Schoenfield's ESPN Sweet Spot featuring the O's today

[LookinUp]

I believe that the cold adherence to statistical analyses will ignore things like desire and intestinal fortitude.

MSK

Vincent K. McMahon approves of this post.

If similar means we play our remaining games in the same pattern as up to this point where we get mostly quality starts and fantastic relief pitching that allows us to win close games, seasoned with a dash of blowout losses, then I don't know why it would be unlikely that we do continue to win at current pace.

I wonder what our median run differential is. What about the quartiles? Wouldn't that give a better picture of the run difference we should expect for an O's game? In other words what happens most often not what happens on average. I'm not a baseball stats guy at all. Just curious.

This is a good drill down that would be helpful. It's theoritically possible (though unlikely) that our median is actually > 0, and I'm guessing the probabilities are much different there. Assuming our median is closer to zero than our mean, I also assume that would say that the pure RS/RA penalizes the O's more than we deserve.

I mostly see the word "outlier" and, while I truly love math and statistics, I find this explanation and the similar ones that accompany it regarding our luckiness to be unsatisfactory - as in that explanation is not good enough.

I agree it is unsatisfactory. What you're actually looking for is the model that explains how outliers to the Pythag happen. This model may or may not exist, but once again it wouldn't prove the Pythag to be wrong, it would just better explain how one might over perform their Pythagorean.

[Hallas]

Around the ASB I was expecting the other shoe to drop.

Now I'm half expecting us to do the same thing next year, and see a gazillion new moneyball articles about how DD revolutionized the art of bullpen construction.

[Lucky Jim]

Around the ASB I was expecting the other shoe to drop.

Now I'm half expecting us to do the same thing next year, and see a gazillion new moneyball articles about how DD revolutionized the art of bullpen construction.

By inheriting 75% of it from MacPhail?

To be clear, I'm joking here - it's pretty evenly distributed between the two and I've praised bullpen construction by DD from day one.

[weams]

They're absolutely appropriate. When a model says that it's essentially impossible for a team to be outscored by 50 runs and still win 55% of their games, and in real life just a tiny handful of teams have done that in the past 110 years, that's a pretty darned good model. You don't throw out your model because some tiny fraction of 1% isn't within a half a standard deviation.

I love that we are a bit different. This team was not supposed to bring happiness this year.

It is like the old broken Television set that was out along the road. And you figured out that by fiddling with the controls that you could get 95 percent of a good picture, 95 percent of the time. With available tools.

[LookinUp]

Beating Pythagoras

http://oriolepost.com/baltimore-orioles/articles/beating-pythagoras.html

Nice effort at a drill down. I think it raises another question about the sustainability of the success of the bullpen.

[Dark Helmet]

This thread made me think of something Larry the cable guy said..."Evoultionists say we come from monkeys, right? Then why in the hell are there still monkeys?".

Groups always have reasons to base their beliefs on, but can rarely come up with reasons to refute the doubters. It comes down to really " that's just the way it is ". The O's are winning with a negative run differential, and teams are losing with a positive run differential. The O's are just in rare territory. So the stats are going to dismiss them easier.

[Lucky Jim]

Nice effort at a drill down. I think it raises another question about the sustainability of the success of the bullpen.

Do we keep it close better than teams with worse records?

[Lucky Jim]

This thread made me think of something Larry the cable guy said..."Evoultionists say we come from monkeys, right? Then why in the hell are there still monkeys?".

Groups always have reasons to base their beliefs on, but can rarely come up with reasons to refute the doubters. It comes down to really " that's just the way it is ". The O's are winning with a negative run differential, and teams are losing with a positive run differential. The O's are just in rare territory. So the stats are going to dismiss them easier.

I would agree that Larry the Cable Guy's understanding of evolution is roughly on par with much of this board's understanding of how pythag (and, sadly, other statistics) are being used.

[SilentJames]

Nice effort at a drill down. I think it raises another question about the sustainability of the success of the bullpen.

The addendum I think really says something.

The Orioles began to go into a tailspin in the second half of June, through July but seem to have pulled themselves out of it over the last 20 games. Over those last 20 games the Orioles have had a positive run differential and a very good 13-7 record.

The starting pitching over the last 20 games has been pretty solid too, aside from a two or three hiccups.

The question is: those 24 games, or the other 88 - which are the real Orioles?

[Pedro Cerrano]

Any team's run differential looks better when ineffective starters are removed. Any team's run differential looks better when their worst blowouts are removed. What does fairness have to do with it? If those starts are replaced with better starts over the rest of the season, their run differential will change.

Fairness in terms of judging the outlook for the rest of the season.

Essentially what is happening is that people are "predicting" how the rest of the season will go based on the performances of players that are not on the team anymore. Doesn't add up to me.

[Dark Helmet]

Fairness in terms of judging the outlook for the rest of the season.

Essentially what is happening is that people are "predicting" how the rest of the season will go based on the performances of players that are not on the team anymore. Doesn't add up to me.

Because its also being assumed that the replacements will be no better than who they are replacing, when its all said and done.

[hoosiers]

We're winning a lot of close games and defying the statistical odds.

Well .... sure. I think everyone understands that. I think everyone understands the historical correlation between RS and RA.

I see about a third of the posts here explaining the pythag, a third mis-interpreting them, and a third saying outrunning the pythag by a wide margin is highly unusual.

I see little attempt to explain why we are winning at a detailed level of analysis despite being outscored by a comfortable margin other than "good bullpen, lucky in close games".

[Pedro Cerrano]

Here is a *very* big hypothetical situation. Try to have some fun with it. The 2013 Orioles begin the first half of the season 45-36 following a 2012 where they ended up just missing out on the playoffs but finishing with a respectable 87-75 record.

Despite being 45-36 at the half-way mark, the Orioles are being outscored by 60(!) runs and, as such, their run differential is a pretty bad -60 and certainly not in line with a team that is 9 games above .500.

Old Man Angelos doesn't care about run differential and, in the twilight of his years, decides that the 2013 team can compete and authorizes a $100MM spending increase for DD.

With these newfound riches DD goes out and does a Dodgers-like frenzy in June and July but then some and adds talent that would make even the biggest Yankee fan blush. He adds 3 new starters and completely overturns the lineup and the Orioles resemble an all-star team.

Despite all this, the pundits claim that the O's record is not sustainable because they've been outscored by 60 runs to that point in the season and don't have a prayer for the playoffs. Does that make any sense?

[Pedro Cerrano]

Because its also being assumed that the replacements will be no better than who they are replacing, when its all said and done.

Why in the world would you assume that replacing Matusz, Arrieta and Britton would not be an upgrade? You'd have to be pretty freaking awful to not be an upgrade over those guys.

[SilentJames]

Do we keep it close better than teams with worse records?

I don't think we really need to worry about other teams right now because the Orioles are statistical anomaly. There really is no sense in comparing.