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The O's at 20% of the season gone.


wildcard

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Are you saying that Manny's 8 errors don't bother you?

I agree with your point, errors don't tell us everything, but they tell us something. If you think there are better metrics out there, go ahead and pull them together and see if they give us a different picture of the team's defensive performance. Otherwise, be polite and thank the OP.

They're annoying, but when a player has an established level of performance and he over/underperforms that for a month it's rarely much more than that. Manny has been judged to be one of the better defenders in baseball over the past 2+ years, it appears he's healthy and hasn't lost much or any ability, so I'm not going to let a month's fielding slump get in my head.

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No. You know what an error is. Everyone does. All it measures is opportunities missed due to physical error, but when:

1) you're comparing team errors from one year to the next, and

2) most of the members on that team are the same, and

3) the current number of errors projects to be much higher than the year before, then

4) you know that the players on the team aren't performing as well as they did the previous year.

In this case, it has nothing to do with ability.

There is ability and then there is observed performance. I don't know of any meaningful reason why Manny's underlying talent or ability has changed, so I've concluded that he's made a few more errors than is typical for him but it's very likely his observed performance this year will tend back towards his long-term performance.

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While we're at it, can we stop using numbers through 1/5th of the season and multiplying by five to get what the team/player is "on pace for"? If a guy has an established level of 30 homers a year and has 13 homers in 32 games he's not on a pace for 66 homers!! It's overwhelmingly likely he's just playing over his head or getting better than normal results over a short span of games, and will hit something like (13 + (30/162 * 130)) = 37 homers.

I have a solution for you and others who don't like me posting the "on a pace for" or even the error stat. You don't have to read the posts. And certainly don't feel obligated to comment on those posts.

I like to post them. They are a way of marking where the O's are at any point. Their pace may change. In many cases we hope they do.

So to answer your question. No I don't think I will stop posting these like of subjects.

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I have a solution for you and others who don't like me posting the "on a pace for" or even the error stat. You don't have to read the posts. And certainly don't feel obligated to comment on those posts.

I like to post them. They are a way of marking where the O's are at any point. Their pace may change. In many cases we hope they do.

So to answer your question. No I don't think I will stop posting these like of subjects.

Feel free to continue to post whatever you want. But I will continue to emphasize that claims of someone "being on pace" for whatever 32 games into the season are just simplistic straight-line approximations that almost certainly won't hold. For them to have any real meaning they need to be heavily regressed to career performances or league average performances, or something that goes beyond locking in short-term noise that only coincidentally reflects ability.

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Looks to me like "errors" are the new "pitching wins". :scratchchinhmm:

We'll use something I don't particularly like. Team dWAR is at positive 0.2. Last year team dWAR was 7.2. Looks like there's catching up to do by that metric.

Gordo usually tracks +/- I think, I wonder where that stands.

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Are you saying that Manny's 8 errors don't bother you?

If it's a near meaningless stat, then yes, the presence of more doesn't bother me. Just as I don't care if our starters have more/less wins, closers have more/less saves, players have more/less sunflower seeds.

Manny has played worse defense this year than any other. That bothers me a tad, though I'm sure he will be fine.

I agree with your point, errors don't tell us everything, but they tell us something.

What do they tell us, exactly? What are they GOOD at spotting? Players that throw and catch well, often with limited range? Players that never dive? Ultra conservative throwers?

If you think there are better metrics out there, go ahead and pull them together and see if they give us a different picture of the team's defensive performance. Otherwise, be polite and thank the OP.

I could pull together something from Fangraphs or Reference, but it would be pointless. For one, defensive metrics need a HUGE sample size before they become predictive in any way, and two, we all have seen the team perform poorly on defense this season.

Errors are one of the few stats that are actually WORSE than the eye test, which is saying something in my book.

No. You know what an error is. Everyone does. All it measures is opportunities missed due to physical error, but when:

1) you're comparing team errors from one year to the next, and

2) most of the members on that team are the same, and

3) the current number of errors projects to be much higher than the year before, then

4) you know that the players on the team aren't performing as well as they did the previous year.

In this case, it has nothing to do with ability.

I don't agree with your premise that I know what an error is. The whole point of asking you is to show how subjective a stat it is. It's so bad it hurts all the other stats based on it, to the point that decent advanced stats refuse to use anything that involves BA, BAA or ERA.

Additionally, the "enforcement" of errors is insanely subjective, especially on the road, which already makes using a small sample size horribly problematic. As statheads everywhere say, garbage in, garbage out.

I completely disagree with point #2 of your post. Which positions have we had a player play 75% of the innings last year that does the same this year? Go ahead.

As if that weren't enough to completely invalidate your conclusion, the sample size is so small, and statistic so flawed here that a few balls hit a few feet further one way or the other can lead to an increase of the size we are discussion here.

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Something else... the offense is on pace for this and that, to eclipse last year's mark, etc. but the AL is scoring .16 more runs/game. Average team OPS is up from .706 to .715.

The team's OPS+ is currently 112 compared to 105 last season so it's not a big sticking point, but it's worth noting.

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I don't agree with your premise that I know what an error is. The whole point of asking you is to show how subjective a stat it is. It's so bad it hurts all the other stats based on it, to the point that decent advanced stats refuse to use anything that involves BA, BAA or ERA.

Additionally, the "enforcement" of errors is insanely subjective, especially on the road, which already makes using a small sample size horribly problematic. As statheads everywhere say, garbage in, garbage out.

I completely disagree with point #2 of your post. Which positions have we had a player play 75% of the innings last year that does the same this year? Go ahead.

As if that weren't enough to completely invalidate your conclusion, the sample size is so small, and statistic so flawed here that a few balls hit a few feet further one way or the other can lead to an increase of the size we are discussion here.

Well then, I'll just say that it was an error to reply to your initial comment and leave it at that.

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I don't agree with your premise that I know what an error is. The whole point of asking you is to show how subjective a stat it is. It's so bad it hurts all the other stats based on it, to the point that decent advanced stats refuse to use anything that involves BA, BAA or ERA.

Wow. I don't think I've heard anyone claim that errors are the SOLE reason why BA, BAA, and ERA aren't used and I've visited SABR, MLB Think Factory, and FanGraphs.

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If it's a near meaningless stat, then yes, the presence of more doesn't bother me. Just as I don't care if our starters have more/less wins, closers have more/less saves, players have more/less sunflower seeds.

Manny has played worse defense this year than any other. That bothers me a tad, though I'm sure he will be fine.

So how would you assess our performance and back up your assessment? It's all just noise? Nobody is making any grand claims, just posting the best data we got and making an educated guess as to where we are as a team. I don't really disagree with anything you are saying about the limited usefulness of errors, I just object to trashing the OP without offering anything constructive.

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Feel free to continue to post whatever you want. But I will continue to emphasize that claims of someone "being on pace" for whatever 32 games into the season are just simplistic straight-line approximations that almost certainly won't hold. For them to have any real meaning they need to be heavily regressed to career performances or league average performances, or something that goes beyond locking in short-term noise that only coincidentally reflects ability.

Thanks Jon. I appreciate you allowing me to post on the OH.

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Feel free to continue to post whatever you want. But I will continue to emphasize that claims of someone "being on pace" for whatever 32 games into the season are just simplistic straight-line approximations that almost certainly won't hold. For them to have any real meaning they need to be heavily regressed to career performances or league average performances, or something that goes beyond locking in short-term noise that only coincidentally reflects ability.

Pretty sure Wildcard wasn't "claiming" anything. Nothing wrong with a little fun and conjecture.

As for errors, I have no issues with them. They're certainly down in the pecking order of defensive efficiency for me. While their are certainly inconsistencies in errors, they are hardly random haphazard assessments as some seem to be suggesting. I'd assume that people criticizing errors as meaningless know that UZR counts errors in their evaluations.

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Pretty sure Wildcard wasn't "claiming" anything. Nothing wrong with a little fun and conjecture.

I probably react a bit too strongly, but it just rubs me the wrong way when folks (and not just wildcard, but pretty much every media outlet) says stuff like "this will be very concerning if it continues" or "Paredes is on pace to hit 30 homers and slug .650" 20 games into the season. It's taking 2% of the available information and speculating on what happens if the other 98% suddenly doesn't matter.

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I probably react a bit too strongly, but it just rubs me the wrong way when folks (and not just wildcard, but pretty much every media outlet) says stuff like "this will be very concerning if it continues" or "Paredes is on pace to hit 30 homers and slug .650" 20 games into the season. It's taking 2% of the available information and speculating on what happens if the other 98% suddenly doesn't matter.

Its more like commenting on the 20% that has happened when anyone with a brain knows that 80% is unknown.

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