Phillies are done (PART 2 – oops)
Posted by Andy on September 8, 2010
A couple of weeks ago, I made an ingenious prediction that the Phillies were done, as far as winning the NL East. That came after they got swept by the Astros over 4 games.
Immediately after my post, the Phillies went out and swept the Padres, and have taken 2 out of 3 games in series against the Dodgers, Brewers, and Marlins, plus that wild win over the Rockies. They made up the deficit against the Braves and now lead the NL East by half a game.
Clearly, I was totally wrong on that prediction!
I'm curious to look at their run-scoring differential before and after my post (13 games ago).
Here it is:
Overall the team has scored 646 runs and allowed 573 runs. Those totals are across 140 games, averaging to 4.61 runs scored per game and 4.09 runs allowed per game.
Since my post the Phillies have scored 60 runs and allowed 50 runs. Coming in 13 games, that means they've averaged 4.62 runs scored and 3.87 allowed. With them getting Utley and Howard back, my gut instinct would have been that they were scoring more runs, but apparently they've been winning by allowing fewer runs.
That means that before my post, the Phillies scored 586 runs and allowed 523 runs over their first 127 games, averaged of 4.61 scored and 4.12 allowed.
Over the last 13 games, the Phillies have allowed 8 unearned runs, or 0.62 per game. On the season, they've allowed 42 unearned runs in all 140 games (0.3 per game.) That means that over their recent streak, they've been allowing ever fewer earned runs than normal, and their strength of opponent has been pretty much average in terms of run-scoring.
So--at least over the relatively small 13-game sample, it would seem that the pitching has been improved. Will it continue? With 6 games head-to-head with Atlanta, this division could go either way. However, the situation is now nearly identical to the AL East, where between the Yankees and the Rays, both are virtually assured of making the playoffs with one as division champ and one as the wild card.
As of this morning, coolstandings.com still gives the Braves the edge, with a 61% chance to win the division compared to 39% for the Phillies (even with the Phillies ahead by half a game.) The Braves also have a 21% chance at the wild card and the Phillies 35%. The Cardinals are down to just a 10% chance at the wild card and the Giants at 17% (having a much better chance at catching the Padres for the division at this point.)
The bottom line is that the Phillies are probably going to the playoffs, perhaps as NL East champs.
September 8th, 2010 at 8:54 am
As I said at the time, you didn't take into account the ROY OSWALT factor. Everything since he has come has gone exactly as planned. If they had him, and his 3.00 ERA, at the beginning of the season, instead of running out Moyer, they would have been 5 games up on the Braves. I guess coolstandings.com will never pull their heads out of their collective butts and factor in ROY OSWALT. How many times do I have to say it...ROY OSWALT!!!
September 8th, 2010 at 9:22 am
September has been a good month for the Phils for about 6 years now. The division race is by no means over, but they're a veteran team that has been in pennant races before. Howard's career OPS+ in September is something like 2 trillion. Added to that is the fact that at no time in this recent run of division titles have they had anything like the trio of starting pitchers they have now in Halladay, Oswalt, and Hamels. Coolstandings or no Coolstandings, I think most people at this point would peg the Phillies as the favorites for the division title.
Or am I being too much of a homer?
September 8th, 2010 at 9:34 am
Duffie, I personally think a lot of it depends on Howard. The guy has had huge Septembers although his numbers have been trending consistently downward over his career. The division may end up getting settled by just a handful of key plays/hits.
September 8th, 2010 at 9:40 am
It's interesting how these probability-based websites contrast with the sort of gut instincts that those of us who follow these races develop... I remember at the time of Andy's first post, I was even a little bit offended as a Phillies fan that he would make such a prediction given the team's recent late season success, though I'm sure the probabilities he cited were legitimate from a mathematical standpoint... as someone who has watched almost every Phillies game for almost 15 years, I just kind of knew they'd have a good road trip and throw themselves back in the race, for no other reason than that they just kind of play well in San Diego for some reason and they've had a lot of success against LA in recent years (much of it in playoff situations and/or against Jonathan Broxton). Sure enough, the Phillies swept the Padres by pitching well and playing really fundamentally sound baseball, went on to have a 6-1 road trip, and are right back in the mix for the division.
Similarly, a lot of people were counting the Rockies out a couple of weeks ago because they were behind 3 other teams in their division and the wild card was so crowded. But as we all know, the Rockies over the last few seasons for whatever reason usually go on a tear down the stretch and end up right in the middle of things. Sure enough, they've caught fire and, thanks in no small part to the Padres' struggles, are only a few games out at this point.
September 8th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Right, Malcolm. Please be sure to post back here every time one of your hunches DOESN'T turn out right.
September 8th, 2010 at 9:49 am
I think this just underscores the silliness of writing off a team, any team, that's 3 games back in the division and 1 back in the wild card with an entire month left to play. Regardless of what said team has done in the previous 4 games, which don't matter any more than the other 158 games in a season.
September 8th, 2010 at 9:51 am
Come on, guys. I made a prediction--a gut call based on my observations (more than 4 games). I was wrong. To call me silly is not appropriate.
September 8th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Lets ease up on Andy. He made an educated guess and he was wrong... but lets not forget that the season still isnt over. the phillies still have a much tougher schedule than the braves (tougher oppenents and more road games). this isnt set in stone, but it is now much more likely that phillies will make the playoffs, either as divison champs or wildcards.
September 8th, 2010 at 10:08 am
Reasonable people make reasonable predictions like this all the time. It's one of the beautiful things about our world that they don't always come to pass. Otherwise, nothing would be terribly interesting, would it?
I personally thank you Andy for making level-headed arguments, as opposed to many of the screaming heads on a sports television network that shall remain nameless.
September 8th, 2010 at 10:14 am
I don't mind Andy "being a fan" once in a while. Its part of what makes him a likeable blogger. I think it was obvious from the previous post that there wasn't any analysis behind it. (No play index or game log searches)
September 8th, 2010 at 10:30 am
Not bashing on Andy but I think the point certain people are trying to make is that it wasn't an 'educated guess' or a 'level-headed' argument. He didn't have any stats or history to show us as evidence. He posted a random statement for the sake of getting replies/getting people worked up and talking. And I say that not as a Phillies fan, but writing someone that's 3 games back with 40 (30? I don't remember) to play is insane. For any team, at any time.
I personally wouldn't have had an issue if there had been one stat listed, but if you make a crazy statement you can't then tell people to ease up on you when you're wrong.
September 8th, 2010 at 10:31 am
Sorry that last sentence should read "if you make a crazy statement with absolutely nothing to back it up you can't then tell people to ease up on you when you're wrong."
It wasn't the statement, it was that you brought no evidence as to why you might think that way....
September 8th, 2010 at 10:34 am
Thomas, I strongly disagree. I have taken my lumps. I have gone so far as to make a new post specifically to point out that I was wrong and say that I was wrong. Anybody who continues to bash me is, I think, behaving in a pretty immature way. BSK would say that's the way of the internet these days--anybody can say whatever they want regardless of how rude they are being.
I'd like to see some of your blogs so that I can go on there and post whatever I want, too.
September 8th, 2010 at 10:41 am
The blog would be much more interesting if Andy wrote posts with titles like "The Mets are done."
It wouldn't be the end of the world if Andy wrote a lightly researched post and it sparked a discussion in which commenters dredged up some statistics to flesh out the conversation about the pennant race. It's not like Andy is the only one who has access to the resources of BR, he's just one of the few who can start threads. I can think of several occasions where I thought it might be nice to have some kind of open thread to discuss something which was current, without necessarily needing one of the bloggers to go to the effort to research and write a full blog post.
September 8th, 2010 at 10:43 am
Evan, that's how I do a lot of my posts. Some are well-researched while others are just tidbits or hunches to get a discussion started. The original Phillies was obviously the latter, as DavidRF points out above.
Anybody can start a discussion--certainly on their own blogs. There are hundreds out there that use B-R as the source of information and research--they just don't happen to post their findings on the same site.
September 8th, 2010 at 10:52 am
Andy,
I think I should have written "It's not the end of the world when..." Instead of "It wouldn't be the end of the world if..."
The real question, Andy, is whether you prefer to be criticized for being too much of a fan and not having a statistical backup to your post or for trying to take all of the fun and interest out of watching baseball by reducing everything to statistics that ignore the human element. It seems that one of these criticisms is almost inevitable, or both in the case of this series.
BTW, I enjoy the mix of what is written here, which is why I read the blog.
September 8th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Andy, you put no stats up... on a blog called Stat Of The Day. Please, feel free to bash or write off any team... I greatly enjoy it the posts and the blog. I take issue with the no evidence thing. That's all. Give me any stat to back it up and you're perfectly 'in the right to not get bashed'. That's all I'm getting at.
Additionally, I ran a blog for 4 years and from the time I started posting on here until early this year all you had to do was click on my name and you would have been able to access it.
September 8th, 2010 at 11:02 am
With all due respect, Thomas, I take my orders from Neil and Sean, not you. It's within the allowed range of the blog for me to post something periodically that's purely speculative. If you want to cite stats or your gut or whatever argument you wish to refute me, that's 100% fine and the purpose of this blog. Calling me stupid is not acceptable.
September 8th, 2010 at 11:07 am
Who called you stupid? Anyone? Or is that what you feel your post was and now you're attributing that feeling to the people who are calling you on your random comment generating posts?
Do what you want, of course, but if your next post is gonna be about how Pujols will never be this good again and next year he'll hit around .200 you'll continue to get crap from people. All I've done is explain why some people (myself included) felt the need to do the 'bashing' you felt you were getting. When all we were doing was posting an idea different then yours... which, I thought we were allowed to post ideas or random whims here? I guess that's just you guys?
September 8th, 2010 at 11:08 am
Or should I have just assumed that 'stupid' was one of your gut feelings about what someone called you instead of you actually looking at it?
September 8th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Thomas, go back and read the comments in this thread and the original thread.
To be honest, I think you really have some nerve. To admit that you feel that "bashing" itself is appropriate really takes some guts. In my mind, there's a big difference between arguing a point, even vehemently, and bashing. I've noticed you bash some of your fellow readers here, too, and I haven't much cared for that either.
September 8th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Thomas, thanks for showing your true colors in #20. I feel no need to reply to you any further on this thread or any others.
September 8th, 2010 at 11:34 am
To clarify my post @14.
I probably should have made that two separate posts. The first comment was intended as entirely sarcastic. Saying the "Mets are done" would be much less controversial/interesting. Re-reading it with my second paragraph I can see why it might seem like it was intended to be tied in and supported by the second paragraph. The second paragraph was really just intended as commentary on the benefits that I saw from a variety of styles of posts on the blog.
September 8th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Always interesting when the internet gets all internet-y.
Lifelong Phillies fan here. Literally impossible for me to imagine how anyone could get angry at Andy for publishing (on his blog) his opinion as to how a certain aspect of the future will unfold, especially when he goes back later to point out specifically that he was wrong.
Go Phils!
September 8th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
"BSK would say that's the way of the internet these days--anybody can say whatever they want regardless of how rude they are being."
Just to clarify on that, I was in no way advocating such a culture, just acknowledging that it does seem to be the dominant meme and we should not necessarily be surprised when it happens, even at sites like this (which isn't necessarily representative of the internet culture as a whole). I think we should do our best to avoid being rude, though obviously we all draw different lines for what is and isn't rude.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Bureaucratist-
Some people definitely behaved inappropriately, with perhaps myself being included in that group. However, I think some folks also raised legitimate questions/concerns about the post. From there, the conversation as a whole devolved. Some folks seem to be chiming in here to follow up on their original contention that the original post was wrong, which may be superfluous gloating or may be intended to demonstrate that they were right in calling out the post. I think we need to be careful to discern the legitimate criticism from the needless bashing.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Andy - I've followed both posts you've made about the Phillies' chances of winning the division the last couple weeks and feel that you have been the worst behaved of any of the people commenting. You made a rather goofy post, got called out on it, then have been extremely defensive and downright rude to people.
For just one example, re-read Malcom's comment at #4 on this post. He shared some coherent thoughts on the issue and kept it respectful. He contributed to the discussion, which seems to be a big point of making these posts. In return he gets an extremely sarcastic, downright rude reply from you, for no reason. There are quite a few other instances in the two threads of you putting words in people's mouths, over-reacting to comments, and just being plain rude.
I'm not sure of your status with the site. I don't know if you're just a volunteer or a paid employee. You are obviously more than just a random user, and your comment about taking your orders from Neil and Sean certainly gives the impression that you are tied pretty heavily into the site; call it an employee, call it a contributor, whatever. You're a public face and name representing this site, and I think your behavior is not a positive for the site. If it were my site I'd be pretty concerned with the image you're projecting.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
I thought the first article was "tongue-in-check" as the Phillies we just getting Utley, Howard and Oswalt together and healthy at that point. And the Braves lost Chipper around the same time too if I remember?
September 8th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
the Braves are toast. feel free to call me on it if i'm wrong of course, but when you can't give your ace any run support against the freaking Pirates, i don't like your chances in the playoffs.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Andy,
I have question for you as a 'blog' writer, do you feel the need to be controversial (i.e. snarky, smug, arrogant,etc) to try to get a rise out of people? To encourage a following and to drive up hits to your posts? Does it generally work? I'm assuming it does, but I have no basis for objective figures. Are there certain fan bases that get more riled up to defend their team against your articles? Do East Coast teams (Phils, Red Sox, Mets) have more/fewer defenders than West Coast teams? really would be an interesting look at the behavioral aspects of the blogger and the reader....
September 8th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
#30, I don't engage in that sort of behavior exactly, with a few exceptions. I make the regular HOF posts because people seem quite interested in them because of the controversy. A few weeks ago I posted a poll about whether Mariano Rivera is the greatest pitcher in history--also controversial. But I typically don't take a position in these posts, instead raising a question, giving some arguments for both sides, and then letting the readers pick it up from there. The original 'Phillies are done' post is another exception, and an unusual one at that in that I clearly did take a side. But I didn't do it to rile Philly fans--I am a Philly fan myself. It wrote it because I felt that way.
September 8th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
For the explanation to the behavior of certain frequenters of this blog Thomas, please see "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory"
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad
September 8th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Hey Andy, you're a great blogger. I'm happy the Phils made it back in, but all that would have had to happen to make them done again was lose two or three more games, and indeed, this could still happen right now. You can be a baseball fan without a pair of rose-tinted glasses. Don't let the guys who don't understand that your personal feelings do not affect baseball outcomes ruin your day.
September 8th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
I completely agree with # 27, Andy seems more than a little bit sensitive and defensive in this blog and other blogs.
September 8th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
I just take this whole thing with playoff probabilities as a great reminder that you can't get too caught up in stats. You need to watch the games, look up from the monitor to see what's going on.
And at Tommy in 29, don't forget:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI201005180.shtml
(halladay went 9, gave up 2, and the phils lost 2-1 at home to the bucs. granted, castro instead of utley but still)
September 8th, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Andy;
The only thing I could think of that would be sillier than all these comments would be if you, a pro, took too much offense from what these Bozo wannabes are saying. You made a prediction, it looks weak {but still not wrong -- the Phils still have a few weeks of chances to fold}, and the vultures are circling.
Keep being the pro you are, Andy. I for one am behind you 100% !
September 8th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
FYI - the last time I had a prediction published {by the Rocky Mountain News in 1980}, it was that Jimmy Carter would win a close election against Ronald Reagon. And I always predict that the Reds will win the World Series -- and haven't been right since '90.
Keep predicting...I will keep reading.
September 8th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Somebody please tell me why this discussion turned into personal attacks from such a neutral starting topic? Everybody must have their own agenda.
@36 @37
{Hats off to Frank for age and knowledge. Wish I'd been alive to hear Gerhig's speech on radio.} I agree with your support for Andy. The level of writing and intelligence in this site is among the best on the baseball Net in my opinion
Andy, not sure why people are nit-picking with your follow-up posts. Continue to be transparent.
One of the delicious tensions in contributing to these discussions is keeping in balance our "fan hat" and our "objective analyst hat". It's hard not to reveal which team we bleed for....
Not going to throw around numbers here, but I don't think the Phillies have a consistent enough offense to secure the division title.
September 8th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
Thomas is right, Andy is wrong (not to mention waaaaay too thin skinned). If you had just said, "I believe", or, "I strongly believe" the Braves will win the division, no one would have an issue. Saying the race was "done" with 40 game to play was simply you being provocative for the sake of being provocative, and was just the kind of careless sportwriting (of which the internet already has way too much. What's next, a "Yankees Suck" post?) There's just no argument to defend it. I don't care if it's the worst team in history and they're chasing the '54 Indians. You are never out of it if you're three back with 40 to play.
September 8th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Andy -- I admire your timely followup to your "done" post. That's good ownership there. And as a newcomer to these blogs, I respect your stuff and your position. Having said that, I do think you overreacted to some of the replies. I won't say they all lived up to the highest standards of polite discourse, but having read the entire thread, I don't see the word "stupid" until you used it, so I think your complaint about that was misguided. Thomas's followup struck me as overheated, but you did (at least implicitly) misquote him and accuse him of rudeness, and I don't think he had been rude up to that point.
Unlike Thomas, I have no objection to your starting the original thread with a statement of pure opinion, without including any statistical support for your position. But having done that, you shouldn't expect your "mea culpa" followup to pre-empt all further expression of opinion about the original post.
September 9th, 2010 at 12:10 am
@36 -- There are two themes in this thread -- comments on Andy's prediction, and then comments about the tone of some of the first comments and Andy's reactions to them. I'm not sure which group you meant to call "Bozo wannabes," but I don't think your choice of words helps Andy or anyone else.
If you read the thread in order, you'll see that Andy:
(a) threw the first snark (see #5);
(b) responded to the slightest provocation by basically saying "nyah, nyah" ("I'd like to see some of your blogs so that I can go on there and post whatever I want, too," #13); and
(c) when that understandably inflamed his correspondent, Andy responded by climbing up on a high horse ("I take my orders from Neil and Sean, not you") and then defended himself from a nonexistent attack ("Calling me stupid is not acceptable," both in #18).
Several people have expressed the reasonable opinion that this thread was not Andy's finest hour, and that he shares the blame for escalating the exchanges. Throwing him your blanket support implies that you endorse his entire body of conduct here. And you're calling someone else a clown?
September 9th, 2010 at 12:18 am
How quickly things can change. From The Trentonian report on Wednesday's Phillies win:
"Rollins, who has been limited to 81 of the team's 141 games this season with a right calf injury and a minor left foot ailment, is listed as day to day with a right hamstring tightness."
The Phillies are DONE.
[joke]
[Er, sort of. The Phils are 51-30 when Rollins starts, 30-30 when he doesn't.]
September 9th, 2010 at 5:09 am
Andy, who says you're wrong about the Braves winning the East. I'm a huge Phillies fan, and I don't consider the Braves out by any stretch. Unlike most, I expect the top teams in either league that have an "easy" schedule to have difficulty getting in (i.e. Phils versus Astros, Braves versus Pirates, O's beating the Rays and Yankees this week). Playing the bad teams in an "easy schedule" are the worst type of teams to play, because you really have no clue who the heck they're calling up in September. I'll only criticize that your original article lacked depth as to why you felt the way you did.
September 9th, 2010 at 7:30 am
Scott-
I think what Andy is saying he is wrong about is the Phillies being "done". They are clearly not done. But they are also not definitely going to win. There is a whole lot of gray area between being "done" and winning a division, and the Phillies are somewhere in there right now. They may win it, they may be "done" in that race at some point. But they weren't "done" 2 weeks ago or whatever it is, and that is what Andy is owing up to.
September 9th, 2010 at 9:19 am
Andy,
I read some of your comments and I hope you don't think I was bashing you in any way in the #1 post. If you got that impression, I do apologize. What I was saying was that not many people, including yourself and coolstandings.com, took the Roy Oswalt trade factor into making a prediction for the Phillies after they were swept by the Stros. I don't think you are stupid for not doing that...I just think it was a very underrated trade is all. The fact that the Phillies picked up one of the top 10 pitchers in the NL to add to a staff that already had 2 of the top 10 meant that in 60% of their games, the Phillies would likely have the pitching advantage. And it has gone exactly as I thought...Oswalt is 5-1 with a 2.30 ERA since the trade.
Thanks
Chris
September 9th, 2010 at 9:29 am
Chris, no, I agree with you completely. I don't know how coolstandings figures their results, but I doubt that they specifically accounted for the fact that Oswalt had joined the team and their team ERA could likely go down as a result, giving them a chance to win more games down the stretch. Your point was dead-on correct a couple of weeks ago, and Oswalt has been great since his second game with the Phils. (I never thought you were bashing me either.)
September 9th, 2010 at 9:41 am
That is something I wondered about with CoolStandings. Are they predictive, in the sense that they look at the current and presumed make-up of the team going forward, the make-up of the teams they play against, and determine how many games they will likely win from here on out, and then use that to determine their odds at achieving a given place in the standings? Or are they more reactive, in the sense that they look at historical situations similar to the current situation and look at what happened in those instances? It would be helpful to know how CoolStandings works with regards to that, since those things can sometimes be wildly different if who a team has been up to that point is likely very different ('very' being a relative term here) to the team they will be going forward. I think that is what we saw here, with the Oswalt addition, the Phillies expecting key players back, and (depending in how much stock you put in some things), particular Phillies' month-by-month splits that indicate some really thrive in the later months. Obviously, the opposite is true, if a team loses a key player or two to injury or something else happens that shakes up the roster. There are also the inevitable flukes, such as the Phils overtaking the Mets a few years back, which will make even the sturdiest projections and predictions seem loopy.
September 9th, 2010 at 9:47 am
BSK I have read a little bit about their methods, and I know it's based on simulations of the remainder of the season, therefore including specific future opponents. This would suggest that they are, in fact, considering specific starting pitchers in those games, and therefore perhaps DO include Roy Oswalt in their simulations. The thing that argues against this is looking at the Phillies' 2010 so far I don't see a sudden bump in expected wins for the season when they acquired Oswalt around 7/30. One would think that if Oswalt were being inserted for, say, Moyer, that the Phillies' expected wins for the year might jump by 1 or 2 wins, but I don't see any evidence of that.
September 9th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Of course, CoolStandings methodology isn't exactly secret. From the site:
"How do we calculate these statistics? Basically we simulate the rest of the season millions of times, based on every team's performance to date and its remaining schedule. We then look at how many "seasons" a team won its division or won the wildcard, and voila - we have our numbers.
The trick, of course, is to determine what chance each team has of beating every other team. Our method is to use simple team statistics (e.g. runs scored and runs against) to predict how each team will fare against all others. For those of you familiar with baseball prediction, we use a variation of the Bill James "Pythagorean Theorem" to predict results. Pretty smart, huh? That's why we call this prediction mode "Smart mode"."
So, it seems as if it is a bit of both. They use RS/RA up until the given point in the season to simulate the rest of the season. So, while this does take into account who the team has been up to that point (at least insofar as RS/RA can) and who the teams they will be playing are, they don't account for or allow for anticipated variations going forward. Which I suppose is somewhat reasonable, as I would imagine it would be somewhat difficult to figure how a couple player additions or subtractions would impact a team's RS/RA in a small sample size. When you factor this in and the reasonable variation of Actual W-L from Pythag W-L, it seems like these is a decently sized margin of error with CoolStandings Playoff Odds, especially for teams making major acquisitions (including the return of injured players) or teams losing major pieces to injury. Which is why, like with just about any stat, a little context and nuanced understanding would go a long way towards its best application.
From my amateur vantage point, it would seem that CoolStandings would struggle to accurately predict races with a gap of less than a handful (3 or 4) games and would REALLY struggle if one team made major changes. Of course, "struggle" here is a relative term, as they are likely more accurate than off-the-cuff predictions and it would be natural for even the best models to have difficulty calling close races.
September 9th, 2010 at 9:49 am
Andy-
I was typing mine as you were submitting yours. It's hard to know EXACTLY how they are doing things, but it seems we have a reasonable sense of how they are. Has B-R considered coming up with their own style projections?
September 9th, 2010 at 9:54 am
I don't know what Sean has considered along these lines.
My feeling is that coolstandings has basically the best method of predicting what will happen except for 2 things: 1) not accounting for player personnel changes perhaps [seems easy to do, BTW, for altering a team's runs allowed by subtracting, say, Moyer's runs and adding Oswalt's runs for the purposes of the simulation] and 2) especially this late in the season, there are so few games remaining that nothing goes according to model. What happens in those 6 games between the Braves and Phillies will go a long way toward determining who wins the division, and no model can make anything better than an educated guess about what will happen.
September 9th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Also, my gut understanding of math/odds/probability/etc tells me that simulated percentage of success does not necessarily equal odds. A coin flip is 50/50, no matter what. But even the largest sample sizes will deviate from that at times. That does not change the ODDS or the PROBABILITY of a head or tail coming up. So while the Sim-Phils make the playoffs in X% of simulations, that does not necessarily mean the Real-Phils have X odds of making the playoffs. This is probably a quibble that is only relevant at the 14th decimal place, but it does seem to be mixing up some pretty different math terms and risks implying something different than what it is. Or maybe I'm mixing up what I learned way back when in college.
...I will now take my nerd hat off...
September 9th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Andy-
I think you hit the nail on the head there. I won't venture a guess at how 'easy' such adjustments to the formula are, since most of this is beyond me anyway, but it does seem like there are ways of doing it, perhaps as simply as you've offered. And, naturally, as sample sizes shrink, things get whacky. CoolStandings seems to offer a good estimate, but probably no more. Which is still an accomplishment, given that most of us with our fan glasses on sees that a magic number still exists for the team we are chasing and assumes we're still in it, even if that magic number is two less than the total games left.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:26 am
BSK @52,
I'm fairly certain that "nerd hats" are part of the dress code around here.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:28 am
#54, that's the damn truth, for sure.
Neil, Sean, and I seemed like pretty cool guys in the lobby of the hotel where SABR was held last month, but at least my wife would be the first to tell you I've got that invisible nerd hat on all the time.
September 9th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Ha! Fair enough! I worried I took it to another level by quibbling over the definition/use of some terms. My next rant will be about the problematic use of the term "batting average".
September 9th, 2010 at 11:21 am
The Phillies play several series against the weak-hitting NL West and suddenly they are giving up fewer runs. What a revelation!
September 9th, 2010 at 11:22 am
Bob, I actually did look at the run-scoring of their recent opponents and its about league-average. The Marlins are one of the highest-scoring teams in fact.
September 9th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
So you're following up one not so great prediction with another one? How can you call the Wild Card a two team race? The Giants are only two games back, and that includes recently weathering a horrible month from Lincecum. The six PHI-ATL games will help the Giants in their Wild Card chase, because one team they're chasing will lose every night. The Giants are in a great spot. If they take care of their own business, they only need one of three teams to falter and they're in.
September 16th, 2010 at 9:04 am
Ironically, since the Phillies are now three games UP, and much later in the season, you should now post that Atlanta is "done"
September 16th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Can't argue with that, Jeff. It ain't looking good for the Braves, and even if the Phillies somehow lose the division at this point, my prediction of them being done earlier is clearly a lost cause.