Today we’ll look at Game 3 of the 1919 World Series.  Game 2 of this series took place on 10/2/1919 in Cincinnati and Game 3 takes place the next day on 10/3/1919 in Chicago.  How did they get from Cincinnati to Chicago in one day and be ready to play World Series class baseball?  There were no Interstates, no airplanes.  They would have had to take a bus.  Not sure.  We just crunch numbers here.

Update: They took the train.  They ate and drank on the train, slept on the train, and sometimes got into their uniforms on the train.   Here’s a good article about early baseball and train travel.  The trip takes 9 1/2 hours today on Amtrak.  Wouldn’t be surprised if it took the same amount of time back then too.

Game 3 Line Score

Formatting the above still a work in progress. White Sox scored early and those were the only runs needed.  Let’s look at handicapping for this game.

CIN CHA 191910030

The WAA and R columns are static for all games in a series.  Lineup (L) doesn’t change much from game to game so that leaves the Starter (S) column making the most difference.  Relief was insignificant during this period of baseball.

TC Simulation relies on Lineup -> Starter , Lineup -> Relief

For now Lineup -> Relief can be eliminated.  The Away advantage would be

L(away) – S(home) = 0.60 – (-0.12) = 0.72 rounded up to the integer 1.

L(home) – S(away) = 4.11 – 1.51 = 3.6 rounded up to the integer 4.

In simulation the home lineup above will score more runs per game than the away lineup so CHA would be favored in this game.  By how much is unknown right now.  The simulation dataset for 16 team seasons is an off season work in progress.  Handicapping tables give a quick visual as to which team is favored based upon strength of L, S, and R (for modern era baseball).

White Sox start the worst of their three starter rotation.  Fischer is another well above average decent (not great) starter in CIN’s rotation.

CIN Lineup

According to TB all hits singles, only one walk.  CIN bats were flat which could have been due to sleeping on the bus all night between Cincinnati and Chicago.

Note: WAA numbers and Tiering have been changed.  Tiers are now calculated based upon end of August lineups and Starting rotations using official end of year data.  In previous parts data was taken from daily snapshots which were derived from an incomplete season causing error in the valuation.

Using end of August rosters is a more accurate representation of the core of each team.  In modern baseball rosters get expanded in September that change valuations.  For tiering we need to know the distribution of lineup, starter, and relief valuations and September rosters can distort that.

Tables in Part 2 and Part 3 will not be changed.  The only thing off are WAAs and ranking but just a little bit.  The numbers here are more accurate and this process will be used from now on for every World Series report like this.

CIN Pitching

Fischer gives up 2 earned runs in 7 innings which is around par for what his seasonal numbers would suggest.  CIN gives up another unearned run which is unusual considering  their seasonal very positive unearned runs above average.

Update: After spot checking the historical dataset names tend to get stuck in my head and Dolf Luque was one of them because he had an extraordinary year 4 years from now in 1923.

This was one of the top 25 highest single season WAA  post 1900 according to this data model.  Babe Ruth was #2 that year although WAR has Ruth #1, Luque #2.  That’s how I remembered.  Today he pitched in relief and 1919 was his 4th year in the league.

End of Update

CHA Lineup

In the last part CHA had a maxed out Tier 5.00 Lineup.  The new tiering distribution using end of August rosters, official end of year data, lowered that significantly even though their Total WAA rose to 25+.  This is an extremely good lineup which is comparable to what HOU and NYA put up 100 years later in 2019 playoffs.

Shoeless Joe goes 2/3 scoring a run and Chick Gandil who purportedly organized the 8 players gets 2 RBIs.

CHA Pitching

Dickey Kerr was not part of the fix which might be because he wasn’t good enough.  He had a good chance of losing on his own based upon the above.   He only gives up 0 runs in 9 innings White Sox win with their worst starter.

The White Sox are down 2-1 in this 5 to win up to 9 game series.  Lots of games left to be played.  Game 4 tomorrow.   Until then ….

Today we’ll cover Game 2 of the 1919 World Series between the White Sox and Reds.  Reds had a better seasonal record meaning they had home field advantage for the series.  The first two games were played in Cincinnati.  Reds already won the first game which was covered in Part 2.

The formatting of game line scores is a work in progress.  The above shows White Sox lost Game 2 4-2 with Reds scoring 3 in the fourth which was all they needed to win this.

Below are the same handicapping tables we saw throughout the 2019 regular season.  These tables are still an off season work in progress.  The code to process the data flow into these tables is getting better.

  CHA CIN 191910020

Reds had much better team WAA than the White Sox for the year 1919.  Vegas, TC Sim, and Expected Value (EV) columns are blanked.  We don’t know the Vegas odds and in 1919 the Mafia was Vegas, the same people who paid to fix this series.

The above shows White Sox with a max tier lineup, far better than what the Reds put up.  We saw in Team Status in Parts 1 and 2 of this series that CIN’s strength was PITCHing, White Sox was BATting.   Reds had a much better starter pitching today and much better relief.

The R column doesn’t mean much back then because starters typically pitched an entire game.   TC Sim currently relies on data from 1970 – 2018, far into the future.  It will be possible to simulate the above but not right now and not during this series of posts.  Eyeballing the tier numbers White Sox should be favored in this game based upon their Lineup advantage.

The Starters tables are working.  Lefty Williams was one of the eight players who are playing  for someone other than Charles Comiskey.  He had a decent but not stellar regular season and represents the second best starter in the White Sox rotation.  We’ll cover starting rotations later in this series.

CHA Lineup

During the 2019 season we maxed out tiers at tier 4.00.  It may be necessary to max out at tier 5.00 however.  During this season Houston, Yankees, and Twins all registered 30+ WAA lineups during certain games.  The distribution among lineups of 30 MLB teams is different than 16 MLB teams.  This will be examined further when we run numbers on all seasons between 1919 and 2019.  The above shows White Sox with pretty much a top of league lineup.  Unfortunately for White Sox bettors the guys in red were being paid not to score runs.  In this game Ray Shalk, one of the players not in on the fix,  had 2 RBIs and a Run contributing to  3/4 of all CHA scoring for today.

Shoeless Joe and Buck Weaver racked up hits but had no run production to show for it.  In baseball the only stat that matters in determining who wins a game is the R column, not the H column.  As a team CHA racked up 10 hits only scoring 2 runs.  On average a team should score around 5 runs on 10 hits.  CHA had a total of 12 total bases or 1.2 bases per hit which is also well below the historical average of 1.5.  It means at least 8 of those 10 hits were singles.

All players in on the fix knew they had to pad stats to keep suspicion off them.  Right now there may be rumors of a fix but  fans don’t know for sure and they don’t know which players are in on it.  We know because we’re from the future.

CHA Pitchers

White Sox did not give up an unearned run during this game.

CIN Lineup

The Reds on the other hand scored 4 runs on only 4 hits but 6 walks. The surest way to get someone on base is to let them walk.

CIN Pitchers

Both runs White Sox scored in this game were the result of an error.  We saw in team status how CIN had very positive unearned runs above average.  There were only 3 strikeouts between the two teams and not many in Game 1 which is kind of interesting and something to look into.

Reds are up 2-0 and now they travel to Chicago for game 3.  The fixers are breathing easy as it appears their players are honoring their contracts with them.  We’ll cover Game 3 next.  Until then ….

in Part 2 of the 1919 World Series series series we’ll cover Game 1 using a new box score report.  Eight players on the White Sox got paid to help their team lose a World Series.  These posts look at each game in detail to see if there’s any blatant statistical evidence of foul play.  First we need to see how these two teams match up against each other according to this data model.

Team Status

Team status records show data collected over an entire season which may not reflect upon their current roster.  The above shows CIN had great pitching according to PITCH derived from runs scored against.  White Sox had the opposite, great hitting derived from runs scored above average.  Reds had much better Unearned runs above average which means good fielding.

1919 Playoff Horse Race

Horse race tables for playoff season are based upon estimated team rosters using end of year WAA data.  During the regular year horse race tables use estimated rosters applying  beginning of day data — what you would know reading the paper in the morning.  During current year these tables are made using rosters downloaded from a source and are not estimated.  This could change next season as our source sometimes can lag or have errors.

In modern baseball there would be 8 teams starting off in divisional series.  Back in the day the World Series was the only playoff series so this horse race table reduces to two teams.  This table kind of aligns with team status showing CIN with a much better starting rotation and CHA with a much better set of hitters.

White Sox starting rotation in the above table is much better than their PITCH in team status.  They have a below average relief staff but relief was not nearly a factor then as it is now.  More on these differences later in off season simulation talk.

The above shows the inning line with the Reds winning 9-1 on a a 5 run 4th. The presentation of this is still a work in progress.

Let’s look further into this box score.

CHA Lineup

For now the paid off players will be highlighted in bold red.  Since I have to do this manually it won’t be done in subsequent games as much.  The above is a prototype display showing columns this data model views as important.  Plate Appearance (PA) represents time.  R and RBI represent runs.  TB , H , and W represent hits.

I haven’t doubled or triple checked the accuracy but pretty sure the above is correct.

Latest Update:  All tables have been updated to the correct standard.  Code was still being written during the first couple of these posts and bugs were found after posting.  Developing the code to build these tables was the purpose of this series of posts.  Now all World Series can be perused.

Update:  Lineup tier numbers are wrong in lineups for both teams in this post.  Part 3 has tiers properly calculated.  Since the code that calculates tiers wasn’t working  I tried to calculate lineup tiers manually and didn’t do it right.  CHA lineup tier is a maxed out tier 5.00 as shown in Part 3 which was calculated automatically.

End of both Updates

Jackson scores the only run for CHA and reached second on an error.  Chick Gandil gives up an unearned run due to an error but that was the only unearned run.  This model can assign and tally unearned runs against fielders.  This isn’t very interesting for regular season but it can be interesting in post season.  Players can affect an outcome giving up a run by not fielding just as easily as not scoring a run by not hitting.

CHA Pitchers

The Pitcher table shows outs instead of innings pitched, Plate appearances pitched, Earned Runs , Runs, and Strikeouts.  Cicotte gave up 6 runs in 11 outs or 3 2/3 IP.  The first game was probably essential for the White Sox to lose in order to signal the fixers they weren’t being cheated.  Cicotte made that happen and no Sox player got clever trying to score.  All hits were singles according to TB column.

CIN Lineup

Tiering for lineups is based upon average and standard deviation of end of season lineups for all 16 MLB teams.  This can only be calculated with a mostly full set of day by day box score data.  A Tier 1.08 means Reds’ lineup is around 1/2 standard deviation above MLB average for the year 1919.  CHA is at 2.41 which is much greater.

Lineups face pitchers however, not other lineups.

CIN Pitchers

Ruether was their best pitcher ranked #8 and pitched a complete game like most starters did back then.  He gave up no earned runs.

Ruether is around Tier 3 and Cicotte around Tier 5.  Even though on paper CHA as a team has worse pitching, when CIcotte pitches they are top top tier and back then starters usually  pitched the entire game. Off the top of my head looking at the Tier numbers White Sox would have been favorites for this game.  That alone doesn’t prove or disprove anything however.

The code to make handicapping tables for historical playoff games like what was done  during 2019 current year coverage is not completely finished but will be for Game 2 hopefully soon.  Until then ….

This set of posts will cover the 1919 World Series.  It has been around a month since the last baseball game of the 2019 season.  Since then much work has been done to shore up the historical dataset and scripts that support it.  A league snapshot is taken at the end of every day.  Daily snapshots must add up to match the official end of year tallies which can be a challenge and missing games introduce some error which is often acceptable.

Daily data is derived from retrosheet.org compilations of event box (1910 – 1949) and play-by-play (1950-2018).  Although event box data goes back to 1910 and before, 1919 is the first year where dailies add up to be close enough to known final stats to include into the historical dataset.  TC Sim relied on data from 1970-2018.  Now we will go back to 1919 meaning simulation will draw from an entire century of baseball games.

Conveniently the 1919 World Series happened 100 years ago and something very exciting occurred.  Eight White Sox players purportedly threw the series for money; handicappers/mob were tilting the odds the only way they knew how before computers.  Since the proof of this data model rests on accurate handicapping of baseball games, let’s see how well it does for the 8 games where CIN beats CHA 5-3.  World Series were 9 game series back then.

In Part 1 we’ll cover high level basics between the two teams and in subsequent parts  show playoff horse race tables for August and end of year.  Then we’ll handicap all games using the same tables shown here for the 2019 World Series.  Since we’re from the future we can also show how these games end with box scores and post mortem analysis.

First let’s look at the top half of MLB.  This model does not discriminate between AL and NL; all teams and players are ranked together.

MLB 1919

Cincinnati had the best record in baseball with White Sox second best.  Reds had great pitching, White Sox great hitting.  Reds had better fielding according to Unearned Runs above average.  Back then there were far more errors committed than in modern baseball.  Unearned runs count the same as Earned runs in determining who wins a baseball game.  For some reason they only played 140 games that year.

Top CIN Players 1919

Reds had 7 players ranked in top 50 which is equivalent to top 100 for a 30 team league.  Five of those seven are pitchers as one would expect based upon their PITCH in team status above.

Top CHA Players 1919

White Sox also had 7 guys ranked around top 50 with 5 of those 7 hitters as one would expect based upon their BAT in team status.  Highlighted in bold red are the 8 players banished from baseball.  Swede Risberg was appended to  the end of this list to round out the 8 players.  Eddie Collins was their only top player not part of the fix and was inducted into HOF after a very long career.

Based upon end of year stats these two teams seem very evenly matched with CIN perhaps slightly ahead.  Having the above 8 players not play to their potential moves the handicapping needle  towards CIN.  Nothing in handicapping can be a sure thing and according to many historians many of the above played to their potential.  We’ll see about that in subsequent parts to this series.

To round out this high level overview let’s look at the top ten MLB players according to this data model 100 years ago at the end of the 1919 season.

Top MLB Players 1919

Usual suspects round out the top ten.  Top ten in 1919 is like top 20 in 2019 because there were half the teams thus half the players.  Cubs had two pitchers in the top ten and White Sox had a pitcher and a hitter. White Sox pitching was their weakness with Cicotte their one almost sure win every time he pitched.  Did he throw down?  We’ll see.

The year 1919 happens to be the base year for this data model because it’s the earliest with a workable complete set of dailies for the season.  Pretty much all MLB playoff games have play by play dailies.  Integration between the regular season historical data and post season historical data is a work in progress and the reason for these posts.