Melog Rankings: Post-Finals 2016

One of the things I like most about tennis is the way it rewards long-haul performance. So many other sports seem to be all about the playoffs; you can win 116 games in a baseball season (like the 2001 Mariners), or 73 games in a basketball season (like last year's Warriors), and still have people scoff at you if you get upended in a short playoff series (or, like the 18-1 2007 Patriots, one game of football).

Tennis is different. While it has its own version of the playoffs, taking the top 8 players of the year and matching them up with each other in the World Tour Finals, it does not automatically designate the winner of that event to be the champion of the year. Instead, the World Number One is the player who performed best through the grind of the ten-month tennis season.

That designation is often secured very early - in 2015, for instance, Novak Djokovic clinched the top spot by winning the US Open in early September. Through the first half of the 2016 season, it looked like we'd have another blowout, as Djokovic won the first two Slams of the year, and three of the first five Masters. After he wrapped up the French Open title (completing the career Slam, and making him the first player in nearly 50 years to hold all four Slams at once), his lead in the 2016 points race was over 3000.

And after that... well, after that, Andy Murray had the run of his life, winning seven titles from nine events stretching from Queen's Club to Paris. Djokovic won only one title in that span, and entering the World Finals, Murray held the #1 spot by a margin of just over 400 points - a gap that could easily be closed using the points available in the Finals.

The event played out perfectly, as Djokovic and Murray both swept their round robin groups and won their semifinal matches, bringing up a first in tennis history: the last match of the Tour Finals would result in the year-end #1 ranking being awarded to the winner, whichever player that was.

Murray won the match, and the title, and the year-end #1 ranking. And given how the Melog ratings have looked during the last couple of updates, the top of the upcoming table should come as little surprise...

2016 MLB Postseason: The statistical view

THE CUBS WON THE WORLD SERIES!!!!!

It's been just over a week and it still hasn't fully sunk in. But I'll try to cut through the haze of post-title bliss and be as rational as possible in breaking down what the numbers have to say about the highly memorable 2016 postseason.

Melog Rankings: Pre-Paris 2016

Here we go.

Andy Murray won the 500-point title in Vienna last week, further narrowing the gap between himself and Novak Djokovic. Novak still leads by nearly 2000 points in this week's ATP rankings, but there's a caveat to that: he's the defending champion at both the Paris Masters and the World Finals, and because of a quirk in the ATP rankings (the previous year's Finals are removed a week before the next year's take place, which is a week earlier than any other event), Murray could leapfrog him in the rankings as early as this week and grab #1 for the first time in his career.

There's action down the line as well, particularly from last week's other titlist, as Marin Cilic grabs the Basel crown and climbs into the ninth spot in the 2016-only rankings, which will determine entry into the World Finals. (The player occupying the #9 spot will qualify for the eight-man field because Rafael Nadal, who's in the top 8, has shut down for the year due to injury.)

And there's a strong argument to be made that neither of those things was the coolest event of the last fortnight. The week before last in Stockholm, Juan Martin del Potro secured his first title since January 2014, further cementing his comeback after years of health problems.

With all of that in the books, let's get to the numbers!

Melog Rankings: Post-Shanghai 2016

The Asian swing is usually one of Novak Djokovic's favorite parts of the tennis season. In particular, he has dominated the 500-point tournament in Beijing like nothing else, having never lost a match there. In 2015, he won both Beijing and the Shanghai Masters, providing yet another exclamation point on a season full of them.

This year? This year, Djokovic pulled out of Beijing with an injury, and lost in the semifinals in Shanghai. And that actually overstates his performance; there were so many early upsets in Shanghai that Djokovic didn't face an opponent in the top 40 until the semifinals, where he lost in straight sets to Roberto Bautista Agut. Meanwhile, both the Beijing and Shanghai titles were instead captured by Andy Murray. Murray, who entered the month over 2000 points behind Djokovic in ATP ranking points for 2016, returns to Europe trailing by just over 900, within relatively easy striking distance of the year-end number 1 spot.

And in the Melog ratings. the upheaval is even bigger.

Melog Rankings: Early October 2016

There were no Grand Slams played in the last three weeks. Nor were there any Masters events, or any 500 point events. There is no Grand Slam in the immediate future, either. So based on the ESPN school of tennis watching, not much is going on at the moment.

On the other hand, the last three weeks have included the Davis Cup semifinals, in which Argentina defeated the defending champion British on the strength of Juan Martin del Potro upending Any Murray in five sets, and in which Marin Cilic and Croatia upset France. And after that,there were four 250-point events played, two in Europe and two in Asia - and three of the four were won by players claiming their first title, the oldest of whom is 22 - and two of those three titles were secured with victories over top-10 players in the final, including one upset of the recently-crowned US Open champion.

The lesson is the same as usual, really: There's always something going on in tennis.

Melog Rankings: Post-US Open 2016

So... that happened.

For now, I will leave aside any ruminations on what the recent US Open says about the participants' places in history; that discussion will be better served by a post about Slam Scores, which will be forthcoming within the next couple of weeks.

Instead, let's just see what Stan Wawrinka's third Slam championship means for the Melog ratings.

Melog Rankings: Pre-US Open 2016

The year's final Slam, the US Open, starts today. And the lead-up to the Open has been unsettled at best; each of the usual favorites comes in with some kind of red flag.

Novak Djokovic, still comfortably #1 in the world and the defending US Open champion, lost in the first round of the Rio Olympics (albeit to about the toughest draw imaginable for a first-round match), then withdrew from the Cincinnati Masters with a wrist injury. If the wrist is still less than 100%, he could run into problems as early as the fourth round, when he likely faces either John Isner or Richard Gasquet.

Rafael Nadal is in the second quarter of the draw, and scoffs at Djokovic's injury worries; his own wrist issues are also on the left side, but since he's left-handed, that's rather more important for him. He reached the Olympic semis before losing back-to-back matches to miss out on a medal (although he did win gold in doubles); more troubling, he lost decisively in the Cincinnati round of 16 in a match that was almost certainly affected by injury. His segment of the bracket isn't overpowering, but Roberto Bautista Agut is a possible fourth-rounder, and he made Djokovic work quite hard at the same stage of the tournament last year. Likely foes beyond that point are Milos Raonic and Gael Monfils, both of whom have played formidably well this year.

Andy Murray is in better physical shape than the other two, and was on a run of some of the best tennis of his life, winning Queen's Club, Wimbledon, and Olympic gold in succession. He then cruised into the Cincinnati final - and lost in straight sets to Marin Cilic, who had never before made the semifinal of a Masters. Cilic is certainly capable of brilliant play at times, but Murray entered that match with an 11-3 record against him and the longest winning streak of his career, and... fatigue or no, that's probably a match he should have won.

But all three of them are better off than Roger Federer, whose knee-driven absence from the tour continues, and really starts to take its toll on his ranking this week.

Melog Rankings: Post-Olympics 2016

So, over the last two weeks, not much has happened on the ATP World Tour. The first week of August saw Nick Kyrgios win the second title of his career by dethroning John Isner in Atlanta, and a week later we visited the opposite end of the age spectrum when the venerable Ivo Karlovic knocked off Feliciano Lopez in the final in Los Cabos. There was some interesting stuff in Challengers as well (young American Frances Tiafoe won his first Challenger title, while even younger Canadian Denis Shapovalov made a quarterfinal and a semifinal in back-to-back events), but outside of that, there's very little to report...

Oh, wait: The Olympics also occurred - and they were rather interesting, to say the least. Andy Murray won his second gold medal, making him the first men's singles player to do that. Kei Nishikori continued establishing himself as a second-tier star by grabbing the bronze; his victory in the third-place match came against Rafael Nadal, whose triumphant return from injury also included a gold in doubles.

And all of that was deservedly upstaged by Juan Martin del Potro, who upset #1 Novak Djokovic in the first round, edged Nadal in the semifinals, and made Murray work pretty hard to secure the gold.

Del Potro entered the Olympics ranked #141 by the ATP, which is not uncommon for a quality player who's working his way back from an injury. And after his stunning run in Rio, he is ranked... #141, because the ATP decided not to award points for the Olympics this year. (In 2012, the silver medal was worth 450 points; Delpo would be in a tie for ATP #53 if the Games were counted the same way this year. Which is a pretty big difference.)

But we're not all bound by the ATP's decision. So let's see what Melog, which does count the Olympics, has to say about the current state of the men's tour as we approach the US Open.

Melog Rankings (Pre-Olympics 2016)

The tennis schedule is a mess right now - and as a result, so are the rankings.

This was touched on briefly last time, but I probably didn't quite give it the emphasis it deserved. The Olympics are coming up, and the tennis schedule was radically adjusted to compensate for their presence; there will be only one 250-point event this week (Atlanta), and one next week (Los Cabos). The Rogers Cup (held in Toronto this year) would normally have been scheduled to take place next week, but was shifted two weeks earlier, also to adjust for the Olympics - and as usual, no other ATP event can take place in the same week as a Masters.

The results of all those machinations were... interesting. Here is a table showing what the schedule between Wimbledon and the Cincinnati Masters has looked like each of the last two years. (The table is color-coded by surface - hopefully in self-explanatory fashion; blue is hard, brown-orange is clay, green is grass. Davis Cup quarterfinals were played on varying surfaces so they're left in black. Week 3 for 2016 was just completed.)

Week	2015	2016
1	Newport; Davis Cup QF	Bastad; Hamburg; Newport; Davis Cup QF
2	Bastad; Bogota; Umag	Gstaad; Kitzbuhel; Umag; Washington
3	Atlanta; Gstaad; Hamburg	Toronto Masters
4	Kitzbuhel; Washington	Atlanta; Rio Olympics
5	Montreal Masters	Los Cabos; Rio Olympics

Bastad and Gstaad were both held a week earlier than usual. Hamburg, Washington, and Kitzbuhel were both held two weeks earlier than usual, as was the Rogers Cup. Atlanta, meanwhile, is a week late, and Los Cabos, which replaces Bogota on the schedule, is three weeks late.

What that means is that as of now, the ATP rankings (and my rankings, for that matter) include two Rogers Cups (Novak Djokovic won one and lost the final in the other, and temporarily gets 1600 points for the combination), along with two Washingtons and two Kitzbuhels, but no Atlantas or Bogota/LosCaboses. (They also include no Olympics - but that will still be true two weeks from now, as no ranking points are being given for the Olympics this year.)

All of this will come out in the wash two weeks from now... kind of. But the compressed post-Wimbledon clay schedule (especially moving Hamburg to the week after Wimbledon) will have consequences that last for the next twelve months, as the fields in those events were severely diluted (players outside the top 100 received direct entry into several of those 250-point events).

Put it this way: The top seed in the 500-point event in Hamburg was Philipp Kohlschreiber, who came into the event ranked #22 in the world by the ATP. In the first week of this year, the tournament held in Brisbane had all eight of its seeds ranked in the top 20 - and yet Milos Raonic gets only 250 points for winning that title, and Martin Klizan gets 500 from his victory in Hamburg.

(Or put it this way... the final in Kitzbuhel this year was Paolo Lorenzi over Nikoloz Basilashvili. After that match, both of those men lost before the semis in the events they played the next week - which doesn't sound all that uncommon until you realize that both of them were playing Challengers.

Let's get into the mess.

Melog rankings: Post-Wimbledon 2016

Well THAT was interesting.

It's not necessarily an earth-shaking shock to see Novak Djokovic lose; it was always going to happen eventually, and grass is a surface that's prone to creating upsets, because it's harder to break serve. So in the abstract, losing a four-set match (including two tiebreaks) to a server of Sam Querrey's quality isn't the most appalling thing that could happen to a tennis player; Querrey isn't even the lowest-ranked player Novak has lost to this year. But given that Djokovic hadn't lost a Grand Slam match in 13 months... it's still rather startling.

The loss drives home two points. First, it is REALLY DIFFICULT to do what Djokovic did in capturing four consecutive Slams; you have one bad day against the wrong person, and it's over. And second, nobody is unbeatable - either in the matches themselves or in the rankings. (Don't look now, but Novak's lead on Andy Murray in the ATP's Race to London - which counts 2016 points only - is suddenly less than 1000 points, a very manageable deficit. A strong finish to the year could get Murray to the ATP #1 spot for the first time.)

So let's see what the turmoil of Wimbledon (or at least relative turmoil - the world #2 still won the title, after all) does to Melog's opinion of the world's best tennis players.

Melog rankings: Pre-Wimbledon 2016

Wimbledon is coming! It's arguably the biggest two weeks of the year in tennis; it's technically no more important than the other three Slams, but there's a certain cachet to Wimbledon that makes it seem weightier, even if it is played on a surface that has practically vanished from the tennis calendar apart from the tournaments they throw in for a few weeks before Wimbledon to give players a chance to remember how to play on grass again after ignoring its existence for eleven months a year.

(Normally, that persistent unfamiliarity also makes it a tournament prone to upsets. But given that the top three seeds in this year's men's draw have a combined 11 Wimbledon titles, plus gold and silver medals won there four years ago, it may be a bit more stable this time around.)

This Wimbledon is a big one. (I mean, they all are. But still.) Novak Djokovic will be going for a third straight title on the turf, and a fifth straight Slam overall. Roger Federer will be facing questions of whether he can still contend for another Slam title, and Wimbledon, as always, represents his best shot. And it may also be Andy Murray's best chance to dethrone the uncontested world #1.

Beyond those three players (and Rafael Nadal, who's sitting out Wimbledon with a wrist injury), there's a ton of movement in the rankings (both Melog and otherwise) for the year so far, and that makes it difficult to pick out other candidates for the title. But big serves have been known to play well on grass in the past, and both Milos Raonic and Nick Kyrgios have had success at Wimbledon before, so they're at least worth watching for the next couple of weeks.

There's a great deal to talk about as Wimbledon begins, so let's spend a bit of time on... things that are not Wimbledon. Namely, the effect of the rest of grass season on the Melog ratings.

Melog Rankings: Post-French Open 2016

Novak Djokovic won the French Open yesterday. That completes not just the career Slam, but also the consecutive Slam; he currently holds all four Grand Slam titles in men's singles, which nobody has done since Rod Laver, who completed the feat the same year that man first walked on the moon.

Djokovic was already a titan of the game in historic terms, and his accomplishment of a feat that neither of his great rivals (Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal) ever managed indicates that he may well be priming for a run at the title of greatest player ever.

We'll get to that more in another post, as we update Grand Slam Scores from the Roland Garros results. For now, let's take a look at the current Melog ratings and see if we can figure out why the greatest moment of Djokovic's career caused his rating to... drop?

Melog Rankings: Pre-French Open 2016

The French Open should be interesting this year.

Well yeah, it's a Grand Slam. But even by Grand Slam standards...

For starters, Novak Djokovic is trying for the career Slam again - and this time, he also has a chance at the consecutive Slam (or contiguous Slam, if you prefer); if he takes Roland Garros, he'll hold all four Grand Slam titles at once, which hasn't been done (in men's singles, at least) since Rod Laver in 1969.

Djokovic has held the #1 ranking virtually unchallenged for the last two years, so you'd figure him to have an excellent shot at the French this year (which, to be fair, he does). But at the same time, the clay season has been considerably more topsy-turvy than has been the norm recently. The three clay court Masters events of 2016 were each won by a different player (Rafael Nadal, Djokovic, and Andy Murray, respectively); it's only the second time that's happened since Nadal emerged in 2005. Throw in the fact that Stan Wawrinka won the French last year, and things look rather unsettled in terms of how everyone is playing on the dirt right now.

That fact culminated a week ago in Rome, where Djokovic was defending a title he's won four times. Novak edged past Nadal in the quarterfinals, then won an even closer match with Kei Nishikori in the semis... and then lost the final to Murray in straight sets. It was Murray's first-ever win over Djokovic on clay, and it pairs nicely with his victory over Nadal in Madrid the previous week. Murray is more a factor on clay than he's ever been, and with the French Open draw putting Djokovic and Nadal on the same side again (for the third time in four years, with the only exception being 2014, when they were the top two seeds and had to be on opposite sides), Murray has a good chance at not just reaching the final, but facing a tired opponent once he gets there.

But we'll see how that plays out over the next two weeks. For now, here are the Melog ratings before the French begins.

Melog Rankings: Post-Madrid 2016

And order was restored to the universe.

Three weeks ago, the Monte Carlo Masters saw Novak Djokovic absorb his first loss to a player ranked outside the top 50 in five and a half years. As a result, Djokovic decided to play Madrid last week, an event that he has sometimes skipped in the past - and he won it, rather easily, beating quality clay opponents such as Kei Nishikori and Andy Murray along the way.

The last three weeks also saw another return to normalcy, as Rafael Nadal reclaimed the Barcelona title that he'd long dominated, but which had eluded him for the last two years. The title match came against Nishikori, who continues to be established as one of the world's best clay court players.

Lower down in the rankings... well, let's just say there's a lot going on at all levels, and get to the table.

Melog Rankings: Post-Monte Carlo 2016

For a couple of weeks in which there wasn't an overabundance of high-level tennis played, quite a bit has actually happened since the last Melog update. Former top-10 player Juan Monaco kicked his injury comeback into high gear by winning the title in Houston. Youngsters Jack Sock and Borna Coric both reached finals, something neither player has done very often in their careers to date. American teenager Stefan Kozlov reached his second career Challenger final in Le Gosier, solidifying his place in the top 300 in the ATP ratings.

And that was just the first week. Week 2 brought us Monte Carlo, which featured the return of Roger Federer, the non-return of David Ferrer (whose withdrawal led to a quarterfinal appearance from lucky loser Marcel Granollers), a first-match upset for defending finalist Tomas Berdych, a run to the final for Gael Monfils (whose loss in the last match dropped his record in tour-level finals to 5-19) and a return to the winner's circle for Rafael Nadal (whose won his ninth career Monte Carlo title, tying his own record for titles at one event).

Have I stalled enough yet? Because the biggest story of the last two weeks wasn't any of those things - it was that Novak Djokovic lost.

Sure, Novak loses sometimes; he now has six defeats in the last year. But one of those losses was due to health (an eye infection in Dubai this year), and another was in the round robin of the Tour Finals last year - an event that he would go on to win despite the defeat. This was the first completed match to eliminate Djokovic from title contention since August of last year.

It's more than that, however. Djokovic lost to Jiri Vesely in the round of 32. Vesely entered the match ranked #55 in the world by the ATP. Djokovic hadn't lost a match to a player ranked outside of Grand Slam seeding territory (the top 32) since 2010, which is before he first reached the #1 ranking. That is a VERY long time.

Let's see what this rather startling defeat does to the rating for the #1 player in the world.

Melog Rankings: Post-Miami 2016

On the surface, it seems like nothing changed at the Miami Masters event this year. Novak Djokovic won the title again; it is his 28th Masters title, his sixth Miami title, the third consecutive year that he's won both Indian Wells and Miami, and the seventh tournament at which he's won at least three consecutive titles. (Yes, all of those are ATP records. Djokovic is starting to compile a compelling case as the greatest player ever. But that's a topic that should be explored in a full-length post, and one that comes after I've released numbers for more than four past years of the ATP.)

But underneath the Novak Wins Everything Always status quo, there was actually a pretty healthy shakeup, more of one than the ATP is accustomed to in recent years. Last year in Miami, Djokovic beat Andy Murray in the final; the other two semifinalists were John Isner and Tomas Berdych. This year, Novak's final conquest was Kei Nishikori (in the second Masters final of his career), and the other two semifinalists were David Goffin (second Masters semi, with the first having come two weeks earlier in Indian Wells) and Nick Kyrgios (first Masters semi, which pushes him into the top 20 of the ATP rankings for the first time). In 2015, Djokovic was the youngest semifinalist in Miami; this year, he was the oldest.

So let's see what kind of progress the youngsters are making in the Melog ratings.

2016 Baseball Preview

Baseball season is coming! Which means it's time for my least-analytical post of the year, the baseball preview in which I incorrectly predict about half of the playoff teams and inadvertently doom two pitchers to having terrible and/or injurious seasons.

Seriously, though, my Cy Young picks have been very, very bad for quite a while now. I've posted two years of predictions here, and was able to track down my picks for every year since 2009 in old emails. I correctly picked Felix Hernandez to win the AL Cy in 2010, and CC Sabathia wasn't a terrible pick in 2009 (6.2 WAR, 4th in the voting). Outside of that, none of my picks have ever received a single Cy Young vote, and the extent to which they have tended to get injured or have bad seasons or both is rather alarming. Last year's picks were Trevor Bauer, who at least managed to qualify for the ERA title but had a below-average ERA, and Adam Wainwright, who was great until he tore his Achilles tendon four starts into the season.

So, as a Cubs fan, I'm definitely not picking Jake Arrieta to defend his award from last year. But there are other things to pick too, which we'll cover before I get to ruining people's careers.

Melog Rankings: Post-Indian Wells 2016

Since we last checked in on present-day tennis, Novak Djokovic has won his third consecutive title at Indian Wells. His performance in the final against a possibly-injured Milos Raonic was particularly dominant, as he won 27 of the 30 points on Raonic's second serve - far and away the worst second-serve performance of Raonic's career, and the second-best Djokovic has ever done on an opponent's second serve (for matches in which Tennis Abstract has the data). Given that Raonic is one of the best servers on tour... yeah, Novak had a good match there.

His fellow highly-ranked players didn't fare quite as well, however. Andy Murray lost in the round of 32 to Federico Delbonis, and Roger Federer missed the tournament entirely due to injury. So let's see how the overall ratings have changed in the last three weeks (remember, we've also seen the first round of Davis Cup play since the last update):

Someone's projecting: 2016 Davis Cup Projections (kind of)

One of the things I've been toying with this year is a basic system for projecting the outcomes of tennis matches. (Like, absurdly basic. No adjustments for surface or anything; the only tweak is that it differentiates between best-of-3 and best-of-5 matches.) I'm using this year to test the system and see if its absurdly basic nature hampers its accuracy within general groups of matches, and I'll be posting about the results at the end of the year.

But since it's Davis Cup week, I thought it might be fun to wheel out the nascent projections and see what they think about the odds of each of the eight first-round World Group ties being played this week. (Kind of. There is, of course, a doubles match in each tie, and I'm not even going to pretend I know what to do with that, so I'm treating each doubles match as a 50-50 proposition. This is clearly incorrect and the results should be evaluated with the requisite grains of salt.)

Melog Rankings: End of February 2016

The tennis schedule is kind of weird.

It's a sport that is played almost year-round, but it has only four events that the casual fans care about, two of which are played within a month of each other despite being on completely different surfaces, allowing very little time to transition between them. And another one is played almost immediately at the beginning of the year, with essentially no time leading up to it. The schedule goes offseason (basically only the month of December), then two weeks of small events, then AUSTRALIAN OPEN!!! And then small events again for the next month.

There are benefits to this, I'm sure; for one thing, it puts the sport's biggest names at center stage right away, which wouldn't necessarily happen without a Slam leading off. (On the other hand, if they moved the Asian swing, including the Shanghai Masters, from October to January and made it part of the ramp-up to the Australian, which would then be held in mid-late February... I'm just saying, that could work.)

But there are also drawbacks, and one of them comes in the sleepy month of February. The tennis stories in January were about Djokovic and Federer and Murray, and then you move into smaller events and the stories are still kind of about those guys, but instead of a Grand Slam, they're about knee surgery and paternity leave and pulling out of moderately important events with eye ailments.

With the big names out of focus for the last four weeks, the casual fan's attention may have wavered - but there's still plenty to intrigue a more dedicated follower of the sport. And foremost on that list this February is a pair of young players who are jetting up the rankings.

Let's go to the numbers...