What Has Worked in the Postseason
Billy Beane once famously said that his poop doesn’t work in the postseason, and ostensibly he wasn’t talking about his digestive system. The Athletics will spend another offseason wondering about it. The rest of baseball’s fandom usually thinks about the victors as models. Do the Giants and Royals represent some sort of sea change, do they represent a way to succeed in the postseason?
I thought I’d run some numbers to see what I could find. What I found is — it’s very difficult to study the postseason as an entity.
The first idea was to compare post-season and regular season correlations between certain statistics and winning percentage. The strength of the correlation would only be important as it pertained to the other statistics, in other words. I’m less interested in how strong the relationship between walks and wins is, as I am interested in how much more or less important strikeouts are to wins. A ranking of team skills, in essence.
For the regular season, using records back to 1974, that was easy. All of the p-values were tiny (less than .00001), and all of the relationships existed on a continuum that lines up with how many of us think about baseball. I indexed the rate stats to the league rate stats in every year — the average strikeout rate has undergone many changes in the last thirty-plus years.
| Stat | Correlation to Win% |
|---|---|
| K%+ | 0.044 |
| BSR | 0.061 |
| BB%+ | 0.151 |
| ISO+ | 0.217 |
| wRC+ | 0.453 |
| oWAR | 0.571 |
By leading the league in strikeout rate and stolen bases, the Royals made it to the postseason using excellence in the two stats that correlate very weakly to win percentage. It was an improbable run, though, and we knew that.
Did it become more probable because of those same correlations in the postseason?
We can’t know using this type of analysis. The strongest correlation between regular season team stats and postseason winning percentage belonged to offensive WAR, and that only described 1.3% of the variance in the sample. But low r-squared numbers aside, the real problem is the size of the sample itself. 246 points of data are just not enough — the lowest p-value in the et was .081 (for WAR). The other p values just suggested that the sample was random.
Which it is. Even for the championship winners in the dual wild-card era, we’re talking about 15 games or so. Remember when the Athletics started the season 11-4? That would have won them the World Series in October. Then a slightly different version of the same team went 3-12 in late August and early September. That almost cost them a chance at the postseason.
Perhaps that’s it, full stop. Maybe I should stop there. But I spent a lot of time collating the postseason data, so I didn’t stop there. I took the top 28 of the 246 postseason teams — the teams that won 2/3 of their games, most of them were champions — and compared their regular season work to the work done by the entire sample of postseason teams.
| BSR | wRC+ | WAR | K%+ | BB%+ | ISO+ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| top 28 ave | 1.92 | 104.06 | 27.12 | 96.52 | 105.90 | 105.90 |
| sample ave | 1.78 | 103.48 | 25.95 | 97.48 | 105.75 | 106.63 |
For the most part, this statistically unreliable approach just gives us the no-duh answer. Better teams are better. They have better weighted offensive numbers, they walk more, they strikeout less. Sure.
But there are two things that stood out to me. Probably just confirmation bias, but look at that last column. Postseason winners did not out-slug their opponents once they got to the postseason. Also, even though their regular season walk rates were a little better than other postseason teams, the gap has been very narrow. In fact, the champions set was — relative to other postseason teams — much better at making contact compared to their league.
We know it can’t mean much, but it also does seem worth further thought. Is the postseason any different from the regular season? If not, then power and patience still rule the roost. If it is, though, perhaps collecting the lottery ticket that is the ball in play becomes a more viable strategy once you make it to October.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
It makes sense overall that there would be some advantage to teams whose offensive value comes from speed than from making good contact. Elite pitchers control a batter’s ability to make good contact more than a batter’s ability to bunt for a hit, steal bases, go first-to-third, etc. Plus, October weather is another variable that makes it harder to hit home runs in most parks. A good manager and speed up and down the lineup is not a bad equation for winning a low scoring game.
But not every team had a deep bullpen of quality relievers and aces starting every game. There were also Jeremy Guthries getting postseason starts, and average relievers pitching high leverage innings. These are possibly small advantages at the margins. I would rather roll with the Tigers’ lineup than the Royals’, even if the Royals’ is likely to play up a little bit in the postseason, and the Tigers’ down.
Why didn’t you compare the top 28 teams postseason numbers vs opponents postseason numbers too?
I’ve been studying this for a while now (not study study but reading) and I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to win in the playoffs is to stack your rotation with aces who can strike out a lot, at least two, if not more, and to have a knock-out bullpen. Dodgers with Koufax and Drysdale was the model I always turned to while ruminating on this.
I know, duh, obvious but studies have supported this.
Baseball Prospectus had the most famous study on this, in their book, in the chapter on why Billy Beane’s “stuff” doesn’t work in the playoffs, which they then brought to the website as “The Secret Sauce”.
They have also disavowed it but I think that it didn’t work because they didn’t implement it right on-line, they just simple ranked them and that was never the purpose of the ranking in the book. In the book, teams were ranked historically, and the right way to approach it each season would be to see where each team ranked historically, then analyze.
They key thing is that not every season will have a team sure to win, most could be “meh” historically and thus you get the “crapshoot” effect (but isn’t very interesting analysis or reading, so perhaps this is why he went the way he did it). But if one shines historically, ranked near the top, that’s when you make the call for that team. I tried to replicate their ranking analysis on the Giants 2010 team and I think they would have ranked near the Top 10 that was in the book (I replicated that as well). I’m pretty sure the 2014 team would not have, as the strikeout rate for the team overall wasn’t like it was in prior years.
In any case, their secret sauce was a high K/9 pitching staff (starting and bullpen), high closer WRXL, and high FRA (fielding). They found no correlation between offense and success in the playoffs. They also examined the correlation with a strong starting staff and found some significance there as well.
Fangraphs/THT also did a study and using different methodology, found similarly that teams won with pitching and fielding, that offense during the regular season did not affect success in the playoffs.
I believe I found the key, which is obvious on the face of it, that teams need to build a dominant starting pitching rotation. It is not automatic (see Phillies 2011) but when I used PQS methodology (saber version of QS) to rate games as quality starts or not, it confirmed the obvious that well-pitched games is a huge advantage over lesser-pitched games, generally 80% wins.
Here is the logic I’ve been using. QS games generally maximizes your chance to win, if other team non-QS, almost auto-win, but if matched QS, at least you have a chance to win. Some pitchers (like Bumgarner, Cain, Lincecum in Cy Young years) has a significant percentage of QS, the good ones have at least 50% QS but the best are over 70% (like Bumgarner in 2013). If you build a rotation full of starters who can deal a high percentage of QS, you max your chances to win in playoffs.
Of course, as Peavy showed during his career, just because you have a high QS% during the season does not mean that you are capable of it during the playoffs, so this is not foolproof either.
Furthermore, in today’s game, you need a shutdown bullpen as well. And good defense, because, as we saw in this year’s playoffs, one error is all it takes to lose a game.
So perhaps you should try a different angle to your analysis, skip all the offensive stats and stick mainly with the pitching and fielding stats and see what your analysis brings up.
FYI, BP did not use winning percentage in the playoffs as the correlating variable but devised a scoring function that assigned each playoff team a certain number of points for each advance into the playoffs plus I think there was bonuses for how well they advanced, if I remember right, kind of like using Game Score to rate a pitcher’s start. Thus the higher the score, the better the team did in the playoffs. Can’t remember if this was available in the book or not.
They also used each team’s adjusted rate stats, if I remember right, in order to compare different eras, so that’s different from what you did as well.
I look forward to any further research you pursue along this topic, as I enjoy your writing.
The problem with your theory is we only have to go back three years to refute it. The 2011 Cardinals were not a good defensive team. They were poor on the basepaths. Their team pitching ranked only 7th in the National League in FIP, and they were 22nd in their K/9 rate, and 13th in their K/BB rate. Chris Carpenter was by far their best starter (Wainwright missed the seasons due to Tommy John surgery), but his K rate was slightly below league average. They didn’t have one let alone two high strikeout starters. The Cardinals had a deep bullpen that helped them in the postseason, but in the regular season it ranked only 18th in baseball in FIP, 20th in xFIP, 17th in ERA, and 25th in WAR.
The 2011 Cardinals won the World Series because they hit the hell out of the ball.
Plus, saying quality starts impact postseason success but hitting has no effect doesn’t make any sense. Are we really arguing whether or not a batter has any impact on a postseason game?
The game of baseball is played both in the regular season and the playoffs. The game is played a little different in a short series than it is in the marathon that is a 162 game season. Any discussion of what skills are emphasized or deemphasized in postseason play must start with what aspects of the game change.
The point is not whether a batter has any impact on a post-season game. Obviously, they will hit (or not, as the case may be).
The point is that both BP and FG/THT found that the offense during the regular season does not correlate to success in the post-season. Runs, HR, SB, BA, OBP, nothing correlated with playoff success.
That makes sense to me. That’s why many times, the MVP hitter is some random guy on the team. Gene Tenace anyone? Or Cody Ross or Marco Scutaro? That’s why many times, the MLB top hitters don’t make much of an impression in the playoffs.
The pitchers will eventually give up something, nobody is perfect, and one hitter will randomly pop up as the big hitter in a series.
That also fits in with the point I’m making about quality starts dominance and influence in the playoffs. Bumgarner made everyone look worse than Mario Mendoza. As great as DIPS has been as an analytical discovery, I think the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, so much as to suggest that pitchers don’t have much influence in a game.
What’s true is the vast majority of pitcher have little influence, but if the pitcher can strike out a lot of batters, while keeping WHIP down, he can deliver a lot more quality starts than other pitchers and greatly influence playoff series when he can pitch more than once in the series.
Here’s a little factoid I’ve discovered which might help people understand this better: if you calculate each player’s WAR/game, you’ll see by adding up the WAR contribution from each player that the best pitchers provide a lot more WAR than any position player in any particular game. Especially the best pitchers who get to pitch twice in a playoff series.
And I would suggest that playing in the regular season is totally different from playing in the playoffs. In the regular season, mostly you play to stay in contention and to last out the season and end up in the playoffs. Only near the end does it switch to playoff mode, for those fighting for a spot.
Once you are in the playoffs, virtually every game is a must win game. You either don’t want to fall behind or don’t want to get tied up. Each game should be played to win. Bochy gets that, not the managers who opposed him this season.
The 2011 Giants missed because of massive injuries, including the rundown of their star player. If we’re talking about luck. And if you want to whine about overall wins, the Giants are the franchise with the worst luck in that regards, go check B/R for 1993. The 1997-02 version of the Giants didn’t have enough bullpen. So they lost. Same guys in charge tweeked the formula.
I don’t think one team winning the World Series refutes everything? I’m not even supporting the guy’s argument, that just seems like a really silly thing to do to refute it.
In the 2011 division series the Cardinals beat the Phillies, the “model” team for success in the postseason. They dispatched the Brewers in the NLCS, and the Brewers fit the “model” much more than the Cardinals, with Greinke and Gallardo at the front of the rotation and Axford and K-Rod in the pen. Even the Rangers fit the model better than the Cardinals.
But it isn’t just the 2011 Cardinals that don’t fit the model.
The 2006 Cardinals were even worse fits: (25th in FIP and 26th in K/9 rate(their bullpen was 18th in FIP and 20th in K/9 rate), although they were a solid team defensively – they needed to be considering how crappy their pitching was.
The 2005 White Sox won with the long ball and starters who didn’t strike out or walk anybody (and defensively they were middle of the pack).
The 2002 Angels won with Ramon Ortiz as their only starter with an above average K/9 rate(6.71/9 IP with his 4.87 FIP), and he was awful in the postseason. Pre-advanced fielding metrics, the 2002 Angels were considered an above average defensive team, largely due to Darin Erstad and David Eckstein; in subsequent years, advanced fielding metrics liked Erstad but did not like Eckstein. And while offensively the 2002 Angels were a contact/speed team, in the postseason they murdered the ball: 24 homers and 33 other extra base hits in 16 games.
Are four World Series champions in the span of a decade sufficient to call into question the model?
I never said that it was a model for 100% success. I said that it would improve a team’s chances of going deeper in the playoffs. OBP is better than BA, but it’s not a 100% improvement in measuring value, you want to take that on too?
I also never said that teams with a better profile is going to beat a lesser team. I set a much higher bar, that the pitchers have to good to great (i.e. 50-70%+ QS). If you have a bunch of teams with meh starters, of course the worse team might win, that’s what happens once things get random.
Here’s what my detailed research showed. When a team with a QS from their starter faced a team that didn’t, the team won roughly 80% of the time. So if you want to win in the playoffs, you need to find SP who are capable of throwing QS, ideally in the playoffs. The more, the better.
Oh, can’t remember the exact years I covered, but I think I covered 2007-2010 first, then for at least a couple more years after, then I didn’t feel the need to continue, it was pretty consistently in the 80% range when one pitcher had a better quality start (sabermetrically) than the other.
I know, this is a “duh” fact, everybody knows a quality start increases the chances of winning, but no team has really tackled that philosophy over more than a year period except for the Giants during the 2008-2012 period. Phillies tried it in 2011, and like I said, it’s not a silver bullet.
But it seems a way to do it from a team philosophy. Putting together a rotation as loaded as you can.
Even with Zito watering down the results (which made the post-season rotation stronger when he was left off the roster in 2010), as a rotation they were regularly in the 60% range.
And the added difficulty is figuring out who can do this in the post-season. Peavy has actually had a pretty high QS% over recent years, except for Boston, but he hasn’t had one PQS quality start in the playoffs ever. And you saw what happened to Kershaw.
And I was looking over Bumgarner’s record and he wasn’t all that dominant until this season, in terms of overall dominance, yes, he was brilliant in the World Series of 2010 and 2012, but most don’t know that he was skipped a start during the 2012 playoffs in order to fix his mechanics. And he’s had bad starts in the playoffs before, his World Series brilliance made my memory foggy of them. So perhaps it is one post-season of brilliance.
But my point is that a team can try to maximize their chances (maximize not guarantee) by filling their rotation with as many starters who can deliver a QS as they can. Has nothing to do with my Giants affilation, 2014 was actually their worse season in years in terms of delivering QS, they basically won because of Bumgarner, hence why all the MVPs.
Hey, I can bring the horse to water, but I can’t make him drink. I know this is obvious, and yet nobody seems to be focused on finding pitching that can do that. And you do that via the draft, because generally teams keep their best players (see Matt Swarz’s study of FA performances vs. FA kept by their team, both here and BP) so FA is usually out of the question. The Giants have spent the vast majority of their first round picks on pitchers, which I have not seen other teams doing or read that either.
And you do that by targeting players with a certain type of mettle. The Giants I’ve noticed often pick guys who are considered more mature than others their ages (not all are like that but a number). And it’s not like all of them are that way, but you read through enough BA prospect descriptions and you can notice patterns.
If you want guarantees of success, I don’t think that there is one in baseball, not like basketball or football, where you can get one extreme talent and surround him with enough good players. And most fans focus on hitters who represent one-ninth of the lineup, whereas starting pitchers are generally one fourth.
And to drive that further, I calculated each players WAR/game numbers and starting pitching’s influence on each individual game became clearer, I found that top pitchers (I looked at Kerahaw vs. Puig), since they pitched two starts in five game series, total more WAR than a top position player would.
It is also incremental, but that is what OBP is over BA, incremental, so I thought it was interesting enough to share.
In the playoffs, somebody will be the winner, no matter how many bad traits they may have. Even in my description above, I said that having these qualities does not guarantee you the World Series (Phillies in 2011).
As I explained above, these variables maximizes your chances of winning and going deep, per BP’s research. You are making the same mistake they did by looking at one year’s data. You are suppose to look at where the team stands in the history of the playoffs relative to other teams. Then you can see what other teams with similar traits did in the playoffs. Teams with poor K/9, bad closers, and poor defense will win sometimes. You roll the five dice in Yahtzee enough times, you will get five Ones. Randomness does affect things.
What I was trying to say was that if you want to maximize your chances, these are ways that Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs/THT found to be ways to improve your chances of success, and I provided another piece of the puzzle with the QS.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to win in the playoffs is to” …
[Bill James and others have run the gamut of possible models thru hundreds of thousands of seasons, and their findings failed to disturb the impression that the post-season is overwhelmingly subject to chance.]
…get into the playoffs.
Hey, I said I came to a conclusion, not that everyone should believe me going forward. Then I made my case. I thought that this would be an exchange of ideas, not shooting down ideas when others have come to conclusions (which they themselves will probably admit would not be their final conclusion either).
The Giants have worked in the postseason.
Joe Morgan (did he read Moneyball yet?): “The one who panics first is the one who’s going to lose.”
I’d say defense, pitching and a shutdown pen are the current keys. The Giants stack up with hackers, have pretty good contact rates. They’ve also preached putting the ball in play (to some ridicule in certain sectors) for a while.
That sage wise Brian Sabean has been saying for years its going to be about pitching and defense in the future. Looks like he beat all those smart, savvy GMs to the punch.
Good article Eno. Its very hard to put statistical analysis on the tournament games. But every GM knows the rules, and knows its a grind and then a sprint. I have absolutely no respect for Billy Beane’s cop out line that has been used as a rallying cry for a decade now. I do respect him making a throw down trade. Addison Russell is going to be good, and its going to be a world of pain now. Maybe.
But I don’t know that we really see much evidence that it isn’t a crapshoot in the playoffs. Nothing really correlates strongly with winning, other than getting “hot” (or lucky, basically). Just because 3 different Giants teams have won lately doesn’t mean that tells us they are magically doing something different. Most of the players are different, and the ones still there from 2010 are vastly different hitters and fielders than they were then.
Seems like it’s just mostly a crapshoot still, no matter how much we want to find some magical recipe to make us feel like it’s not a crapshoot.
Actually, if Aubrey Huff didn’t drink so much in the 2010 offseason, or Pablo Sandoval didn’t eat so much in the 2012 offseason, or 1/2 the teams impact players didn’t decide to do a victory tour in the WBC in 2012 offseason, or Scott Cousins doesn’t run Posey over in 2012… You might be looking at a 5 year straight dynasty. Foundation built in 2007-08 with Bumgarner and Posey. Didn’t tank or take 7-8 years to build it either. Built it under pressure from irate fans and panik-ing ownership over butts in the seats, lost for 4 years and then went on a rampage. The Giants are built to win, especially in the postseason, and they will continue to get… wait for it… lucky. Because they have a great core and a great ability to supplement that core on the fly.
How do you sleep at night? The Giants have won 3 out of 5 and they could very easily have won 5 out of 5 if they had been a little more “lucky”? Winning 3 out of 5 does not make Sabean a genius. It’s people like you that drive me crazy. Congrats to your team, can’t wait to see what you think about the Giants not winning it all for a long time hence.
Gosh, them horses been too long in the barn on y’all, Shank. Lemme help you clean up.
Posey’s big injury was in 2011, IOW not 2012.
Call me skeptical, but when I see an anon online assertion like yours on Huff, I discount by some per cent. You got the max!
Gosh, I watched the 2012 Giants season; IMO the overall outcome had more to do with:
– Pagan hurt, mostly absent
– a crap tsunami in LF
– Scutaro’s back finally gave out
– no SP beyond Bumgarmer worth snotrockets
– zero from Cain
– less from Vogelsong
– still less from Lincecum, and
– a full course in incompetence from Zito
not necessarily weighted in that order.
Concerns over Sandoval’s middle I would’ve consigned to trolling and [Cue eerie theremin music.] … the Future.
I sleep very well. 2010, 2012 and 2014 were magical. And the Giants didn’t win it all for a long time, no doubt. The fact some of it came about during this stats revolution has definitely put a lot of emphasis on the efforts of these two teams that got profiled for books, as fun David versus Goliath stories.
Having stats nerds get mad about the Giants winning it all (again) is a nice little bonus though. I never called Sabean a genius, but I would point out when the Giants sign Aubrey Huff and he has a bounce back year, around here (authors and posters) they get called lucky. When the Rays sign James Loney and he has a bounce back year they are called statistical geniuses finding undervalued commodities.
Avattoir – you picked up my typo on 2011 and then did it yourself with 2013. Back at ya.
The Huff was tongue in cheek. But he wasn’t paid to be a 5 WAR player, he was paid two years due to market pressure from down south (Agent Ned) and he was paid to be a 2 WAR player. It didn’t work out, and then Bruce Bochy got greedy with his new shiny toy Belt (that’s the fun thing that everybody forgets – Bochy loved Belt, he couldn’t get enough of him out of 2011 ST).
2013 was 40% on Sandoval. Pagan’s injury. The pitching. Giants strength has always been pitching, but its slowly changed and is now looking more like hitting coming from the farm as well. The biggest need if there is going to be any more of these is definitely new starting pitching.
But you’re always in it when you have Posey and Bumgarner, supplemented by a core with above average production from most positions, which they should have again next year from 1B, RF and SS (yes, SS). 2B is prove out, 3B is an enigma. CF is an injury enigma. And LF will most likely be another crap tsunami. But you can have 1-2 of those if you have strength elsewhere.
I don’t see anyone mad except you. Mad everyone isn’t bowing at the feet of the Giants. Do you really expect people to turn their brains off and just praise something because it worked?
And please, you might not have called Sabean a genius, but you did say “sage” and “wise” to describe him and that he beat the “smart” and “savvy”. So, sage, wise, better than smart and savvy, but not genius.
Nothing you have said here makes a damn bit of sense.
Sabean being called wise and sage is tongue in cheek, directly in relation to what has been said repeatedly here in these pages over the years… The Giants were the whipping boy, even when they won in 2010. Now there’s 3 of these things, and the Royals with Dayton Moore to boot? What’s happening, its not going according to the strato-matic spreadsheet.
Sabean has been a very good GM for a very long time. He deserves the credit. And he’s also the guy who drafted the Yankee’s who did what they did in 1996-2000, which is an impressive feat. The efforts in the late Bonds years weren’t so sage. But that’s another story.
The Giants are a fun club, they’ve built a core and are stealing lunch money. I applaud Eno for taking a crack at why. I expect for it to come up again, they aren’t going away anytime soon.
I think we know that there’s a degree of “luck” involved from a front-office perspective, and that it’s greater than the degree of building the best team over a full season. But the crapshoot vs. non-crapshoot debate is silly. If a team could marginally improve its odds in the postseason without compromising its chance of success in the regular season, that would seem worthwhile.
Brian Sabean took the league’s 7th largest payroll to 88 wins (the same number Beane won with the A’s too in the harder league and division with almost half the payroll). Lets not go stroking Sabean because his team won the right 12 games after that. For one, let’s remember in 2011 this team doesn’t even make the playoffs. Brian should send Bud a fruit basket or something…
And its nice that you have no respect for a single sentence quote and all, but Beane is quite clearly the best GM in baseball given what he’s accomplished with the resources his owners have given him. Just because his teams have found some bad breaks in several games doesn’t invalidate now 15 years of nearly continuous competition with typically a bottom 1/3 payroll or worse.
If Beane keeps it up, its only a matter of time before the bad luck reverses.
Actually its not. Beane is an impulsive trader who gives away too much. He doesn’t pay enough attention to fundamentals. He actually has copied many of Sabean’s moves over the years: vets, CFs for defense, and his latest foray into the trade market was to stack his team with pitching. But he has no idea about team chemistry, which is important. Just go look at the quotes from Lowrie and a couple others I can’t recall at the moment. Beane’s use of platoons is questionable, and I think it folds under the bright lights and good pitching in the postseason.
Further, if you want to look at wins, and make that the all-important factor, then you have to look at divisional competition. Beane’s latest run has been fueled in large part to the Rangers choking away and then folding up their tents completely. And the lousiest franchise in baseball coming to the AL West.
I doubt very much anything reverses. Beane just threw it all in, and now he’s going to blow it up because it didn’t work. And 15 years… he had a 5 year stretch in the wilderness, despite the AL West not being all that from a competitive standpoint.
I feel really bad for A’s fans having to never get attached to their players because they’re getting shipped. That’s a bummer, and its mostly on ownership. Beane is saved some by having good development people who can bring him new pitching. His other moves… pretty overrated.
wait, what?!?!
It kills me when hot-sports-opinion homers invade the comments to fluff their teams with nothing resembling a statistic or any analysis…
A few important points about your OAK comments:
1. OAK had +90 pyth wins in each of the last 3 seasons
2. OAK’s schedule was harder than the MLB average in all of these seasons
(based on BRef SOS)
3. Lester’s Aug-Sep WAR Was 1.6 versus Cespedes at 1.2, not to mention the WAR from Shark
4. Please show some data backing up that “Beane’s use of platoons is questionable”
5. If you look at wins / payroll $ I’d love for you to find a GM who has done more than Beane – I can wait, you just lemme know when you find it
Did Beane give away too much for Donaldson? Moss? Please.
troybruno – pyth wins is where its at. You keep hoarding those bad boys. 15-4 versus the Astros in 2013. Rangers choked in 2012. As far as platoons, you can start with catcher. Gets exposed in the postseason when you have to choose between hitting and defending. Go ahead and sputter about Soto getting hurt. I didn’t mention the Lester trade, but WAR is only one part of the equation. Lester didn’t like pitching to Soto whatsoever in that game.
Wins versus payroll? The standard response for Beane boys. I didn’t say he wasn’t a good GM. I said he was heavily overrated though. And his quote is a total cop out, scooped up by an adoring author looking to spin a story.
Right, Shank. All of the A’s victories are really someone else’s failures and all of the A’s failures are only their own. That’s some awesome logic.
The A’s played Texas 7 times in the final 10 games (4 in Texas) in 2012 and won 5 of them. Texas “choked” because they got beat by the team chasing them. How can we discredit that accomplishment while simultaneously taking holding it against Beane that the A’s are 1 for 15, or something, in do-or-die playoff games under him (since, ya know, all of those last 3 wins in Texas were do or die games to win the division, but those don’t count obviously).
“Gets exposed in the postseason when you have to choose between hitting and defending.”
Wasn’t much of the nonsense above about choosing that defence over hitting, which was exactly what Melvin did only to have a fluke-ish injury on a easy play at the plate? And the choice wouldn’t have been that way if ALL THREE of the A’s catchers prior to Soto’s arrival hadn’t been significantly hurt by the WC game. I suppose a GM should know exactly when a catcher’s back might start acting up or when an ankle injury might happen?
” Lester didn’t like pitching to Soto whatsoever in that game.”
Based on what… even when Norris came in was Lester better…err…? And golly-gee is your argument limited to one game.
“The standard response for Beane boys. I didn’t say he wasn’t a good GM. I said he was heavily overrated though.”
Even given all the praise he gets, he’s probably still UNDERrated. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/billion-dollar-billy-beane/
If we actually try to measure GM value, Beane laps the field. Look down the page a little and notice where the Giants are. Beane is about 5x higher than Sabean. But lets not let really facts and analysis get in the way of your narrative….
Lots of wins against an AL West that just hasn’t been prime time. Those 3 wins in between the Ranger games? An easy sweep of hapless Seattle. A franchise that has decided to take a decade off.
Beane took a great core of players – Hudson/Zito/Mulder with Chavez/Tejada/Giambi and replaced it as creatively as he could – Kotsay and Burns, Rich Harden. Good job. But most of that was put in place by Alderson & Grady Fulson.
then he sucked for 5 years. 2007-2011. Derek Barton? Cliff Pennington? Come on. At least he gets credit for not tanking. Which also helps those who love to count wins for their arguments.
Then he made three bold moves – signed the first big Cuban name in Cespedes and had a hit, plus they threw a failed C prospect into 3B, finally a huge trade win for Trader Billy with Josh Donaldson. Plus he shipped off his latest pen arm to a rookie GM for Reddick. Those were great moves – and Colon as the old vet, Crisp as the continuation, that’s a good team. That beat up on the AL West and got Texas to choke.
But now he got restless, gave away Cespedes because he knew he would have to trade him anyways due to the contract ending in 2015. That carved up his batting order, taking your cleanup hitter that everybody looks to DID screw it up. One trade too many.
The farm system has fed Beane pieces pretty regular. He has thrown it all into a blender and never built team continuity. You have the easy dismissal of budget constraints. And you have the overall win numbers. Cling to that, because there sure isn’t anything…
That worked in the postseason.
And if we’re going to get into those 88 wins, lets at least acknowledge that the Giants are battling the #1 payroll, the new Yankees of baseball. Who have the best pitcher in baseball, an ace with Greinke, a great #3 in Ryu and a pretty good set of hitters as well as the unique front office/ownership position of having no problem sitting tens of millions on the bench all over the joint. 8 starters? No problem. 4 OFs making nine figures? No problem. But they didn’t have enough for the postseason, and I think a lot has to do with a) bad bullpen construction, b) overrating hitting in the postseason, c) bad defense at key position(s). You could add in d) not a very good field manager if you like, Donnie Two Times is a pretty good butt of jokes. But they are still a good team because of their starting pitching being all world.
oh – I guess just spouting off a bunch of random sht is your thing… disregard the prior comment
The Giants never faced the Dodgers in the Postseason. They did get their asses beat with Bumgarner on the mound a few games before the playoffs started. You spout off how great the Dodgers are then conclude that they fell short in the Postseason because they weren’t built right? Do us all a favor, when analyzing baseball, pretend you are not a Giants fan, then read what you have written and realize how terrible it sounds, then re-evaluate your life.
The postseason is the postseason for a reason. Dismissing it as irrelevant is weak sauce.
A lot of MLB fans think Giants fan are obnoxious, for appearing to claim some material part in something they themselves have done nothing to earn, especially whe we consider that the team they follow, “their” team, went 57 years between WS wins and 53 years before “their” city won even one.
That’s got some truth in it, but not a lot of fairness, given that NOT Giants Fans would presumably react something like this to a substantially simliar horn of proxy plenty.
Yet, also in that subset of presumed obnoxious Giants fans are some actually assinine ones. I’d apologize to any of you who’ve been set on by a member of this varmint species, a pest common to most if not all baseball zoos but currently running riot in SF. They have this uncanny behavioral trait of somehow only showing up on “their” teams sunny days, but still fail to see their shadows cuz they backed out of their lairs wrong way up.
It was sure fun to watch that streak of “sold-out” games in roughly the middle of the season when the Giants looked cooked and the stadium was half full.
“Giants … did get their asses beat with Bumgarner on the mound a few games before”
They lost 2-4, all asses accounted for and unbeaten.
In the only 3 regular season games between the eventual WS opponents, KC won ’em all; ran them Giants outta KC like that whipped gunslinger Bill in Unforgiven.
At one point this season, it was SF up on LA 7-3 in games won head-to-head. It closed LA 10 SF 9 – same as the home games. Maybe not precisely jack squat, cuz Wolfgang Pauli’s exclusion principle; but as Andy Griffith said (in character in “What It Was, Was Football”), If not that, then what it was, was I don’t know what all.
Ain’t sayin’ Giants would-a whupped them Dodgers’ ain’t sayin’ they would-na.
“Ain’t sayin’ Giants would-a whupped them Dodgers’ ain’t sayin’ they would-na.”
Well Avattoir, damn shame the Dodgers didn’t bother to show up to the NLCS to find out, now isn’t it?
Them grapes, up there, that you can’t reach….they ain’t sour.
Don’t know who these Giants fans you are complaining about but the ones I see around here has been adding our knowledge to FG for a long time now. Search my handle and you will find that I’ve been here since this site began. And you will find my comments on many Giants related posts, I try to make time for that.
And I’ve been writing about this strategy for at least 5-6 years now, at my blog, changing my beliefs as new data and information come to light. I’ve been following the various tries at studying the issues of success in the post-season since I read BP’s chapter on it, and roughly at the same time THT/FG had an article on it too.
If you don’t like the theory, fine, but don’t dare to denigrate me as a homer. I love my Giants but I’ve been a realist as to their shortcomings since I started following them in 1971. I was telling my fellow Giants fans in the 70’s who thought we were competitive that, no, they weren’t, they were mediocre. Despite knowing how bad they were for many, many years, I still loved my team and followed them and attended games at Candlestick to support my team. So don’t you dare call me a homer!
I would note that Andy Griffith’s comedy routine is one of my all-time favorites. Love my orange pop! I fell in love with his routine with the show that played after Giants games in the 70’s, Golden Age of Comedy.
Here’s what I would say about any try at using in-season games regarding the Giants in 2014: don’t bother trying. The Giants when mostly healthy was pretty much stoppable during the early season. Then a bunch of players got hurt and injured, and that sent the team into a tailspin that they didn’t really get out of until Panik stabilized 2B and the #2 hitting spot, and Peavy and Petit, helped stabilize the rotation. Belt was the last piece but he didn’t start hitting again until the last week of the season.
So trying to divine anything from what they did early on or mid-season or even heading down the stretch won’t really yield much of anything because the team during the playoffs was nothing like the team at any other part of the season.
Oops, make that unstoppable, they were playing at over .667 pace for two months!
Then they were pretty much stoppable once they lost Pagan and Belt, two of their top five hitters, plus Morse stopped hitting, and he was lengthening out the lineup (I was amazed at how good a hitter he is, he’s not just a homer/muscle guy). Most lineups don’t do so well when they lose that much of their lineup. And that was for two month roughly too.
Then they started turning around in the last couple of months as Posey got hot, Panik got hot (after being BABIPed his first month, needing to figure out MLB pitchers), they started turning to Ishikawa, who is not that bad a hitter vs. RHP, then finally Belt returned and found his bat before the season ended.
Walter,
According to wins per payroll, the GMs for Miami and Houston are far and away the best GMs is baseball. Do you agree?
I’m not sure if this is serious or not… this year’s Giants started Peavy and Hudson and Vogelsong. They had Ishikawa in LF.
In 2010 they had Jose Guillen and Cody Ross platooning in RF, along with Burrell in LF for part of the game, and Aaron Rowand sulking on the bench until he could get in the game. In 2012 they had a red hot Marco Scutaro as a replacement for Manny Burriss who they “hoped like hell” could play ball. Too much is spent on the weaknesses and not enough on the core strength. Giants have and will continue to have positional superiority at 4-5 positions. Their pitching was their weakness this year. Madison Bumgarner – remember him – is the core strength of the team. Along with Posey and Pence. Usually Matt Cain, but he was out with his bone chip surgery. So it goes, you make do on the fly. Again, a organizational strength, not a weakness.
I’m utterly shocked your name links to a Giant’s blog.
Yeah, lets not feed the troll anymore. 7/33 posts in this thread are from this guy. Dude needs a job.
These comments are hilarious.
However, I think it highlights one of the main problems with the growth in sabermetric analysis. A de-emphasis of what happens on the field and a glorification of statistical analysis. Its sucking the life out of baseball.
We seem to be in a Shankbone vs. Everyone else battle, let me jump in (somewhat) to Shankbone’s defense.
* First off I applaud Eno’s efforts here. IMO, saber analysis is two pronged….1) find value, and 2) understand why things happened the way they did (which really gets back to finding value).
* I think I speak for Shank and many other Giant’s fans in that what Giants’ fans want the most is respect for the team’s results. If you think the Giants have gotten respect from this and similar sites over the past five years then you haven’t been paying attention. The fact that established sabermetrics can not easily explain the Giants’ success does not de-legitimize it. Maybe the problem is that statistical analysis is not yet fully developed or that it can only explain so much and that non-measurable aspects account for more of the results in baseball than you want it to.
* Are there obnxious Giants’ fans? Of course, but isn’t that true of every team. Ever met a Red Sox, Cardinals or Yankees fan? There is a reason you don’t hear much from obnoxious fans of the Astros, Padres or Twins.
* Speaking of obnxious….can all you guys piling on Shankbone take a step back and read your own comments? Talk about rampant narcissism. Nothing worse than someone who passed a statistics class – and can identify that .357 is larger than .338 – and now thinks he can run a baseball team.
* It seems to me that articles like this did not exist prior to November 1, 2010. Can someone – anyone – provide a link to an article where a team’s World Series title (in the post Moneyball era) was explained away using luck and/or “the playoffs are a crapshoot”. I honestly don’t think any such article exists. This type of thinking has been solely reserved for the Giants. Why? Because they are thought of as being anti-saber (which people on this and similar sites apparently view as an insult – and really, do you not think the Giants are doing statistical analysis?) and because established sabermetrics struggles to explain their success. To some, that means some other factor (luck) must be in play.
* But my last comment is for you Shankbone. As a Giant’s fan I appreciate your tenacity. I just want to let you know you are fighting a losing battle – but you probably already know this. The clouds could part and God (or whatever deity you may believe in) could come forth ….wait….better yet….an apparition of Billy Beane or Andrew Freidman could appear and confirm every point you have made and even add some additional insight to the Giants’ success. But that still won’t change anybody’s mind. The spreadsheets don’t say the Giants should be winning, so it must not be real.
Go Giants!
Well-stated Sabean W.
There is almost and angery-angstity fury fest going on as Saber people experience extreme cognitive dissonance at the Giants recent, sustained success.
Because they can not assemble a numerical cause-effect they MUST dismiss it as luck.
But sustained luck does not compute.
And then, when confronted with an alternative point of view (enter Shankbone), here comes the sound and fury (signifying…).
The postseason is a different animal from the regular season but it is still baseball.
You have to respect the numbers that say it is mostly all random, with some room at the periphery for skill. This great debate is simply us wanting to find meaning in something we put a great deal of weight in.
That said, I am more than open to the idea that the “skill” portion is significantly different in the postseason, and that in the long run some teams would have significantly better records in the post season than they did in the regular season. To know this we just have to look at the differences in the style of play.
Depth is less important (who cares about your 2nd backup outfielder, or long pen arm)
A players strength in specific areas of skill out weighs all around skill (i.e. being a great baserunner, or hitting lefties extremely well)
It’s much easier to leverage your best arms over your lesser ones. (Bumgarner must’ve thrown 1/4th of all the Giants innings in the WS)
Good pitchers limit contact, walks and power
BABIP is likely more a function of defense and batter speed when facing good pitching
This implies to me that all of the theories on pitching, speed and defense in the post season are true. The only thing is, you have to qualify for the postseason by performing in the regular season first. A team with two legit aces, a slightly above average third starter, a deep bullpen and nothing else could very well dominate the postseason if managed correctly, but no way they qualify.
This is where the randomness comes in. Teams are built for the 162 game season, so we don’t ever see teams truly built for a postseason run. In the end, it all comes down to the way the ball bounces.
A GM building a team for the NL West would be in for a pretty big shock playing in the AL East. Ballparks are huge factors, as is divisional competition. I think injury is the biggest random factor, I guess that’s part of “luck” or where the ball bounces. A team that can have good health will most likely be better off than one without. You do have to fight out of your division before you can go do anything else.
But I knew the Giants were going to be good this year, and most likely make the playoffs, so I’m not really buying this ball bounces part. Players have to go out and compete, and 6th tools can be important. Clutch gets sneered at, but ask Yankee fans how much they loved Nick Swisher’s forays into the playoffs. When Cleveland had the wild card last year I watched and every time he came up I said “auto-out”. 2 K’s and a 0 for 4 later…
I would disagree that we don’t see teams truly built for a postseason run. That is what the Giants have been doing. The Cards as well. The Dodgers are certainly built for winning now. The Nats were everybody’s choice as best in the NL, after stocking up on the draft and getting lucky with historic #1 overall no doubt draft picks. These teams are expected to be good and they are.
The Giants are a great team that were weakened by injuries. I agree that there are aspects of the team that are built for postseason, but not nearly enough to drown out the noise associated with playoff sample sizes.
Cards / Dodgers / Nats are all good teams but nothing specific that tells me they’d be any better in the postseason than you’d expect. The Dodger have the aces, but they are lacking in defense and in the bullpen, so I’d say they are closer to the type of team you’d expect to fold.
At the same time, there were so few games difference between the top 5 teams in the NL that maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the one team that looks ‘a little’ better prepared in post season might win 3 of 5 years running. I’m still skeptical and wouldn’t be surprised if the Giants don’t win another world series for decades.
BP and THT/FG both have analyzed the post season and found that regular season offense does not matter, only pitching and fielding.
BP further found that it was having a dominant pitching staff, via a high K/9, having a dominant closer, and having good fielding defense that gets a team deeper into the playoffs. They also found that having a stronger rotation helps as well.
So as long as the Giants have Bumgarner and Cain in there, and perhaps a restored Cy Lincecum (recent SI report noted that he hasn’t worked with his dad regarding his mechanics since 2009, but will start again this off-season), plus Posey, Pence, Belt, Crawford, Panik, I think the Giants will be in the mix and could win another championship.
FYI, I’ve been saying since 2009, based on what I’ve seen in sabermetric research, that the Giants were going to be the Team of the 2010 Decade, and I see no reason that they won’t nail that down, with at least another championship.
And I’ll remain skeptical about Beane and the A’s as well. A GM who has given away (not traded GAVE) players like Ethier, Hudson, and CarGon (and I think Russell will be added to this list, as well as Cespedes) would be hung and quartered by most fans. I’m amazed that the hype has kept him above reproach.
BP laid out what he needed to do to become better. He has only really followed the advice about fielding defense. His pitchers are still all low K/9 (below average K/9 for AL basically every year), and he still don’t see the value in having a reliable shutdown closer. Maybe Doolittle will do much to convince him otherwise.
“Bumgarner must’ve thrown 1/4th of all the Giants innings in the WS”
21/61 = 34% in the WS
35.2/161 = 32% over the play-offs.
I actually typed out 1/3 but thought it was probably an exaggeration. I was too lazy to look it up so I went with 1/4. haha
“Maybe I should stop there.” No maybe about it.
There weren’t two dominant teams this season, or even one.
There were teams that maybe seemed dominant if you looked at them sort of cock-eyed, but while good weren’t really outside the school of flounders in their divisions (the Easts).
There were divisional races we might reasonably hope to be competitive to the end, but, due to the whimsy of chance, weren’t (the Wests).
And there were divisions which manifested the overall flatness of the universe, uh, equality in MLB this season (the Centrals).
Anything beyond that is more narrative than reasons.
An example of narrative: “the champions set was — relative to other postseason teams — much better at making contact compared to their league”.
IOW, teams that hit better won more than teams that hit worse.
None of those numbers are postseason numbers other than win percentage. And though they had a better wRC+, I found it interesting that the champions set actually slugged worse in the regular season than the sample average. The makeup of *how* they hit better was interesting to me.
I didn’t read it that way, but that could all be on me; eyes ain’t so reliable these days.
You figure their low respective SLG had maybe something to do with their home fields being larger-than-average in the OF?
Or that plus local wind?
I haven’t been to KC (well, only in winter); all I know is Kauffman has the 2nd biggest OF in MLB and the park’s set down in a bowl or depression. I know the winds around AT&T Park, and unlike say Wrigley, the winds there mostly work against slugging. IOW there’s one, maybe 2 factors in common, each of which depresses SLGpct.
Reason I raise this: seems to me a park with a notably large OF area and unequal distribution of pro-dinger/anti-dinger wind will learn that to produce better results requires hitting the ball level, so hard thru the infield, sliced down the lines, hard towards the gaps, and otherwise in front of opposing OFers. That education, on being addressed, would show up in numbers that reflect ‘contact’, yes no?
Did anyone here read Tony Blenginos piece posted just a bit earlier? When park factors are accounted for, the Giants had one of the top offenses in baseball. They had Bumgarner and a bunch of groundball pitchers with a good OF defense and a great IF defense. That was the formula. Add it all up and they were actually the best team!
That’s not all what that article said. It never actually ranked them nor compared them to individual teams or weighted different components appropriately. All you can say is that they were better than average be decent amount in several aspects of the game. If the Angels or Dodgers were even better than that, we don’t know from that article.
Quotes from Blengino:
1. “Adustment for context boosts the Giants ADJ PRD on flyballs way up to 123 in the upper tier of MLB clubs.” OK, the Giants were one of the best POWER hitting clubs in MLB when adjusted for park factors. They hit flyballs harder= power.
2. “The Giants don’t walk people, don’t induce popups, bout have a fairly high groundball rate.”
3. “Most importantly, their 88.2 ground ball multiplier(defensively) is EXCEPTIONAL- this is what enabled them to hold opponents to well below MLB average production on all those grounders.”
Blengino concludes that the Giants were above average in all aspects of the game, which he points out is hard to achieve, but his own data in the text shows that in at least two areas, flyball hitting and groundball defense they were among the best in baseball.
I believe when you add all that up, the sum of the parts equals the best team in baseball and that is why they won the World Series for the 3’rd time in 5 seasons.
You seem so happy to have found an article that tries to capture the idea that the Giants aren’t necessarily as ‘bad’ as some of their numbers suggest, and refashioning it and adding some scaffolding and a coupla wings to it so you can suggest they’re ‘could perhaps actually maybe were the best, I almost hate myself for asking after what DEFINITION you’re using for ‘best’.
DrB,
Like I said those are just a few of things the Giants did well, even best in the league, but they are still just a few things. So from those 3 points you got to “Add it all up and they were actually the best team!”? Err, comprehension fail.
The ISO+ Thing really sticks out to me. You can see how feast-or-famine, power hitting teams that wait for the 3-run bomb don’t fare as well in a short series when every game counts and consistency is key.
Then again, the last three Giants World Series champion teams were kindof all over the place. Their ISO the last three times was .133 in 2014(17th), .128 in 2012(29th), and .159 in 2010(11th).
Bumgarner pitched 1/3 of the Giants’ WS innings. Had he not pitched so well, KC would have won the WS. From this, one could conjecture that having one, just one, really incredible starting pitcher is the key to playoff success. From that, we can safely conclude that the LA Dodgers are the 2014 World Champions.