baseball commissioner is doing, but like yeah, you can't expect zero, right? There's going to be some cases you Hopefully have protocols to deal with it and then we can have a season and get all the way to the world series Yeah, I mean the players are I mean they're they're you know Young males between 20 and 40 They're not going to sit cloistered in there in their houses for three months without baseball and be in their panic rooms With the with the bubbles. I mean I I made a lot of dumb decisions when I was in my 20s and 30s I'm 42 and I still make a lot of dumb decisions. So I I think there's a chance that that this can work out pretty well Hopefully crossing fingers And we've even seen positive tests in NASCAR and PGA in sports where you can socially distance They've proceeded on to so in smaller player pools too to support one guy test positive is a bigger impact So I think if they can get through baseball can too Let's talk some baseball Dan But the the benefit of talking to you and the something we like to do here on covering the spread is We like to dig into kind of a nuts and bolts behind Math things because we love data here on covering the spread. So we've got you here We're gonna talk about the origin of zips because it's obviously an intricate projection system that you've been running You created a while ago. When did zips get going? How long have you been doing all this? Well, I I first briefly talked about we'll discuss the concept of what became zips In the mid 90s a friend of mine named chris dial. I don't know if you know him. He's vaguely around twitter He was on the board of the of sabre for a number of years We talked a lot in the 90s. We've been friends for a long time And we we we discussed what if we could put together a basic projection system That got us most of the way there the internet was kind of not really at as advanced as it was today Sabre metrics was kind of limited to a few sites and for projections you had baseball prospectus's work The early one. I think it was still vlad at this point or or wilton. I think vlad came before wilton because You wouldn't name something Wilton before vlad Ron chandler's work, you know various Magazine previews which weren't really necessarily scientific And it's the kind of thing that tom tango later did with uh, marcel kind of the idea was a basic Let's get most of the way there projections never actually did anything like that We never got around to doing it. It's just something we discussed. Uh, I remember the That about five or six years later. Uh, this was 2001 2002. I was writing for, um Baseball primer. It was called then and I thought about revisiting The projections and it was it became something a lot more complicated than than the initial idea of a simple projection system So I came up with zips in over 2002 2003 Was the first early development. I mean, it's constantly been in development for you know, 20 years now almost And it was I made it rhyme with dips because it was kind of the first projection system that was using some of orish macracken's research into into a fielder picture Independencies say of balls And so the z was for zimborsky because I didn't want to be called sips Uh, and I made it look like a little lie and a little less initially because I liked, uh, chips when I was a little kid And so I wanted to say kind of it's a really stupid reason But I didn't expect anybody to ever actually look at this or use it for anything So so then the zips was born and uh, j jaffy, uh, he linked it like that first day, uh, when he was still had his blog Which was futility in the fielder and people liked it. It worked. Uh, I It's a lot more complex now than it was, uh, at that point But it's it's it's it's been fun to develop things and you learn a lot when developing a projection system Scarily, sometimes I think the thing you most learn about is being wrong Yeah, because when you run projections or do anything like this, there's no illusion of your omnipotent predictions of the future And you learn a lot more from being wrong than being right, uh, so it's I've learned a lot over the years I hope that I've helped people over the years and people like the product and I do a lot of things with it I never really envisioned doing with it at the time Yeah, that's awesome I've been using your zips picture projections, uh for a long time to account for starting pictures when when I project games over on my site, um Give us a little sense for like how you build those up on a player by player level Well, I I think of it a lot of the way that, uh, that like hurricane forecasts work Okay, it's it's it's it's the same kind of concept obviously a storm. I mean there are named storms You're with a hurricane. You're essentially starting with where a hurricane is and you know based on historical data And uh, they kind of have the idea of how hurricanes interact with, you know, high pressure low pressure Uh, and you know, there's it's it's built off that and you had a kind of that cone of ignorance that comes off if you ever see like one of those graphics where the They show the track and it widens and like a big cone And baseball players are like that you're your fundamental challenges first identifying where a player is and that's harder, uh, than a lot of people think because One of the things about player performance is you never actually truly know if you're right or exactly where a player is A player who hits 300 last year We don't really know based on the sample size we have, you know, 500 600 at bats We don't really know if they were in fact a 300 hitter that year They could have been a 300 hitter They could have been truly a you know a 290 hitter that was lucky A 310 hitter who was unlucky and you never really get to know the correct answer. So it's it's it's very probability based So once I have a baseline, uh, then I try to get an estimate of where the player is going And I use baseball history for that, uh, this kind of strategy has been used before Uh, pacota uses it, uh, the elias baseball analyst. They used a system like that also in the late 80s zips uses large cohorts of similar players to try to construct Just kind of a you know a blueprint for the the players next decade for the rest of their career whoever long that is and That there's not a lot of other approaches I think that make a lot of sense because all we know about baseball is what's happened in baseball We don't have a lot of experimental data in baseball. There's no simulations of players. There's not like, you know, physics We can draw on So that's that's the approach I take and I mean, I'm always refining the model and the things I do But I I'm pretty happy with where it is. It's not perfect and it can always be better But I like new challenges Yeah, that's awesome Dan and and I really love like kind of the historical perspective you gave of like in the 90s and You know doing something by by 2003 I mean, obviously since 2003 we have a ton of new data In baseball, how do you look at that new data and what's your process for Whether you want to include that in your model? Well, I'm very careful when when I add new things. I don't want to to To break anything let's just say I mean, there's a lot of techniques you can use long term I've I've always been a fan of you know, principal component analysis and things like that to try to To to just find the variables that have predictive value and that that takes time I'm not quick to you know, just throw in stat cast data because there's a lot of great things in stat cast And a lot of stuff. I'm excited about but we still don't know really yet Precisely what is cool and what is actually cool and predictive Especially with some of the defensive things we have enough, you know Unpicked velocity and that kind of thing that that we do have an idea and I'm very careful about how I integrate it Like I we know that velocity is important on some level That your the projections are enhanced by by knowing how hard a picture throws And I always have a kind of versions of zips They're like a few years in the future that you know, I want to test on live data There's only so much you can do with with with cross validation I just like to have you know live actual information that I don't know ahead of time just I don't know. Maybe it's maybe it's a philosophical stretch that I need to do that But I I feel that anything I offer I had to have some confidence in Right, and you'd rather be over prepared than under prepared in general Which I think is a good thing too. And like you said, you don't want to make any rash decisions when adding things in Let's talk about this here Dan because It's a definitely a unique situation because I think in 162 game season There's gonna be variants in the player level But from the team level you generally expect the cream to rise to the top and there's still variants there But how different is the variance projection on the team level basis? We go from 162 games down to 60 games of this year Well, the variance It's it's huge The the roster strengths even the roster strengths themselves are more variable because we have Things like injuries because they don't really scale the same way the rest of the season does One way zips projects teams is it it doesn't actually know How strong a team is if it believes that a team is on average a 500 team Zips knows that it doesn't know that for effect You see sometimes people project that way, you know Use the binomial distribution and say treat it like coin flips But they're like coin flips where you don't know how the coin is weighted So zips already starts with kind of a distribution distribution of how strong a team is it It looks at a team that that say the rays zips has had them around as a 90 win team And a in a perfect league where they just play everybody, you know a million times zips knows that It might actually be a 93 win team. They might actually be an 87 win team and and so on and so forth And I use a month of crawler simulation to to do the actual season standings That way I can kind of you know built in some of that uncertainty Just on a simulated level rather than having to actually just figure out and calculate or you know brute force variance that way So that that's how zips does it. I'm not sure always sure if it's the best way I know some people will actually use the game sims themselves But I I I try not to rely on things that I don't do if that makes sense, right Yeah, for sure So Dan you had a full season projections before covid hit And then you had to obviously rerun the numbers Once we knew we had a 60 game season How dramatic were your kind of playoff in world series odds when you made that change and for teams like the you know The favorites like the Dodgers and the Yankees Yeah, it had a pretty huge change on on the favorites going into The original season it had the Yankees and Dodgers is over 90 percent to make the playoffs In in 60 games the Yankees have dropped in the last run I didn't do another run before tomorrow morning but the last run the Yankees were down to 67 percent the Dodgers 73 percent and You you see, you know, the basement teams have just a slightly better long shot hope I mean it had the the matters up to one in 25 to make the playoffs and Psychologically that just seems weird, but then I had to think Dan this is 60 games. Sure And you know a team starts off, you know 12 and 3 or something and they're probably a playoff team at that point It's just by treading water because it is the home stretch and we're not used to Taking of the season in 60 game terms So so it is fascinating even the Orioles got a chance to make the playoffs So what you're saying Dan is you've cleared off your schedule in october to watch some Orioles baseball, right? I'm not I'm not going That far. Okay, uh, I don't even know if they'll I wonder how the the media access in the playoffs is going to work right Because because I mean they normally, you know with I mean you you you're you're you're you're credited to Right. I'm not. No. Oh, I thought you were well either way. The way it works is if you have your bb wba card You can just kind of show but the stadium just you just waltz in and go wherever do whatever you want You can't do that this year. They've limited to 30 people who can go in And that includes photographers as well. So you really have to fight to get in I'm actually skipping it this year because I really don't want to take spots from From from the beat guys, right? Because I mean they have to be there in a way that I don't necessarily have to be there I mean a lot of the guys in the press box. They're you know, they're working working and me I'm wondering how to get a hot dog or like Opening day last year. I was away from the press box for like three innings because I was trying to find the bourbon slushies The beat guys don't had that luxury So so I try to you know, it's gonna be weird not being in a baseball game But I'm wondering about the playoffs because I do if the worlds make the playoffs I really do have to get to one of those games You would be tempting especially given the expectations that he did this year, you know You know, why not take a take a trip out there? Especially for such a beautiful park, you know I've taken a game there and if there's no one else that doesn't hurt things too much either Let's talk about the the schedule because that's another big thing that's changed here because it's a very division heavy schedule and Some divisions are not as strong as others if we're gonna, you know play things Play things nicely here, but when we look at the teams In the new schedules, were there any teams that benefited more than others from this change where it's so Specific and so central to their division. I had the changes as basically division benefits Certain teams have to play certain rivals more than others. It wasn't quite as balanced as it looked But the big thing is the divisional issues because I do have the eastern and western divisions as significantly stronger than the central And while that's not really as big of a big enough big enough big of an effect on divisional races when you talk wild cards, it's it's extremely significant because Everybody's still competing against each other in the standings Except they don't actually play each other which is kind of an odd thing. I almost feel like They should have done it in three different leagues Somehow and then kind of like a round robin championship or something They they didn't get that creative in the end they and given how Harder was just to get the season going and how they didn't start talking about this until the end of May Which is absolutely third that they oh, maybe we should start thinking about the whole money thing So so we didn't get anything cool like that But it does give a a significant benefit to the central teams Especially kind of those mid tier contenders that already have gotten some help from the schedule I think the white socks are a team that really benefited a lot They do have a fairly deep rotation now, especially compared to last year And they have an easier schedule and that that's that that's beneficial They may not win the division But they get kind of you know a leg up over say a team like the angels or rangers or other second tier teams Because they're playing you know the royals and tigers a lot and they're not playing the asters or a's So it's it's it's helpful for the central teams. Generally. It's unhelpful for the the coasts Excellent. So dan you post uh, I mean not only do you post win totals, uh, which which you did on fan graphs this year And I believe before it was on espn Yeah fan graphs and espn to the 2010 We used to do them in the magazine every year, which was fun They don't print the magazine anymore. It's just online only and then before that a baseball think factory baseball primer Excellent When you look over at fandal sportsbook, is there anything in terms of win totals or world series odds that you find interesting? Uh, when I when I when I look at the odds, I kind of like From from a from a championship standpoint, I don't usually battle on champions I usually don't find like a ton of of play in there So that is usually my favorite bet But I do like some of the The odds for teams to make the playoffs That are not good teams, but they're not tigers orials bad Uh, I I like the marlins. They have an interesting rotation. They have Slap together a lineup who which has to be better than last year And I I think that they that they do have if you look at the odds that it is tempting I look at the royals in the same way. They're not a good team But they have enough major league players that I think they could make a run and make them playoffs Uh, so those are two teams in particular. I like Uh That's I know it feels weird betting on the royals after I've bad mapped them for so long It's like, hey, we what do you mean you're making money off us dan But I I do think those are good value bets Have you gotten more flak from royals fans on twitter or rockies fans like which which one is more abusive to you It used to be royals fans now. It's rockies fans They don't know why i'm picking on them because normally nobody cares about the rockies But the rock is just drive me nuts sometimes. Yeah, it's the little things It's it's the owners declaring how they extrapolated that they or they interpolated And they have 94 wins this year because of like they compared it like 2009 2010 like It's not how the word works or how the math works or how logic works Even like as a fantasy player like the rockies drive me nuts because like I want to like guys like ryan mcman and garret hampton But then they'll inevitably sign some veteran who has been dust for 15 years and just frustrate me to no end So like I as a fantasy player enjoy it when you bash the rockies So it's kind of like cathartic for me to read your tweets sometimes And and and there's things like, you know, jeff bride. He's talking give quitting giving a quotes about how You know writers don't anything about leadership and he compared himself to a brain surgeon You might have seen that one. It was it was a fun one and just some of the things they do just kind of Bother me in an annoying way. Yeah, the way they showed no interest in mike talkman I didn't think mike talkman was going to be as good as he was with the yankees obviously But the team showed no interest in even looking at that. They gave matt holiday You know time at the end of his career They bring carlos gonzalez back no matter how he played for a number of years But they didn't even look at mike talkman. They didn't even look at reberto ramas last year I didn't think he was going to be a star even average player But it's like they didn't care to find this out and now you look at their second base situation You mentioned ryan mcman. You have mcman and hampton You have brennan rogers in there and they seem mostly concerned with how do we find playing time for chris owing's Right. So we've got to look at this matt kemp kid It's it's it's a frustrating team. They don't really do any like awful trades. We can make fun of like, you know, the swanson trade But they just do these things that just nag on me for some reason Well, if you do want to follow dan and bet the the royals and the marlins royals plus 2,500 to make the playoffs of fandal sportsbook in the marlins plus 1800 So really intriguing odds there But dan as you mentioned like I guess a lot of zips at least the way that most of us use it is player level And we can bet on Individual player awards And there are actually a lot of season long statistical categories we can bet on like who are the most home run stuff like that Any players stand out to use being undervalued with the 60 game schedule based on the odds at fandal sportsbook I what I really like actually on the prop bets is some of the awards Uh, I I've I've done well with the words one of my favorite bets of all time And thankfully I recorded it in my preseason betting piece for espn Was when I predicted max scherzer's breakout season and and I got I got him to Win the scion at plus 2000 And I and I thought that was a good value bet, you know, you make enough good value bets You'll they'll work out over time. So I I tend to like some of these Second tier scion's I I think Cole is it's probably a little too much because I mean it's the implied odds last I checked we're almost like we're more than one in three and I don't think it's that good For for him to win the sigh, but I I do like like Lance Lynn Last I checked. I mean If you think he has a four or five percent chance to win the sigh, that's a good value bet at that point Uh, the the same with otani I think the angels are going to push a healthy otani Uh and that gives and he has such a story behind and that's the kind of guy who can impress voters I mean, it's more that based than it used to be. I don't think we are going to be voting I don't think if we had a repeat of 1995 that dante bachette would would be second in the mvp voting Uh, I hope not. I certainly wouldn't have paid that vote Uh, my my one sad thing is I can't bet on national league awards anymore since I'm a voter I had a I had a moment of panic that that after christian yellich's breakout because After I spent that offseason writing pieces about how I thought he was like a big breakout guy He had like two espn pieces for me Uh, and then I bet on him to win the mvp and I was thinking wait, what if I had to vote on this? I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to actually abstain because I can't you know ethically vote on an award In which it pays me off. Even if I didn't get caught I that's that's pretty You know, right? So I can't get voting the L awards anymore. That makes me kind of sad. Yeah Uh, that is sad, but hey, at least you got the the yellich ticket in there. That's always helpful Uh, lance lin is 30 to 1 as is otani and Live last year was pretty like again. I keep bringing it back to fantasy Like that's where my main focus is lance lin and dfs last year was really really fun So I'm hoping we get some more of that this year and hopefully we can get dan Helping out there with lance lin being 30 to 1 dan zimborsky of fangrass Thank you for swinging by and talking some baseball here today Really appreciate all the thoughts and all the conversation I want to let you go so you can go enjoy the baseball tomorrow night and hopefully well beyond that And maybe we'll talk to you again here soon. Thanks for having me on guys Covering the future Big thank you once again to dan zimborsky for swinging by and breaking down this 60 game mlb season Make sure you follow dan on twitter at d zimborsky s z y m b o r s k i and check out his work over at fangrass.com and ed Uh, I didn't expect the royals and the marlins to come up in that conversation But I totally get it and I think that his analysis on those those two specific teams is pretty spot-on too Yeah, absolutely in a 16 game 60 game season You're going to see much more variance in terms of the results and you're going to have some of those long shots I I put together a little computer ensemble model. So I took five models That I think are pretty good at projecting wind totals put them together And you know, Miami's 25th and kansas city's 26, which is exactly kind of in that Not very good, but not The tigers or the orioles either Right and uh, the there's uh Another writer fan grask named paul sporer He calls that he's referring to like starting pitching ranks But what he calls it is the blob and the blob is like this area where the difference between The first the top you know, we'll call it teams here the top team in the blob and the bottom team in the blob The gap is not all that big And I think that the benefit of the 60 game season is it increases the blob It makes more teams relevant and Miami and kansas city are at least on the bottom end of that massive blob which means if they happen to you know Have a good stretch like dan said you could very well see a team like that make the playoffs Yeah, and you have some health and yeah a lack of covid positive tests. Yeah, which is you know, all of a sudden an issue Yeah, I I mean, I often think of in turn. I don't really call it the blob, but I call it the fat noodle You know, you think about it And this is you know in the NFL you have such a short season that I'm not actually convinced that how much we can say about the fat blob In the middle like I know we know what the top five and the bottom five teams are But I mean, how much of we can we really say in 16 games about those middle teams? um I've been meaning to like run a model where you know You look at the model and you obviously make the the this The standard prediction when you have a good team or a bad team versus anyone else But like just predicting like, you know a three-point win for the home team for any two teams in the middle of the blob And seeing how that does right I actually I I need to I need to get on that. I'd be an interesting thing See we're just we're spurring up content ideas here. This is this is the whole point But it was also nice to talk to Dan because like it's another really smart math guy like you who you can kind of talk to You know ask some good questions And I think that it's always beneficial to hear from smart people like that if we're trying to make ourselves smarter too Yeah, absolutely. He talked about principle component analysis This is a linear algebra technique where you you basically look at a matrix of variables And you figure out which ones are the most important and which ones are the most predictive I've heard about this being done for basketball He's clearly doing it for baseball um And I actually have a neighbor that does uh, he does cognitive science research So he takes brain scans and tries to predict things based on that And uh, you know, this is a pretty big research group at the university of michigan And and he applied a number of techniques to try to predict certain attributes based on these brain scans And and this includes like, you know, all your typical machine learning things that go into yourself driving cars and and all these things And he actually found out the best predictor was pca this principle component analysis So it kind of makes me think that I should start messing with that myself. Um And in doing some of this But yeah, I mean math is powerful, right? I mean, this is why this is why I should pay attention We should have had dan on earlier. So we could have gotten you on this, uh, pca kick during the pandemic I know, I mean, yeah, there's there's so many things going on, but uh Yeah, no, I think I think yeah, it should it's something that should be done in nfl and call I'm sure someone someone out there's done it I'm also so curious what what a cookout in your neighborhood is like because you have that professor Didn't you live by john b line at 1.2? I still live near bro. Yeah. Yeah, it's like What are the cookouts like in this town? Uh, I don't know the cookouts are fun. That's why that's why I moved here um But yeah, I mean, there's there's mostly doctors and you know, yeah john b line and jim harbaugh in my neighborhood Not that I see the latter two at cookouts, but right, right But yeah, it's a good time. I'll bring the milk. We know that for sure for sure Yeah, um, let's move into covering the future and one thing you had mentioned while we were talking about dan was you have this ensemble computer wind totals for baseball and trying to Take predictions you think are smart and kind of combine them together What takeaways have you gotten from looking at those numbers this year? Yeah, yeah, jim. I'm happy to talk through any teams, but I mean the idea is pretty simple, you know, take five models, uh, so you take zips Which we've talked about a bunch already 538 which is an elo model uh clay Davenport who is another guy that that has been doing projections for a long time, uh picota baseball prospectus and fan graphs Uh, so the standings projections at fan graphs Uh, you combine them together one of these years I'm actually going to go back and look at historical accuracy so that I can kind of reweight things and weight Models that I like better more, but right now they're just all equal Um, so in terms of wind totals, you know, the ensemble is highest on the Dodgers at 37.1 wins The Yankees are next at 35.9 Houston's next at 35.6 and and so on and so forth Uh, Houston's a really interesting team. Um, in that, you know, they were very good last year obviously made it all the way to the World series before the the epic, uh away team wins all The situation that we that we had last year Um, they're obviously an interesting team in terms of the cheating scandal that has has since come out Um, but another thing I do over my site is calculate cluster lock and here the idea is that um Based on the underlying statistics, how many runs should you have scored? So based on how many homers singles doubles triples walks on and so forth How many runs should you have scored and the idea is that some teams are going to cluster a lot of runs together, uh, You know, if you get nine singles in one inning, you're gonna score a lot more runs If then if you scatter those nine singles over nine innings one single uh each inning And so cluster lock is a way of kind of figuring out how lucky a team was in terms of clustering their hits and and we know that, um We know when you do this analysis that, uh You know, it's luck, right? Like being lucky in in one season doesn't project to the next season Houston was actually almost negative 38 runs and cluster luck last year Negative, I mean that's an astronomical total. I think they were like dead last for a while Detroit was actually lasted at minus 68 Cluster uh negative Runs so they should have scored 68 more runs than than they actually did So they were bad, but probably not as awful as they were in the standings So anyways, um, you know, everybody gosh actually tweeted out my cluster luck stuff today. Maybe uh, Which got me to look at my own stuff, which Shows you how smart I've been this week, but but anyways, um He did point out that, you know, Houston was actually very unlucky despite all their success last year and that could potentially project to Uh, good things for them this year despite losing Garry Cole Uh, let me say one last thing about the the computer ensemble Uh numbers that I have they have to chart at 24.5 wins and this Was a very interesting team because every single projection Said over the wind total of fan duel at 21 and I think it's 21 and a half. At least it was earlier this week, so Um, I would not simply take my numbers and go make a bet But if there's something you like about this Detroit Tigers team, uh, you think they they can do something As in not completely sucking over 60 games A lot of these models support that thinking It's 21 and a half still and it's actually minus 102 on the over It's actually getting like you're not letting that much juice either because it's minus 120 on the under So they're baiting you towards the under and It sounds like they're over by three wins, uh, based on the projection systems Yeah, I mean, uh, I mean i'm looking at it right now. Zips is the lowest with Detroit at 23 Uh, fangrass and Davenport at 25 538 24 Huh, interesting. Okay. So, uh, maybe you want like I actually added the last I added zips in in 538 Before the show today. Um Before that the other three models actually really like baltimore. Yeah, but then zips in 538 pulled it right back It's really funny that dan who is an orials fan. He was his projection system that dragged the orials down Exactly. And you know how he busted all on colorado Yeah, uh during the show like zips was by far the lowest win total on colorado of any of the five I mean the orials are starting tommy malone as their opening day guy. I think that tells you all you need to know there Um, tommy malone. Okay starter Probably not a dude you want as your opening day starter, but I think uh, that's really interesting especially with the tigers, you know We're talking about the tigers the royals of arlands. There is nothing more chaotic than upping up upping those three teams So we are embracing the randomness here as we get set for the 2020 mlb season My covering the future is focusing on another sport and action on thursday night and that is nascar because Got a nascar race coming up on thursday as opposed to sunday for this week. It's in kansas and once again Shocker my model is highest and ryan blaney. He is first there makes sense He has a top five average running position in all three tracks similar to kansas this year So you're at nine to one I like blaney there. However, if you listen to this podcast regularly You probably just knew to bet blaney by now because like I just kind of like the every week thing So i'm not going to bore you. This is not a ryan blaney segment. I promise Instead we're talking about his teammate. That's joey legano legano is 16 to 1 Which i'm pretty sure is the longest value he has been all year long And on one hand kind of makes sense in the six races at one and a half mile tracks since his win in las vegas He has just one top five finish But that win in vegas is big because it is a track that is similar to kansas It is one and a half miles with moderate banking The other two races like that have been in homestead and in kentucky in homestead legano led 27 laps But he got in a wreck on pit road which hurt his car finished 27th there not a good day then in kentucky Legano had a sixth place average running position, which is really not that bad He's coming off a third place run last week another mile and a half track Though with different banking so he's been better than his results would indicate And he has been best at the tracks most similar to kansas legano is not one in kansas since 2015 but He is a two-time winner here. He also had a fourth place average running position in both 2018 races at this track So if we're looking at my model overall Yes, blaney is first of course because it's it's my model. It's kind of how things go But legano is sixth and everybody who is higher than him in my model is plus 850 or shorter to win Whereas legano is 16 to 1 that is easily long enough for me to jump back in on legano To win thursday night's race. I've been kind of off legano for the past month and a half or so Haven't recommended him too much in that time But I think now with the odds I think over reacting as much as I have I'm gonna buy back into joy legano 16 to 1 to win thursday's race But if it happens to be ryan blaney, I'm gonna go ahead and claim victory anyway because we've been talking so much about him regardless Ever since things picked back up you're on covering the spread and I'm sad though that nascar's time in the spotlight Is coming to an end like i'm still gonna watch it but like it's just sad that like they're losing their spotlight here Well, that was inevitably going to happen with some of these sports coming back You know baseball took a long time to come back, but at least it's it's back and then the nba starts next week. So yeah We're gonna talk some then for some nba next week too. So that'll be a lot of fun It's gonna be weird having all these sports going like I know My work schedule will be chaotic because I've been doing nascar pga stuff a little bit at mma But then you add Baseball which is every day and we're doing two shows per day around baseball like Things are about to get really crazy and it's not gonna end until the nfl season stops whenever that may be So we're gonna we're gonna be busy here for the next couple of months So you're doing daily shot, which is your just solo episode talking Dfs for yep, and then uh in the afternoon. I'll be doing a twitch stream. I don't think they've announced this yet I don't know. I don't ever who cares. I don't care personally We can put it here if cap gets on your case Yeah, exactly. I'll send I'll send him your way because I want to do with it But it is every day at 4 p.m. Will be on twitch. I'll be going through lineups Taking or talking about takeaways from those talking some weather because weather is huge for mlb dfs That's on the I think it's like brand new the fan dual twitch stream I honestly don't know but we're doing the stuff with it for the first time in a while So it'll be interesting. I am not a uh a youth anymore. I don't think I can call myself that So I'm not super familiar with twitch. So it could be rocky to start, but I think there'll be a lot of fun Has twitch gone beyond gaming? Yeah, uh, I mean and jonathan bail's doing push-ups I forgot that was on twitch. I watched a lot of that stream. I'm embarrassed. I'm like that stream too I'm embarrassed how much I watched that I forgot that that happened. That's That was in the middle of like march or april like when we had no nc double a tournament There was nothing going on literally the world had stopped like I we are We're both getting a pass for watching like hours of jonathan bail is doing push-ups Like that was the thing that week in future generations when they ask us what we did during the pandemic Am I going to talk about I watched I watched some guy do push-ups On for a thing I didn't even bet on like is that going to be the thing that I discuss That's going to be your legacy. I guess there we go. That's uh, it's a wild wild thing But hey baseball's back. We still got an ass car nba's back I can finally watch real sports again, and I am so pumped for that That is all that we have for today's show here on covering the spread once again a big thank you to dan zimborsky for swinging by and breaking down This year's nlb win totals and player awards to follow dan on twitter at d zimborsky and again Check out his work over at fangrass.com some stuff over at espn as well and check out the zips projections Which can be found over on fangrass ed. What's going on for you over on the power rank this week? Yeah, so um Well, nothing much this week. Uh, well, I mean So so come by sign up for my newsletter same pitch every week, but I will post those win totals On the blog so you can take a look at them So hopefully they will be up by the time this this pod goes up and then um I'm actually working on some pretty big studies a pretty big study of nfo quarterbacks Okay, and uh, I'm going to tease a little bit about what you might expect next week except it's going to be Uh, something about the nba. Okay, and three-point shooting. So, um, that's coming out early next week. I I'm very excited about this. Um Definitely one of the better things I've ever done. So, uh, yeah, so that'll be up next week We'll talk about more then but if you want to get, you know, the first glimpse at it Uh, send out for my email newsletter over at the power rank dot com I'm excited to see how you can link three-point shooting with nfo quarterbacks. That's going to be fun This is going to be a fun ride. So make sure you tune in next week as well To hear add on that and go to the power rank dot com to check out. Uh, his mlb win totals, uh, based on the Composite models. I'm at gymsonnis j i m s a n n e s as mentioned We have uh, the solo show which is going up every day starting tomorrow for the two games We'll still have one there a little bit shorter Obviously, but that will be up there twitch stream later in the day So subscribe to the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed to get that our nascar podcast our pga podcast Probably some usc podcasts occasionally nba podcast next week with tom vecchio So a lot of stuff going over on the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed We're probably not going anywhere to cover in the spread for a while. We got our one off week So we'll be here every week. Make sure you're subscribed to us as well by searching for a cover in the spread Wherever you get your podcast and if you like what you hear from us or dan or anybody else Please leave us a rating and review as well Big thank you to calvin theobald our video producer for running the video side of things here today Thank you cal. Oh so much as always and thank you to everyone for tuning in you made it We finally reached the beginning of the big four resuming play once again with baseball tomorrow Sit back. Enjoy it. Hopefully win some money in the process. We'll talk to you all again next week This has been covering the spread right here on the fan duel podcast network