Schoenfield: O's Starting to Look Like Team of Destiny

[Babypowder]

The 1969 Mets say Hello.

More recently, the 2009 Seattle Mariners.

[srock]

I want 90 wins and to win the AL East. You can't fluke a MLB season, it is just too long. A team can get lucky during the season, but teams do not have lucky seasons IMO. The tide has to turn with the media because they would look like fools if the Orioles made the playoffs and they continued to talk about how we were below average. Whatever, just keep expecting the Orioles to melt down and for the Red Sox to turn it on..... idiots.

You can fluke 60% of a season. I'll accept the Orioles were lucky the first 60% of year, milky a great bullpen for all it was worth. But as of now, the Orioles are a top notch team and only need to remain this good for 36 games.

Anything can happen in 36 games! Lets take this thing.

[Lucky Jim]

You can fluke 60% of a season. I'll accept the Orioles were lucky the first 60% of year, milky a great bullpen for all it was worth. But as of now, the Orioles are a top notch team and only need to remain this good for 36 games.

Anything can happen in 36 games! Lets take this thing.

A couple of points. I think it's important to qualify what people mean by "luck." They don't mean that the Orioles didn't perform well enough to win. They mean that there is a certain amount of uncontrollable uncertainty in baseball, an uncertainty that is highly-leveraged in close games, that can rear its head even when a team plays well and "deserves to win." The O's have largely avoided that - and, in that sense, have been "lucky" - they've avoided being bitten by uncertainty. In those games that - to echo a cliche - "neither team really deserved the lose," the O's have generally not lost. People blanch at the idea of "luck," I think, because they think it takes agency away from the team. But really it's just an uneven distribution of unknowns, and the avoidance of bad luck that factors in.

Second, this article is sort-of silly. Going from "this can't last" to "team of destiny" after a single game makes little sense. Before yesterday, the Orioles were 15-8 in August, w/ a run differential of 6. Their expected W-L was 12ish-12ish and yet they were 7 games over .500. They have been better - but they were never awful (blowout losses certainly played a role in their ugly run differential). But their ability to keep winning still belies the baseline math. Folks just need to get over it. What they're doing since Aug. 1st doesn't somehow confirm the the prior attempts to strong-arm the team into Pythag. That said, no one was "wrong" to identify the run differential as a red flag or sign of weakness. It was. They've gotten better. The question remains - an open one - of whether they've gotten good enough.

[Moose Milligan]

This supports my opinion that the national pundits don't watch full games. They form their opinion(s) off of highlight clips. They have little knowledge about the inner details of many teams, they do little in depth research. They use the Cliff Notes approach.

He is writing about 2 potential playoff teams, he should have his facts straight and know it is a 4 game series.

It may be nitpicky but I've seen it happen too much. These national writers/TV personalities have at best a surface level understanding of most of the teams they discuss.

Well, that's their job. They're supposed to be keeping an eye on all 30 ML teams. You try to do to that and see how much in depth knowledge you have of a specific team after a little while. Knowing the minute details of all teams in the MLB is impossible. They obviously know more about the big market teams because that's what sells and that's what people watch. People like Roch, Amber, and Britt who cover the team each day are going to know the specifics about the O's. Turning to espn for good coverage about your team that doesn't play in a huge market and has been irrelevant for 15 years is a mistake.

[Fan4Life]

Buck is known for taking every team he has managed to the playoff's in his second full year as manager. It's looking good for keeping that record in tact.

[flashjordnk]

That said, no one was "wrong" to identify the run differential as a red flag or sign of weakness. It was. They've gotten better. The question remains - an open one - of whether they've gotten good enough.

I think this is the bottom line. The inputs to some degree have fundamentally changed from what we've done until August.

But right now it's all about the starting pitching to me. Tillman, and Gonzalez have been huge helps. Hammel is due to return. Looking at it that way alone, we've allowed 94 runs in August, 4th best in the AL. If Chen/Tillman/Gonzalez can continue to churn out QS's and Hammel can come back and be dominant as he was before...with the bullpen being what it has been. To answer LJ's equation, yeah if the SP can continue to perform...yes I think it's enough.

[hoosiers]

But their ability to keep winning still belies the baseline math.

It belies your premise of what is "baseline math".

[Lucky Jim]

And here's why it's better not to even post.

[hoosiers]

And here's why it's better not to even post.

Ha ha. The ability of the Os to keep winning or not has nothing to do with your baseline math. Period.

[Mizerooskie]

Schoenfeld points out precisely why looking at pythag projections and run differential is so lazy and flawed--teams change over the course of the year. They get better, worse, change personnel, learn to win, give up on the season, etc.

I agree with the poster above that said teams don't have lucky seasons. Sure, they can play at the absolute peak of their talent level for extended periods, but that's a whole different phenomena than luck. It's typically a unique combination of circumstances. In the case of the Orioles, it's a fantastic bullpen combined with timely hitting (notably home runs).

Paraphrasing Tommy Lasorda, no matter how good or a team is, it's going to lose one third of its game and win one third of its games. The Orioles have been taking advantage of the other third.

[Lucky Jim]

Ha ha. The ability of the Os to keep winning or not has nothing to do with your baseline math. Period.

I used "baseline math" to refer to the lens through which Schoenfield was viewing the season - the pythag. That's his baseline. And he's torturing logic. But, sure, cherry-pick anything you want to make irrelevant points. Awesome. Thanks.

[Sanfran327]

This supports my opinion that the national pundits don't watch full games. They form their opinion(s) off of highlight clips. They have little knowledge about the inner details of many teams, they do little in depth research. They use the Cliff Notes approach.

He is writing about 2 potential playoff teams, he should have his facts straight and know it is a 4 game series.

It may be nitpicky but I've seen it happen too much. These national writers/TV personalities have at best a surface level understanding of most of the teams they discuss.

It's not nitpicky. It's an indicator of how attentive national media types are to teams outside of their precious ultra-markets.

Put it this way, if you submitted that article to your boss, or any type of assignment with a glaring mistake, you'd hear about it. No reason to give a professional writer a free pass.

[weams]

no one was "wrong" to identify the run differential as a red flag or sign of weakness. It was. They've gotten better. The question remains - an open one - of whether they've gotten good enough.

I really is. I bet you are enjoying this all though. No?

[Lucky Jim]

I really is. I bet you are enjoying this all though. No?

Hugely. I had a 20 minute conversation with a guy last night just detailing the season, the factors at play, what's likely going forward.

[LookinUp]

Lol at this tweet. People are fixated on the 1-run thing now.

Jon Heyman ‏@JonHeymanCBS

MT @HallerDave How are Rays 1.5 GB of O's? Rays have lost 19 of their last 25 1-run games; O's are 24-6 for the season