2005 Mariner Playoff Odds tracking
DMZ · August 16, 2005 at 11:29 am · Filed Under Mariners
Clay Davenport over at Baseball Prospectus does this odds thing where the computer does a huge number of simulations about who needs to beat who and when to get into the playoffs, and fortunately for us, there’s historical information so we can see the team’s chances decline over time. It’s pretty depressing.
For extra depressingness, check out our divisional rivals: here’s the same odds against the A’s.
Yup.
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47 Responses to “2005 Mariner Playoff Odds tracking”
There are as yet no NL teams with a 0% chance of reaching the post season.
There are as yet no NL teams with a 0% chance of reaching the post season.
That’s because the wild card threshold is currently lower in the NL. Again, we need look no further than the A’s.
Are there supposed to be links in that post because I don’t see any information about the odds.
Whoops, sorry, didn’t realize that they were images. I had images turned off since I am at work.
Apparantly we suck. But did we really need a graph to tell us that?
Funny thing – M’s brass was telling Finnigan that we were still in the wild card hunt on 7/21. So clearly those graphs can’t be true.
/sarcasm
Who cares, we have King Felix 🙂
Notice that that 4 game sweep against the Angels did not meaningfully move us off that zero line- despite mangement THINKING that meant something.
Can you say “wishful thinking”, Bill?
I never thought of this team asa playoff contender, even after the signings of Beltre and Sexson. I thought it could win 75 games, like many realists thought. Too bad the Ms will need to go 25-19 the rest of the way for that to happen.
But if King Felix could pitch every day against the Royals , Twins, and (I guess) the Tigers …
Um, that would be 44-0
While I’m sure the computer model at BP is elaborate,l to me the A’s chart questions the general notion of probability and the rigors of the model. One should be able to conclude that what the A’s accomplished in a recent 30 day window, is so exceedingly rare…..I don’t have the statistacal stamina to back out the figure.
To go from an under 5% chance to an over 75% chance within a 30 day window seems to suggest something about the lacking rigors of the model, or the extraordinary accomplishment of the A’s (i.e. this kind of streak has a less than 1% chance of occuring)
One should be able to conclude that what the A’s accomplished in a recent 30 day window, is so exceedingly rare…..I don’t have the statistacal stamina to back out the figure.
Of course, this makes it twice in 5 years they’ve done this (returned from the dead in June): 2001 and 2005.
10. I was thinking of what it would take to reach my goal of 75 wins for this team. 44-0, with the Angels and Athletics falling apart, would be the only way for the Mariners to make the playoffs.
To go from an under 5% chance to an over 75% chance within a 30 day window seems to suggest something about the lacking rigors of the model, or the extraordinary accomplishment of the A’s (i.e. this kind of streak has a less than 1% chance of occuring)
First, rigor means unflexible, stiff. It’s hard to argue that any statistical model lacks rigor. I think you may have meant something else.
Second, yes. I’m not sure if you’ve been paying attention, but the A’s have been on an insane tear since the end of May. It’s improbable given their start, but there are a lot more factors than that.
Notice how the A’s tail off right at the end (76% to 62%). That’s when the Angels were sweeping the Mariners.
So . . . how about that King Felix fella???
13
That was if the King started all our games against those teams
16: That’s fine; I just wanted to clarify what you meant. Now that I understand, I will take 44-0 with Felix on the mound any day of the week, as will all of us.
re: 11
The way I understand how these odds are calculated is they take the third-order winning % of the team (pythagorean record based on strength of schedule, etc.) and use that as an indicator of the team’s “true talent.” So in the middle of June, the playoff odds were using the assumption that the A’s were a “10-games under .500” team. This was not their true ability level so that 5% is misleading. If the algorithm assumed the A’s were actually a “10-games over .500” team, that 5% would be much higher. But in the middle of June, no one knew that was true. Past perfomance is not an exact indicator of future sucess.
14 DMZ
Yes quite right. On a linguistic bit, stiff or rigid are the primary definitions of rigor, but the notion of, the reference to “rigorous predicitve models” is quite prevalent – which was what I was after.
While “rigorous” is derived form the word rigor, it has a definition that seems unique to this derivative, “scrupulously accurate, precise”.
I would offer a link, but I can’t do that properly, and it may be to far off topic.
I think this is the part where I make some fangirl comment like “The A’s took off in late June because Jason Kendall finally adjusted to the American League and started hitting well and won himself back the leadoff spot”, right?
#1 – the NL is so bizarre this year, though. All of the NL West is playing under .500 and all of the NL East is playing over .500… has there ever been a time where a team won their division and would have been dead last in another division? (Despite the Mets’ setbacks, they’re still a game or two up on the Padres. Crazy.)
re NL West
Yeah bizarre…particularly when considering that Bob Melvin (he who is so reviled by many Ms fans) has actually improved his team substantially more than Hargrove has for the Ms.
What depresses me is seeing headlines like “Mariners nearly throw Angels for loss” at the Mariners site. The M’s get swept and the story of the day is that they almost won. I guess it’s a feel-good line in a sick sort of way.
11 – Jeff
That helps, thanks
The NL West winner had better finish over .500. If the Mets are one of the NL East teams that misses the playoffs, and the West champ has a losing record, I will be hopping mad. Sure the one weekend the Mariners pick to actually play flawless baseball this year and it has to be against the Mets. Ok, I’m forgetting the Angels series prior to the ASB, but it gives me an excuse to vent. That division, to put it nicely, SUCKS!!! (If I chose to be undiplomatic, this post might get deleted.)
Of course, I can turn around and blast the Mets for sucking it up in Seattle, too. Oh wait, I already did that when the sweep was complete.
Ah, so this is where all the asbs-m’ers went after strikethree stopped posting regularly. Good to see the old voices still around.
So they had a team that lost 99 games last year with a 35% chance of making the play offs at the beginning of the year!? Yowza.
What do people think of the M’s trying to convert Mike Morse into an outfielder? His minor league numbers don’t look all that great for an outfielder. On the other hand, he is 6’4″ and 220, maybe he’s filled out some and might think about hitting for some power sometime.
Dave,
We all know Yuniesky can play defense, but what type of hitter do you project him to be?
Morse has only recently become a remotely adequate SS. But we don’t have any room for him in the middle infield.
If the M’s are going to derive any value from Morse, it will be as an outfielder. But no, he’ll probably never hit well enough to getting a starting job out there. Morse’s best possible career path is as a bench guy.
But he looks like A-Rod!! 😉
The other option for deriving value from Morse is to convince some GM that this year’s batting average isn’t a fluke, and trade him for someone we can use. I don’t see what the point of trying to convert him into a bad outfielder is.
Maybe the plan is to turn Morse into WFB. WFB is going to expensive before Morse is.
Is there any possible significance of Joel Pineiro clearing waivers?
Just out of curiosity; What did the M’s 1995 chart look like.
Sure. It signifies that no one thought it was worth the risk to claim him. It signifies no other team would be willing to pay him what we do.
#31 – You can’t make Morse into Bloomquist. Morse is mediocre at best defensively even when he’s focused on one position full-time. If he moves to the outfield, it would be a commitment to change his position, not a way to expand his repertoire.
Figuring out what to do with Morse reminds me of Russ Davis a few years ago, when they briefly tried putting him in left field. Morse’s fielding isn’t as brutal as Davis’ yips were, but I think they would have a similar lack of position versatility.
And yet, I think Morse is a better defensive shortstop than Willie.
Given that all 3 of our potential OFers are LH (Ichiro, Reed, Doyle) our DH/LFer is LH having a RH 4th OFer isn’t a bad option.
#31: WFB? William F Buckley?
That spike in the Mariner’s play-off chances back on July 13 sure had my heart going pitty-pat.
25 – people still looking for pictures of a rod on asbs-m?
We need NOW pitching!
#38: Willie Bloomquist. He apparently has the same middle name as Bucky Dent.
#26 — The model used to produce these charts only considers in-season performance. So before any games have been played, it assumes every team is a 500 team. The M’s (and every other team in the West) then have a 25% chance of winning the West + a 7% chance of the wildcard = 32%. It regresses to the mean pretty heavily at the beginning of the season, too, otherwise the teams that start 8-2 would be at 95% already and the 2-8 teams at 5%, and obviously that’s not right.
It just looks at the composite hitting and pitching records, too — it knows nothing of players going on the DL, coming off, deadline trades for a slugger, or any of that.
So, while it’s fun, it’s not 100% accurate…but nothing is. Just because it gives a team a 7% chance of winning the wildcard, and then they do, doesn’t mean the model is wrong. At the beginning of the season, every team is just 7% (1/14) for the wildcard, but one of those 7% teams has to win it.
Actually, I would think there’s a ~9% chance of winning the wildcard: since 3 teams are going to take their respective divisions, there are 11 teams fighting for the chance at a wildcard. At the start of the season we don’t know which teams those are, because we don’t know who will win the division, but we know that whatever teams do win the division won’t also win the wildcard.
The Playoff Odds Report doesn’t start until April 20th, since small sample size would screw up the third-order winning percentages.
40: No clue. Haven’t been back to asbs-m in a few years now, probably not since MLB took over all the team sites. Back in the day, I was Web Dave, because I had the pleasure of mainting mariners.org during the 2000 season.
45: mainting? Sheesh. MaintAINing. Some editor I am.
coolstandings.com also has us at 0% to win this year (no shocker). They have a “dumb” mode too where every team is given an even 50-50 chance to win each game, but even then we’re at 0%.
http://www.coolstandings.com/baseball_team.asp?id=SEA