The 2007 A's Love Wednesdays!
Being a partial season ticket holder this year, I've endured too many losses seemingly every Friday, Saturday and the occasional Sunday. It got me thinking... am I seeing my unfair share of losses, when compared to other days during the week? And do the A's play better on Saturday night 6:05 starts than 1:05 starts here in Oakland? So I broke out the Excel sheet. Could the results be coincidence, small sample size, or are the numbers telling us something?
-- ALL Stats Current as of Sunday's Win vs. Kansas City --
First Up: Weekdays.
After crunching the numbers, I was right about one thing. The A's do much better during the week than they do on the weekends. In fact, during the relative low-pressure Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the 2007 A's win at a 57.9% and 63.2% clip, respectively. Given the team's sub-.500 record, it's no surprise that's above everything else. In fact, the team only wins 35% of Saturday contests and 40% of Sunday games overall. (See below chart)


Next up: Day games vs. Night games.
It turns out the A's only win just under 49% of day games and just under 49% of night games, so that tells us a whole lot of nothing. But if you drill down on a day by day comparison, some jump out at you, and I'm not talking about the fact that Sunday night games and Monday and Friday day games don't exist. Instead, you can see that on Saturdays, the team wins less than 43% of day games, and only 23% of night games, a total not helped by their woeful 0-7 record away from Oakland on Saturday night. That's right, 0-7. In fact, to my surprise, the team both wins and loses an equal amount of games at home on Saturdays, so I've got little to whine about there.
(Also: Don't get thrown by the fact the team won their only Tuesday day game on the road. 1 for 1 does not a sample size make)

Next up: Home games vs. Road games.
We already talked about how much the A's love playing at home on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, where they've won 14 of 21 contests, good for a 66.7% winning percentage. But did you have any idea that Thursdays on the road were just as nice? Okay, so it's only 4 out of 6 games won, but you're not going to get those numbers anywhere else. (That might also explain why the A's seem to do well mid-week and get us excited, only to then fade on the weekend)

Putting it all together: Home vs. Road vs. Weekdays vs. Day vs. Night
Again, throw out the one Tuesday day game. That's an anomaly. What we see is that on Wednesday, the A's play great at home during the day and great on the road at night. On Friday/Saturday/Sunday, you may as well flip a coin to see if the A's will do well, unless it's Saturday night and they're on the road. That's a guaranteed loss.

If you want to poke holes in the data, love ones and zeroes, or just want to get your inner geek on, please do download the full Excel file and give us some new reports. But until then, I'm going to go to Vegas and put my home mortgage against the A's when the play on the road Saturday nights. And I've GOT to start attending Wednesday day games instead. Dollar Dogs, right?
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22 comments
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which night averages the most attendance?
perhaps wednesdays?
by black beane and rice on
Aug 20, 2007 9:38 AM PDT
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Graph one suggests to me that
The players start getting hammered every Thursday, then more on Friday-Saturday-Sunday, leading to hangover-dulled senses and successively poor winning percentages, until they start to recover on Tuesday, hitting their peak Wednesday, at which point they're so delighted that they start the party cycle all over again.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on
Aug 20, 2007 9:42 AM PDT
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lol
honestly, this is what I thought
young, loose clubhouse - getting a little too wild on the weekends
by SwisherThresher on
Aug 20, 2007 12:06 PM PDT
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Let me ask my boss. :-)
Don't want to get demoted.
by louismg on
Aug 20, 2007 12:12 PM PDT
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pretty graphs
but where's the ANtics?
by ArakSOT on
Aug 20, 2007 11:40 AM PDT
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On the DL
Brad borrowed the "Late Sunday" slot, so he can keep it this week. There'll be more options for ANtics as the seasons progress.
by louismg on
Aug 20, 2007 12:11 PM PDT
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in other words, it's all my fault
by monkeyball on
Aug 20, 2007 12:26 PM PDT
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No, no, no...
That's not true and you know it. Maybe somebody can take the Excel sheet and throw front page writers at it to see what sticks?
by louismg on
Aug 20, 2007 1:31 PM PDT
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our rotation
who gets what days? I haven't been paying attention
by ArakSOT on
Aug 20, 2007 1:33 PM PDT
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I've got Saturdays ... .350, baby!
by monkeyball on
Aug 20, 2007 4:04 PM PDT
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I picked up on this problem back in May
And I addressed it in my usual empathetic style.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on
Aug 20, 2007 4:27 PM PDT
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I love this thread.....
Anyone want to do a breakdown of the records on Fridays when coming off an off-day vs. a getaway day vs. a home game the previous day? Just curious.....
by gigglingone on
Aug 20, 2007 12:38 PM PDT
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Oh
and is day vs. night calculated by local time where the game is? or by west coast time? (6pm on the east coast is 3pm here....)
by gigglingone on
Aug 20, 2007 12:39 PM PDT
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It's calculated fairly simply
by PaulThomas on
Aug 20, 2007 1:09 PM PDT
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Then they're all day games
because the sun always shines out of Billy Beane's ass.
by oblique on
Aug 20, 2007 1:10 PM PDT
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It was calculated by local start time
7:05 EST is night across the board and 1:05 starts here are day.
by louismg on
Aug 20, 2007 1:32 PM PDT
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Any way we can...
get this data but for previous years? maybe there's a pattern
by El Cerrito Steve on
Aug 20, 2007 2:41 PM PDT
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The split I want to see
Not so much this year, but for most of the Howe and Macha eras it seemed to me like the A's record was much worse in the first game of a series than it was in games two and three. I even went to the trouble of tracking it one year...Howe's last, I think...and there was definitely a split, though how signficant I don't recall. I have the sense that there's no such split this year.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on
Aug 20, 2007 3:35 PM PDT
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Any way you can check ...
if there's a correlation with better pitchers?
by devo on
Aug 20, 2007 3:38 PM PDT
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That would be my thinking too..
Starting pitching is everything in baseball.
Let's assume that when the season started on
a Monday, and with a 5 man rotation, the teams
#1 and #2 starter would then pitch again on
Saturday and Sunday, then wouldn't pitch again
until Thursday and Friday, etc. The A's weak
offense through most of the season (except in
August), usually gets baffled with the ace starters,
while the back of the A's rotation is better than
most teams. That would be my theory, it would be
interesting to look it up like Devo said.
by SanJoseRon on
Aug 20, 2007 9:58 PM PDT
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Wednesdays = Cheap Tix and Hot Dogs
Tix and Dogs = Happy Fans
Happy Fans = Fan Energy
Fan Energy = Hometeam momentum
Hometeam momentum = A's Win
A's win = the Light Side of the Force
by oaklandSMASH on
Aug 21, 2007 12:44 PM PDT
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