Fangraphs article on why their projections hate us

[Can_of_corn]

28 minutes ago, dystopia said:

Which makes their forecasts a waste of bandwidth. 

Sure.  So why are folks so hung up on them not liking the Orioles?

[DirtyBird]

17 minutes ago, Malike said:

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

Can you share a summary?

[Malike]

1 minute ago, DirtyBird said:

Can you share a summary?

My recommendation is, if you are curious as to what it says, just read it. I'm not the Cliff Notes of the OH.

[Moose Milligan]

39 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.

Yeah.

But I don't like Fangraphs.

 

[dystopia]

10 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Sure.  So why are folks so hung up on them not liking the Orioles?

Is it really hard to understand why Oriole fans would take the disrespect personally?

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, dystopia said:

Is it really hard to understand why Oriole fans would take the disrespect personally?

Yes, because it isn't personal.

[DrungoHazewood]

51 minutes ago, dystopia said:

Which makes their forecasts a waste of bandwidth. 

If you strictly limited online content to things that are positively moving the human race forward we could probably host the whole Internet on a few dozen Commodore 64s.

[Number5]

7 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Yes, because it isn't personal.

 

[DirtyBird]

21 minutes ago, Malike said:

My recommendation is, if you are curious as to what it says, just read it. I'm not the Cliff Notes of the OH.

Thanks a lot 

[DrungoHazewood]

34 minutes ago, btdart20 said:

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%.

Here's a relevant quote from Tom Tango:

Quote

Listen, this idea of the true spread being smaller than the observed spread bothers many people, and they all think they know a way around it.  And they don’t.  They can’t.  Even if they are god.

 

[ledzepp8]

1 hour 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.   

 

 

This is on point. I couldn't care less if they make a projection and it's wildly wrong. That's what happens all the time. The issue is when they continue to tout these projections and project the Orioles to still be worse than they are deeper and deeper into the season, in spite of their actual performance on the field/in the standings. It's akin to them saying, "Our projections are right. It's the Orioles winning ways that are wrong. You'll see (eventually)."

[dystopia]

26 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Yes, because it isn't personal.

Why does that matter? FG is looking at a 100 team and saying “we don’t believe you’re anywhere close to being that good”. Doesn’t matter if it’s personal or not. It would be one thing if it could be statistically defensible but it’s not. The Orioles and their fans have every right to feel disrespected by that, and there’s 29 other teams and fan bases who would feel the same way. If you think otherwise, then you’re either lying or not a real fan. 

[AnythingO's]

Wasn't it pointed out in an earlier thread that Fangraphs makes their forecasts pre-season and does NOT revise them mid-year like some other services?? Or am I mis-remembering?

[ledzepp8]

Explain how on 10/1 the Orioles odds to win the WS were 6.5%. Four days later, having yet to play a game, their odds are 5.6%.

[NCRaven]

Fangraphs playoff odds were updated throughout the season, including as recently as this morning.  They are based on the team and individual player performances from what I understand.  They use the same methodology for every team in baseball during the season and every team still alive in the post season.  I think that one of the reasons that they are missing on the O's this year is that our young players lack a long performance history and their system is slow to adjust to more recent performance vs. past performance.  It's also true that teams with our run differential do not historically do as well as this year's Orioles team has done.