Fangraphs article on why their projections hate us

[Moose Milligan]

On 10/3/2023 at 6:08 PM, Can_of_corn said:

If by rush to defend you mean point out they have a set projection that hasn't had a lot of luck with the O's this year, yea, I'm guilty.

I'm certainly not saying their projection has done a good job this year, just that they don't have some sort of bias.

The idea that they have some sort of ulterior motive to view the O's harshly in the simulations is laughable.

It's Baltimore victim syndrome at it's finest.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong.  The Baltimore Inferiority Complex is a very real thing.  A city that might be best known around the country for The Wire...tucked between Washington DC (you know, where things allegedly get done, the nerve center of the free world, Nation's Attic) Philly (Rocky) and NYC (cultural center of...well, everything) and there's an inferiority complex that people from the area have.  Rightly or wrongly, it exists.

But I also don't think you're necessarily correct here, either.  As others have pointed out, Fangraphs has been down on the Orioles the entire season and the Orioles have been consistent throughout the entire season.  I mean, you have to be to win 101 games, be one of two teams, IIRC, that didn't have a losing month and haven't been swept in a series since 2022.  

And yet, they continue to be down on the Orioles.  They can say "our projections" all they want and that's fine.  But maybe at some point they should stop patting themselves on the back and acting like the smartest baseball people on the internet because they've been consistently wrong about this team.  Moreover, they seem to want to double down on it. 

There's nothing they can do or say to convince me that the Diamondbacks or Phillies or Dodgers have better World Series odds than us when you take into consideration that all of those teams probably have to go through the team that they think has the highest odds to win it all.   

I'm going to come right out and say it; I  just don't think they know how to project for a team full of younger players and younger players that are having breakout years (Gunnar, Bradish, G-Rod, O'Hearn, Cano, etc) so instead of being high on us, they're going to be low on us until their precious projection system has enough data to predict accurately for our players.  They don't know how to project/predict for a team that won 52 games two years ago to winning 101 games this year because no team in history has done that before.

That's a diplomatic way of saying that they're not going to be nice to a team full of players who aren't household names yet.  There's no other reason to have us ranked so low here, it's ridiculous.   And I'm writing this as a poster here who has long made fun of other posters on here for being up in arms about anti-Orioles biases in the media.  

If you're reading between the lines, you'll understand that I don't think that they really have a projection system when it comes to their season projections and their playoff predictions and World Series predictions.  Sure, they have lots of fancy stats for individual players (their WAR stats are nice and tidy) but I think they're talking out of their ass when they're making their "projections" for entire teams.  

They don't know.  And they won't admit that they don't know.  But it's safer to look at a team of guys that aren't big names yet and give them the lowest odds.

Is that the pesky Baltimore Inferiority Complex rearing its ugly head?  Maybe.  But there's no way anyone can logically explain to me why they have our World Series odds so low after the season we just had other than they just don't know what to make of us.  

 

[btdart20]

1 hour ago, dystopia said:

Whatever you do, don’t dare accuse FG of having an agenda or being biased… you might get accused of having a Baltimore inferiority complex. 

I don't think they have an agenda or are being biased.  I think their model is simply wrong.  They tend to crunch numbers and just post the results.  They do try to add commentary occasionally on how they got the conclusion.  I'm not even arguing the O's should be #1.  But behind Arizona?  Nope.  FG can shift weightings however they want; I just don't see how they can get past the OPS and ERA/FIP gap that Arizona compared to every other team left in the post-season to not project them last.  This has more explaining to do than their previous projections IMHO.  

In the vein of what Churchill said about democracy...  FG's model is the worst except for all the others than have been tried.  (Not quite true, but my brain made the stretch connection...)

[Malike]

MLB The Show has the Rangers beating us, maybe they secretly just use that as their model.

[Moose Milligan]

Also, I am not a conspiracy theory guy but I find it very odd that they have over 202k followers on Twitter and have practically zero engagement on their twitter feed.  Their posts get a lot of views, hardly ever any comments, retweets or likes.  

Just now, Malike said:

MLB The Show has the Rangers beating us, maybe they secretly just use that as their model.

I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[interloper]

1) The model sucks

2) They're annoying steadfast in following their sucky model instead of allowing for the possibility that it sucks

The end

[RZNJ]

4 minutes ago, Malike said:

MLB The Show has the Rangers beating us, maybe they secretly just use that as their model.

I take that as a good sign.

[Malike]

2 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

I take that as a good sign.

I don't believe in signs. I think we're good enough to beat them, but I wouldn't be surprised if they rolled us in 3 games either. There are a lot of unknowns about how these kids are going to play in the limelight. Texas is a team full of guys who have played in the playoffs and World Series. 

No matter what happens, it was still a heck of a season and it would be nice if they can get to the ALCS, and while there is no easy path to the World Series, I would have preferred Tampa as our opponent. They play very competitive games and we know them fairly well.

[DrungoHazewood]

20 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

If you're reading between the lines, you'll understand that I don't think that they really have a projection system when it comes to their season projections and their playoff predictions and World Series predictions.  Sure, they have lots of fancy stats for individual players (their WAR stats are nice and tidy) but I think they're talking out of their ass when they're making their "projections" for entire teams.  

They don't know.  And they won't admit that they don't know.  But it's safer to look at a team of guys that aren't big names yet and give them the lowest odds.

I nearly 100% guarantee that any of their analysts would admit with little or no prodding that the uncertainty in their forecasts, as is true with all baseball team forecasts, is much larger than the separation between many of the teams. Everyone knows, or should know, that when someone says the Blue Jays will win 87 games what they really mean is that the center of the probability distribution is 87 wins, but nobody's gonna be too surprised if they win 77 or 97.

If that means you think nobody has a really valid projection system, that's not wrong. But that's a lot different than singling out anyone in particular like Fangraphs.

[DrungoHazewood]

16 minutes ago, btdart20 said:

I don't think they have an agenda or are being biased.  I think their model is simply wrong.  They tend to crunch numbers and just post the results.  They do try to add commentary occasionally on how they got the conclusion.  I'm not even arguing the O's should be #1.  But behind Arizona?  Nope.  FG can shift weightings however they want; I just don't see how they can get past the OPS and ERA/FIP gap that Arizona compared to every other team left in the post-season to not project them last.  This has more explaining to do than their previous projections IMHO.  

In the vein of what Churchill said about democracy...  FG's model is the worst except for all the others than have been tried.  (Not quite true, but my brain made the stretch connection...)

They're all wrong. Because even if you set up the league such that you 100% knew the true talent of every team on April 1st and you evened that talent out so everyone was a 81-win team, as the season played out some teams would win 70 and some teams would win 98. Random variation is largely ignored, but tremendously important.

[dystopia]

2 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I nearly 100% guarantee that any of their analysts would admit with little or no prodding that the uncertainty in their forecasts, as is true with all baseball team forecasts, is much larger than the separation between many of the teams. Everyone knows, or should know, that when someone says the Blue Jays will win 87 games what they really mean is that the center of the probability distribution is 87 wins, but nobody's gonna be too surprised if they win 77 or 97.

If that means you think nobody has a really valid projection system, that's not wrong. But that's a lot different than singling out anyone in particular like Fangraphs.

Which makes their forecasts a waste of bandwidth. 

[Hallas]

By the way, the postseason ZIPS projection for the ALDS has the O's favored 56%-44%.  The fact that we get to pitch Bradish twice on normal rest I think is a huge bump for us according to their projections.  ZIPS seems to think that Bradish is better than any of the Rangers starters.

 

https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds/postseason-zips

 

Edited October 5, 2023 by Hallas

[DirtyBird]

 

28 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I don't think you're necessarily wrong.  The Baltimore Inferiority Complex is a very real thing.  A city that might be best known around the country for The Wire...tucked between Washington DC (you know, where things allegedly get done, the nerve center of the free world, Nation's Attic) Philly (Rocky) and NYC (cultural center of...well, everything) and there's an inferiority complex that people from the area have.  Rightly or wrongly, it exists.

But I also don't think you're necessarily correct here, either.  As others have pointed out, Fangraphs has been down on the Orioles the entire season and the Orioles have been consistent throughout the entire season.  I mean, you have to be to win 101 games, be one of two teams, IIRC, that didn't have a losing month and haven't been swept in a series since 2022.  

And yet, they continue to be down on the Orioles.  They can say "our projections" all they want and that's fine.  But maybe at some point they should stop patting themselves on the back and acting like the smartest baseball people on the internet because they've been consistently wrong about this team.  Moreover, they seem to want to double down on it. 

There's nothing they can do or say to convince me that the Diamondbacks or Phillies or Dodgers have better World Series odds than us when you take into consideration that all of those teams probably have to go through the team that they think has the highest odds to win it all.   

I'm going to come right out and say it; I  just don't think they know how to project for a team full of younger players and younger players that are having breakout years (Gunnar, Bradish, G-Rod, O'Hearn, Cano, etc) so instead of being high on us, they're going to be low on us until their precious projection system has enough data to predict accurately for our players.  They don't know how to project/predict for a team that won 52 games two years ago to winning 101 games this year because no team in history has done that before.

That's a diplomatic way of saying that they're not going to be nice to a team full of players who aren't household names yet.  There's no other reason to have us ranked so low here, it's ridiculous.   And I'm writing this as a poster here who has long made fun of other posters on here for being up in arms about anti-Orioles biases in the media.  

If you're reading between the lines, you'll understand that I don't think that they really have a projection system when it comes to their season projections and their playoff predictions and World Series predictions.  Sure, they have lots of fancy stats for individual players (their WAR stats are nice and tidy) but I think they're talking out of their ass when they're making their "projections" for entire teams.  

They don't know.  And they won't admit that they don't know.  But it's safer to look at a team of guys that aren't big names yet and give them the lowest odds.

Is that the pesky Baltimore Inferiority Complex rearing its ugly head?  Maybe.  But there's no way anyone can logically explain to me why they have our World Series odds so low after the season we just had other than they just don't know what to make of us.  

 

nobody is going to read all of this

[Malike]

13 minutes ago, DirtyBird said:

 

nobody is going to read all of this

I read it, but I also don't have the attention span of a 2-year-old.

[Ohfan67]

14 minutes ago, dystopia said:

Which makes their forecasts a waste of bandwidth. 

They got folks to click on the link and they have you posting about it and making others aware of it. Their purpose was served. 

[btdart20]

14 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

They're all wrong. Because even if you set up the league such that you 100% knew the true talent of every team on April 1st and you evened that talent out so everyone was a 81-win team, as the season played out some teams would win 70 and some teams would win 98. Random variation is largely ignored, but tremendously important.

That sounds true in the grand scheme.  Injuries, "hot/cold streaks"... 

Are there certain stats that are more variable than others?  If so, then would a GM goal be about reducing the random variation?  

K% is one that I know we've discussed from a pitching perspective.  Balls in play are subject to more variation than striking someone out.  Same thing for hitting (but a low K%).  Maybe the SigBot is onto the same thing you're talking about because we signed a guy this past offseason who's main value-add skill is his low K%.