My original use of the term "King Maker" comes from a baseball handicapping system that I developed a few years ago. The King Maker System was an extremely popular subject at Pregame and it exploded with the help of my partner (The Game/JD). With his help, we gathered as many as 2,200-3,000 page views during a period when Pregame had a much smaller membership base. In the end, I can thank the King Maker System for my job at Pregame, so I thought I'd re-introduce certain segments to the archives.

Here's a clip from an article in 2008:

"Formerly known as Three2Won, The King Maker shifted gears to professional sports betting after retiring from a career in stock trading. On Pregame’s active forum community, The King Maker made a name for himself by developing a one-of-a-kind winning "Kingmaker system for betting Major League Baseball”, and was one of Pregame’s best baseball handicappers during the 2007 season.

By taking a 360-degree approach to utilizing information, The King Maker has created a system not only for baseball, but for basketball as well, hitting 70% of his plays during the month of February 2008, boosting him into March Madness."

It's clearly time to get back to the basics with my baseball experiments, so I'm diving back in......

The Umpire IS "The King Maker"

The form of capping that I use in baseball comes from the assumption that two players handle the ball on nearly every possession. If we keep this in mind, then we can leverage a ton of focus on the two men that affect almost every pitch (Pitcher/Catcher). The pitcher and catcher don't work in a vaccuum, so we have to look at the immediate secondary indicators (batter, fielders, Umpire).

Every secondary indicator has equal merit, and we have to weigh the batter and the fielders with a little more weight than an Umpire, but the hidden fact is that certain Umpires actually determine how a batter bats; how a pitcher pitches; and how a catcher calls a game. And this is why I call the "radical" Umpire a "King Maker". The King Maker determines whether an ACE will stink and he also has the power to transform a crappy pitcher into a god. In the days before computer-tracking, you could bank on the renegade umpires. Today is a little different, but I think it's important for you to know the tendencies of certain Umpires. BAIP, OPS, Range, and all of the other statistical models are VERY relevant, so please take all Umpire information as a small part of your capping package, ok?

What can we do with an Umpire database?

1. Find and record OVER and UNDER Umpires.

2. Locate great pitchers that struggle with certain Umpires.

3. Find the lousy pitchers that will get a boost from a King Maker.

4. Locate Homer Umps.

5. Locate potentially biased Umpires.

Odd-ball terms that Kevin Uses: (If I jot down terms that are not used in normal conversation, I'll post them here)

The Box: The StrikeZone

Hot Box Umpire: Usually a 12/6 K/BB Umpire that has a low home run rate and a massive grounder rate. This kind of "box" is usually built for contact.

"Shoe Box": Derryl Cousins' nickname. His strike zone shrinks to the size of a shoe box as the game progresses.

(more to come)

K/BB Ratio: Strikeout-to-walk ratio; calculated as:strikeouts divided by bases on balls.

Strike Rate: The percentage that an Umpire calls his strikes (60% is low and OVER/64% is high and UNDER)

This Blog will be tweaked and it will evovle over the next few years.......