Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 8/6/14
| 11:43 |
: It’s Wednesday, so let’s talk baseball for an hour or so.
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| 11:43 |
: The queue is now open and we’ll start in about 15 minutes.
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| 12:03 |
It’s Wednesday, so let’s talk Javier Baez for an hour or so. |
| 12:03 |
: The Alfonso Soriano comparison feels lazy, but also feels pretty accurate. Hope you enjoyed the Soriano experience the first time, Cubs fans, because you might just get it again.
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| 12:04 |
Apparently the Cards and John Lackey have come to some kind of unofficial agreement about his option for next season. Am I correct in assuming it’ll a 1 or 2 year deal at or slightly above market value to make up for being underpaid for one season? |
| 12:04 |
: Lackey said after the trade that he will honor the $500,000 option because he likes STL. He also noted he wouldn’t have done that for every city. I still wouldn’t be too surprised if STL made that option go away with a two year deal for real money.
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| 12:05 |
What do you think it will take for the Phillies to remove RAJ from his position? Most other teams would have made a move by now, no? |
| 12:05 |
: I’m completely speculating with no inside information, but I think he gets fired this winter and they start over with someone else.
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| 12:05 |
Is this the second time you’ve gotten a writer from The Score? Didn’t Eno do a turn there, too? |
| 12:06 |
: Eno wrote for us before he wrote for them. They hired a bunch of FG people — Wendy Thurm and Jack Moore also — and so we’re just returning the favor.
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| 12:06 |
: I guess I should note for those who didn’t see it on Twitter: Drew Fairservice, formerly of The Score, is going to write for us. He debuts soon.
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| 12:07 |
Hey Dave, what’s the general intent of a team that blocks someone on a revocable waiver in August? Is that team made known to the other GM’s and if so are there consequences usually? |
| 12:07 |
: The intent is to stop your opponents from getting better. The other GMs might not like it, but it’s a completely rational decision.
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| 12:08 |
Orioles now have the largest lead in all of baseball! Why are they always considered to be the worst division leader in baseball? |
| 12:08 |
: Because they’re leading the worst division?
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| 12:09 |
The phillies doing nothing was dumb, but it wasn’t exactly surprising. Were there any deadline moves that surprised you? |
| 12:09 |
: I wouldn’t have guessed that the Tigers were going to be the team to end up with Price.
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| 12:09 |
What do you think of Austin Jackson as a player, and as a return for Nick Franklin in the Mariners situation? I’m not sure you’ve written about it. |
| 12:10 |
: Above average center fielder, fills a big need. They’d basically eliminated any chance Franklin would have value in Seattle, so it’s a rational trade, if not one that will look great in a few years, especially if Jackson doesn’t re-sign for a below market deal.
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| 12:10 |
3 Ks, a scorching LD out, and a 400+ ft HR…..did I self-describe my skillset in 1 game? |
| 12:10 |
: Pretty much, yeah.
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| 12:11 |
What are the odds that Corey Kluber actually beats out Felix for the Cy Young? |
| 12:11 |
: I’d say less than 5%. Unless Felix dies down the stretch, the award is his.
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| 12:11 |
Can the Cubs compete in 2015? They have a ton of talent on the way, and should be able to spend a ridiculous amount this offseason. |
| 12:11 |
: It’s not entirely crazy. By BaseRuns, they’re a .500ish team right now.
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| 12:12 |
What kind of contract would you offer the Panda? |
| 12:12 |
: Short and expensive. Maybe 3/60 or 4/75 or something?
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| 12:13 |
FG never respects the O’s talent because the numbers say they have been playing over their heads for 3 years…When do stat guys realize that they just aren’t measuring this teams talent correctly? |
| 12:13 |
: Maybe you should look into a concept called “random variation”.
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| 12:14 |
Dave- Any chance the Cubs open the wallet this winter for Lester, Scherzer, and/or Shields? Isn’t this the perfect time to get a great pitcher or two? Pitchers of this caliber (and relative youth) rarely come on the open market. |
| 12:14 |
: I could see them going after Scherzer.
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| 12:15 |
Re Price deal: everybody praises Dombrowski for the trade, but including his trade of the winter in the picture, I don’t think that (David Price value) > (Fister + Smyly + Jackson) values on the field and $-wise. What do you think? Thanks |
| 12:16 |
: I think everybody is praising Dombrowski for the Price trade because they’re dramatically underselling the value of Smyly and Franklin. People are far too interested in perceived upside and star potential and not nearly interested enough in quality above average players making no money.
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| 12:17 |
Do you see any pitchers having a David Price type call up for the pennant run? |
| 12:17 |
: There aren’t any David Price type pitching prospects right now, so no.
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| 12:17 |
What should the Phillies be doing this offseason? Should being the operative word |
| 12:17 |
: Find a new GM, blow the thing up.
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| 12:18 |
Who do you expect to be the biggest name moved during the waiver trading season? |
| 12:18 |
: Probably Alex Rios.
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| 12:18 |
: In other words, big names aren’t moving.
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| 12:19 |
Dave – really enjoyed the piece estimating the cost of a win acquired midseason. Does it substantially change the analysis in the case of a trade like Samardzija if Oakland were to deal him in the offseason? The cost of his additional wins should then not just be whatever the A’s paid, but whatever the A’s paid – whatever they receive in return? I know this is no longer “midseason” and thus might not fit into your discussion, but that has to matter for executives making these kinds of calculations, yes? It seems like your model works much better for pure rentals (especially since there is no need to estimate the cost of draft pick compensation). |
| 12:20 |
: If you buy a car for $35,000, drive it for six months, and then sell it for $25,000, you don’t say the new car only costs $10,000; you pro-rate that cost to the short amount of time you owned the vehicle. So, yes, the A’s could reclaim some percentage of the value they lost by trading away Russell, but it would be a fraction of the price they paid.
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| 12:20 |
: That’s why the A’s traded for Samardzija and not Price, by the way. Samardzija they can keep; Price they couldn’t.
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| 12:21 |
What’s a Pythagorean record? I saw that on a Fangraphs chat and wasn’t familiar with it. |
| 12:21 |
: It’s an estimate of expected wins based on runs scored and runs allowed.
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| 12:21 |
Where does Wade Davis fit in in a “best reliever in baseball” conversation? |
| 12:21 |
: Somewhere on the outside of the conversation.
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| 12:22 |
If you were forced into the role of GM, what would you do differently than the rest of the league? |
| 12:22 |
: Hire an actually qualified GM to tell me what to do.
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| 12:22 |
I was shocked to discover that a HBP is an AB, not a PA. Why do they score it that way? It hurts a player’s avg. if he gets hit. |
| 12:22 |
: That’s not true.
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| 12:23 |
Re: Cole Hamels — in one sentence, Rob’s position is that he’s relatively inexpensive to keep, and your position is that that is what makes him much more valuable of a trade asset (and therefore can speed up the rebuild process) — is that fair? |
| 12:23 |
: I’d say my position is more that Hamels is a depreciating asset, and rebuilding teams shouldn’t hang onto those.
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| 12:24 |
Very pumped that you’ve hired Drew Fairservice! How often should we expect to see his work? |
| 12:24 |
: Several times per week.
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| 12:24 |
How do you avoid redundant research/writing about baseball? Do you just have a strong sense of what’s already out there due to the nature of your work, or is there a process you have to survey the literature? |
| 12:25 |
: It’s basically impossible. I try to keep up with what’s been written, but there are so many people writing about baseball now that it’s inevitable that we’re going to cover ground already covered.
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| 12:26 |
But this time the Soriano experience costs us ~$100 million less! |
| 12:26 |
: Yes, that should make it more enjoyable.
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| 12:26 |
If Franklin was traded to a team considered less smart than the Rays, would people be as optimistic about his upside? |
| 12:27 |
: If they’re rational, sure. The projections suggested Franklin was something like an average player long before TB acquired him. The key is that the Rays actually value cheap average players, while fans do not.
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| 12:27 |
Any reason for the Orioles not to put a claim in on Chase Utley with that awful, glaring need at 2B? (I understand that Schoop could be the future and Utley has another year on his deal.) |
| 12:27 |
: Utley has a no-trade and doesn’t want to waive it.
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| 12:28 |
What is Buehrle’s trade value in the offseason? Wouldn’t it be smart for the Blue Jays to trade him then sign someone like McCarthy? |
| 12:28 |
: Sure, but it would be smart of the other teams to not trade for Buehrle and sign McCarthy themselves.
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| 12:28 |
What would it mean for Lackey *not* to honor the $500,000 option? |
| 12:29 |
: He could have simply told whichever team traded for him that he wanted an extension/raise or he’d retire. You can’t force a guy to play .
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| 12:29 |
Is Wendy done here then? |
| 12:30 |
: No, Wendy still writes for us. I was referencing FG writers who had also written for The Score before they got rid of all their writers.
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| 12:30 |
Do you think Beane & Co. felt confident moving Cespedes because they liked what they saw in Reddick |
| 12:31 |
: No. I think they were okay moving Cespedes because they got a better player in return.
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| 12:31 |
Thoughts on the Padres hiring of Preller? |
| 12:32 |
: It should be a pretty big culture change for that organization. Preller was basically known for two things in Texas: helping the Rangers win the international market on a regular basis and pissing people off in the process.
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| 12:32 |
Who wins the NL MVP? |
| 12:33 |
: Kershaw, I think. Would think Puig had a better chance of winning if sportswriters didn’t hate him.
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| 12:33 |
Do the projections systems have every prospect panning out (at least to some degree)? Or do the take into account the history of prospet failure. For example, in yiur piece where you said no to the Hamels for 3 top prospects, you had all 3 of those guys workung out rather well – when I’d assume history would disagree. |
| 12:34 |
: No, I didn’t have all three guys working out well. The value of a prospect is based on both the potential reward and the likelihood of reaching that reward. If you have a $10 million lottery ticket with a 10% chance of success, you have a $1 million asset, even though there’s a 90% chance it’s actually worthless.
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| 12:34 |
Why do you think that people have such a hard time accepting that some events occur due to random variation and not some discernible cause? |
| 12:34 |
: People hate the idea of randomness.
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| 12:35 |
: And they especially hate it as an explanation for why their favorite team isn’t as good as they want it to be.
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| 12:35 |
The best part of having Cistulli as a house guest is _____. The worst part is _____. |
| 12:35 |
: Liberty loved him. Liberty hated seeing him leave.
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| 12:36 |
is there a pitcher alive who should be allowed to pitch into the eighth inning of a postseason game? |
| 12:36 |
: Depends on pitch count, number of batters faced, score, etc… If it’s not close, sure, save the bullpen. If it is close, maybe Kershaw.
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| 12:37 |
In your piece advocating a Hamels trade you state that Jered Weaver has declined significantly since being a top-10 pitcher by WAR from 08-12. How significantly has he declined? My perception is he’s adapted well to pitching with diminished stuff. |
| 12:37 |
: His 97 ERA- is the second worst mark of his career.
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| 12:38 |
: He might very well be adapting, but he’s adapted into a less effective pitcher.
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| 12:39 |
Who are you highest on among all the Cubs young guys: Alcantara, Baez, Bryant, Russell, … |
| 12:39 |
: Bryant and Russell, big gap, everyone else.
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| 12:40 |
I’m not a Cubs fan, but I do believe their rebuild is on the right track. Yet there are detractors who really focus on the lack of top-flight pitching prospects in their system. Do these detractors have a legit concern, or are they grasping at straws? |
| 12:40 |
: PItching is the easy part.
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| 12:40 |
: The Cubs are doing gerat.
|
| 12:40 |
: Unlike my ability to spell.
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| 12:40 |
What is BaseRuns? |
| 12:41 |
: The most accurate model of estimating run scoring given the basic event types: single, double, walk, home run, etc…
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| 12:42 |
Do you expect Joc or Seager to be in the Opening Day lineup for the Dodgers in 2015? |
| 12:42 |
: Pederson maybe, Seager no.
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| 12:42 |
listening to the Brewer’s broadcast, which is actually decent, on Sandoval’s defense, you would think that he is Miggy with an arm. Yet this is his second season of being a very valuable defensive third baseman. Will people ever see past the girth |
| 12:43 |
: He’s a very good defensive third baseman. The inability of people to evaluate defense by anything other than size is a reason why the eye test doesn’t really work.
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| 12:44 |
I totally understand and agree with the o’s as the posterboys of random variation, but in theory how long would a player/team have to consistently do something weird for the models to change? |
| 12:45 |
: You’d have to prove that they are more than two standard deviations from the mean over a significant period of time. The Angels routinely beat their expected records for years, and people presumed that Mike Scioscia was a wizard, and then it magically went away, and no one has ever really explained why.
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| 12:45 |
Since the Tigers traded for Price, is there any chance they re-sign Scherzer? And if they don’t re-sign Scherzer, do they extend Price? |
| 12:45 |
: I’d say there’s no chance at all they re-sign Scherzer.
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| 12:45 |
What happens if a player with no trade clause is claimed on waivers? |
| 12:45 |
: He still has the right to veto the move.
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| 12:47 |
You’re the son of mechanics, so I’ve got a car question. My car (2011 BMW 135i) just had a light come on this morning saying “low coolant”, then go back off about 10 seconds later and not return. Is this trouble? Apparently I can only go to the dealership to get it fixed and I really don’t want to do that if I don’t have to |
| 12:47 |
: Google “import mechanic (your city here)” and call and ask them. There’s no reason you should have to take the car to the dealer.
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| 12:48 |
C’mon, we’re going on over 400 games over the past 2 3/4 years and we’re still playing the “Orioles are a mediocre team lucking into their .550 winning %” card? Is it possible the FanGraphs analysis isn’t accurately measuring this team? |
| 12:48 |
: Am I the only one who saw the Orioles not be very good last year?
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| 12:48 |
Can you explain the Jacob Turner DFA? Can’t wrap my head around it. |
| 12:48 |
: Well, he’s not very good.
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| 12:49 |
I’m hearing the “Price makes too much money” stuff a lot. But that only matters to some of the teams in baseball. If you are the Yankees, Tigers, or Dodgers money doesn’t seem to be a factor. While Franklin and Smyly have value, they have more value to the Rays than Tigers. Price has more value to the Tigers because he is better and money isn’t a big factor. I am skeptical of payroll restrictions anyways. They seem very artificial when all teams are making money |
| 12:49 |
: This is 100% wrong.
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| 12:50 |
Would you be for or against a rebuilding team signing an elite player just to trade him a few months later? At least ethically. Let’s say Houston signed Robinson cano and he didn’t have a NTC then they flipped him last week for prospects. |
| 12:50 |
: At the price it would take a team like Houston to sign Cano, he would have negative trade value.
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| 12:50 |
Re: Hamels – you’ve also written in the past that tearing things down and being terrible for several years can have serious negative ramifications for the franchise. I don’t think an Astros style makeover is the right move for a franchise with the Phillies resources |
| 12:51 |
: I’ve never advocated for the Phillies to do that. Trading Hamels != being the Astros. Trade him and be the 2013 Red Sox if you want. There’s nothing to stop the Phillies from re-spending the money they would otherwise pay Hamels.
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| 12:51 |
Is it hard living in a state that doesn’t have an MLB team? |
| 12:52 |
: Not really. The value of attending a game in person isn’t particularly high for me personally.
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| 12:53 |
: That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it, but it doesn’t really have a huge positive impact on my job.
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| 12:53 |
How silly will you feel when the Orioles win the division? At the beginning of the year, you said they weren’t a very good team and, as of a week ago, still dismissed their chances of taking the East. |
| 12:53 |
: How would you feel if you told me a coin had a 50/50 chance of landing heads or tails and then landed on heads five times in a row?
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| 12:54 |
But “cheap average players” only matter if you have some star-type players at the top to push you to the playoffs, right? |
| 12:54 |
: Not really. If you get 15 average players, the simple properties of variation mean that several of them will perform like stars for a year.
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| 12:55 |
: It remains a mystery to me that people can continue to reject the notion of the value of a balanced roster of non-stars in the same year that the A’s are the best team in baseball.
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| 12:56 |
Since players have to clear waivers to be traded this month, can they only be traded for prospects or other major leaguers who also cleared waivers? How does that work? |
| 12:56 |
: Teams get around that by trading them for players to be named later. You have six months to name a PTBNL, so they just wait until the waiver process is over and then name the player. The catch is that a player cannot appear in the majors after the trade, so you can’t PTBNL some guy on your big league roster.
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| 12:57 |
Realistically, could Mike Trout be the best baseball player of all time? |
| 12:57 |
: Not unless he also learns how to pitch.
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| 12:58 |
Cespedes strikes me as the classic avoid giving big money out to guy. Flashy. But plays a corner OF spot. Powerful. But an only-above average-ish offensive player. Someone gives him $100M. Amaro, ya listening?? |
| 12:58 |
: Yeah, it’s difficult to see a scenario in which Cespedes is anything but a free agent landmine.
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| 12:59 |
Why aren’t more teams selling at the deadline if the return on investment is around $15 mil/war? seems like the easiest way to build a strong team (i.e. how the cubs have been rolling) |
| 12:59 |
: Most bad teams don’t have a ton of good assets to sell, which is why they’re bad in the first place.
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| 12:59 |
Not arguing your point on Smyly/franklin, but isn’t Price in Detroit a move to finally win that WS a win for Detroit too? Also, if Tigs can sign Price for around what they offered Max, isn’t that a good thing too? Because i think it was safe to say Max was already gone. |
| 1:00 |
: Yes, that was the point of the deal for the Tigers. And I said in my write-up last Thursday that I liked the deal for Detroit. I simply reject the notion that the Tigers “stole” Price from the Rays or that the Rays made a bad trade. The people advancing that argument are simply performing poor analysis.
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| 1:01 |
As I recall you wrote an article on why the Dodgers shouldn’t trade for Lester about a week ago. Agree thoroughly with them not needing a starter, but especially with Beckett not pitching through the fifth inning on a regular basis, what are your thoughts on the Dodger bullpen, winning the division, and doing at all well in the postseason? |
| 1:01 |
: I would have liked to see them get in on Andrew Miller and maybe go after another reliever too. I doubt they’re done, though. Relievers get moved in August.
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| 1:02 |
On Jonah Keri’s podcast, Rosenthal mentioned that he disagreed with FG and others who say mid-season trades don’t have much impact. He argued that the smartest numbers guys in baseball are making them (GMs) so they must matter. What do you think of this appeal to authority? |
| 1:02 |
: I think it’s misconstruing the argument. A trade can both not matter that much and still be worth doing.
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| 1:04 |
Why did you name your dog Liberty? |
| 1:04 |
: It’s a personal story, but it has to do with restoring my wife’s birthday month after a couple of hard years.
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| 1:04 |
your least favorite prospect that everyone else seems to love and why |
| 1:04 |
: Archie Braldey, Aaron Sanchez, insert name of bad command two pitch guy with big velo here.
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| 1:05 |
Is Season To Date BaseRuns better at describing what has happened, or what will happen? |
| 1:05 |
: What has happened.
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| 1:05 |
Can we get an update on your pup? |
| 1:06 |
: She’s over a year old now, has topped out at about 50 pounds, and is still a massive bundle of energy. But also still adorable.
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| 1:07 |
:
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| 1:07 |
: Here’s a recent-ish photo.
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| 1:08 |
: And on that note, I’m off to grab some lunch.
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| 1:09 |
: Neil Weinberg will be here in a few hours to answer questions you have about the site or our data, and Eno will be here tomorrow.
|
| 1:09 |
: See you guys next week.
|
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
What do you make of Bryce Harper’s struggles post thumb injury so far…worrisome(especially the 1 HR part…and only 3 homers on the year) or will he figure it out?
Shut up, Orioles fans. Just shut up.
O’s fan here.
I do not condone the whining, even if I think the team is a little underrated by the national media. What fan doesn’t? Despite being in last place, a good half of the stories written by ESPN, etc. are about the Red Sox. The Red Sox and the Yankees have bigger fan bases, which lead to more clicks, which leads to greater revenue, and ESPN is a business, so I get that much. But even stathead favorites, such as the Rays, receive more attention despite a tiny fan base and a mediocre year. In the national media, the Orioles condescendingly treated as a secondary character in the AL East storyline–Baltimore should know their place well enough to keep quiet while the real actors change clothes in the dressing room.
They don’t have the recent success and popularity of Boston, they don’t have the historical branding of the Yankees, and they aren’t the manifestation of, for lack of a better term, fangraphs-era baseball analysis the way the Rays are. The Orioles don’t have a nice and neat narrative angle, which leads to less exposure.
Baltimore as a city has an inferiority complex, stuck between Washington DC and NYC, and this sort of thing just inflames the feeling. The whining is unbecoming, but it’s also understandable. (I say this as someone who lives three hours away from Baltimore.) Obviously the only way to change any of that is to just keep winning games. Whining for respect does nothing.
Though I suspect fans from a lot of teams come on here and complain about this or that and, for whatever reason, Cameron decided to answer a disproportionate amount of them, basically answering the same question again and again.
I like the O’s but I’m not a fan per se. It isn’t the same as a coin flip. Their pythag was only slightly above .500 in 2012 and they way outperformed it, they equaled their pythag last year, slightly better this year. I haven’t checked base runs but basically they keep getting pegged as a below .500 team and are consistently better than that. Some of it is luck but some of it seems to be they are better than people give them credit for.
Is your evidence that they consistently outperform projections based on the fact that they’ve done so for 3 years now? If so, how is that different than flipping heads 3 times in a row, or for a more accurate baseball analogy, how is it different than the Angels outperforming their projections for a number of years in a row and then suddenly they stopped doing, despite keeping the same management?
It’s not that the Orioles are “bad.” Average teams are not bad teams, and average teams can beat out good teams when the sample size is small enough and the difference isn’t large to begin with. The Orioles are an average to above-average and they have outperformed their projections. They have been the exception to the rule, but that doesn’t mean the rule doesn’t hold its water. The projections don’t say what can and cannot happen, so the Orioles winning like this does not disprove the projections. The projections just tell us that this kind of win production is not expected, just like flipping three heads in a row is not expected, but it’s not shocking either.
I’m well aware if all of these things. But there are a hell of a lot more variables than a coin flip at play, and projection systems are far less accurate than projecting a coin will be heads roughly 50% of the time if I flip it a million times. And the range of possible outcomes is far broader. Sure, you can be better or worse. They have been a lot better than expected. They’ve been better than I expected as well.
Well I look at it this way: in 2012 they had that crazy one-run-game record, and last year that flipped on them. I wouldn’t say winning one-run-games means a team is outperforming expectations.
Last year it flipped on them and they still ended up with a better record, pythag and actual, than what had been projected. They weren’t projected to do this well this year either. I was probably wrong to raise them outperforming their pythag. They’ve outperformed projections. Their pythag has outperformed projections.
They had the toughest projected schedule per an fg article earlier this year. They were projected above .500 if i recall correctly (which i think was independent of supposed strength of schedule).
I’m not busting on Dave or sabr. I’m not saying the projections were wrong given the inputs. How could they be? But while it may just be random it is just as likely, given how imperfect projections are (a hell of a lot less certain than a million coin flips), that something is being missed.
Meant to say they were not projected above .500, iirc.
“restoring my wife’s birthday month”?
We had a couple really rough July’s in a row, starting with my leukemia diagnosis coinciding with her birthday. We got the dog, in part, to start having some good memories in July. I’ll leave it at that.
Gotcha. Sounds really nice and sweet (the restoring part, not the other parts). I was thinking that she found out as an adult that what she had thought her whole life was her birthday actually wasn’t or something crazy like that.
Puig finished 15th in the MVP voting last year, behind 12 of the 25 players who had higher WAR than him, Clayton Kershaw, and Craig Kimbrel. He also finished second in the ROY behind Jose Fernandez, getting 4 of 30 first place votes (the other 26 going to Fernandez) and basically all the other second place votes.
The sportwriters, whether or not they actually don’t like Puig, didn’t hurt him. If anything, I’d guess his personality, antics, etc. makes him more likely to be an undeserving guy who wins than a deserving guy who doesn’t.
A lot of the stuff that has made the crotchety types dislike him has happened since those awards were voted on. (Reckless driving, bat flip, etc.)
OTOH, there was that awesome article about his emigration published in March…
Orioles fans are obviously being a little bit defensive here, but “the AL East is the worst division” argument seems like a bit of an exaggeration. Ranked by games over .500 when playing outside the division:
NL Central: +12
AL West: +8
AL East/Central: +7
NL East: -8
NL West: -26
The AL East plays all of their games this year (except the rivalry series) against the rest of the AL and the NL Central, so they’re also the division with the hardest schedules in 2014. Tampa and Boston have both fallen well short of expectations this year, but with Baltimore, Toronto, and New York exceeding expectations, the division has performed as a whole just about as well as any division in baseball. Perhaps you can argue that the division has been fairly lucky as a whole, as they have been slightly outscored as a division.
The AL West has the two best teams in baseball, but it also has two of the worst; LAA/OAK are 17 games over .500 (33-16) JUST in games against HOU/TEX.
Anyway, just some food for thought in comparing the strength of different divisions.
Excellent reply.
The AL East has no truly dominant team, which maybe makes it look soft, but it also doesn’t have any truly weak team. Boston may qualify now, due to their deadline fire sale (which they handled beautifully, in my opinion), but for the majority of the season, there was no bad team.
Parity, as I’m sure Cameron knows, is not the same as weakness.
But it’s easier to win a division with 4 average teams than one with 2 poor teams and 2 excellent teams, no?
No. The eventual division winner in the division with four average teams might not be as good as the winner of a division with two excellent team. But it is significantly harder to deal with two extra teams in the race who could go on a crazy hot streak and play above their talent for a season.
So you are saying it’s harder to beat an average team that may go on a hot streak than a legitimately excellent team? That the Orioles would be better off right now in the AL West than AL East?
This is a very interesting question. I may spin up Bill James favorite toy a bit later to try it out. I’ll reply here with the results if I do.
I admit to the possibility of me being dense, but it seems pretty clear cut to me. To win a division, you must be 1 game better than the second best team. If the second best team is an average team, that’s much easier than if the second best team is an excellent team. The 4-average-team-division will have fewer easy wins, but also fewer difficult wins. Unless you can demonstrate that the 4-average teams are significantly better in total than 2 excellent, 2 poor teams, it seems pretty clear that the path is easier to be the best in the average division.
in what parallel universe is franklin a “quality above average player”??
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=10166&position=2B#longprojection
Projections. He’s a 0.5 WAR player with an awful K rate in 119 MLB games so far.
Felix would win the Cy Young even if he did actually die down the stretch. All other things being equal, people are going to vote for the dead guy.
Orioles fan here. And yes, slightly butthurt. Sorry. But you try being told over and over that your team’s success is due SOLELY to dumb luck and that they aren’t actually any good. And that our .571 winning percentage has nothing at all to do with Dan Duquette’s roster construction or Buck Showalter’s managing. As an Orioles fan, that’s next to impossible to believe. As a baseball fan, I can believe it. But as an O’s fan, that freaking hurts. So you can’t blame fans for getting defensive.
But anyway, okay, so we’re overachieving. We’ve been lucky. Whatever, fine. Much as it hurts me to admit that, smarter and more objective people than I are saying it, and the numbers are saying it as well, so I’m sure it’s true.
Having said all of that, there were still things in this chat that bothered me.
First off, you can’t tell me the AL East is the worst division in baseball. No matter what metric you use, that’s not the case. I’m looking at BaseRuns right now. The NL East has one team (the Nationals) with a positive expected run differential. And Washington is a very good team. I don’t deny that. But it’s all that division has. One really good team and four bad ones. The AL East has three teams (O’s, Rays, Jays) with positive expected run differentials (21, 22, 25, respectively). I see the earlier argument about what would be the easier division to win, a division with two good teams and two bad teams or four average teams. So we’ll say the AL East has three decent teams (slightly above average?) and two bad ones. That’s better than one good/great team and four bad ones. Right?
Next, we aren’t the worst division leader, or at least not decidedly. The Brewers, again by BaseRuns, have a worse expected run differential than we do. So if you go by that, Milwaukee is the worst division leader. And don’t try to give me strength of schedule, because the Cards and Pirates respective expected run differentials (24, 24) are essentially the same as those of the Blue Jays and Rays (25, 22).
Finally, Dave said he remembers the Orioles not being very good last year. We were 85-77, which was also our Pythagorean record if I remember correctly. 85-77 is pretty decent. Obviously it’s not great, but I’d at least call it “good” even if we didn’t make the playoffs.
If I’m wrong (and I could be, because I’m very biased), someone tell me why.
The way some of you people act about the Orioles makes me wonder if we’d get more respect if we were 20 games below .500 and under-performing projections by 40 games. But I guess baseball’s just a crapshoot. What do you do? At the end of the day, as a fan, I shouldn’t care whether people respect us or not (and if we win a WS, I definitely won’t), but I have to admit I kind of do. It bothers me hearing my team get constantly talked down (both by fans and by smart baseball people like Dave), and the idea of my team being lucky rather than good is something with which it is difficult for me to come to terms.
So there’s a fan’s perspective. Instead of telling us to shut up, try understanding our position here.
NL West is the worst division in baseball. AL East is probably the third strongest division.
The thing I honestly don’t understand is why Dave’s (or any writer, or ESPN) saying that the O’s are good is so important. If they’re in first place, and go to the playoffs, and maybe even have some playoff success, who cares? Legitimately wondering how any writer needs to provide validation to a good season, whether it’s flukish or not. If a team I rooted for could scratch their way into the playoffs at 82-80 with a negative run differential, I would take that 100% of the time over being a 92-70 team that garners lots of plaudits, accolades, and media attention but misses out on the WC game by a single game.
I agree with all of that completely. At the end of the day, I am all about the success of my team above all else. I would also rather see a crappy, disrespected Orioles team make the playoffs than a good, respected one miss them.
Still though, as a fan it’s hard not to react when you hear your team get cut down this way. It’s hard not to want to fire back when people call us lucky. For whatever reason, I can’t just not be bothered by that. It’s a natural reaction for me to defend my team against those who criticize it. Any fan would want to defend their team against detractors. Particularly if that team is having its most successful season in decades.
That’s totally fair. Thanks for the response!
Well if the postseason is, as they say, “a crapshoot,” then it’s better to be lucky than good. So, as an Orioles fan, I’m okay with them being a lucky team.