Jump to content

FiveThirtyEight: The Orioles Outperform

weams

By weams
in Orioles Talk

Recommended Posts

weams Hangout Grand Counsel

weams

Posted
Posted

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-orioles-always-win-more-than-they-should-theres-a-reason-for-that/

The Orioles Always Win More Than They Should. There’s A Reason For That.

On average, the projections have missed low on Baltimore by 10 wins a year since 2012, including 2017 so far.2 And not to single out PECOTA specifically, but it has been low on the Orioles so often — 2017 is tracking to be the sixth-consecutive season where this happened — that it has become something of a running joke among Baltimore fans.

Even granting that predicting baseball teams is an imperfect science at best, there’s something else going on here — and it has a lot to do with manager Buck Showalter, one of the best in modern history at squeezing every spare win out of a roster. This isn’t the first time Showalter’s teams have shattered expectations; in addition to his work in Baltimore, he also won plenty of ballgames during his previous stints in Texas, Arizona and New York when the numbers said he had no business doing so. With the Orioles, though, Showalter has turned defying the odds into an art form.

Three years ago, I wrote that — for better and for worse — few managers really make much of a dent in a team’s record, relative to what we’d expect from a simple, manager-independent projection of talent. But Showalter is one of the select few who’ve risen above the fray. From 2010 (when Showalter took over the Baltimore job midseason) to 2016,3 the O’s won an average of nearly six extra games per season over expectation, which elevated Showalter into eighth place among overachieving managers since the expansion era began in 1961:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
CheeryO Major Leaguer Cup of Coffee

CheeryO

Posted
Posted

I don't think this was posted yet, but I didn't see it if it was.  Good to see the O's getting attention even from a non-baseball site.  One thing I noticed the article does not mention was how good the Oriole bullpen was under the Earl Weaver teams too.  Here's to crossing our fingers this all continues.  

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-orioles-always-win-more-than-they-should-theres-a-reason-for-that/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing


  • Posts

    • Brian88
      2024 Week 4: Ravens vs Bills on SNF

      By Brian88 · Posted

      The same thing was happening was MacDonald was the DC and when Wink was the DC, that makes me put most of the blame on Harbaugh 
    • Hallas
      Can Cowser still win Rookie of The Year over Gil/Wells ?

      By Hallas · Posted

      dWAR is just the run value for defense added with the defensive adjustment.  Corner OF spots have a -7.5 run adjustment, while CF has a +2.5 adjustment over 150 games.    Since Cowser played both CF and the corners they pro-rate his time at each to calculate his defensive adjustment. 
    • e16bball
      Can Cowser still win Rookie of The Year over Gil/Wells ?

      By e16bball · Posted

      Just to be clear, though, fWAR also includes a substantial adjustment for position, including a negative one for Cowser.  For a clearer example on that front, as the chart posted higher on this page indicates, Carlos Santana had a +14 OAA — which is the source data that fWAR’s defensive component is based on. That 14 outs above average equates to 11-12 (they use different values on this for some reason) runs better than the average 1B.  So does Santana have a 12.0 defensive value, per fWAR? He does not. That’s because they adjust his defensive value downward to reflect that he’s playing a less difficult/valuable position. In this case, that adjustment comes out to -11.0 runs, as you can see here:   So despite apparently having a bona fide Gold Glove season, Santana’s Fielding Runs value (FanGraphs’ equivalent to dWAR) is barely above average, at 1.1 runs.    Any good WAR calculation is going to adjust for position. Being a good 1B just isn’t worth as much as being an average SS or catcher. Just as being a good LF isn’t worth as much as being an average CF. Every outfielder can play LF — only the best outfielders can play CF.  Where the nuance/context shows up here is with Cowser’s unique situation. Playing LF in OPACY, with all that ground to cover, is not the same as playing LF at Fenway or Yankee Stadium. Treating Cowser’s “position” as equivalent to Tyler O’Neill’s, for example, is not fair. The degree of difficulty is much, much higher at OPACY’s LF, and so the adjustment seems out of whack for him. That’s the one place where I’d say the bWAR value is “unfair” to Cowser.
    • Hallas
      Can Cowser still win Rookie of The Year over Gil/Wells ?

      By Hallas · Posted

      Wait a second here, the reason he's -0.1 in bb-ref dwar is because they're using drs to track his defensive run value.  He's worth 6.6 runs in defense according to fangraphs, which includes adjustments for position, which would give him a fangraphs defensive war of +0.7.
    • e16bball
      Can Cowser still win Rookie of The Year over Gil/Wells ?

      By e16bball · Posted

      A little funny to have provided descriptions of the hits (“weak” single; “500 foot” HR). FIP doesn’t care about any of that either, so it’s kind of an odd thing to add in an effort to make ERA look bad.  Come in, strike out the first hitter, then give up three 108 MPH rocket doubles off the wall. FIP thinks you were absolutely outstanding, and it’s a shame your pathetic defense and/or sheer bad luck let you down. Next time you’ll (probably) get the outcomes you deserve. They’re both flawed. So is xFIP. So is SIERA. So is RA/9. So is WPA. So is xERA. None of them are perfect measures of how a pitcher’s actual performance was, because there’s way too much context and too many variables for any one metric to really encompass.  But when I’m thinking about awards, for me at least, it ends up having to be about the actual outcomes. I don’t really care what a hitter’s xWOBA is when I’m thinking about MVP, and the same is true for pitchers. Did you get the outs? Did the runs score? That’s the “value” that translates to the scoreboard and, ultimately, to the standings. So I think the B-R side of it is more sensible for awards.  I definitely take into account the types of factors that you (and other pitching fWAR advocates) reference as flaws. So if a guy plays in front of a particular bad defense or had a particularly high percentage of inherited runners score, I’d absolutely adjust my take to incorporate that info. And I also 100% go to Fangraphs first when I’m trying to figure out which pitchers we should acquire (i.e., for forward looking purposes).  But I just can’t bring myself say that my Cy Young is just whichever guy had the best ratio of Ks to BBs to HRs over a threshold number of innings. As @Frobby said, it just distills out too much of what actually happened.
    • Moose Milligan
      Looks like the Detroit Tigers (Update: O's play KC in 1st round of playoffs)

      By Moose Milligan · Posted

      We were all a lot younger in 2005.  No one wanted to believe Canseco cause he’s a smarmy guy. Like I said, he was the only one telling the truth. It wasn’t a leap of faith to see McGwire up there and Sosa up there and think “yeah, those guys were juicing” but then suddenly look at Raffy and think he was completely innocent.  It’s a sad story. The guy should be in Hall of Fame yet 500 homers and 3,000 hits are gone like a fart in the wind cause his legacy is wagging his finger and thinking he couldn’t get caught.  Don’t fly too close to the sun.  
    • Billy F-Face3
      Os vs KC in WC round

      By Billy F-Face3 · Posted

      I think if we get the fun sprinkler loving Gunnar that was in the dugout yesterday, I don’t think we have to worry about him pressing. He seemed loose and feeling good with the other guys he was with, like Kremer.

  • Popular Contributors

×
×
  • Create New...