Silent James speaks his Mind

[weams]

http://www.masnsports.com/orioles_buzz/2012/08/james-baker-beating-pythagoras.html

The Baltimore Orioles have been confounding sabermetricians and national pundits all year. The Orioles currently sit eight games over .500 and are tied for the second wild card spot, even though they have been outscored this year. And not just outscored, but outscored badly. The Orioles' current run differential is currently -55 (447-502), which is awful. It is one of the worst run differentials in baseball and should not belong to a team in a legitimate playoff hunt.

Bill James developed something called the Pythagorean Win Percentage. Looking at the team's runs allowed and runs scored and putting them in a modified Pythagorean Theorem, you should get an "expected" win percentage. Right now with those numbers, the Orioles should have a record of 46-60.

If you wonder why this team is not being taken seriously by national media outlets and seems impossibly low on many power rankings, it is this. It is hard to ignore a -55 run deficit. Normally you see a team that is outperforming their expected win total and you think two things:

* They are very lucky.

* They will come crashing down eventually.

[Moose Milligan]

Patiently waiting for Lucky Jim to dryly poop on this.

Good writeup, SJ. It's not dumb luck but I don't think it's a sustainable method of winning games. Maybe this year, but not next. We're starting to see a lot of comparisons to the 1989 team, but people should look at how the 1990 team fared. They weren't able to capture the magic.

[Flash- bd]

Patiently waiting for Lucky Jim to dryly poop on this.

Good writeup, SJ. It's not dumb luck but I don't think it's a sustainable method of winning games. Maybe this year, but not next. We're starting to see a lot of comparisons to the 1989 team, but people should look at how the 1990 team fared. They weren't able to capture the magic.

Since he hasn't done it yet...

Silent James

Moreover, the Orioles' offense has not been able to score enough runs to blowout teams on a regular basis to make up for those handful of very bad losses.

Again, he is rightly pointing out an underlying cause for our pythag record but needs to realize he is also pointing out an underlying cause for why we aren't as good a team as our record says, and closer to being as good a team as our pythag says.

There's a lot of moments like that in the article, but again, this is such a commonly repeated and recurring problem in this whole pythag argument that it'd be nice if people started recognizing it.

[Lucky Jim]

Since he hasn't done it yet...

Silent James

Again, he is rightly pointing out an underlying cause for our pythag record but needs to realize he is also pointing out an underlying cause for why we aren't as good a team as our record says, and closer to being as good a team as our pythag says.

There's a lot of moments like that in the article, but again, this is such a commonly repeated and recurring problem in this whole pythag argument that it'd be nice if people started recognizing it.

It's actually gotten worse in the other thread. But yeah, I appreciate the effort by SJ, but he's out-of-his-depth and beyond-his-ken if not off-his-rocker.

[Fan4Life]

Excellent! I cannot be refuted.

[SrMeowMeow]

Every team has a reason why they're beating their Pythagorean. That's why they're beating it. They did actually win those games. But there's no reason to think anything we're doing is sustainable. I wish there were.

[Hank Scorpio]

Every team has a reason why they're beating their Pythagorean. That's why they're beating it. They did actually win those games. But there's no reason to think anything we're doing is sustainable. I wish there were.

Honestly, there's no reason to think they would be where they are NOW given that substantial differencial.

But here they are... hopefully they remain an anomaly.

[SilentJames]

Over at oriolepost.com I updated an addendum. I looked at it another way and saw something.

I already explained it in another thread so hit my blog up and read the addition that is not on MASN.

Basically, it was our winning that wasn't unsustainable, rather the absolute 7-16 funk this team was in from mid june to mid july.

When you see the graph of wins and losses on baseball reference it is quite striking the gaping hole on between those two dates.

Consider the following: what if it was the really bad losses and pathetic offense of that period that was unsustainable. Now that we seem to be climbing out of it should the orioles be able to put a dent in that run differential hole?

Just a theory.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

[Flash- bd]

Over at oriolepost.com I updated an addendum. I looked at it another way and saw something.

I already explained it in another thread so hit my blog up and read the addition that is not on MASN.

Basically, it was our winning that wasn't unsustainable, rather the absolute 7-16 funk this team was in from mid june to mid july.

When you see the graph of wins and losses on baseball reference it is quite striking the gaping hole on between those two dates.

Consider the following: what if it was the really bad losses and pathetic offense of that period that was unsustainable. Now that we seem to be climbing out of it should the orioles be able to put a dent in that run differential hole?

Just a theory.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

Ingroup bias: believing that individual members (or components--ie, the anatomy of our season in terms of WL) are more distinctive than members of outgroups, and underestimating the distinctiveness of outrgroups.

Every other ML team can have it's season broken down around a 7-16 funk (or worse, frankly) and it can seem "quite striking."

[Hank Scorpio]

As fluid as the Orioles roster has been, one could argue that it's hard to attribute any of the runs to any set group of baseball players.

:laughlol:

[Frobby]

To me, the blowouts are pretty irrelevant. The major factor is that the team is 22-6 in one-run games. If we were 14-14 right now in those, the team would be 51-59 instead of 59-51.

So the big question is, why have we won so many one-run games? If the educated guess is that it is the bullpen, then I present the following:

Oakland 2.89 ERA, 18-13 in one run games

Baltimore 3.06 ERA, 22-6

Tampa 3.08 ERA, 17-17

New York 3.17 ERA, 13-17

Kansas City 3.18 ERA, 16-15

Very similar bullpen ERA's, very different W/L in one-run games, and nobody close to the Orioles. And by the way, Tampa (85% save rate) and New York (80%) have a higher save rate than the Orioles (73%).

[CA-ORIOLE]

Ingroup bias: believing that individual members (or components--ie, the anatomy of our season in terms of WL) are more distinctive than members of outgroups, and underestimating the distinctiveness of outrgroups.

Every other ML team can have it's season broken down around a 7-16 funk (or worse, frankly) and it can seem "quite striking."

This has potential to better the logic in the WAR argument.

[SilentJames]

But not every team is destroying their Pythagorean expectation on a historic level.

The orioles run differential in that period - -72. MINUS 72! and that is not cherry picking that is over a continuous 23 game series spread between june and july.

Those few weeks left a martian sized crater in our differential. We are.+18 in the 88 other games this season. Still beating our pythag by about six games, but that is within an expected standard deviation.

88 games of positive runs, or a 23 game run of offensive ineptitude and horrendous pitching that netted -72 runs. I ask, which is more sustainable?

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[SrMeowMeow]

Our Pythagorean record just means that our past record has been a little lucky. It doesn't mean that we "are" a sub-.500 team going forward. It is possible to both underperform your true talent and overperform your Pyth over that underperforming stretch.

I predicted 95 wins pre-season and I'm sticking to my guns.

[SrMeowMeow]

But not every team is destroying their Pythagorean expectation on a historic level.

The orioles run differential in that period - -72. MINUS 72! and that is not cherry picking that is over a continuous 23 game series spread between june and july.

Those few weeks left a martian sized crater in our differential. We are.+18 in the 88 other games this season. Still beating our pythag by about six games, but that is within an expected standard deviation.

88 games of positive runs, or a 23 game run of offensive ineptitude and horrendous pitching that netted -72 runs. I ask, which is more sustainable?

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And my above post notwithstanding, unfortunately, this isn't good logic. You can perform this exercise with any team. "Hey, if you take out our ten worst games, look how much better we seem!"

You need to go with the biggest sample size you can find. And it is cherry-picking to cut out our worst stretch. It would be just as bad a cherry-pick if I argued that we're really a .350 team if you take out our best 23 games in a row. And the fact that you can do either really demonstrates how facile the argument is.