Wonders Never Cease

[Frobby]

Couldn’t resist that thread title.  

Huge win to beat Chicago with their ace on the mound.  Seemed like the ChiSox were threatening every inning until the last one.  Tremendous escape job for the O’s, who managed to cash in on their own few opportunities.   Hard to believe we won that one.  
 

[Hallas]

Between knocking around Manoah and Cease this team seems to have a weird amount of success against ace pitching of late.

[Aristotelian]

Got some help from the big wall in left!

[Roll Tide]

Nice win …if that’s a bad start for him he’s a beast. Good stuff and extremely composed. Glad we got to him early as it’s against the trend this year.

[JR Oriole]

Yeah, that was one of those wins where they really had no business winning.  Cease is insane and the Sox had what felt like 3 baserunners every inning until the 9th. Amazingly, Fangraphs still has us projected to finish 81-81...with a 17-23 finish, which is one of the worst in the majors.  They must have us losing most of the games against Toronto and Boston.  Either that, or they still can't reconcile our current record with our 0.00% playoff odds heading into the season.

[Moose Milligan]

The first inning was impressive and it kept him from going deeper in the game. I was surprised he didn’t strike out at least 8-10 of our free swingers, it felt like some of our guys were able to rein in their tendencies for a bit. 
 

Their bullpen is depleted. I think we can take another game in this series for sure, maybe even a sweep. 

[Sports Guy]

Got lucky last night.  In any given game, you get lucky or unlucky.  You have games you lose that you should have won and vice versa.

Last night is a game they should have lost but they had a lot of good breaks. That’s baseball.  
 

Btw, speaking of luck, the announcers were saying that the Os have 6 guys who have played over 100 games and 2 others at 90 or more.

The WS had 2.

Lots of injuries and bad luck for the WS. I mention that because that team is stacked with high end talent and yet they are struggling to get into the playoffs.

I would bet their fans saw lots of playoff appearances on the horizon with that talent and even one or more WS titles.

Never take winning for granted.  

[Frobby]

4 minutes ago, JR Oriole said:

Yeah, that was one of those wins where they really had no business winning.  Cease is insane and the Sox had what felt like 3 baserunners every inning until the 9th. Amazingly, Fangraphs still has us projected to finish 81-81...with a 17-23 finish, which is one of the worst in the majors.  They must have us losing most of the games against Toronto and Boston.  Either that, or they still can't reconcile our current record with our 0.00% playoff odds heading into the season.

Fangraphs can bite me.  Their projections are essentially based on every player performing like they projected they would, instead of how they’re actually performing.  For example, for the rest of this season they have:

Mateo .665 OPS

Kremer 4.76 ERA

Voth 4.79 ERA

Lyles 5.10 ERA

Watkins 5.53 ERA

They have us with a team ERA of 4.90 the rest of the season, compared to our YTD ERA of 3.91.   So bottom line, their models project a ton of regression to career means for our pitchers despite what they’ve done for 3/4 of the season to date.  Their models may prove correct, but I really doubt it.   This will be a post to revisit when the season is over.

[DrungoHazewood]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Fangraphs can bite me.  Their projections are essentially based on every player performing like they projected they would, instead of how they’re actually performing.  For example, for the rest of this season they have:

Mateo .665 OPS

Kremer 4.76 ERA

Voth 4.79 ERA

Lyles 5.10 ERA

Watkins 5.53 ERA

They have us with a team ERA of 4.90 the rest of the season, compared to our YTD ERA of 3.91.   So bottom line, their models project a ton of regression to career means for our pitchers despite what they’ve done for 3/4 of the season to date.  Their models may prove correct, but I really doubt it.   This will be a post to revisit when the season is over.

What were the projections for those players at the beginning of the year?  Kind of a rhetorical question, I don't know if they keep those archived anywhere handy.

But I'd be very surprised if their projections were just the beginning of the years numbers scaled to the number of games left.  I would think they'd be something like (1 x two years ago) + (2 x last year) + (1.5 x so far this year) / 4.5.  Or perhaps something more complicated incorporating xwOBA and batted ball data.  And using some kind of MLEs for years where he was in the minors. It's not at all Fangraphs-y to project someone like Mateo by ignoring what's now 63% of his career MLB PAs.

[eddie83]

8 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

Got some help from the big wall in left!

Obviously circumstances change if the 2 hits were HR’s but in the surface it only cost Chicago 1 run. The first double scored anyway.  

[eddie83]

39 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

The first inning was impressive and it kept him from going deeper in the game. I was surprised he didn’t strike out at least 8-10 of our free swingers, it felt like some of our guys were able to rein in their tendencies for a bit. 
 

Their bullpen is depleted. I think we can take another game in this series for sure, maybe even a sweep. 

A sweep would be huge heading into Houston. I would be very happy with a 3-3 split vs Houston and Cleveland.  

[Aristotelian]

2 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

Obviously circumstances change if the 2 hits were HR’s but in the surface it only cost Chicago 1 run. The first double scored anyway.  

Like I said, it helped, that doesn't mean it determined the game. They also got some lucky bounces on grounders as well as some terrible strikes called balls etc. And the wall is there for our hitters too. 

[eddie83]

1 minute ago, Aristotelian said:

Like I said, it helped, that doesn't mean it determined the game. They also got some lucky bounces on grounders as well as some terrible strikes called balls etc. And the wall is there for our hitters too. 

After the top of the 1st I thought it was going to be an uphill climb. Great win.  

[Frobby]

9 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

What were the projections for those players at the beginning of the year?  Kind of a rhetorical question, I don't know if they keep those archived anywhere handy.

But I'd be very surprised if their projections were just the beginning of the years numbers scaled to the number of games left.  I would think they'd be something like (1 x two years ago) + (2 x last year) + (1.5 x so far this year) / 4.5.  Or perhaps something more complicated incorporating xwOBA and batted ball data.  And using some kind of MLEs for years where he was in the minors. It's not at all Fangraphs-y to project someone like Mateo by ignoring what's now 63% of his career MLB PAs.

No, you are right.  The ROS projections take into account both past years and what has happened so far this year.   But in my opinion it’s too heavily weighted towards previous years, plus whatever else they throw into the mix to guess how pitchers will do going forward.  I just don’t think it’s likely that the team ERA is going to be a full run worse over the final 40 games than it’s been over the first 122.   

Fangraphs team projections and playoff offs are based on a ZiPS/Steamer blend they call Depth Charts.  

Pre-season O’s hitter projections

Rest of season hitting projections

Pre-season O’s pitching projections

Rest of season pitching projections

Bautista with a 4.00 ERA the rest of the season?

 

 

[DirtyBird]

They should have used Cease on Monday to beat the Royals. Instead they lost both games.