Running the 2008 season a hundred times
The results of my last couple sim seasons has been bothering me, since it diverged so far general opinion and from what I thought it would be. I decided to look at this in a lot more depth. I used the ZiPS projections for 2008 and SG’s quite useful RunDMB program, cranked up the USSM Labs Comp-u-matik 2000, and went at it.
Then I put together a likely M’s lineup, cheated a little by turning Betancourt’s defensive rating up, and ran a hundred seasons. This took a day.
Your 2008 simulated Mariners:
Average record: 77-85
Average runs scored: 716
Average runs allowed: 759
Number of times they won the division: 6
Number of times they won the wild card: 0
Best season: 93-69
Worst season: 59-103
Best offense: 804 runs
Worst offense: 607 runs
Best run prevention: 674 runs allowed
Worst run prevention: 866 runs allowed
Standard deviation for wins: 71-84
Standard deviation for offense: 674-757
Standard deviation for run prevention: 717-801
The division favorite was not the Angels but the torn-down Athletics, 47% to 42%, and Texas won the division almost as often as the M’s. The A’s-Angels thing is as much a shock as anything. General analyst-on-TV-or-radio seems to be that it’s all about the M’s-Angels, but Oakland fields the best pitching/defense combination in the AL and their offense is decent too.
Added: since this seems to be causing a lot of hostility, I’ll explain part of what’s going on here. The projection set doesn’t include known, current injuries — so when you look at a depth chart and you see that a bunch of their starters are likely to be guys like Saarloos or even Greg Smith because so many will be down for the start of the season, that’s the rub — these weren’t run with them starting off injured for x days and then coming back. You can make your own assessment of how important that is to the outcomes, but they only play two series against the A’s for five games in the first two months of the year. So even if you want to throw out their season finish, the M’s aren’t going to move up substantially in the win column by taking more games from Oakland.
Back to the M’s, though.
Here’s some graphs of the distributions:
That’s a scatter with smoothed lines.
And for the people who complain about graphs without absolute axis bounds:
And by request, the bar graph
Here’s the cumulative probability:
27% of seasons were 74 wins or under
50% of seasons were 76 wins or under.
77% of the seasons were 82 wins or under
95% of the seasons were 86 wins or under
99% of the seasons were 91 wins or under
I did a projection post back in January. Pre-Bedard-trade, of course, it’s still an interesting contrast. I guessed at ~795 runs scored and ~780 runs allowed. Compared to what I got simulating, that’s too optimistic on the run prevention and way, way optimistic on the runs scored. Clearly, replacing the fifth starter with Bedard and tossing Sherill aside makes a difference in run prevention, but it’s interesting that the overall difference wasn’t all that large — I’d have thought it’d be a lot more than 20 runs. But considering that the trade meant a pretty large defensive downgrade in right plus a whole in the bullpen, it’s reasonable.
The defense is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. Even assuming Wilkerson is healthy and passable in right, Ibanez makes that offense bad, and the infield doesn’t make up for it, dragged down by Sexson’s awfulness. And remember, I turned Betancourt’s defense up. The pourous defense particularly hits Washburn and Silva as you’d expect. As Dave told me, they should consider running Reed out in right field when Washburn starts just to keep Washburn’s head from exploding in frustration after giving up the seventh double of a game.
The other interesting thing to note is that DMB, in running through the whole season and simulating every game, does take into account the rotation matchups (which, as I’ve noted, don’t in practice have that much effect). So pushing everyone back a spot doesn’t help.
It’s the runs scored that really hurts. Here’s where the ZiPS differed significantly from the numbers I came up with “random guesses, hunches, wishcasting, and general skullduggery” but which was largely three-year averages:
- Ichiro’s down a little on OBP and off on SLG
- Shaves Beltre by 5 points of OBP and 10 points of SLG
- ZiPS is down on Lopez (.302/.369 versus my .320/.400)
- the Wilkerson ZiPS is lower than my Jones guess
- didn’t give Sexson as much of a bounce (.323/.441 vs my .330/.460)
- down on Johjima (.316/.405 vs my .325/.425)
Please note that when I disagreed with what an excellent projection system came up with, I was high every time, sometimes by a lot. Ponies for everyone!
Since I ran the season, I’ve stared at the results and tried to find a reason to not write this post. Some thing that would invalidate the results, or that would give me an excuse to change something and go back to do it all over with even more pro-Mariner assumptions. But there isn’t. The ZiPS projections have been excellent in the past, and if you use the PECOTA projections the team is just as bad.
If you start from last year’s team and make adjustments, it’s easy to come up with another five, ten, sixteen wins. But starting from scratch, using reasonable assumptions, the picture looks much bleaker.
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How do you factor in defense here, DMZ?
DMZ:
6% chance of playoffs is higher than I would’ve expected, to be honest.
Your graphs should really not have a ‘best fit’ curve drawn through the data: there’s no meaning to 82-1/2 wins. You would be better off with just the data plotted (no curve), or a bar graph, as the horizontal axis is discrete.
The data also looks quite noisy: at 100 samples spread over this much space you’re still getting small-sample-size noise on those plots. I don’t suppose your computer could handle running another 900 or so seasons, huh?
So you got about a 6% chance of the M’s winning the division. Burning question: Any idea what that would have been pre-Bedard trade?
A lot of people forget that this team was extremely lucky when it came to injuries last year.
Felix missed a few starts, Sexson was out towards the end of the year, but other than that, there were so significant injuries that put guys out for stretches of time.
Something tells me they won’t be so lucky this year. Last year’s lucky 88 wins are about the peak, IMO.
So basically, we are one superstar outfielder away from being capable of competing with the A’s/Angels.
Is it worth totally gutting the farm in the hope of luring a new RF/LF, and if so who is available?
Either way, I now have no hope for the season whatsoever. I just wish I would have seen this before spending a £1000 on a trip to NYC for June to watch the M’s/Mets.
I have read your blog for a while. It’s a good blog. Thanks for making it an intelligent place to read about baseball.
But I want to respectfully “lodge a complaint” about something I believe you folks here tend to do, whether inadvertently or knowingly…
You use numbers like politicians. I know you will argue that I am wrong here, but hear me out.
Though you have refuted this in the past, your comments and conclusions come from a predisposition to the negative. You are essentially using numbers to prove a negative point of view correct. I have heard you accused of being negative in general and I disagree with that. But at the heart of your philosophy, is the belief that the Mariners front office is lousy and makes lousy decisions. And you go to great lengths (maybe even unconsciously) to prove that belief correct using numbers. And I feel you are missing a huge aspect of the game of baseball in doing so.
Without intending to be, you are masters of spin. And since “numbers don’t lie”, how can your conclusions be refuted? And again, I say this with respect for the writing and your right to have your point of view. (I even own the “Cheater’s Guide.” I am not out to discredit anyone. And I love stats. I am a long-time “strat-o-matic” player, even.)
But, when it gets right down to it, numbers never tell the whole story, sometimes not even a decent percentage of the story. I wish your analysis took into account more human factors. Factors like:
-The addition of a TOR pitcher and its impact on the excitement, intensity, commitment, and performance of players on the team.
-The impact on players of taking the field each day thinking they actually have a chance to win.
-Players benefitting from better coaching.
-Players benefitting from not having a steroid suspect in the clubhouse (e.g.; Guillen)
-How often a player recovers from a bad season and what factors play into that
-The impact of having one manager for the whole year and having a single approach from spring training onward
-The possible impact of a certain group of guys gelling or no gelling together and why that happens
-The real impact of clubhouse leadership
These are just a few examples. These types of factors create the best storylines in sports, like the Giants beating the Patriots. (I am not a Giants fan, btw, but loved that game.) You can’t run numbers on these things. They are harder to quantify. But instead of trying, finding ways to factor these things in, you just call them “intangibles” and move on without them. I would argue that you are doing your readers a disservice by doing that.
My point is, numbers give us the mean expectation. And the mean expectation will never be “Win the world series” and probably seldom has been, even for the teams that wound up winning. So, your numbers will never be satisfied. Championships only occur when things happen that NO numbers predicted. The nature of a championship is that all things must come together at once: skill, talent, luck, chemistry. statistics, individual performance, a city’s excitement, coaches getting through to players, and many more. SO little of that relies on numbers. It relies in special moments and special people performing to the highest level they can. Numbers don’t have Buckner miss that grounder or Gibson hit that home run. And yet those are the very storylines we crave. So, why do you rely on numbers to predict our likelihood of getting the very thing they are so inept at predicting? Because it is the best we can do? I don’t think it is. We must at least TRY to factor in everything else. At least try.
Can we sometimes get a post that argues for why our team might stand a chance? What factors could break right? What numbers show possibilities for success? What might contribute to something happening that is BETTER than the numbers? Because that is the kind of season we are waiting for.
The factors that will ultimately spell a championship for the Ms will not be measured beforehand. Look at 2001. They were expected to take 3rd place at best. When we finally go to the M’s store and buy our Mariners World Series Championship gear, we will be saying how unlikely it was, how nobody could have predicted it. And how it hinged on some crazy risk… like trading for Bedard. Or somebody like Wilkerson coming up huge. Or Jose Lopez unexpectedly reaching his potential when the numbers gave up on him. That is a warm truth for the true sports fan and it hits us in a place where numbers leave us cold.
I know you guys are true fans. And again, I respect you guys and what you do. That is just my $.02. I hope you won’t dismiss my observations. Thanks for listening.
So now our pitching isn’t awful, now our offense and defense is terrible. I am predicting now by the midseason if the Mariners are competeing for the playoffs they will sacrifice even more for a power hitter.
The fact that these projections have the A’s as the favorite in the division instead of the Angels
just shows the fallacy in the whole deal. If these projections have Oakland as the division favorite,
which is in most people’s opinions, flawed, why should we believe these projections will be close to
accurate for how the M’s are going to do this year? What a joke.
I too would like to lodge a complaint…
those graphs are flipping me off
Completely agreed #8. As soon as I read that the A’s are favored to not only top the M’s but the Angels as well, I pretty much disregarded the simulations.
Bra-fucking-vo, #6.
I disagree vehemently that there’s an inherently negative point of view here. I ran projections. There’s the numbers. Unless you think I made them up, how is this negative?
-The addition of a TOR pitcher and its impact on the excitement, intensity, commitment, and performance of players on the team.
-The impact on players of taking the field each day thinking they actually have a chance to win.
This doesn’t matter. Teams that acquire a so-called “TOR” pitcher don’t perform better than you’d expect.
Similarly, teams that are competitive don’t perform better than you’d expect, and teams with no chance don’t perform worse.
-Players benefitting from better coaching.
Generally speaking, this doesn’t have the effect often ascribed to it. Certain coaches do well with some players and don’t help others. There are very few coaches that make any noticeable positive impact across most of their players.
-Players benefitting from not having a steroid suspect in the clubhouse (e.g.; Guillen)
The M’s won 116 games with one of the most-widely-suspected steroid users in the lineup: if Guillen mattered, that certainly should have, but didn’t.
-How often a player recovers from a bad season and what factors play into that
I don’t understand how this affects anything.
-The impact of having one manager for the whole year and having a single approach from spring training onward
The M’s didn’t play substantially better when they had Hargrove for full years versus half years. There’s no reason to think that McLaren’s a significantly better manager than Hargrove.
-The possible impact of a certain group of guys gelling or no gelling together and why that happens
Chemistry, if it exists in this form, doesn’t have a significant effect.
-The real impact of clubhouse leadership
Cross-apply previous argument.
They are harder to quantify. But instead of trying, finding ways to factor these things in, you just call them “intangibles†and move on without them. I would argue that you are doing your readers a disservice by doing that.
For decades, better and brighter minds than I have tried to find any evidence that there are clutch hitters, or pitchers, that there’s a team chemistry effect, and no one’s found it. At some point it’s reasonable to say “if there’s an effect, it’s too small to see, and thus too small to be a significant impact.”
My point is, numbers give us the mean expectation. And the mean expectation will never be “Win the world series†and probably seldom has been, even for the teams that wound up winning.
You’re looking at this backwards, I think. The mean expectation for all teams is “no chance at the World Series” and that’s accurate, but going into a season, you can do a pretty good job handicapping the races and identifying teams that do.
The factors that will ultimately spell a championship for the Ms will not be measured beforehand. Look at 2001. They were expected to take 3rd place at best.
I could write a ton about the failure of prediction models in the 2001 series.
The W and Derubino, do you just prefer to ignore the fact that these projections have a good record of accuracy when you dismiss them because of one projection that you find ludicrous because “most people” think otherwise? To put it another way, when Derek writes a thoughtful and reasoned post and you dismiss it out of hand without even an attempt at a supporting argument, why should anyone care about your opinion?
Manjini, if it were to happen next year, say, you’re right, this is how we’d all react, because our team’s management is bad and we’d have to get lucky. But when the Patriots win, when the Spurs win, when the Red Sox win, their fans know it’s because their team made smart decisions, and they expect to win. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather expect to win than have to be surprised by it.
The won 91 games and took the wild card in 2000.
Sigh.
If you start from last year’s team and make adjustments, it’s easy to come up with another five, ten, sixteen wins. But starting from scratch, … the picture looks much bleaker.
Why is this?
Just stepping back from the data, it seems that a reasonable person would say …
… no likely regression or reduced performance offensively expected from Beltre, Betancourt, Ichiro, Joh.
… Lopez is young, and should improve (can’t be worse).
… Vidro and Ibanez you would expect some decline,
… but certainly you would also expect Sexson to come up with some kind of rebound.
… Wilkerson is not likely to be as good offensively as Guillen, but should be in the vicinity. His defense is likely as much an improvement as his offense is a decrement.
So, on offense, seven players who are the same or slightly better, two who decline slightly.
Defense should be the same as last year. Sexson is bad; Ibanez is bad — but neither should be getting appreciably worse. The four up the middle, as well as 3rd base, should not be worse than they were. Wilkerson should be better than Guillen.
Pitching should obviously be better. Bedard 50 runs better than Horam/Weaver? Silva 20 runs better? Lose a little for George, but relievers are fungible….
So, just informally, intuitively, it seems that a reasonable analyst or fan would expect that the offense declines a little, the defense stays the same (or even very slightly improves), and the pitching improves.
So, M’s offense goes from 794 to scoring around 780.
M’s defense goes from 813 to allowing around 740.
So, they win 85 games.
Why is that more than one standard deviation away from what the sims show?
This by all accounts, I think, is a better team than last year. Last year, they pythaogreously were a 79-win team, got 9 wins worth of luck and won 88.
This year, I think it seems reasonable to say they are pythaogreously an 85 win team. Extrapolating based on “reasonable adjustments” from last year’s team plus additions/subtractions, they are 6 wins better this coming year.
If luck shines on them — or Manjini’s magic or coaching or leadership comes through — maybe they win 94 and sneak into the playoffs. Or maybe things go bad, and they win 80.
But to expect them to win 77? What’s your analysis DMZ, or anyone, about why the sims seem so discrepant from the “reasonable man”?
This is not a sub-.500 team. It is not a good team, Bavasi is not a good GM, there is frustration galore, but this is not a sub.500 team.
Why would the sims think so?
Here’s the thing about the Angels/A’s thing, though — well first, dismissing it out of hand is weird. If you’re not going to be interested in things that don’t look like you think they should look, well, that’s like being the columnist who rejects defensive metrics that don’t show Derek Jeter as the best shortstop in the American League.
Beyond that, though, we’re going to have the same argument as with the M’s. If you want to disagree with the projection system, that’s one thing — but where? I think the Cust projection’s way too optimistic, but otherwise, that’s a pretty good pitching staff. Sure, it’s a lot of new blood, but…
That’s my big question: there are a set of assumptions here that I laid out in running this sim, which are:
- You accept the ZiPS projections as being worth using (and they clearly are, last year they were neck-and-neck with PECOTA)
- You accept that DMB does a good job as a simulator engine (it does)
I’d love to hear arguments about where the ZiPS are wrong.
The only thing I can think of off the top of my head here is that you shouldn’t keep the defense the same as last year.
The talent level might stay the same, but the actual outcome should be regressed heavily towards the mean (but I’m not sure if you already did that or what).
I used the ZiPS defensive numbers, with the Betancourt adjustment. That runs Poor-Fair-Average-Very Good-Excellent in the DMB spectrum, and considers a whole set of factors
Johjima -Av
Sexson – Pr
Lopez – Vg
Betancourt – Vg (and again, I did that myself)
Ibanez – Fr
Ichiro! – Av
Wilkerson – Av
Those are all reasonable ratings and especially as a whole (I think Ichiro’s better, but Ibanez is near the bottom in every metric, he should be Poor, for instance).
… but certainly you would also expect Sexson to come up with some kind of rebound.
There is no reason to expect this. This is hope on the part of M’s fandom. Nothing in his last 3 years would lead me to expect he’ll make a rebound. He has a skill set that is seriously hampered by aging. I think we can expect more of last year with enough flashes of his former self for the M’s to delude themselves into a whole season of suckyness on Sexson’s behalf. You toss $14,000,000.00 at one person and hope takes on a whole new meaning.
By the by, the Mac is suggesting the suckyness could also be sauciness but I tend to think no amount of flavoring is going to make this go down easier.
But, when it gets right down to it, numbers never tell the whole story, sometimes not even a decent percentage of the story. I wish your analysis took into account more human factors. Factors like:
We humans, equipped with brains that love nothing more than identifying patterns (even when none really exist) find all sorts of patterns in the results random chance produces. Good statistical techniques attempt to identify luck (or, if you prefer Demming, Common Cause Variations) and find ways to factor it out of the measurements. Thus, why K rate, BB rate and GB/FB is considered a better predictor of pitching success than ERA. Thus why offensive production based on a spike in BABIP is discounted. Thus why a HR/FB significantly different than 11% is discounted.
You listed several factors that, instinctively, we think must have an impact on a player’s performance. However, there have been serious attempts to find a cause-effect relationship (which is different than a correlation), and none has really been found. But that doesn’t mesh with our human instinct, so we look for reasons to still believe, and our clever brains are quite good at using selective memory to find those reasons.
Now, some of those factors might be legitmately difficult, or even impossible, to measure. How do you measure clubhouse chemistry, for instance? Specifically, how do you measure it in time to predict performance? You mention the absence of Guillen as a clubhouse positive, yet last year his fiery presence was touted as a clubhouse positive and an explanation for how they played above expectations. Which is it? You have no way of saying, and it basically boils down to wishful thinking on your part. You hope that it will be a happy clubhouse and that this will contribute to more wins. I hope so too, but I recongize it’s just hope and not planning.
Specifically, you said:
The factors that will ultimately spell a championship for the Ms will not be measured beforehand.
Some factors will be measured and some will not be. The luck that determines who gets injured and who doesn’t, or which gounder bounces into Sexsons glove and which hops past him into RF, or whether the curveball the Bedard or Felix will occasionally hang get smashed over the fence or fouled back into the stands , no, none of that will be measured.
But luck represents random variations around a point. Good measurment, of the kind folks try to do around here, can tell you where that point is likely to be. And smart planning, informed by good measurments, can help you move that point in your favor.
Any idea what these defensive ratings actually give you in terms of runs on the year?
Updated with bar graph.
Unless DMB is giving Rich Harden perfect health and two spots in the rotation, Oakland’s rotation blows.
I’m still having trouble believing in a projection that has Oakland, which is telling its fans “come back when the new park is finished, we’ll have a real team for you” being the favorite to win the division.
I found this:
Jayson Addcox, of Athletics.MLB.com, reports the Oakland Athletics’ projected lineup for the 2008 season is: RF Travis Buck, 1B Daric Barton, 3B Eric Chavez, DH Jack Cust, 2B Mark Ellis, LF Emil Brown, SS Bobby Crosby, CF Chris Denorfia and C Kurt Suzuki.
Chavez is their Richie, the overpaid salary albatross. Crosby has got to be plugged in for two months minimum on the DL, and there’s no more Marco Scutaro to fill in. Cust is one of those players I’d figure has a serious standard deviation for performance; 2007 might be real or people might be taking the time to figure out how to pitch to him. Ellis is a pretty steady player, but he’s a 31 year old second baseman who hit his career high in homers at 30. The rest of the lineup is a lot of conjecture.
49% chance to win the division strikes me as something that would make me look at my model.
I actually have that somewhere — I did a whole thing on this.
Fun side note: I ran out a all-defense lineup and it won 93 games. That’s a whole other post though.
Luck is the residue of design — Branch Rickey
DMZ, I can’t remember, but what were the ZIPs projections for last year in the AL West? If I remember they had Texas’ win-loss exactly.
What I am pondering is that if last year’s pythagorean win-loss was near 79 wins, then by basically replacing Guillen with Wilkerson and Ramirez and Weaver with Silva and Bedard, and we net a loss of one run?
That is the reason why most are completely caught off-guard with these results.
you would expect Sexson to come up with some kind of rebound.
There is no reason to expect this.
Yes, there is a reason. Sexson basically has never slugged below .500 or had an OPS below .800 in over 10 years — until last year. Last year he slugged below .400 and OPS below .700.
Statistically speaking, you should expect him to regress to the mean, which means you would expect he will perform better than he did in 2007.
I don’t think he will be good. I don’t think he will get all the way back to his mean, or that his skills will be as good as they used to be.
I just think that in comparing last year’s M’s to this year’s M’s, it is reasonable to expect that Sexson 2008 will be better than Sexson 2007.
I just think that in comparing last year’s M’s to this year’s M’s, it is reasonable to expect that Sexson 2008 will be better than Sexson 2007.
Totally agree
Great post DMZ, great work.
In regards to not factoring the human element and being pessimistic, the whole point of objective analyses are to remove biases and unmeasurable elements, ie luck.
DMZ ran a series of projects with expected performances and came up with some numbers. Did he tweak the numbers to come up with a pessimistic outcome? It doesn’t seem so.
I’d rather the front office act rationally and analyze the team without letting optimism get in the way. How does this team measure really, and what can we do realistically to improve it? Then when the season starts root for them to win.
If anything the current front office seems a bit over-optimistic. I hope the M’s win and reach the playoff. But I’m not going to delude myself with aphorisms, blind faith, and empty wishes.
…
Graham you’ve been arguing that M’s defense was worse than expected last year and that it will regress to a better level. What is your evidence for that? Ibanez’s and Sexon’s defensive metrics being much worse than career or in the previous three years?
In regards to Sexson to rebounding, I think he had a pretty bad BABIP last year, .212 to be precise. So you do expect a rebound, on the other hand his power has shown a consistent trend downwards. http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/printarticle/the-worst-infield-for-the-dough/.
Number 6 — AMEN, BROTHER!
The ZiPS has it as Blanton/Harden/Gaudin/Dinardo/Eveland, and then the injury starts variously to Saarloos/Gonzalez/Meyer/Smith/Braden/whoever.
I should talk about the injury issue more up above, since that clearly affects this.
Graham you’ve been arguing that M’s defense was worse than expected last year and that it will regress to a better level. What is your evidence for that? Ibanez’s and Sexon’s defensive metrics being much worse than career or in the previous three years?
Basically, I think they’re pretty poor as a unit, but the result of their play last year was much worse than the sum of their parts, and therefore we should expect some heavy regression. It’s sort of like Jeff Weaver – yeah, he’s not good, but he’s not really 6+ ERA bad either.
As fans, we don’t tend to be reasonable people.
Johjima: a catcher entering his year 32 season, who declined last year. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect that he may be at the start of the downside of his career.
Ichiro: a great hitter, who had a much better season last year than his previous two seasons, and is going to be 34. I wouldn’t bet against Ichiro, personally, but it’s perfectly reasonable to expect regression.
Beltre: Just had the best of his three seasons in Seattle, and is a fair candidate for a bit of regression.
Betancourt: Just had his best season. Again, I wouldn’t bet against him personally, but I’m a fan. Even though Yuni’s young, an objective analyst is going to see him as a candidate for regression.
Even when we’re trying to be objective, we want to see things as positively as we can, within reason. It’s not entirely unreasonable to expect all four of those guys to maintain their level. But it’s likelier that, as a group, they won’t hit as well next year.
Updated to talk about the issue with the A’s not starting out with adequate injury information.
Oh, sweet, I just figured out how to deliberately injure players.
Oh, sweet, I just figured out how to deliberately injure players.
Finally, a solution to our LF problem.
As disappointing as Chavez has been, he remains (when healthy) an average hitter (disguised by his low batting average and pitcher’s ballpark) and a terrific fielder at a tough position, and three years younger than Sexson. As albatrosses go, he is still a lot closer to Beltre (that is, a contributor of value) than to Sexson (a lead weight).
oh, the times we could have used this power.
Sounds like there are a lot of McLarens out there guaranteeing that Sexson will be the comeback player of the year or at least return to an average level of productivity for 1B.
TheHardballTimes recently had an article that showed that Sexson’s secondary average has declined steadily the last two years. Both were the lowest in his career. I think that clearly speaks to his losing power. As a one-tool player, he has nothing left to give.
You’re dreaming!
Why the hostility Scraps? I merely gave my thoughts on the matter. I think Derek and Dave write fantastic posts all the time and read them daily. I just didn’t happen to agree with today’s simulation and I don’t have 900 stats to back it up or my own simulations to run. Now I guess you can accuse me of relying too much on my own human knowledge and decades of baseball obsession, but I am going to use every ounce of my experience to say that the A’s do not have a 49% chance of winning the division. Having just read the update regarding injuries not being factored into the simulation, I feel like my earlier claim is somewhat justified. Rich Harden is a talented pitcher, but I’ve pitched in the bigs about as much as he has lately, ya know? I suppose to say I dismissed the post entirely is kind of fair, though it doesn’t seem that unwarranted to say that if I disagree grossly with a major projection that I should question the validity of the others. However, since the injury factor has been explained, I would say that the individual Mariners projections probably have more validity than I thought earlier in the day. The Mariners do have a good advantage of not having serious pre-existing injury concerns going into the year, which also would make the simulations more accurate for them specifically. I assume the A’s were simulated with Harden and the Angels with Escobar (out to start the year), so those teams may be skewed positively while the Mariners don’t get skewed either positively or negatively. Is that an accurate statement as far as the simulations go?
Ah, shoot, it resets injuries every season. I’d have to manually beat up their team before the start of every year, and I don’t know how I’d automate that.
I ran the Mariners in my simulator too with ZIPS projections. It just runs through 162 games for any selected team (Mariners this time) so you don’t see how the other teams did over 162.
With Adam Jones on the team:
75.9 – 86.1
standard dev 6.82
With Bedard
74.7 – 87.3
standard dev 4.58
I’d be interested in knowing how DMB incorporates their defense into their program and how subjective it is.
vr, Xei
Sounds like there are a lot of McLarens out there guaranteeing that Sexson will be the comeback player of the year or at least return to an average level of productivity for 1B….You’re dreaming!
Sexson will not be comeback player of the year.
He will not reach the level of productivity of an average first baseman.
He will just be better this year than last.
He’ll go from horrible to merely bad.
So if the M’s insist on running him out there, their offense from the first base position this year will be better than their offense was from the first base position last year.
No one is dreaming crazy dreams about Sexson.
Just trying to figure out how a sim series thinks this 2008 offense will be well over 10% worse than 2007′s, when on the face of things, it only looks to be just ever-so-slightly worse.
Yup, both Escobar and Harden start the year in their respective rotations, and will until someone offers a reasonable solution to limiting their playing time.
I have to say, I have been surprised at how the national press seems to have just written off the A’s out-of-hand.
speaking of surprising outcomes, “The Washington Redskins hired Jim Zorn as their coach Saturday night, The Associated Press has learned.”
did you add Foulke back into the equation for the A’s?
Nope — he’s not available to put in.
Correction from 41.
I meant Isolated Power, not Secondary.
Conclusion is the same. You’re going to have to find your offensive improvement elsewhere.
I’ll run this with PECOTA when I get back on my ultra-awesome computer.
#45. Well, actually McLaren did guarantee that Sexson would win the COY award.
Which tells us all we need to know about how perceptive the management is. And how interested they are in solving obvious problems. Of course, now we have Cairo for when Sexson needs a day off.
Reason I am wondering about the sims and how much stock to place in them is because it is important in thinking about what the M’s do. It is a bit of central question that has permeated all the trade talk and all the analysis of Bavasi and roster construction.
If this is “truly” an 85 win team, then just one move — getting a great defensive LF who is a 2-win player offensively, and then bumping Ibanez to DH — very plausibly makes the M’s a 91 – 93 win team, and even the greatest USSM-pessimists can legitimately go to the park thinking the M’s have a real chance to make the playoffs.
If this is “truly” a 77-win team, then there is no “one move” that can make the playoffs plausible.
Has Bavasi bumbled his way into being one move away?
Or are the sims right and there is no reasonable scenario aside from magic that gets this team north of 90 wins?
Ah, shoot, it resets injuries every season. I’d have to manually beat up their team before the start of every year, and I don’t know how I’d automate that.
Jeff Gilooly may be available.
I think Sexson is just as likely to be finished as he is to bounce back even a little bit. The one-two punch of terrible defense and terrible offense at first base might just add up to the worst season by any player in the history of the game. I dunno.
But I do know that if his average is up by five points it’ll be a “comeback” in the eyes of a lot of people around here. Not mine.
I can believe a sub-.500 season is more likely than not. However, I have to cling to some hope (>>6%) of a division title, so I’ll blissfully ignore the specific result.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go put some money on the A’s…
“Jayson Addcox, of Athletics.MLB.com, reports the Oakland Athletics’ projected lineup for the 2008 season is: RF Travis Buck, 1B Daric Barton, 3B Eric Chavez, DH Jack Cust, 2B Mark Ellis, LF Emil Brown, SS Bobby Crosby, CF Chris Denorfia and C Kurt Suzuki.”
On the surface, I don’t see how that’s so much worse than the Mariners.
A’s are better offensively in RF, 1B, 2B, SS and DH. M’s are better in CF, C, 3B and LF. When you add in defense, where I expect the A’s to be MUCH better, I wouldn’t be suprised if that’s a more productive 9 than the M’s. The A’s weakness is injury prone-ness, esp. Crosby, Harden and Chavez.
The M’s edge over the A’s is almost wholely Felix, Bedard and Putz.
A’s are better offensively in RF, 1B, 2B, SS and DH.
The A’s play Bobby Crosby at shortstop.
Yea, maybe with expectations so low, if you put money on the A’s now to win the world series, you could walk out a millionaire in october.
One Giants fan called into the Adam Carolla show, saying how he bet 20 dollars on the Giants winning the super bowl before the playoffs even started, and walked out with 15 grand after the super bowl. Crazy, huh?
A’s are better offensively in RF, 1B, 2B, SS and DH.
The A’s play Bobby Crosby at shortstop.
Yuni is well over .100 OPS better than Crosby.
Ah, shoot, it resets injuries every season. I’d have to manually beat up their team before the start of every year, and I don’t know how I’d automate that.
Set Gillooly=1 in the config file?
“The A’s play Bobby Crosby at shortstop.”
Just checked the #’s. Wow Crosby’s worse than I remembered. Here’s the stats from Zips projections. M’s are better at SS, CF, LF, & C. On average, A’s are at 5.2 RC/27, M’s at 4.8. The caveat, A’s are much more injury prone. But the A’s defense is much better.
RC27 RC
1b Sexson,Richie 4.8 59.1
Barton,Daric 5.9 83.7
2b Lopez,Jose 3.8 60.3
Ellis,Mark 4.9 67.9
3b Beltre,Adrian 5.0 85.5
Chavez,Eric 5.5 76.7
ss Betancourt 4.4 65.9
Crosby,Bobby 3.7 38.5
c Johjima,Kenji 4.4 57.3
Suzuki,Kurt 4.2 49.5
rf Wilkerson,Brad 4.5 52.2
Buck,Travis 6.0 55.5
cf Suzuki,Ichiro 5.9 104.6
Denorfia,Chris 5.5 65.8
lf Ibanez,Raul 5.7 87.9
Brown,Emil 4.3 44.7
dh Vidro,Jose 5.0 65.1
Cust,Jack 6.8 83.6
Ah shoot. Mat beat me to the punch line.
Vegas odds of each AL West team winning the AL Pennant (uodates 2/5/08):
Los Angeles Angels 4/1
Seattle Mariners 14/1
Oakland Athletics 40/1
Texas Rangers 50/1
We won 88 games last year, Pythagerus be damned. We did that because we won the close games because we had a strong bullpen that could hold games. We lost blowouts because, no matter what, we had to send a 4 and 5 pitcher out there to get shellacked. Sometimes, our offense would keep up, and our bullpen would come through in the end, and we’d squeak by. Other times, we’d roll over and lose by 10.
Additionally, we got murdered by our chief competition in the division, those Angels. If we can close that gap even slightly, then all bets are off.
Also, I’m thoroughly curious as to what the Diamondbacks end up doing. That’s a team in ’07 that defied the Pythagorean Theory worse than us, and who not only won a tight division, but also a playoff series. Similarly, they even had a big-time pitching aquisition over the offseason. Now, I get the fact their defense is better, and that their core is primarily young guns, but when you go ahead and give all of said young guns a slight bump up in productivity, you’re defying the M’s.
And what I mean by that is, our second basemen and first baseman have to bounce back from their underwhelming performances of last year. Our shortstop will likely (hopefully?) become more patient at the plate. Our GM will realize Vidro as a DH is possibly the most idiotic thing anyone could have ever thought up, ever, or Reed/Jimerson mercifully relieve Ibanez of his fielding duties and regulate him to DH. Our bullpen, as good as it is, will be better because it won’t be overused and torn to shreds by exhaustion near the end of the season. These are all, of course, wishful thinkings, but by no means a stretch.
I wasn’t really a fan of the trade. But, I think this overuse of computer-generated analysis finally went too far when it predicted the A’s will have the best chance to win the division. I think the Angels are a damn good team. But I also think that we are by no means buried before the season begins. While I harbor plently of homerism, I really can’t see 95 wins as a ridiculous over-the-top stretch.
The fact we won 88 games with that late season plunge, that broken down bullpen, that awful starting rotation, and those everyday players mired in Burrell-esque seasonlong slumps tells me 88 is more than plausible with a huge rotation upgrade, a stand-pat bullpen (the loss of Sherrill is more than made up for by the fact we don’t have Weaver and HoRo…starting, at least), a stand-pat defense, assuming Wilkerson is only a marginal upgrade from Guillen (which he isn’t, Guillen is legendarily awful), and a slightly upgraded offense, assuming Wilkerson is a marginal downgrade from Guillen, Lopez will play around his potential, and Sexson will play hard since he’s playing for a contract. To me, that’s all more than fair.
Maybe I just want to hope. Maybe I love this team so much, I’m blinded by obvious truths. But maybe, just maybe, I’m on to something. One can only hope, right?
Overuse of computer-generated analysis.
Sigh.
I wonder if there is a super computer somewhere powerful enough to find a way to make HoRam project not to suck.
You, sir, go too far when your computer-generated, statistical, mathematics mumbo-jumbo puts forth a result that is not only offensive to the senses, but immoral and perverse as well.
On a rational note… I’ve really appreciated all the work you’ve put into this.
67 – That would be in Star Trek’s evil twin world. HoRam would be our ace. And would have a goatee.
“Overuse of computer-generated analysis.”
Also know as “overuse of the same things that the Red Sox and similar foward-thinking FOs have used to be build successful teams.”
I can’t help but laugh my ass off about those results. I can’t say there’s something wrong with the way it was done or even that the results aren’t accurate, but I’d put my money on:
1. The A’s not winning the division
2. The over of 77 wins for the M’s
3. The over even if you pushed it to 80…
This is the only statistical analysis I’ve seen on win projection that has the M’s significantly under 85 wins. It seems to me if I choose to agree with this I also choose to disregard all the others. Not willing to do that.
Let’s face it…you can run a computer program a million times but it’s still never going to accurately predict a team’s season. It’s sports…anything can happen. Take that same program, run an NFL season with last year’s lineups and see how many times the Giants win the Super Bowl…
Anyways, someone up the ladder here made a comment about the M’s selling the farm for a power hitter sometime this season…I agree. I totally see them doing that..or worse, signing Barry Bonds
Griffey anyone?
See here.
I take it you’re the second guy.
What other “statistical analysis” have you seen that puts them over or at 85 wins?
Clearly, Vegas disagrees vehemently with the, uh, “computer generated analysis”.
When in doubt, follow the money trail. Or, in this case, follow that of which actually has something riding on being correct.
gwanggung….
Only if he’s the better looking one….
*grin*
The money lines last year were way, way off on any number of teams that were more accurately predicted by DMB and other similar simulations. The lines reflect current consensus, not reality.
Vegas lines have a lot more to do with how the casinos think people will bet than anything else.
Vegas lines are ALL about convincing suckers to do some sucky financial planning.
#72 — The simulations are for the regular season, not playoffs. If you ran an NFL simulation for the regular season prior to the actual 2007 season, I would guess that the Giants making the playoffs would not have been uncommon scenario. What is shocking about DMZ’s simulations is the rarity of a a really good season from this group of M’s. Now if that rarity occurs, than anything can happen.
Vegas lines are created with full knowledge of everything that is known in the sabermetric community. The casinos employ statisticians who are the match of anyone you can find in a front office or data collecting agency. They also employ gut reaction line setters whose job it is to pow wow about what lines should be in a wisdom of the (small) crowd approach, basically using conventional wisdom and intangibles to set the lines. They basically employ the famous beer and tacos approach. The lines are then set in such a way that they do not raise too many eyebrows- but they generally lean toward drawing in those on the side of conventional wisdom. Where the inefficiency occurs is once the public begins placing bets- the line will move against conventional wisdom (whatever it may be) to diversify the casino’s risk. They have the benefit of knowing both what is most likely to happen and what the public thinks will happen. If there is a small percentage of the public that is smart enough to exploit the inefficiency between the two they do not mind, as long as they remain a very small minority. A better educated betting public will force them to rely more on stats and less on conventional wisdom when setting lines and greatly diminish this inefficiency (and their potential for profit). This is one reason why casinos are so willing to work with ESPN and other media outlets. The more they can help in propagating the flawed concepts of intangibles and gut instincts, the more ignorance there will be in the betting public, and the more profit potential they have per game.
DMZ,
Well, I am not in the business of winning arguments, but I will attempt to clarify why I made the observations I made. I actually think your post in reply supported many of my points. So, allow me to respond.
By the way… I am not a regular poster, so I am not sure the best way to quote your comments back to you, but I will try to do it right.
YOU: I disagree vehemently that there’s an inherently negative point of view here. I ran projections. There’s the numbers. Unless you think I made them up, how is this negative?
I argue that you USE numbers to justify your negative point of view. And then hide behind the “absolute” quality of numbers to make disputing them seem naive. And you use the fact that you have some status in the baseball writing world and the fact that it is your blog to dismiss suggestions to the contrary. You will take this as an attack, but if you consider it for a moment, you might realize it has some truth.
I suggested some factors that might be considered outside of numbers and I found your responses to be condescending and dismissive. Is this a good way to promote dialogue? I was not making a judgement one way or the other on these factors, just saying that I thought they should be part of the discussion as having an impact on the game, measurable or not. You assume the negative stance on just about all of them. Here are some of them with my comments:
ME: -The addition of a TOR pitcher and its impact on the excitement, intensity, commitment, and performance of players on the team.
YOU: -Teams that acquire a so-called “TOR†pitcher don’t perform better than you’d expect.
Similarly, teams that are competitive don’t perform better than you’d expect, and teams with no chance don’t perform worse.
This is just double-speak. What does this mean? “Better than you’d expect” based on what? “Teams with no chance don’t perform worse?” That’s a triple-negative and just avoids making a point.
ME: -Players benefitting from better coaching.
YOU: Generally speaking, this doesn’t have the effect often ascribed to it. Certain coaches do well with some players and don’t help others. There are very few coaches that make any noticeable positive impact across most of their players.
Just because you say that, doesn’t make it true. This is exactly my point. Because you take the negative stance on so many things (LIKE: coaches not making a noticeable impact) you assume that I presented it from the perspective of thinking coaches DO make an impact. You tip you hand here. You make these claims as if you were an “expert” but don’t back them up. You mistake is that you think that since nobody has ever been able to QUANTIFY it, it must mean that it doesn’t HAVE AN IMPACT. Nobody knows how to quantify love between two people, but you can’t argue that it has a HUGE impact on how they behave.
ME: -Players benefitting from not having a steroid suspect in the clubhouse (e.g.; Guillen)
YOU; The M’s won 116 games with one of the most-widely-suspected steroid users in the lineup: if Guillen mattered, that certainly should have, but didn’t.
Again, you assume that I am wearing rose-colored glasses hoping that having Guillen gone will help the clubhouse and that somehow mentioning Boonie proves my point mute. But you missed my point: In the absence of your ability to QUANTIFY the impact, you pretend it has marginal or no impact. That’s wrong. It just can’t be MEASURED and since you folks are in the business of measuring, you want to dismiss all things unmeasurable. I think Guillen WAS a good presence and I will miss him. Some say his absence will be a good thing. I just pose the question and you assume that I am the patsy fan who hopes for the best and you are here to set me straight… but with nothing to back it up.
ME: -How often a player recovers from a bad season and what factors play into that
YOU: I don’t understand how this affects anything.
Thanks for saying that you don’t understand something. What are the factors that contribute to a player going from a poor year to a comeback performance? And how often does it happen? If you don’t see how this effects anything, you have forgotten that Sexson and Lopez (among others) play for the 2008 Mariners.
ME:-The impact of having one manager for the whole year and having a single approach from spring training onward
YOU: The M’s didn’t play substantially better when they had Hargrove for full years versus half years. There’s no reason to think that McLaren’s a significantly better manager than Hargrove.
This is a good point on your part. I hope you can concede a good point, too.
ME: -The possible impact of a certain group of guys gelling or not gelling together and why that happens
YOU: Chemistry, if it exists in this form, doesn’t have a significant effect.
Perfect example. You can’t quantify it, so you dismiss it as having “no significant effect.” I beg to differ. I have played on and coached MANY teams and would argue that chemistry has a VERY significant impact. It should be less at the major league level because they are pros, yes… but it is still a huge factor. We think we can win, we have pitchers we believe in, we get along with each other and pick each other up… and now we play like we feel that way. It is a huge factor. Or maybe I should just say, it MIGHT be a factor. But you don’t really know, so why pretend you know is ISN’T? You CAN’T know, but you dismiss it like you do.
ME: -The real impact of clubhouse leadership
YOU: Cross-apply previous argument.
But the previous argument didn’t work for me.
ME: My point is, numbers give us the mean expectation. And the mean expectation will never be “Win the world series†and probably seldom has been, even for the teams that wound up winning.
YOU: You’re looking at this backwards, I think. The mean expectation for all teams is “no chance at the World Series†and that’s accurate, but going into a season, you can do a pretty good job handicapping the races and identifying teams that do.
I have seen little success handicapping teams other than plain common sense. I don’t need sims to tell me that the Red Sox will be better than the Orioles in the East. But that common sense also tells me to still watch the games. But some amount of my knowing that is because of the character of the teams, the towns, the players, the owners, and the groups expectation to win or lose.
ME: -The factors that will ultimately spell a championship for the Ms will not be measured beforehand. Look at 2001. They were expected to take 3rd place at best.
YOU: I could write a ton about the failure of prediction models in the 2001 series.
Bingo. This is precisely at the heart of my argument. Numbers will always fail to predict the moments we most hope for. And that is not something you want your readers thinking about. The 2001 season was the high-point for Ms fans, the closest we have gotten. And the numbers failed to tell that story ahead of time. Of course you can explain it after the fact. The time the Ms did something very close to what we all hoped for, all you can do is explain AFTERWARDS why the numbers failed to pick it up. Doesn’t this leave you a little suspicious that maybe their failure to accurately predict outcomes is due to the fact that unmeasurable factors DO play a major role?
I look forward to your further thoughts.
Yesterday I ran 100 seasons with the exact same software, projections, and parameters that USSMariner did today. My results were quite similar, save the M’s average win total was 80, with 5 seasons topping 90 instead of just 3. Though the A’s didn’t fare as well as they did in USSMariner sims, everything else was eerily close.
If someone wishes to discount any validity of DMB software or ZiPS, thats fine. Yet USSMariner is only quoting the results DMB spewed out. The facts of their data is this: only 8 times out of 200 did the M’s reach/top 90 wins. And that is WITH ’2 Aces….TWO…..ACES!!!!111!!!one!!11obi-1!!!!!’
“Maybe I just want to hope. Maybe I love this team so much, I’m blinded by obvious truths. But maybe, just maybe, I’m on to something. One can only hope, right?”
I’d rather ‘hope with reason’ than ‘hope without it’.
I don’t understand all the surprise at the results that DMZ posted. As has been pointed out earlier, the M’s weren’t really an 88 win team last year, but rather a 79 win team masquerading as an 88 win team. The differences between last year’s team and this include:
- Vidro had an unsustainably high BABIP last year that will undoubtedly lower his offense appreciably.
- Ibanez had long stretches last year when he looked like he was done, and others when he looked more like he did three or four years ago. This year, he’s older, and the long stretches of poor play are likely to be longer
- Ichiro is a year older and probably won’t hit as well
- Johjima is a year older and probably won’t hit as well
- Betancourt had a better year with the bet than anyone might have expected in 2007. It would be easy to believe that 2008 is a little worse
- Beltre is a year older, but still not very old. Will we see another 2007 from him or will it be more like 2005 or 2006?
- Wilkerson probably won’t hit as well as Guillen
- Indeed, the only hitters on the team who might reasonably be expected NOT to be poorer than in 2007 are Lopez and Sexson, and I wouldn’t necessarily bet a lot on improvement from either one.
- Putz can be expected to have a few more blown saves. Some of those will translate into losses.
Yes, we have Bedard, but he’ll be out there less than 20% of the time, whereas all of the above will be happening 100% of the time. 79 wins + much worse offense + Bedard = 75 wins is real, real easy to believe.
That said, I hope the M’s win 105 games in 2008!
How did the Diamondbacks do in the sims?
I only ask because they are widely considered the favorite to win their division after winning the NL West and a playoff series last year. And they did that with a Pythagerean mark of 79-83.
The is a great reason to be optimistic! The worse the M’s play, the sooner Bavasi gets fired…
#82 AMEN AGAIN, BRO!
I like “don’t tase me, bro!” better.
So I’ll try and do this quickly.
I reject the argument that I’ve got some negative point of view and use numbers to justify it. You don’t know me. I wonder how I’m supposed to take the accusation that I “use numbers like a politician” and use them to justify a skewed world view besides as an attack? That’s a pretty heated charge to make, that I’m twisting the truth to meet some agenda I have. I don’t know what agenda that would be, or how I would benefit. I don’t know why I’ve spent so much time over so long doing this if I’m not a fan.
I don’t understand why you saw those responses as dismissive and condescending, but that’s your right to take them as you will. They were certainly curt, but there’s no derision there.
To the points:
On “exceeding expectations” — teams that add a star pitcher don’t win more games than you’d expect given the sum of their talent, and similarly, don’t lose less. They win as many games as they are good. Now, you’re going to argue that in a second, but that’s how the definition’s set.
Also, accusing someone of “double-speak” is not particularly conductive to a reasonable conversation.
On “better coaching”. You’re accusing me here of taking a negative stance by asserting that:
Generally speaking, this doesn’t have the effect often ascribed to it. Certain coaches do well with some players and don’t help others. There are very few coaches that make any noticeable positive impact across most of their players.
Which isn’t a negative stance at all, for one — it’s a belief based on my knowledge of the studies done on this.
You tip you hand here. You make these claims as if you were an “expert†but don’t back them up. You mistake is that you think that since nobody has ever been able to QUANTIFY it, it must mean that it doesn’t HAVE AN IMPACT.
That’s not what I said at all, for one: my point there was that generally speaking, it’s not as dramatic as people often think it is, because usually, coaches do well helping some but not others.
Further, I’m no expert, but there’ve been a bunch of studies done on this — as I said, by better minds than me — and even someone like Leo Mazzone, who you can certainly call a success — and they haven’t found anything there.
My point here, as in all things, is that if there’s an effect, it’s so small that there’s been no way to find it, and if it’s that small, it’s not significant.
So to steroids.
The argument here is that the team will do better because they don’t have a steroid suspect. My response was
The M’s won 116 games with one of the most-widely-suspected steroid users in the lineup: if Guillen mattered, that certainly should have, but didn’t.
Again, you assume that I am wearing rose-colored glasses hoping that having Guillen gone will help the clubhouse and that somehow mentioning Boonie proves my point mute. But you missed my point: In the absence of your ability to QUANTIFY the impact, you pretend it has marginal or no impact. That’s wrong. It just can’t be MEASURED and since you folks are in the business of measuring, you want to dismiss all things unmeasurable.
I don’t… In a sense, yes — I’m much more interested in things we know and can talk about than, say, angels on the head of a pin, or the smaller fluctuations of wave forms. If we can say that having a good bench is worth two or three games in the standings but having a suspected steroid user might be bad or good, but we don’t know how much, or whether it’ll happen, I’d rather talk about the bench. And so it is here.
I also would suggest don’t know me very well if you think I dismiss all things unmeasurable. I’m not making assumptions about you, and would appreciate a similar courtesy.
I think Guillen WAS a good presence and I will miss him. Some say his absence will be a good thing. I just pose the question and you assume that I am the patsy fan who hopes for the best and you are here to set me straight… but with nothing to back it up.
I made no such assumption, and am baffled why you think that.
My point, as always, is that we argue if Guillen was good for the team last year, or bad, or if it’s good for him to leave, or bad, and really, if there’s no way to resolve this or even talk about it reasonably, I don’t see why it’s as important as the team’s defense, for instance.
On comeback players:
What are the factors that contribute to a player going from a poor year to a comeback performance? And how often does it happen? If you don’t see how this effects anything, you have forgotten that Sexson and Lopez (among others) play for the 2008 Mariners.
Ah. There’s a lot to that, and I think injury and wear plays into down years a lot more than is often acknowledged, but to a larger sense, I absolutely think work ethic is a huge factor in coming back from injuries and growth, and I’ve talked about this at length in our discussions about prospect paths.
On chemistry: again, I think we’re just going to have to part ways here and agree to disagree. My point is this: I don’t know whether or not chemistry, as we’re discussing it here, exists. What I know is that chemistry is frequently attributed to winning teams after the fact, and there are happy, hard-working teams that stink and teams that hate each other and do well. No one can say what causes good chemistry, or bad-good chemistry, and people who think they’ve solved the problem and bring in chemistry players very often see the opposite of what they expected (see the M’s, for instance, in the recent dark years).
Moreover – and we’ve talked about this here before – the minor leagues weed out the worst team players pretty quickly. You have to be really talented to make your way up the ladder to have people who hate you offer contracts, and even then, many of the players you hear about who are jerks in one sense have other qualities that make up for it.
So there’s a selection process that goes on. It’s not that this might not have a huge effect at the lower levels, even — but by the time you get to the majors, just like players who can’t hit in pressure situations have failed to make it, so have players who might dramatically harm their team’s performance.
And further, if everyone who has studied this and tried to find an effect fails, at some point I’m willing to acknowledge that if it’s out there, it’s not that big an effect that we can see it.
So the expectations v 2001 argument:
Numbers will always fail to predict the moments we most hope for. And that is not something you want your readers thinking about.
I don’t? And again, I’m not sure how long you’ve been around, or what you’ve read, but this makes me suspect you might not have seen us in our more exuberant and irrational moments. I don’t know if that’s the case, but please be assured that I see something new every time I watch a game, and that’s why I love it.
The 2001 season was the high-point for Ms fans, the closest we have gotten. And the numbers failed to tell that story ahead of time. Of course you can explain it after the fact. The time the Ms did something very close to what we all hoped for, all you can do is explain AFTERWARDS why the numbers failed to pick it up. Doesn’t this leave you a little suspicious that maybe their failure to accurately predict outcomes is due to the fact that unmeasurable factors DO play a major role?
I don’t think there’s a response here I can give that’s not going to inflame you further, so let me say this instead: I wasn’t nearly as smart about this stuff in 2001 as I was now, and there wasn’t nearly as much freely available research. We didn’t know about DIPS in 2001, for instance, just to pick one. The good stuff that off-season was, if I recall, a really good study showing that protection in a lineup wasn’t a significant help to the protectee (the Grabiner work).
Today I can do sims using data from an outstanding, freely available projection system in a well-known, excellent simulation engine. I couldn’t do that in 2001. Maybe we’d have seen something interesting.
I know at the time, I thought Boone was a bad move, Bell would suck, I hated that Al Martin was in left (for the backup-wife-beating in particular) and I wasn’t too hot on some of the other guys in the lineup.
I was making a lot of guesses based on not particularly great data or analysis. I can’t find anything where I said “they’re going to win 50 games” but I remember I wasn’t very excited.
I do remember that I loved watching Ichiro play from the first few games and started preaching the gospel almost immediately. Which is a whole other thing, the vast joy I take watching Ichiro play — and not because he puts up particularly gaudy numbers.
Manjini – if people seem short in responding to your comments, it’s because different versions of those same comments been responded to again and again and again over the years. You’re trying to be polite, which is appreciated, but, man, you’re just not saying anything new.
“You guys spin the stats in order to further your negative agenda.” That’s just BS. DMZ ran some projections that indicated a 6% chance of the M’s making the playoffs. I take it you would like to focus on the 6% and ignore the 94%? That’s called wishing. My cup is 6% full! And a blog by M’s fans about how M’s fans wish the season would go wouldn’t be very interesting. This site is, at its core, about analysis. If there were some analysis that indicated a positive result, don’t you think we’d be talking about it? Seriously.
“There are intangible and unquantifiable aspects to baseball that might cause the M’s to be better.” No shxt. In fact, there’s about a 6% chance those will come into play next year to the extent necessary to get the M’s to the playoffs. To point out that anything could happen doesn’t add to the discussion. We all know that. Yes, the M’s might “gel” and Sexson might have resurgence and Bedard and Felix might be the best 2 pitchers in baseball, and the modified coaching staff might coax more from Lopez, etc. etc. We know these are possibilities. But we’re not talking about possibility, we’re talking about probability. This was already posted once, but maybe you missed it: http://lookoutlanding.com/story/2008/2/9/164534/1904.
Seems to me that what you’d like out of the authors is:
The M’s might do well this year! Yay!
I don’t think USSM would be the smash hit it is today if that’s all the authors posted.
Personally, I can’t bring myself to care much anymore whether people think this site is too negative, or think we should all expect the 2008 Mariners to win 120 games because of team chemistry, or whatever.
This site is a wealth of information, and if people would rather just ceaselessly complain about the tone of the posts here rather than take advantage of that information, I just can’t really bring myself to care about what they have to say.
DMZ, CCW, et al…
I certainly did not mean to come off as angry or make any personal attacks. I sincerely did not wish either. It is so hard to write tone, as many have said.
I respect that many may not agree with my comments and maybe it HAS all been said before. I have certainly seen posts in the past that tried to say things along the same lines.
But, look… I am not a fairy tale fan. I don’t want a blog that suggests the Ms will “just be awesome and away we go.” But at times this blog has seemed (to me) to be almost the opposite… a blog that suggests the Ms will “always suck and away we go.” And that to me is one-sided. Whether it be based on analysis or opinion, it is not the whole picture. Because when something happens that differs from that, you say they “outperformed the numbers” and that means they really weren’t as good as they were. But they WERE.
I do still reject the responses to my comments about the unmeasurable factors having a big impact. I am hearing a lot of what sounds to me like, “If it can’t be measured, it’s impact must be small… or we could measure it.” And I just disagree, so that’s OK. I think someone can be depressed on Mondays and not know why or what about… and they might actually hit a baseball 23% worse on Mondays as a result. But you can’t measure it, so you seem to say that this means it doesn’t have that 23% impact. I say it still has the impact, but that we will attribute it to something more tangible and that might steer our calculations off in the wrong direction. Do you see my point? I really don’t mean to be argumentative or goading here… I just really think this is the central problem with the kinds of measurements that we use to quantify the game.
One final point. I don’t think I ever used the word “agenda.” That is very different than saying you seem to have a negative “take” or “slant” justified by numbers. I do not think you have any agenda, nor do see how it would benefit you to have one. But the conclusions and opinions on the blog far and wide are pretty negative… or maybe pessimistic would be a better word. Maybe it’s just because the team is bad. Or maybe it’s because even when the team is good, there is a way to make it look like they were just accidentally better than the numbers. I say, that’s what many world champions are.
I could say more, but I have taken up plenty of space tonight. I truly extend an olive branch and apologize again for the the fact that some remarks may have seemed inflammatory or personal. But I stand by my opinions and conclusions.
Be well.
It struck me after I posted the last comment that I had two more things to say.
First, I think it is in the best interest of a blog writer to care what the readers think. Jeff talks of “ceaseless complaining” and I take issue with that, at least in my case. Carefully presenting a critical opinion is what I tried to do and I have every intention of continuing to benefit from the blog. And I am thankful for that.
Second, CCW says that versions of this argument have been responded to “again and again and again over the years.” I know for me, when the same opinion come up again and again and again… there comes a time when I have to look at it and say, “Maybe there is something for me to take away from this” – even if it is hard to hear.
I am not saying this blog is bad or without tons of merit, I did make my remarks within the context of good will. But some reader feedback can help you shape the content to make a more 3-dimensional case for your conclusions.
“Personally, I can’t bring myself to care much anymore whether people think this site is too negative, or think we should all expect the 2008 Mariners to win 120 games because of team chemistry, or whatever.
This site is a wealth of information, and if people would rather just ceaselessly complain about the tone of the posts here rather than take advantage of that information, I just can’t really bring myself to care about what they have to say.”
Now thats a point WORTHY of an ‘amen’. I’ve had a number of friends who are rabid M’s fans that, when I showed them the DMB projections, tell me to two repetitive points: 1) ‘Yer just being negative.’ 2) ‘Bedard makes the M’s a minimum 95-win team.’ These are friends that even play in DMB leagues, and swear by its accuracy!
Maybe ZiPS is being negative. Maybe DMB is being negative. The data they spew out speaks for itself. Yet to call someone (or an entire community) ‘negative’ because they are the messenger quoting the results? Thats not right. Do they not understand that if DMB projections showed a 60% chance the M’s win 90+ games (instead of a mere 6%), the USSMariner base would be jumping for joy?
I think the current situation is this: in the absence of ‘reasoned optimism’, certain folks will cling to any optimism they can find…even ‘blind’. USSMariner just refuses to sugar-coat it and tell them what they WANT to hear.
93: But maybe that hitter thinks Thursdays are awesome and hits 23% better. Oh look, the effects cancelled out.
It’s not that people can definitively say these effects don’t exist. But they generally can work both ways (positive or negative). That’s why we look at large statistical samples, like simulating the season a hundred times. The larger the sample, the more likely these intagibles are to cancel each other out. Sometimes they work in concert, however, and the Mariners win 93 or lose 103. What’s most likely, however, is that to the extent these effects exist, they generally nullify each other and as such will have minimal overall impact.
All that you did, manjini, is post with more words than normal the same sort of thing that we have interjected into conversations here on a DAILY basis.
Yes, you were politer than some, but that only gets you so far.
The part that makes me maddest, though, is when people come here and post about things like “chemistry” and “intangibles” like they are telling us something that we just weren’t smart enough to think of ourselves.
We’ve considered them, carefully, as factors. We’ve decided that, if they have any effect at all, there’s no way to distinguish them from random chance, which we’re already admitting to the possibility of.
We’ve also considered that things like Diamond Mind simulations, ZIPS projections, etc, are simply that: PREDICTIONS of what is likely to happen. Could the 2008 Mariners win 120 games? You bet. And yet, that singular event happening would not invalidate the methods used to arrive at any of those predictions.
And yet, literally every day, I see someone new show up here, on a holy mission to bring the light of boundless optimism to us poor gloomy bloggers and share their superior wisdom about what they learned in Little League about trying their hardest and everything will work out OK.
And, frankly, every time I see it, the thin veneer of civility I try to maintain when posting here thins a little more.
If this is your first, third, fifth, or five hundredth post here, you have not earned the right to be condescending to ANYONE.
This is more than an issue of tone. It’s hard to imagine more inflammatory comments. It’s certainly difficult to believe that they were motivated by a desire to add to the discussion.
I wish our defense were half as good as ESPN repeatedly states. Where, exactly, are they getting this wealth of information from? Do they even watch baseball?
Then again, we all know what a great talent evaluator Steve Phillips is. If there’s any silver lining to the cloud of this trade, it’s that it’ll never be as bad as Victor Zambrano for Scott Kazmir.
#99 — Yes, as a M’s fan I can take some consolation in the fact the Bavasi is not Steve Phillips. I believe that Bavasi is both a better GM, although that is faint praise, and, in all likelihood, a better guy.
I’ve never felt a negative vibe coming from the authors here. More of a “hope for the best, prepare for the worst vibe”. That never strikes me as negative, especially in light of the kind of front office the Mariners have, just pragmatic.
Honestly, man, here’s the deal – if you think we’re constantly negative and never talk about the good things this organization does, you’re just not trying. Go read any of my ridiculously over the top fanboy articles on King Felix. Hell, we invented the nickname.
Go read the articles lobbying the Mariners to sign Adrian Beltre as a free agent, then the joyous celebration when they actually did. Read the post where I congratulate the entire organization on the Freddy Garcia trade. Read any of the articles where we talk about the awesomeness of J.J. Putz. Google for our opinions about Ichiro and how valuable he is.
Or you could read us praising Bavasi for putting together a top notch bullpen on the cheap. You could find me calling Sean Green “criminally underrated”. There’s also the praise of Bob Fontaine and Bob Engle for putting together a group of prospects that we were big fans of. You could go read about my public love affair for Carlos Triunfel before he’d ever played a professional ballgame.
You could find articles last off-season where we praised the organization for signing Jose Guillen. You could read about how good the organization was at stealing talent late in the draft, including posts on how they found Kam Mickolio in the 18th round.
You could find posts on how awesome we thought Chris Snelling’s personality was, or how hilarious Ichiro’s quotes are, or how we think Bavasi’s a really cool dude in person.
Yes, a lot of the stuff we say is critical of the organization. But you know what? It’s not because we enjoy being negative, or are prone towards pessimism, or any of this other crap you’ve decided to project on us. It’s because this organization is one of the worst run in major league baseball, and they give us way too many things to criticize.
We want them to do better. We want them to make smart decisions, build a good baseball team, and hold a parade in November.
You don’t have to believe any of that, but I know what’s in my heart, and you don’t. So, whether you think I should or not, if you really think that I’m predisposed to negativity, then I don’t care what you think, and that doesn’t bother me one bit.
#102 I’m pretty sure the USSM authors were happy with the Aumont pick last year as well.
I needed no help getting through the 116 win season. None. In fact, I didn’t want it to end.
USSM got me through the ’04 and ’05 seasons precisely because it was an oasis from the disaster taking place on the field.
To top it off, USSM content can cause brain cells to multiply. All in all, not a bad deal for free.
Thank you for the bar graph: as a scientist, it makes me much happier than the other one because it is easier to read and doesn’t convey “false” information.
I aim to please.
I always struggle getting Excel to produce the graphs I want. I wish there were an easy way to produce interesting, worthwhile graphs. A Tufte plug-in for Excel or something.
This site is a wealth of information, and if people would rather just ceaselessly complain about the tone of the posts here rather than take advantage of that information, I just can’t really bring myself to care about what they have to say.
Bingo.
Unfortunately, Excel is about the easiest software out there to get reasonable-looking plots. I know people who swear by Origin or GNUplot, but they’re nontrivial to learn.
Generally speaking, connecting together data with a line or curve should be avoided unless the line/curve actually means something. In practise this means almost never in a scientific context, though a line drawn as a ‘guide to the eye’ is occasionally added as a kind of guesstimated best fit line.
If some functional form is expected, this can be fit to the curve. Excel only handles lines, polynomials, and exponentials, which is poor in a baseball/statistical context given that one often wants a bell curve. These can be fitted by hand, but it’s a bunch of work to do, especially the first time you do it.
Anyhow, that’s enough yammering about graphs from me: back to complaints you aren’t intuitive enough from someone else.
I can’t recall a negative post by Derek or Dave that wasn’t warranted. If you feel the need to take it negatively when stats show something you wished wasn’t true, that is. The projections I’ve looked at all show a slight decline by Ichiro, Betancourt, Beltre, Ibanez and Kenji while a slightly bigger increase from Sexson and Lopez. Things will go differently for that with a few, maybe all of the players, but there’s no reason to assume that it would mostly be better than predictions. Then there’s Guillen being replaced by Wilkerson, which I am still hopeful was brought in as the 4th OFer/backup 1B and is not the Starting fix for RF. I see how the team could do a little worse than some are thinking and don’t personally think they have much chance at 90+ wins. I can’t blame the stats or the people who put them together without being able to show what went wrong (not that I think anything did with this.) Even the Pythag being discussed here the last few days has them well over 80 wins with all of that (except future acquisitions) taken into account though. I don’t think the post is negative anyway, it’s just extrapolating stats and they are what they are. It took a lot of time to put this all together and I won’t complain about it being shared with me, even if I disagree with the outcome.
102: Your comment shouldn’t be just that. It should be it’s own post, with links to mentioned posts. As a longtime visitor to this site, I remember reading all of the posts you mentioned and being excited about the Mariners and their future while doing so. Obviously there are folks around here that never saw them and should read those posts to see that side of you guys. And after that, if they accuse you all of being nothing other than negative/pessimistic, it’s time to ban some IP addresses.
Seriously. I remember how hyped you were when Felix was playing in the minors and how you kept trying to get us all to go to those games because his gifts were a sight to see. When he finally got called up, I believe that so many of us were knowledgeable about Felix (including the local media) because of USSM.
#86. I ran 15 seasons for the Diamondbacks with my simulator and here is what I came up with.
Wins: 84.3
Losses: 77.7
Std Dev: 7.6
Highest Wins: 96
Lowest Wins: 72
vr, Xei
Sexson and Lopez are guaranteed to bounce back from last year’s underwhelming performances, just like Brett Boone, John Olerud, Jeremy Reed, Miguel Olivo, Carl Everett, Scott Spiezio, Jeff Cirillo, Al Martin, Ben Davis . . . oh, never mind.
102 you forget that fans of a team aren’t allowed to be logical about it. When you try to be logical, especially if things are going wrong, you’re no longer a fan. You become an objective party. It happens in sports, politics, business, television/media, marketing, PR, and dozens of other areas. There’s nothing more hated than a person trying to analyze what’s actually going on, because that’s dangerous.
Usually you aren’t allowed to tell your boss the flaws in his brilliant new design. When it sinks you hope he doesn’t pin it on you, and your job is safe. When he manages to pull off a ‘pet rock’ stupid success, well maybe you’ll get a raise for not questioning him. This off season may turn into the pet rock, and next October we’ll all be happy. That doesn’t mean that counting on luck and stupidity is the best long-term strategy.
The really funny thing is, Dave and Derek complain about moves based on measurable, objective information. For this, they are accused of having a subjective bias by people who almost never offer anything other than subjective opinions themselves.
For instance, Manjini accused Derek of failing to back up his claims.
Majini himself specifically declined to back up any of his own claims. In fact, he denied making any claims about chemistry, or coaching, or any other intangibles. When aked to back them up, he said he just wished that Derek had taken them into account.
Now, so far as anyone here – or over on Baker’s blog for that matter – knows, there is no objective way to account for intangibles (hence the name). The only way to “account†for them is to make an utterly subjective guess about the impact. A guess that cannot be backed up by anything other than saying “that’s my opinion†or “that’s what I believe.†The best possible support for one of these subjective positions is “that’s what some smart people I trust believe.†Interestingly, when Derek explained his lack of belief in the impact of team chemistry by saying a bunch of smart people he trusts believe it doesn’t exist, that wasn’t good enough. Even though it’s the best justification anyone could have possibly provided for believing there is an impact. Talk about asymmetical situations.
So, as best I can tell, the complaint here is that Derek was insufficiently objective about the M’s chances because he failed to take a wholly subjective position on the subject. Wow. I really should buy him a beer.
Damn let up on Manjini. I think we all want them Mariners to project out better for next season and when they don’t we want to look for a reason. DMZ is not the reason but its a classic case of shoot the messenger.
Manjini come down to reality this team is not as good as we all hope for but there is still a 6% chance they make the playoffs (there’s your optimism).
LOL mediocrity.
Peace fellas. Peace.
I am not going to make counter arguments. I guess I will just say that I have read the blog for many years and will continue to do so. I am disheartened that my attempt to respectfully express my point of view came across the way it obviously did. I was truly trying to engage in a debate about the blog content, but seriously didn’t mean to attack you guys. Looking back, I can see that some of my comments probably came across that way and I am not so small I can’t admit that. But it is much more lack of skill at writing my arguments in a way that doesn’t sound that way… than it is a desire to attack you.
My experience reading in the blogosphere is that when someone raises critical points, they get jumped on. For what it’s worth, I tried to write the kind of post that would be taken as thoughtful, if critical.
The last point I will make is this: A bunch are saying that the purpose of this blog is to look at “probability”. And maybe the core of what I am saying is that the goal we all seek (a world series victory) is, by definition, improbable. So, the numbers will almost always paint a bleak picture. So, when I come to the blog, I don’t feel there is a balance between the probability point of view with the other aspects that contribute, aspects that might contribute when the Ms finally buck the probability and break through. I just find it a little depressing as a fan. It’s just my general reaction to coming to the blog day in and day out: that it focuses mostly on why the Ms making it all the way is improbable. And I say, “Yeah, we know.” That seems like something we all know.
What would make it more interesting for this one reader, is some insight into what factors could lead the team to do something improbable because every season there are a handful of teams that do just that and win big. And other teams that have the probability of winning that lose like crazy. Where are the numbers and formulas the help us predict whether we might have that 6% season on our hands? Maybe there are none. I would love to see more about that, but maybe that is just not the blog you want to write and I respect that. (And I HAVE seen the Felix fanboy posts…)
But I am not looking for overt optimism or “Rah Rah” posts.
You guys go on with your bad selfs. And really… Peace.
I guess I will just say that I have read the blog for many years and will continue to do so. I am disheartened that my attempt to respectfully express my point of view came across the way it obviously did.
One helpful suggestion … questioning someone’s motivation and character always comes across as disrespectful. Don’t do it.
As to your last point, the probability that at least one MLB team will significantly exceed their projections is very high. At this point, no one (neither statistician nor clubhouse-chemisty-diviner) has a good method to determine in advance which teams they will be.
DMZ, any chance you could elaborate on the fact we averaged 93 wins on the simulator when you plugged in an all-defense lineup?
And thanks, 111 – apparently the computers dislike anyone who defies the Pythagorean theory.
The problem, then, is that the core of what you are saying is askew. Your second sentence does not follow from the first. The Vegas odds demonstrate this neatly: No team starts the season at even odds, but some teams start with much better odds than others. “Bleak picture” is relative. Boston’s chance may not be better than fifty percent, but it is certainly not relatively bleak; Boston fans can be cheerful knowing that they have as good a chance as anyone, that if they need luck they need only the tiniest bit, that other teams will need more luck to overcome then.
As a Mariners fan, the problem isn’t that the numbers say that winning the World Series is improbable. The problem is that the numbers say our likelihood is lower than a great many teams, if not most, and the numbers say that every year. Yes, every team requires luck. We require a lot of luck, and probably will so long as Bavasi is running the team more on optimism than sound analysis.
” A bunch are saying that the purpose of this blog is to look at “probabilityâ€. And maybe the core of what I am saying is that the goal we all seek (a world series victory) is, by definition, improbable.”
Manjini. Go to this website http://www.replacementlevel.com/
Scroll down a bunch and you’ll find a DMB simulation, like Derek did, for all teams.
You’ll find a bunch of teams projected for 90+ wins. A world series is not that unlikely for them. Once you get to the playoffs no one is better than a 20% shot, but you’ve got to get there first.
The reason USSM may seem negative to you is that the Mariners have the resources to be a perennial 90 win team but squander it through bad management. If I were a diehard M fan (for full disclosure, I’m a Yankee fan, but love statistical approaches to baseball, Billy Beane etc.) I’d be pissed too.
DMZ, why not run the entire season without Harden or whichever player people seem down on? Substitute Donnie Murphy in at SS and whatever random 5th starter the A’s have around and see how that changes things. Escobar can be handled similarly.
When you look at that, though, keep in mind that the Replacement Level people use their own projection system, CAIRO, not ZiPS, which we all know and love.
I believe I understand where manjini is coming from, although I don’t necessarily agree with him. I often feel a negative tone coming from this site, although I don’t feel it is the site’s authors who generate it, but some of the commentors.
Obviously the authors of the blog (and the majority of the regular commentors) would prefer that the Mariners were run by people who share their views on how a successful team should be built. Therefore they are critical of moves they see as not being made in advancement of those ideals. These critical posts by the authors are often followed by any number of comments on the order of “God this organization sucks so bad I’m never buying tickets again” or “Bavasi is total idiot.” These comments are where I feel the negativity. I can’t recall similar sentiments coming from the authors, who go out of their way to point out the good qualities of the management (e.g. Bavasi’s skills in building the minor league system and general niceness as a human being) and arrange events with the organization they’re critical of so that we can all have a better understanding of where they are coming from.
As to manjini’s comments on the responses given by the authors to criticism of their posts, I think I can see both sides of the arguement. On the one hand, it does seem curt and dismissive when Dave or DMZ responds with a short “Well, you’re just wrong” reply, but on the other hand they do have lives to lead outside this blog and to fully reiterate their positions in replies that are just as long as their original posts is unrealistic for commentors to expect. Unfortunately, most people aren’t going to search the blog to see what the the authors have already written about the subject in the comment.
I would also point out the stark contrast between the tone of the offseason analysis of moves and the in-season game threads. No matter how much the authors and commentors may dislike a move, for example the Vidro trade/extension, if he hits a game winning home run, everyone in the game thread goes nuts and applauds him. They may not like the fact he is on the team and how his overall contribution may be hurting the team, but that doesn’t stop anyone from appreciating his real contributions to winning a specific game.
just look to the Mariners, and the effects their coaching staffs have had through the years. Ibanez had the combined Mariner and Royals coaching staffs trying to help him — according to him, it was going to the minors and working with Royals instructor Kevin Seitzer that made the difference. How did 2007 D-back’s hitting coach Kevin Seitzer’s major-league hitter’s do? Poorly enough that they fired him in July, replaced him, and still ended up 14th out of 16 in NL hitting. Lee Elia? apparently didn’t help Raul, but there are many who claim that Uncle Lee is why Dan Wilson had a few years where he wasn’t just a defensive catcher…
and there have been a few, both here and on asb-sm. Some really irrational moments of hope and adoration.
and therein lies one of the frustrations with recent organizational moves; Bavasi is a smart, straightforward, funny guy, and yet generally, he ‘does not meet expectations’
Thats a good look at it from a pure numbers modeling point of view. I think your incorrect about Ichiro just being a very good CF, He should be modeled as excellent, but thats just me. We all see the glaring needs in our line up that must be addressed before the sun will truely shine.
And the whole point that Oakland has a better chance of winning the west over Seattle is just laughable. That right there lends a factor to just how broken modeling can be. The only thing Oakland will do average or above is play defence. If they keep Blanton there rotation will be below average and relying on Harden for there rotation is just careless, Harden is the new Prior. There Pen has a chance of staying above average if HS is kept.
Lets spit ball on the one single move in reality that FO could do that would improve the lineup on both sides of the ball Off/Def. There is 2 glaring holes on Defence Ibanez/Sexon and Offence is Sexon/Vidro. We all see the obvious move. Drop Sexon off the planet. Take Ibanez and put him at DH/1B, platoon 1B with Clement/Morse/Ibanez. With Ibanez’s bat always being in the lineup between DH/1B. Now what to do with Left and Right fields. Who is the one single above average Defensive corner outfielder with an arm and a bat we could trade for? Lets Argue that for a while. Who is the one guy out there we could plausibly trade a package of minor leaguers that would be worth it leaving out Truienfel. I truely believe this move is coming anyway. Run it like the Princess Willie contract sweepstakes!
I wish your analysis took into account more human factors. Factors like:
-The addition of a TOR pitcher and its impact on the excitement, intensity, commitment, and performance of players on the team.
-The impact on players of taking the field each day thinking they actually have a chance to win.
-Players benefitting from better coaching.
-Players benefitting from not having a steroid suspect in the clubhouse (e.g.; Guillen)
-How often a player recovers from a bad season and what factors play into that
-The impact of having one manager for the whole year and having a single approach from spring training onward
-The possible impact of a certain group of guys gelling or no gelling together and why that happens
-The real impact of clubhouse leadership
Yeah, and let’s factor in the veteran grit!
And the ponies!
Can anyone please tell me the tabs on here for “quote” so poor Bill Nye doesn’t have to keep fixing my posts? Thanks.
Surround the phrase in question with
“blockquote”
and
“/blockquote”
, with the ” replaced by angle brackets
I appreciate the comments of “the other benno”. I guess I appreciate the willingness to acknowledge that there might be two sides two appreciate in the discussion. I already admitted where I might have come across harshly and even apologized for that. I am very familiar with “replacement level” player model. And I see a lot of merit there.
This is all a case of me trying to make a point that came out too personal. I think I was trying to speak to the overall experience I have with the blog and ended up indicting the authors solely. But I do stand behind my opinions. I just find the numbers game leaves me cold and is just too often wrong. But it’s probably better than any other way of projecting outcomes, so have at it.
This is why my favorite posts are the ones that look back at projections for the previous season. Those are great. But part of why they are great is because just as often as they were spot on, they are often spot off. (Is “spot off” a real phrase?)
Rock on.
Quick question DMZ…have you tried simulating YOUR offseason moves (both win now and win future) and seeing how those Mariners do in comparison? Could be a fun exercise if its not too hard to run the Diamond Mind simulations…
I have played on and coached MANY teams and would argue that chemistry has a VERY significant impact.
We call this the “Auburn Argument from Anecdotal Evidence.”
129 – Thanks Julian.I was just doing “quote” instead of “blockquote”.
Looking at the replacementlevel.com sims, two things stand out:
1. CAIRO doesn’t think too highly of the A’s; they win the wilcard once, never the division (looks like they ran 100 seasons), and have an expected record of 73-89, last in the AL.
2. CAIRO seems to agree with ZiPS about the Mariners; expected record 78-84, averaging 11 games behind the Angels. The good news: 13 division titles out of 100 seasons, or about double the chances that ZiPS gives the M’s… ponies!
I’m not familiar with CAIRO, so can’t vouch for the accuracy of these results. Perhaps somebody more familiar with the details can compare it with ZiPS.
Wondering….
If the M’s are in playoff contention at the trade deadline does Bavasi make a move? Any concerns that he trades more young talent if he needs oh lets say A BAT!
Bavasi will be already occupied at the trade deadline, trading young talent for a left-handed setup man.
I have played on and coached MANY teams and would argue that chemistry has a VERY significant impact.
Right, but many arguments about “chemistry” verge on begging the question, since great teams have both quantifiable ways in which they have superior performance AND great “chemistry”. I would argue that in many cases, it’s the performance that creates the “chemistry”. All the chemistry in the world isn’t going to turn a bunch of 5th graders into a team that would beat the worst major league team in any particular year, right?
To look at this another way, the 2004-2006 Mariners were all lousy teams, and Bavasi made a number of signings (Spiezio and Everett being the prime examples) that were intended to add “chemistry”. How’d those work out? So why do you think Bill Bavasi is any better at identifying players who create “chemistry”? To me it seems, rather, that you should work at identifying talent and superior performance first, and allow “chemistry” to precipitate out of that. That’s not to say you should have 25 felons on your MLB roster- it’s more a recognition of the fact that “intangibles”, by the very nature of the word, are hard to identify (and might possibly even be misleading compared to tangibles).
135 – Check comment 7
. Of course he probably will. As much as I would like to see someone like Mark Teixeria replace Sexson at 1st, I feel with Bavasi’s negotiating skills, the Mariners would probably give up the remaining pieces of their future for him.
137: Hurray for correct use of “begging the question”!
The Mariners have not only been terrible about adding “character guys”, they’ve also been terrible about getting rid of perceived problems.
First-year GM Steve Kerr of the Phoenix Suns just made a move — trading Shawn Marion for Shaq, basically — that is fundamentally a chemistry move, and is widely perceived to be a poor trade on the actual court of play. The Suns were leading the West at the time of the trade, but were worried about the feel of the locker room. Let’s see how that one turns out.
Here’s dumb question. I’m thinking about buying DMB, why is ZIPs the favored projection system for it?
Mr. USSM Authors:
Have you considered disallowing and deleting all personal comments about your attitudes and motives? I certainly don’t want to tell you how to run your weblog. But I can’t remember a useful conversation arising from “you’re too negative”, “you brook no disagreement”, “you’re just statheads”, “you think you know everything”, etc. It’s basically the same conversation every time, and it almost always has the power to derail the actual conversation. I’m sure it would be taken as more evidence of your perfidy by people inclined to see you that way, but there’s no convincing them anyway.
God knows it’s your weblog to run as you please. I am not complaining. But you all might find it easier to just give up trying to explain yourselves to people who aren’t listening. And, for what it’s worth, I think most people here would agree with you if you did.
When did the goal of the team become ‘get to the playoffs’. Seriously, even if we happen to get in, being clowned in the 1st round sucks (we all know how that feels). Trading off the future for 3 or 4 and done would really bite.
OT: [deleted, ot]
I’m not familiar with CAIRO, so can’t vouch for the accuracy of these results. Perhaps somebody more familiar with the details can compare it with ZiPS.
CAIRO’s really just a slightly enhanced version of Tango Tiger’s Marcels. I just created it this season, not necessarily because I expect it to be any better than PECOTA/ZIPS/CHONE, but just so I could have my own system in place for when I needed answers to questions. How accurate is it? I guess we’ll find out in due time. It’s important to remember that these exercises running projections through Diamond Mind regress towards a mean, and that in the actual 2008 season things will happen that will surprise us. That’s the great thing about baseball after all.
Here’s dumb question. I’m thinking about buying DMB, why is ZIPs the favored projection system for it?
One of the problems with Diamond Mind is it takes a lot of work to build a season disk for it. Dan Szymborski is the only person who’s been willing to do the work involved and provide a free projection disk. Diamond Mind makes their own projection disk every year, but it is usually not ready until March and it is not free. If you want to use any other projection systems, you pretty much have to create the disk yourself.
On the 93-win team: I went through and essentially played for defense above all things: I never played Sexson at first, I frequently fielded an outfield of Reed/Jimerson/Ichiro to get three Vg guys out there when Washburn was starting and then pinch-hit aggressively. Ibanez DHed against righties and sometimes played left when Bedard or Felix pitched.
The really interesting thing was that it turned Silva into an ace and Washburn looked great.
They didn’t average 93 wins, btw — I haven’t run a hundred seasons. I was just screwing around.
The problem with that at 100 seasons is that you can’t program DMB to use an all-defense lineup sometimes but not others — you get to set up a vs. L/R, not a “when Washburn’s pitching”
Was worth a shot. So DMZ, in #25 you mentioned that with an entirely “defensive” team, you got 93 wins. What changes did you make to the starting lineup to do this? I assume Reed in there somewhere, what else?
SG– thanks so much for all your work on this stuff, I really appreciate it.
#139 — I would assert that “chemistry” or “playing together” might be more important in basketball than baseball. In the NBA, the parts have to be willing to work together and with one another.
I don’t think the M’s have enough in the farm system to trade for one or two bats and a lefty reliever. If anything, I would expect a trade earlier, in spring training or April, rather than later. I have a hunch, nothing more, that either the team with which the M’s start the season will either exceed my expectations and be in the division race or fail so miserably (10-15 games out) that no one in the front office could justify trading away prospects in a futile attempt to catch LAA. I feel that the 2008 M’s will either swim gloriously or sink miserably. I don’t see them bobbing up and down in a lifepreserver.
Wilkerson played first over Sexson against righties and I threw a different righty with a better defensive rating — LaHair? I forget — in against lefties.
Which brings up the other huge difference — I carried a ton of hitters and worked my staff ridiculously hard, rotating the bullpen guys through Tacoma to get their rest at times.
Hah, response posted before my question. Also, are there any available free agent outfielders that fit with that scheme that would be an upgrade over Reed/Jimerson, in your opinion? Guys that maybe the have front-office-valued skills that could get them to accidentally produce a good signing?
it’s more a recognition of the fact that “intangiblesâ€, by the very nature of the word, are hard to identify (and might possibly even be misleading compared to tangibles).
Exactly. You could say that
Results = Skill + Intangibles + Luck.
Intangibles are things that may impact the outcome, but we don’t know how to measure them. They’re different that mere luck because they’re not the result of random chance, but since we don’t know how to measure them, they are indistinguishable from mere luck. The instant we figure out how to measure an intangible, it is no longer an intangible but a skill. Defensive Range is something that made that transition over the last quarter century. It used to be that Range was an intangible – some people had “good range†the way some people are “clutch hitters†– based on anecdotal evidence. The lack of data in the early days of SABRE had some people saying patently stupid things like “Defense doesn’t matter.†They said that because, as Manjini correctly noted, some people will ignore things they don’t understand (just like some antediluvian folks discount stats today because they don’t understand the math). Defensive metrics were basically useless 20 years ago, pretty much limited to Fielding Pct. And while some people ignored them and focused on lumbering on-base and HR machines, other people claimed defense obviously mattered and, since it couldn’t be measured, proved statistical analysis was badly flawed. And yet still others looked for ways to better measure defense, and so were born range factors and zone ratings in their myriad forms and glory. They’re still not perfect, but defensive range is now a measurable skill and not an intangible. Things have progressed so far that many of us here argue trading Jones was bad precisely because of his defense. I think that twenty years ago, a “stat-based website†(er, or the pre-Internet equivalent – I guess a Xeroxed newsletter, written in WordStar no doubt) arguing the merits of a trade based on defense would have been quite remarkable.
I suspect some of the intangibles Manjini mentioned will someday be proven to be actual skills with measurable impact. Others will remain essentially superstitions (the result of humans trying so very hard to see patterns where there are none and to feel in control of random chance). And some will probably fall into the category of “very rare skillsâ€, skills that a handful of extraordinary players actually have (e.g. Ichiro may have the ability to locate his hits, John Olerud had the ability to decrease the error rate of his infielders) but that most MLB players – even average HOFers – completely lack, or lack to such a degree as to make no real difference in results.
If this is your first, third, fifth, or five hundredth post here, you have not earned the right to be condescending to ANYONE.
We humans, equipped with brains that love nothing more than identifying patterns (even when none really exist) find all sorts of patterns in the results random chance produces.
That line stands out more than otheres, but I could go on and quote your entire post, because all of it is something about which I can say “I wish I would have said that.”
Mostly, I wish I had the ability to say it in such a compelling and eloquent way. And, that more people that practice baseball analysis would understand some of the concepts presented there.
Wilkerson played first over Sexson against righties and I threw a different righty with a better defensive rating — LaHair? I forget — in against lefties.
Lahair’s a lefty — perhaps you used Morse?
I think that Patterson was also waiting while this mess sorted out, fits the defensive mold the M’s really need right now in a corner OF, is projecting in James, CHONE, Marcel, etc. to have a similar offensive season as they’re projecting for Jones (with far more SB’s.) So what if the payroll ended up at about $135M, right?
OT for this thread, but the other one’s closed. Derek, way to go on being a delegate!
I’ll allow that OT because Yayyy!
I’ve run a couple other sims with the all-defense team I got 93 wins with… they’re pretty ugly. The average run saving is huge — I saw a -100 off the average of the initial — but they cannot score to save their life. I think my 93 wins was partly a fluke and mostly me managing all the games while nursing delicious beers.
Given some underlying lack of trust in the team W-L statistical projections, does anyone have historical data for analysis (i.e. ZIPs 2006 predicted AL West finish vs. actual)? The simple analogy is the sports columnist’s pre-season “10 predictions for team X” to be re-visited at season’s end.
Taking a look at historical projections would bolster the argument for their accuracy as well as help refine & improve the methodology.
First, more props for Derek the delegate…at my precinct it was a wild scene…my middle school teaching background came in handy as caucus chairman to prevent a Zimmer-esque brouhaha.
Second, I’ll echo the appreciation for all who ran sims…fun reading.
Third, a few interesting notes on Patterson: Wilkerson and Boras notwithstanding.
*Hit .294, OPS .737 after moved to 2 hole.
*Quit hitting for the fences…dropped his K/AB from a brutal 4.1 to 7.1 last year
*After only hitting .240 career vs. lefties, hit .310 in 142 ABs last year
*.341 in 44 ABs at Safeco
I think the Defensive/Managed season is like putting a manager who runs the numbers on one team, while all of their opponents has no such edge or equality. I do think that what DMZ did would probably have more positive effect on the win totals than the moves most Managers make in game, but when the actual Manager isn’t likely to make most of the same decisions and the other team doesn’t have a manager at all it isn’t going to show anything of predictive value. It’s still interesting that 93 wins were accrued with Jimerson, Reed Wilkerson and others getting a good deal of ABs with that though.
You can go look at diamond-mind.com and look for their past season runs (lot higher sample sizes). They also do an annual article for ESPN, I believe, that should be easily available. Use your Google-fu.
DMZ
Sometimes you have to just have to put your $$$ (or even a nice bottle of single malt) where your projections are… I’ll take the over on the projected wins and spot you a game so you can sleep at night through out the long season.
Seriously, if you had to bet your life, who here, among this very educated crowd would take the ‘under’ on the win total?
I know if you use inferential statistics in science, stock trading or business – when something smells funny { “AL West Champ… Your Fremont Athletic’s!”} you have got to be a little bit skeptical of your model, data and/or methodology.
[we've hit our quota of "you hate the Mariners" posts for today, try again later]
[we've hit our quota of "you hate the Mariners" posts for today, try again later]
Ok, so I know I am probably going to get blasted for this, but I want to hope against hope for a little bit. I agree this trade hurts us offensively and defensively, but I do think there is a chance that the M’s surprise us.
I played college baseball, and we were pretty good. We had an ace my freshman year that was absolutely dominating. We were a very good hitting team and he mowed us down every time we hit live. Once, in a fall ball game he threw a 15 strike out, 5 inning perfect game.
I know that this is a stats oriented web site, and I agree whole heartedly with the analysis of USSM, but I also know that on the days our ace threw, we were real loose. We knew that we only needed to get a run or two and we could win. Most of the time, we put up huge offensive numbers because there was no pressure to produce, we knew Kenny(our ace) would keep us in the game.
I am hoping that the M’s will play this way when Bedard and Felix pitch. Hopefully their confidence in these two will allow them to stop trying to hit 8 run HR’s, and just play ball. Remember half of this game is 90% mental.
In support of Dave and Derek:
As a former “USSM is so pessimistic!” type poster, I think that before arguing with Dave and Derek, one must first consider that they have historically been correct about the implications and potential consequences of the Mariners’ FO decisions. When Dave and DMZ respond to someone, such as manjini, who thinks that they are simply pessimists who use numbers to their advantage, this is pretty much a waste of their time. I am not saying we should squash all arguing and discussion, because differing opinions are good. However, it is unfair to continually raise the idea the Dave and Derek are just grumpy statheads who hate the current M’s situation. If they weren’t die-hard fans, why would they spend so much of their time committed to expressing their opinions and posting on this blog. For example, there are plenty of aspects of the M’s which they love: Felix, Beltre, the young guys in the farm system, Ichiro, Betancourt, and so on. It’s OK to be an optimistic fan, but don’t depend on the intangibles such as veteran leadership, two aces (with crappy overall defense) and clubhouse chemistry to get the M’s into the playoffs.
Thank you Dave and Derek, for TRYING to get your points across. This blog is awesome!!!
Some of the newbie drivel here reminds me of a story from a few years back. Anybody, please correct the particulars, I have only a vague memory of the details. DMZ wrote a piece for the Weekly, which laid out the case for the M’s being a sub-.500 team. The predictable result was that some fans got all riled up and one wrote a letter to the editor calling DMZ “Dumbsteg” and stating unequivocally that the M’s would seriously outperform the projection. What happened? DMZ’s projection was pretty close to the final W-L record and the “Dumbsteg” guy, to the best of my knowledge, never wrote a follow-up letter to the editor admitting what a dumbass he was.
I predict a repeat of this phenomenon in 2008.
Also, before last season, there was a PECOTA forecast that the White Sox would win 72 games. A Chicago columnist, Dave van Dyck, wrote a column, dripping with contempt for the “surreal world of computers” that made the prediction. His tone reminded me of Geoff Baker’s. What was the White Sox record in 2007, you ask? 72-90.
<i> and </i> for italics
<blockquote> and </blockquote>for an indented quote should do it.
Just a random thought. For the sake of argument, lets say the M’s win it all this year but then fall into the crapper the next three years, would it be worth it?
Uhmmmm…30+ years with no title… If the M’s could take a WS and then have 3 down years I think it’s worth it. If anybody thought that’s really what was going on there would not be as much complaint. I know I’d take a WS and 4 down years as a cycle I’d be pretty happy with. 2 WS every 10 years is pretty good no matter what the other years look like.
169 – that seems to be the goal of the front office, but there seems to be a consensus among USSM posters (my opinion included also) that the front office hasn’t come anywhere near creating a team with realistic playoff chances. They’ve potentially put the team “into the crapper” in a couple years without boosting the present to the playoffs, let alone the World Series.
If there’s a Bedard extension, I retract the “crapper” statement, but with no extension, I think that’s exactly where they’ll be.
With respect to everyone who has played baseball below the professional level: It’s not the same. The variation in skill from top to bottom below professional ball is huge. The fact that there can even be a five-inning, fifteen-strikeout perfect game says all you need to know: that pitcher is on a different plane than the people he’s pitching to. Differences like that level out by the minor leagues; by the major leagues, everybody who has made it — Willie Bloomquist, Horacio Ramirez, everybody — was a star wherever they came from. Unless you’ve played in the major leagues, or somewhere close, you really have no idea what that level of competition is like. In particular, if you think you know more about major league baseball than what years of statistical analysis say, than you are — I’m sorry — making more of your own experience than it’s worth.
172- go back and read my post again. I didn’t say I knew more than years of statistical analysis, here is what I said, “Ok, so I know I am probably going to get blasted for this, but I want to hope against hope for a little bit.”
I still think it is highly unlikely that the M’s challenge the Angels, but since I am an M’s fan and I want them to win, my only hope is to grasp at straws. Obviously, Bedard isn’t going to be throwing any 15 K, 5 inning perfect games, but Major Leaguers are people, and who is pitching does make a difference. Enough of a difference? I doubt it.
Also, I totally agree with you, Major Leaguers are on a totally different level. My freshman year I played against Ryan Franklin when he was at Seminole. I lead off with a bunt hit and stole second. Our next hitter doubled, and our 3 hitter singled to drive him in.
The pitching coach came out and lit him up. I heard words that I didn’t even know existed. Franklin was untouchable the rest of the game. He struck me out the next at bat on a slider that totally baffled me, and then he got me on a fastball that I had no shot at. They came back to beat us 3-2 and we didn’t have another base runner.
In my opinion, to say that he was a star, doesn’t begin to tell the story.
Derek,
The same advice you once gave Corco:
Ride a bike, get a date.
Ryan Franklin? I heard once that he was from Spiro, Oklahoma.
*strangling noises*
John –
I ran the sims overnight, so it’s not as if my continuous time investment was a day — it was a couple hours getting everything working and tweaked properly, and then I went and read a book while it did its thing.
I appreciate the thought, though.
of course, with the M’s in recent years, when they felt they only needed to score ‘a run or two’, that’s just what has happened.
And then they needed to score that one extra run … and didn’t
Well put together post and info.
BUT – there’s one piece of additional information that would be EXTREMELY helpful in judging the accuracy/utility of the systematic approach.
What did the exact same approach predict for the 2007 Ms?
The biggest failure I see from many analysts is an inability (or unwillingness) to post BOTH projections and previous results.
Mind you – it’s quite possible for any system to have five consecutive “hits” and then be wildly off the 6th year. The question then is attempting to discern WHY it was off, (was it something systemic – or something organic with a team that the system simply didn’t/doesn’t account for).
I recall almost every pre-season pick for the Ms in 2007 being extremely negative. And I suspect that if you were told ahead of time that the defense would drop from 13th in DER to 27th, the projections would’ve been even more drastically negative.
Well, actually, I thought a lot of the 2007 projections were in the 81-84 win area, with some handful showing the team battling the Angels. That doesn’t make the actual results quite that remarkable.
Derek- Thanks for all the hard work, bought you a beer! Also, when you were running all those M’s sims did you take a look at Adam’s numbers in Baltimore? I got almost the exact same results you did in my DMB seasons.
Dave, congrats on being a delegate! This was my third caucus and it’s always fun to get involved at this level.
I saw a guy on the side of the road with a sign, “Will toil with numbers for beer.” Now I can put a name to the face.
What is the estimation error of these simulations? (i.e. what is the 1 standard dev measure across all win number forecasts–that is, if you took all pre-2008 projections for all teams using the same assumption set, and took the difference between that and actual number of wins, what is the std. dev. of that set of numbers? I would assume the mean is statistically identical to zero.)
Please? Bonus beers if author answers; simulated knuckle-touch for anyone else.
BTW am I the only one to notice “whole” in right field in the OP? I had to read it three times to make sure because Derek rarely misspells.
Also, “Ibanez makes that offense bad, and the infield doesn’t make up for it” should be “Ibanez makes that outfield bad, and the infield doesn’t make up for it”.
178 –
“I recall almost every pre-season pick for the Ms in 2007 being extremely negative.”
I honestly don’t remember this, but perhaps your definition of ‘extremely negative’ differs. I know the Hardball Times had the M’s at 82-80, I saw a number of 80-85 win projections, many at 83 wins or so (isn’t that what USSM had? I don’t remember). None of that sounded terribly pessimistic, and indeed, it wasn’t far off. Eyeballing the ZiPS numbers, they were perhaps a bit lower than that, but I haven’t run the DMB seasons.
Clearly, the drop in DER/team defense has a lot to do with the surprisingly low projections for 2008, but I don’t think there were many 75 win projections last year.
Why is it that nobody seems to want to run the numbers for 2007? I’ve been trying to find somewhere that retained the pre-season projections for 2007 using ZIPS and DMB, but so far, no luck. (I’ve found some of the individual team projections for 2007 – and frankly, the few I’ve looked at were often WILDLY out of whack.
I think it’s completely fair for DMZ to say – “if you don’t like the results, than talk to the system.”
Well, I have ZERO sense for how accurate the system *HAS BEEN*, except for a few comments of “well, I think so and so was projected last season.” Memories are imperfect. I happen to remember almost exclusively negative pre-2007 projections – most projecting FEWER wins for the Ms in 2007 than they had in 2006. But, I didn’t log them, so maybe I just happen to remember more negative projections than their were – or maybe they were just had more interesting commentary.
But, all that aside – for ANY projection system, I want to see how it has done in the past. The easiest way to get this picture is to plug in 2007 projections and look at 2007 results.
If it projected the Ms runs differential correctly and a 79-83 record, then maybe I buy into this year’s projections a bit more. If it was off by 50-60 runs (either way), or wildly off-target for Cleveland or Detroit or Oakland, then that would be helpful as well in adjusting my personal sense of how useful the sims actually are.
I HAVE found the 2007 player projections for the 2007 Ms. Here are the actual results (OPS) – followed by ZIPs projections for 2007.
POS – Player – REAL – ZIPS (diff)
CA – Johjima – .755 – .771 – (+16)
1B – Sexson — .694 – .814 – (+130)
2B – J Lopez – .629 – .737 – (+108)
3B – A Beltre- .801 – .779 – (-22)
SS – YuBet — .726 – .697 – (-29)
LF – Ibanez — .831 – .800 – (-31)
CF – Ichiro — .827 – .779 – (-48)
RF – Guillen – .813 – .776 – (-37)
DH – J Vidro – .775 – .726 – (-49)
(ERA)
SP1 – Felix —- 3.92 – 3.71 (-.21)
SP2 – Washburn – 4.32 – 4.45 (+.23)
SP3 – Batista — 4.29 – 4.62 (+.33)
SP4 – HoRam —- 7.16 – 5.13 (-2.03)
SP5 – Weav/Piner 6.20 – 5.10 (-1.10) * Weaver not on the projection – so Pineiro was the projected primary #5.
From MY perspective, these projections paint a picture of an unreliable system, which is PRONE to underprojection (at least for Ms hitters). There were two players who each hit WILDLY under their previous norms. I understand why those projections were off, and I wouldn’t expect any system to do better.
But 6 out of the 7 “normal” hitters for the season are underprojected. I could take this as a case of park effect perhaps being too freely used – except for the pitching — the #5 slot really doesn’t apply. And HoRam was an utter disaster.
But, the thing that baffles me is Wash/Batista. Two pitchers with LONG histories, were both negatively projected (compared to reality) *DESPITE* the fact that the team DER fell from 13th to 27th between 2006 and 2007.
===
For 2008, the team has *ONE* batter at an age where there is legitimate concern of decline based on age – (Ibanez).
Age-declines typically become “significant” at age 36.
So, given the 2007 system CONSISTENTLY underprojected for players having “typical” seasons, I would expect that the 2008 projections are likely to have a similar bias. This would lead me to expect the 2008 run production projections for said system to be generally lower than what the actual will be.
I believe that the fact Seattle managed to post a 104 team OPS+ in 2007 *DESPITE* having two players MASSIVELY under projection, (and zero players massively over expectation) is an indication that inherently, the club WAS (and is) a slightly above average hitting team. They should, therefore, continue to produce slightly above average runs.
As for runs allowed – the team had roughly 350 innings from HoRam/Weaver/Baek/Fear that were significantly worse than replacement level. (280 runs in those innings). These will be replaced by Silva and Bedard. If you use NOT the 2007 numbers – but the 2006 numbers for Silva/Bedard, (when Silva posted a career WORST 5.94 ERA), they allowed 222 runs in 376 innings. That’s a 60 run improvement easily, if you shave off the extra 26 innings. That’s not optimized – that’s specifically examining worst-case scenario for Silva – and “only” using Bedard’s 2006 production.
If you use their career 162-game averages, you end up with 179 runs allowed in 365 innings. THAT would be a 100 run improvement – again – NOT optimized to paint a rosier than reasonable picture.
The only pitcher on the club with “danger-zone” age decline concerns is Batista. Of course, the club still has Morrow, who holds potential to be an excellent #6 starter and stop-gap fill-in for any injuries.
Sherill’s departure might hurt some, yes. But Seattle threw roughly 50 more RELIEF innings than most other MLB clubs last season. If they get an extra 50 innings out of Bedard/Silva (likely – given they replace the Ho-mess that were the 4/5 slots in the rotation), than whatever negative impact is realized by said departure “should” be minimized.
In the end, even if ZIPS/DMB is the “best” projection system available – it doesn’t mean it is good. But, thus far, I have zero sense for how good it may or may not be.
So, given the 2007 system CONSISTENTLY underprojected for players having “typical†seasons, I would expect that the 2008 projections are likely to have a similar bias.
Looking at just the M’s is a poor sample. Surveys of ZiPS’ overall predictions found them quite good.
There’s also an assumption there that posting a higher-than-expected result in 07 means that they should continue to produce more than expected. If you think it’s underpredicting M’s because of park effects, that might be true, but I don’t see a lot of evidence that ZiPS is missing because of park.
Hey guys,
Sorry for being a jerk here in the comments. Believe it or not, I really didn’t mean to be. But reading back… well, I tried to make a point, but yeah… it got too personal. I apologize to Derek in particular. I’ll think my posts through more in the future.
Now here’s a legit question and forgive me is this is answered somewhere that I missed:
How does a sim like this factor in all 25 men on the team? Given that we don’t know who will fill out 4-6 of the spots yet (though your current post makes some good stabs at it), does the sim just take into account the starting nine, rotation, and key bullpen pitchers? I doubt it makes that much difference, but just curious.
The A’s plans are to use Justin Duscherer as a starter this year.
I think the 2008 rotation for the A’s will be something like Blanton, Harden (while he lasts), Gaudin, Duscherer, DiNardo.