I decided to make my comments on the Game Averaged PythagenPat win estimator a regular, updated feature of DOV, complete with PythagenMatt for every Major League team. I'll update this each night with the latest games played for each team included and leave comments open to discuss the strengths of teams as they rise and fall on the chart. Here are the 30 teams in order of adjusted PythagenMatt W%
For those not familiar with PythagenMatt, I'll give the short explanation here and a link to the full explanation appears in comment four below.
We know that the biggest problem with ordinary seasonal Pythag is that is puts too much emphasis on a team's production in blowout games. Generally, once the game starts to get out of hand, the losing side starts to send out the reserves, especially the reserve pitchers. They in essence become a weaker team for the rest of that game. This often leads to additional run scoring that has essentially no meaning (or very close to none). I believe that the best way to cancel out the impact of blowout games is to put each game on a pythagorean scale. If you win by 8 runs or by 12, you can still only win one game at a time, and the pythagorean difference between a 10-1 game and a 15-1 game is negligible.
PythagenMatt is PythagenPat, but applied to one game at a time and then summed and averaged (per game).
For example, if you win 14-3, the PythagenPat equation gives us an exponent of 17^0.285 or 2.24 and a winning percentage of 0.969. Do this for every game and you get something that correlates much more strongly to actual winning percentage than seasonal pythag (I demonstrated a 4% improvement in R^2 in the article I linked in comment #4). Doing just that gives you numbers that bias toward .500 from both sides (a center-pull) because you're by definition taking away some of the extremes, but the center-pull is easily remedied by applying an adjustment based on the linear correlation I ran to prove that PythagenMatt was indeed a step in the right direction.
That equation is: Projected W% = (PythagenMattRaw - 0.1531) / 0.6938
The cool thing is that I got that linear best fit without doing anything other than asking Excel for it, and it works out that there is no directional bias (a .500 Raw PythagenMatt is a .500 projection…which proves that there is no systematic error in PythagenMatt).
To boil it down…PythagenMatt is game-averaged PythagenPat with an adjustment to fit a theoretical model. I believe it works quite well. The data I have thus far seems to suggest it does.
Updated through Games of: 08/24/07
|
Rk |
Team |
GP |
W |
RS |
RA |
Matt |
Pat |
Act |
CLOSER |
GAP |
M-P |
L10 |
L30 |
|
1 |
BOS |
129 |
78 |
660 |
501 |
100.5 |
101.4 |
98.0 |
MATT |
0.9 |
-0.9 |
0.749 |
0.662 |
|
2 |
NYY |
128 |
71 |
764 |
611 |
96.9 |
98.5 |
89.9 |
MATT |
1.6 |
-1.6 |
0.576 |
0.629 |
|
3 |
NYM |
127 |
72 |
618 |
554 |
94.0 |
89.3 |
91.8 |
TIE |
0.3 |
4.7 |
0.689 |
0.587 |
|
4 |
ANA |
128 |
75 |
653 |
573 |
93.6 |
91.0 |
94.9 |
MATT |
2.6 |
2.6 |
0.502 |
0.601 |
|
5 |
SDP |
127 |
69 |
570 |
498 |
92.8 |
91.0 |
88.0 |
PAT |
1.8 |
1.8 |
0.494 |
0.507 |
|
6 |
SEA |
126 |
73 |
637 |
609 |
90.7 |
84.5 |
93.9 |
MATT |
6.2 |
6.2 |
0.695 |
0.629 |
|
7 |
CHC |
127 |
66 |
591 |
538 |
88.8 |
88.1 |
84.2 |
PAT |
0.7 |
0.7 |
0.697 |
0.501 |
|
8 |
CLE |
127 |
70 |
629 |
577 |
87.2 |
87.6 |
89.3 |
TIE |
0.4 |
-0.4 |
0.677 |
0.465 |
|
9 |
PHI |
127 |
66 |
683 |
657 |
86.8 |
84.1 |
84.2 |
PAT |
2.4 |
2.7 |
0.244 |
0.518 |
|
10 |
DET |
128 |
69 |
712 |
658 |
86.0 |
87.3 |
87.3 |
PAT |
1.3 |
-1.3 |
0.279 |
0.304 |
|
11 |
TOR |
128 |
64 |
576 |
544 |
84.9 |
85.3 |
81.0 |
TIE |
0.3 |
-0.3 |
0.385 |
0.500 |
|
12 |
ARI |
129 |
72 |
548 |
583 |
83.8 |
76.3 |
90.4 |
MATT |
7.4 |
7.4 |
0.465 |
0.590 |
|
13 |
ATL |
129 |
67 |
649 |
594 |
83.7 |
87.8 |
84.1 |
MATT |
3.3 |
-4.1 |
0.475 |
0.540 |
|
14 |
BAL |
127 |
58 |
587 |
611 |
82.9 |
77.9 |
74.0 |
PAT |
5.0 |
5.0 |
0.368 |
0.455 |
|
15 |
COL |
128 |
65 |
647 |
615 |
82.7 |
84.9 |
82.3 |
MATT |
2.2 |
-2.2 |
0.457 |
0.571 |
|
16 |
MIL |
128 |
65 |
612 |
626 |
80.7 |
79.3 |
82.3 |
MATT |
1.5 |
1.5 |
0.384 |
0.352 |
|
17 |
OAK |
130 |
65 |
586 |
566 |
80.2 |
83.6 |
81.0 |
MATT |
1.8 |
-3.4 |
0.619 |
0.561 |
|
18 |
MIN |
128 |
65 |
574 |
561 |
79.4 |
82.7 |
82.3 |
PAT |
2.4 |
-3.4 |
0.630 |
0.497 |
|
19 |
LAD |
128 |
66 |
573 |
553 |
79.2 |
83.7 |
83.5 |
PAT |
4.1 |
-4.4 |
0.675 |
0.326 |
|
20 |
SFG |
129 |
57 |
557 |
567 |
75.6 |
79.7 |
71.6 |
MATT |
4.0 |
-4.0 |
0.630 |
0.532 |
|
21 |
CIN |
128 |
58 |
617 |
685 |
74.1 |
72.8 |
73.4 |
TIE |
0.1 |
1.3 |
0.512 |
0.471 |
|
22 |
STL |
125 |
61 |
559 |
631 |
73.9 |
71.7 |
79.1 |
MATT |
2.2 |
2.2 |
0.546 |
0.566 |
|
23 |
KCR |
127 |
57 |
577 |
610 |
72.9 |
76.7 |
72.7 |
MATT |
3.8 |
-3.8 |
0.569 |
0.558 |
|
24 |
HOU |
129 |
57 |
575 |
659 |
72.6 |
70.5 |
71.6 |
TIE |
0.0 |
2.1 |
0.286 |
0.480 |
|
25 |
PIT |
127 |
56 |
579 |
645 |
71.4 |
72.7 |
71.4 |
MATT |
1.2 |
-1.3 |
0.728 |
0.550 |
|
26 |
FLO |
129 |
57 |
624 |
675 |
71.2 |
74.9 |
71.6 |
MATT |
2.9 |
-3.7 |
0.300 |
0.379 |
|
27 |
TEX |
128 |
56 |
629 |
668 |
69.5 |
76.3 |
70.9 |
MATT |
4.1 |
-6.8 |
0.381 |
0.361 |
|
28 |
CHW |
128 |
56 |
546 |
674 |
68.2 |
65.0 |
70.9 |
MATT |
3.2 |
3.2 |
0.276 |
0.399 |
|
29 |
WAS |
129 |
58 |
511 |
604 |
67.9 |
68.6 |
72.8 |
PAT |
0.6 |
-0.6 |
0.437 |
0.522 |
|
30 |
TBD |
128 |
49 |
580 |
767 |
57.9 |
59.4 |
62.0 |
PAT |
1.5 |
-1.5 |
0.353 |
0.381 |
PythagenMatt leads PythagenPat 16-9-5 (W-L-T)
Matt = PythagenMatt estimated wins in 162 games
Pat = PythagenPat Seasonal win estimate.
Act = Projected Wins on current W%
GAP = The number of wins (per 162 games) by which the projection method that is closer to the team's actual prorated wins is closer. Found by subtracting (Matt - Act) from (Pat - Act) and taking the absolute value.
M-P = PythagenMatt minus PythagenPat projected wins
L10 = The team's PythagenMatt winning percentage in the last ten calendar days (NOT games…the implementation of that would have been nearly impossible to do in Excel the way my spreadsheet is arranged).
L30 = The same as L10 only over the last 30 calendar days. A longer term streak meter.
NOTE: I consider it a tie between PythagenMatt and PythagenPat when the closer of the two is less than half a win closer to real win rates than the further of the two (GAP < 0.5).
July 1st, 2007 at 12:43 am Quote
Hey Doc…you gotta give me control of your scroll bar…I’ll update it faster! On days like today it’s a visual assault to see my team still 5 games back of the Angels when I know they’re 4 games back, dangit!
Not a knock on you….I know your life is hectic.
July 1st, 2007 at 8:23 pm Quote
Ms storm into 7th place on the leaderboard…they’re breathing down Cleveland and Detroit’s necks…don’t think anyone in baseball is taking Seattle lightly anymore.
July 4th, 2007 at 2:45 am Quote
I’m bumping this article forward in the history to make it easier to find when I need to update it. I’m going to keep doing that Doc if it’s OK with you…want to keep the “publish” date close to recent times.
Meanwhile, us getting absolutely SHELLACKED by KC is just another example of why we’re constantly doing better than PythagenPat. When we lose, we usually lose BIG…it’s throwing off any analysis of this club.
July 4th, 2007 at 10:25 am Quote
Matt, one thing that might be cool is a graph of the M’s actual record, Pat, and Matt over time. That way we can see how quickly things converge.
July 4th, 2007 at 3:28 pm Quote
I gotta figure out how to do a historical overview of a team’s running PythagenMatt through time with the sheet I have. I’ll add an image to the original post when I figure that out.
July 4th, 2007 at 9:47 pm Quote
This last week has been a classic example of how the Mariners are this good while running such a mediocre PythagenPat. A couple of one run wins in low scoring games (worth more PythagenMatt wins than you’d think…do little to change PythagenPat), a shutout (a full PythagenMatt win with little impact on PythagenPat), an UGLY blowout loss (destroys the PythagenPat, costs us a PythagenMatt win)…I think we are getting a pretty clear picture of what this team is like here.
July 5th, 2007 at 4:58 am Quote
Matt,
While I like your PythagenMatt methodology - and am already convinced it is superior at reflecting what “has” happened. My one area of inquiry is in regards to whether it is actually better (or worse) in “predicting” what WILL happen.
What I would like to see is something like the year-end projections based on the final tallies for each month comparing Matt to Pat. Maybe do an over/under totals for both systems, showing the range of difference as well as the aggregate difference. (An experiment to consider might be to examine whether the most recent month of data is more (or less) accurate at predicting future results than the year-as-a-whole totals, just as an example).
I suspect that Seattle will end up solidly superior in PMatt, because there is a REASON that the club is beating the Pyt curve — a bullpen that has been historically wonderful. If I had to make a guess, I’m thinking there is a ‘minimum’ number of games that both systems have to see before they move toward prediction-level value. Obviously, with game scores from previous years, a study of a year that has already been completed might be easier to process.
July 5th, 2007 at 5:05 am Quote
When I get home (in the process of ending my summer course work…will be home Friday night and back in business Saturday), I will break out the game log and do some work in MySQL to determine at what point in the season the PythagenMatt and PythagenPat values start to have meaning (IOW…how many games do you have to play before the average error between the seasonal estimate and the final win total is less than some tolerance). My guy instinct is that we’ve long since pass that point for PythagenMatt…it converged on actual W% and has been holding a commanding lead over PythagenPat that hasn’t changed much since mid May…which is about the time where I became confident in its’ future projecting ability.
July 9th, 2007 at 1:09 am Quote
There are your first half standings…
Seattle finishes the first half the hottest team in baseball by a good margin, climbs to 5th in PythagenMatt wins, and pulls to within 2 games of the sliding (overrated) Angels (2.5 games in the real standings). If you’re a Mariner fan, and you’re NOT excited about this club, you’re not a true fan.
July 9th, 2007 at 9:15 pm Quote
The auther of this article does not know about PythMatt and that a team with strong bullpen will outscore Pat:
http://www.sportsmemo.com/handicappers/er/articles/1178/
July 10th, 2007 at 2:40 am Quote
Heh…a lot of folks who rely on Pythagorean W% will be fooled by this club…this is one of the strongest examples of why PythagenPat W% can’t be trusted fully. By PyrhagenMatt, our 49 and 36 record is about right.
Seattle is an aberrant team according to PythagenPat because they’re a rare combination of an inconsistent but NOT overall terrible rotation, a GREAT bullpen, and an inconsistent but NOT overall terrible offense. Seattle’s starting rotation is actually probably middle of the pack in baseball in terms of quality..it’s just prone to the occasional blowout. Their line-up is one of the top 8 or 10 in baseball but prone to stretches of difficulty. Very unusual combination.
July 12th, 2007 at 10:23 pm Quote
Ms return from the break looking a little sluggish with the bats but then…this is DET we’re talking about and they have the arms…Andrew Miller is a STUD and we made him throw 100 pitches in 5 innings and leave trailing. This offense is doing a great job of going deep into counts despite not taking lots of walks.
July 13th, 2007 at 7:52 am Quote
Anybody notice that the M’s have shaved about a half run off their team ERA and now stand in the middle of the pack instead of near the bottom like they did a quarter of the way through the season? That’s like carrying a boulder up a hill.
July 13th, 2007 at 7:59 am Quote
In terms of RA, the Mariners are 15th (of 30)…better even than the vaunted Tigers.
July 13th, 2007 at 8:00 am Quote
of course if you park adjust that, they drop into the 20 range…mediocre but not horrible.
July 13th, 2007 at 8:07 am Quote
Getting to mediocre a month and a half after you were horrible is a pretty amazing feat!
July 13th, 2007 at 8:13 am Quote
indeed…it helps that a big part of the “horrible” is either not pitching for us or is pitching like an ace instead of a joke now.
July 13th, 2007 at 8:15 am Quote
BTW…we’re 11th in RS, which when you park adjust would bump us up to about 7th.
July 13th, 2007 at 8:22 am Quote
Yeah, this team is gradually closer to the profile you would have predicted at the outset of the season. Good but not great offense, middle of the pack pitching (best case scenario).
July 13th, 2007 at 8:24 am Quote
average-solid pitching with a great pen plus a good solid 1-9 offense = playoff monster IMHO.
July 13th, 2007 at 11:18 am Quote
[promoted to front page]
July 13th, 2007 at 1:45 pm Quote
Sandy…if you find a median ERA for Mariner starters it will be far more below the mean ERA (what you’re used to using) than the average team. The Mariners have a good rotation except when the guy who’s starting is getting his rear end handed to him in a horsehide sack. They will run 8 good to decent starts for every horrific implosion. Don’t get too laser focused on the team’s SP ERA…it’s misleading in our case.
July 14th, 2007 at 6:26 am Quote
NEW TOY…yes…another one.
I added L30 to the chart along with L10…now you get a larger scale “big picture” of how the teams have done recently. The Mariners are 15-10 in their last 25 games for a .600 actual W%..their PythagenMatt in that span suggests they should be doing a hair better but it’s pretty close. The hottest team in baseball shouldn’t surprise anyone. The Tigers have gotten Robertson and Rogers back and settled into a nice groove thang…good for them. The Mariners have played them competitively all year so don’t feel like Detroit is unstoppable in the post-season.
After the Tigers, the Mariners are in a group of teams that includes a few surprises. Did anyone notice that Colorado is playing some good ball this year? how about Texas lately? How about KC makin’ it tough on the contenders every time they take the field lately?
We’ll see what the Mariners can do long term, but at the moment, they are definitely playing the best baseball we’ve seen from them since May 2003.
July 14th, 2007 at 6:29 am Quote
BTW I have taken to highlighting in DARK blue (with bold and italics for extra emphasis) the teams that are downright AWFUL lately. Oakland (according to PythagenMatt) is unlikely to win even one game in their last 10 days if they were replayed a million times. They are LOST as a franchise right now. The Devil Rays have found a new low I didn’t know they had in the tank by managing to play at the team replacement level for the last month. That’s just painful to look at.
July 14th, 2007 at 10:16 pm Quote
Johjima’s funk blast propels the Ms to a huge win, guaranteeing respectability against the Tigers on the year (presently we’re 3-3 against them pending tomorrow’s game). We can play any team…any time…anywhere…and we’ll be a tough team to beat.
July 16th, 2007 at 10:23 pm Quote
Oakland’s futility continues and it’s beginning to force Beane to punt the season…he’s already traded Kendall…who goes next?
July 16th, 2007 at 10:55 pm Quote
Kendall is terrible.. sounds like he’s upgrading the team by getting rid of him
July 17th, 2007 at 2:09 am Quote
I’m guessing Piazza goes.
By the way, I agree that Beane is upgrading his team by getting rid of Kendall.
July 17th, 2007 at 7:43 am Quote
so do I, of course. I never understood why Oakland acquired him in the first place.
I’m just saying he didn’t exactly get pieces that will help the As contend. He got a long-term prospect.
July 17th, 2007 at 2:14 pm Quote
How are you going swap a useless major leaguer for a useful one? Beane was just lucky that there was someone dumb enough to take Kendall off his hands. Jason was the A’s equivalent of Bret Boone.
July 17th, 2007 at 2:30 pm Quote
fair enough. I still don’t think this reflects all that well on the As’ position as buyers at the deadline…they’re almost certainly just oging to play position and try to set up for next year.
July 18th, 2007 at 8:50 am Quote
The Ms are starting to “tread water” as evident by the L10…they’re going to need to get on another roll if they want to run down the currently sputtering Angels.
July 18th, 2007 at 11:05 pm Quote
Gritting my teeth through this little skid by Seattle…hopefully a weak schedule for the next 10 days will cure what ails ‘em.
July 18th, 2007 at 11:56 pm Quote
So long as we get more Broussard and less Vidro/Ibanez/Sexson..I think there’s a good shot of them making up ground. That’s such as easy move to make that it’s foolish of them not to at least give him an extended platoon role in the LF/1B/DH spots.
July 19th, 2007 at 6:30 am Quote
He should definitely DH against righties (or if you’re worried about him losing focus DHing…he can play left and Ibanez can DH).
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:38 am Quote
Ouch…this weekend really. REALLY. Hurt.
Got 8 games against patsies coming up…let’s hope we can get the hitting going again against Tejas.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:16 am Quote
OK…for those of you who are interested, I wrote an article which serves as a rebuttal to the one penned by Keoth Law (ESPN Insider) and discusses many of the reasons Seattle is a better club than many expect possible. It’s posted here:
http://athomeplate.com/regular_articles/2007_seattle_mariners_the_dangers_of_traditional_sabermetrics_and_assumptions.html
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:54 pm Quote
Matt, your method is a topic at Inside the Book’s blog
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:00 pm Quote
www.tangotiger.net? I’m not a regular at Tango’s blogs, and he has more than one, so which one are you referring to?
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:06 pm Quote
never mind, I found it.
Cool…I would call that a bit of a coup for me…it’s not often you open Tango’s eyes to something.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:43 pm Quote
Jose Lopez
Was he even awake in the ninth inning.. Doesnt move the runner over, and then inexcusably gets doubled up, and prevents Ichiro from hitting.. Im a big fan of his, but his mental lapses are driving me nuts.. Same with Betancourt.. It seems like sometimes they arent even paying attention to the baseball game
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:02 pm Quote
Lopez has no earthly idea how to hit. If we had a halfway competent option to replace him, I’d advocate demoting him to AAA for the rest of the year to teach him a lesson. He doesn’t know what he’s doing up there and it’s killing this team…I’m getting more and more annoyed with him right now.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:17 pm Quote
I just don’t understand where his swing goes at times…
1) He’s totally abandoned the shooting the ball up the middle and to right field approach..
Yet..
2) He’s not pulling the ball for any power
SO…
What is he doing?? I guess his last month can be described as a bunch of topped grounders, hard grounders to the left side, failed bunts, and a bunch of weak pop outs.. When he does go the opposite way he has no power whatsoever, and cant seem to get the ball past mid outfield..
Im terribly frustrated watching him.. does he even have an approach right now?? How comes some weeks he can destroy pitches on the inner half, but others he does nothing with… I cant remember the last time he took a ball back up the middle or hit a hard line drive somewhere..
July 24th, 2007 at 10:28 am Quote
He’s doing what all players who are idiots and don’t pay attention do. He’s up there in “see ball hit ball” mode without a plan of action…when he’s seeing the ball well, he hits well…when he’s not he doesn’t.
July 24th, 2007 at 10:47 am Quote
I figured out how to do running PythagenMatt W% game by game, so I can create graphs that show how PythagenMatt has changed over the course of the season…I can’t do the same for PythagenPat, however, since I have not been logging the RS/RA of every game…just the resulting PythagenMatt W% (there’s no way to backwards engineer it either). I would have to create another file and go back through more than a thousand games that have already been played and record every RS/RA.
July 24th, 2007 at 11:34 am Quote
SABRMatt wrote:
Well said, Matt.
And this is exactly why I have a personal distaste for the Ms current walk-impaired lineup.
I think one of the subtleties that rarely gets mentioned because most fans are monofocused on THEIR team is that the opposition is ALWAYS attempting to find ways to exploit the weakness of opponents. With young hitters, it may take time to zero in on what pitches or pitch sequences kids are struggling with.
Lopez and Yubet are both still in the learning-the-ropes period of their careers. But, so is the opposition. It takes time for the LEAGUE to get a book on the youngsters. But when you’ve got a pair of kids who are only patient enough to walk once per week, then it becomes easier for the opposition to say — ‘throw him a couple at his feet, then throw the next four a foot outside’, because they’ve seen that sequence work earlier in the season.
Mind you, I’ve watched Andruw Jones play this game for a decade — where he’s either zoned in and hitting .500 and slugging .800 — or he’s doing his best impression of Rick Camp at the plate. But, Andruw WILL take a base on balls occasionally. I’m still of the opinion that unless YuBet and Lopez ACCEPT walks occasionally, they are going to start regressing.
July 24th, 2007 at 11:58 am Quote
I’m beginning to see your point regarding Betancourt and Lopez. We’re so used to thinking in terms of a 22 y/o improving on his age 21 season and on until you get to age 27 or 30, but JLo and YuBet may not be the kind of player who do this sort of thing smoothly. I would guess they will regress until they make a plateau leap in their ability to take pitches (at which point they will suddenly break out) or until they regress far enough to be ousted from the game.
July 24th, 2007 at 6:12 pm Quote
This team is really blowing it right now… with a difficult August schedule.. these are are the games we were supposed to get “fat” on… Instead, this offense continues to be lost.. Too frustrating to even watch this squad right now
July 24th, 2007 at 8:12 pm Quote
How do u lose 3 straight games to the Rangers… 4 runs vs a couple of garbage pitchers… No life in this team… There isn’t a player outside of Vidro who looks comfortable at the plate, or even looks like they want to be playing baseball…
July 24th, 2007 at 11:30 pm Quote
I don’t know how this happened…we looked lively and went for the kill against Baltimore and in the first game against Toronto…and then all of a sudden, flatline. It makes no sense.
July 25th, 2007 at 12:45 pm Quote
SABRMatt wrote:
Well, after splitting the first two with Toronto, (and the loss was a 1-0 affair which would be chalked up as just one of those games if it weren’t for what followed), ANY team facing Halladay has an uphill battle. The Toronto results can easily be chalked up to a reality that one cannot expect to win EVERY series.
Texas, on the other hand, might be directly attributable to the April snow-outs. Once Weaver righted himself, the club had FOUR solid starters and a walking land-mine pitching 5th. But the double-header forced the club to pitch BOTH HoRam and Ferry. Against anyone, if Horam and Ferry are two of the starters, I’m going in expecting to lose 2 of 3, but hoping to maybe squeak out with a couple of 1-run wins.
Instead, the club gets three straight 1-run losses. Think about that for a moment. All three games were single run defeats. It’s not like the club got pounded 40-5. It’s a cluster of ‘oh-darn’ losses for a club that has gotten extremely comfortable with its ability to consider games wrapped for shipping after 6 innings.
Considering that four of the five losses are 1-run defeats, (and the other was the Halladay whupping), the CLUB hasn’t gone into any kind of a collapse. It’s just a standard hiccup in a season relatively absent of road bumps. The club got 16 hits in the first game, but didn’t bunch them as efficiently as it has most of the season.
In game one of the twofer, Rheinecker was getting groundballs. Both teams got 7 hits, but Seattle was 0-6 with RISP, while Texas happened to go 3 for 8.
In the nightcap, the Ms get 8 hits (instead of their typical 10), going 2 for 6 with RISP, while Texas goes 3 for 13. Again, no ‘funk’, just a day where the club gave up more chances to score than was wise, (combo of WPs, SBs, and a couple more XBH).
Remember, this is a ROAD series, and for the SEASON, the Ms do NOT play well on the road. Their BA drops 9 points, and the team OPS is 38 points LOWER on the road. The pitching side has been worse, giving up 6/10 of a run more on the road, where the opposition hits 19 points better in their own parks - and the pitching OPS skew is 50 points worse when travelling.
And as easy as it is to bad-mouth the Rangers, they DO have an offense that scores more per game than Seattle, (4.93 to 4.81). Meanwhile, the overall difference in pitching is not exactly great — Seattle 4.8 R/G to Texas 5.35. Yes, Seattle’s pitching is superior at first glance, but what if one compares Seattle’s ROAD pitching to the Ranger Home pitching: Seattle 5.00 r/g (road) — Texas 5.18 r/g (home).
In Arlington, this matchup is a coin-flip from a numerical standpoint. But the Ms were throwing their worst two pitchers into the fray, while Texas doesn’t really have a worst pitcher.
The really good news for the club is that since McClaren took over, the club’s DER has been slowly improving, (which is reflected in steadily improving pitching numbers). The fact that the offense is hitting .257 for the month of July is certainly disappointing, but it’s also encouraging, because while I stated this club could not hit .290 all season, (which they did for May and June), I also don’t believe they can stay at .260 for long. The talent is a .280ish club BA-wise.
The even better news is that while the Ms have sputtered, the As managed to wake up enough to keep the Angels from running away. The Texas series while disappointing, isn’t all that big. The incoming As are another story. If Oakland comes in and takes 3 of 4 (or perish the thought, sweeps), then the idea of a July 31st deal gets REALLY complex.
The potential for swingage this weekend is huge. If Detroit handles the Angles and Seattle wakes up against Oakland, the Ms could end the month in first place. If things go the opposite direction, a 2.5 game deficit could turn into a 7 game hole VERY quickly.
July 25th, 2007 at 1:41 pm Quote
Sandy is of course correct…with PythagenMatt updated again, 3 losses to the Rangers have not cost the Mariners too much ground in PythagenMatt terms…we’re still 9th overall and lost 1.1 wins on our pace…that’s all. Obviously, we need to get it going again soon here, but there’s no need to panic yet.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:10 pm Quote
Congrats, Matt. Just caught the writeup on your revision of Pythag in the HBT article yesterday “Ten Things I Didn’t Know Last Week”…
July 27th, 2007 at 9:23 pm Quote
Wow…I’m honored to show up in that article…I’ll have to e-mail the author and thank him.
July 28th, 2007 at 11:26 am Quote
If we don’t quit treading water here and start swimming for October, that undertow is going to be a problem. :\
July 28th, 2007 at 11:59 am Quote
I think we can expect August and September to look like April through July, with winning periods that tantalize us and occasional significant losing streaks that are all the more frustrating because of how tantalized we are. Some teams that are “above-.500-but-not-playoff” teams just play 6-4, 5-5, 4-6, 7-3 ten-game stretches of baseball all season, but the M’s play 5-5, 8-2, 7-3, 2-8 type of ball.
July 28th, 2007 at 12:05 pm Quote
I’m not sure you can make the assumption that just because we’ve been a little streaky so far, it means we’ll be streaky the rest of the year. If we have another 6 game losing streak though, we’re probably eliminated. We need to avoid the long losing streaks and win as many series as possible.
July 29th, 2007 at 10:19 pm Quote
Can’t get too excited about winning 3 in a row against the As…they’re not a good team and we didn’t win convincingly. We need to make a dent against the Angels (get at least 2 of 3) and get back on track. The good news is that Cleveland is fading some here and the Yankees overtaken us yet so the WC remains at least something of a possibility.
July 30th, 2007 at 5:50 am Quote
SABRMatt wrote:
Actually, I would be very excited about the results against Oakland. The club stopped the skid when it REALLY mattered, (so they won’t be facing the Angels 7 down). More importantly, they likely took Oakland out of the hunt, turning the As into a seller instead of a buyer at the deadline. ANY competition for the WC that gets gone is a good thing for the Ms.
Ultimately, I still don’t think the Ms are likely to make the playoffs without plugging the #5 slot in the rotation, (barring a major catastrophe for the Angels, like losing Vlad).
The ironic thing about this season is that in many ways, watching the Braves in the NL has been almost identical to the Ms in the AL. Falling well behind a fast-out-of-the-gate division rival, and then reeling them in, while constantly struggling to get consistency out of the bottom of the rotation. The Braves just have a better overall offense without the bullpen of the century to make up for the other problems.
And strangely enough, with both clubs really in need of a #5 starter to come in and make the difference, they may well be sniffing after the same deadline deal.
July 30th, 2007 at 9:22 am Quote
Yeah…if we don’t get Reitsma and HoRam out of the way and insert competent players…we won’t make the playoffs without some good breaks. I definitely agree there. Fortunately, Reitsma will probably be DFA’d soon…he’s not owed much money and Mark Lowe’s return makes him completely replaceable. That just leaves us looking for a fifth starter…just like the Braves.
Garland is still out there…that’s the only name I see that’s worth acquiring.
July 30th, 2007 at 9:29 am Quote
From where I sit, there are six contending teams in the AL as of this moment.
Boston
Detroit
New York (A)
Anaheim
Seattle
Cleveland
The Blue Jays have too many problems to fix to get back into it and Minnesota has to climb over too many people to be a serious threat at this point.
Six teams for four spots. Boston will almost certainly make the post-season. That leaves 5 teams for 3 spots…should be a good finish for those five teams.
July 31st, 2007 at 7:54 pm Quote
Matt, I can’t figure out how to email you.
July 31st, 2007 at 8:06 pm Quote
matt.souders@verizon.net
I just changed ISPs so my e-mail address changed too.
August 4th, 2007 at 12:06 am Quote
If the Mariners can put up a good fight against the Red Sox these next couple of days and get 1 out of the the next two, we’re in good shape for a nice run. Got a fairly weak schedule the following week.
BTW I’ll be at the Orioles’ game on Wednesday for Prince Felix’ start…look for me behind the Mariner dugout (my father and I decided to splurge and get really good seats this time)…I’ll be the really REALLY blond-headed guy with very fair skin…LOL
August 4th, 2007 at 12:21 am Quote
Yeah, winning tonight with our worst pitcher on the hill was big..especially against the BoSox and their mouth-foaming bandwagoneering fans.
Gotta see if I’ve got Wednesday off…might need to see Felix go against a less-than-stellar offense
August 4th, 2007 at 1:24 am Quote
I liked this tonight when the Red Sawx fans tried to make noise everyone in the stadium BOOOOOOOOOOOOO’ed them into submission. Last time we played Boston, the Nation had control of the stadium until the Mariners got leads. When YuBet homered, Safeco got about as loud as I’ve ever heard it…LOL
August 4th, 2007 at 5:31 am Quote
Matt-san how many wins will be playing AJ and Broussard over Sexson, Lopez and Ibanez?
Add the wins (I think it will be 1 or 2) and M’s have a far better chance for playoffs.
August 4th, 2007 at 3:22 pm Quote
If Jones and Broussard do in fact play more often and Ibanez and Sexson less often (and especially if Vidro’s bat moves to second base every once in a while where it’s a plus bat instead of a minus), it could easily make the difference in a couple of key games…especially against the Angels who we have not matched up well against this year.
August 4th, 2007 at 6:17 pm Quote
BTW…a little “hmmm” note. Doc proposes that it’s exceptionally rare for a team to have an ERA+ plus OPS+ of less than 200 and get into the post-season. He’s correct of course, but an interesting parallel for the team is the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals (OPS+ = 102, ERA+ = 97). Just saying.
August 4th, 2007 at 6:34 pm Quote
It hasn’t escaped my keen observation that the Tigers are about to lose tonight, the Indians have already lost, as have the Angels and the Yankees have won (handily…again…against lame competition…why is it that the Yankees’ schedule gets like 30 consecutive games against cast off teams???)…meaning the Mariners can take sole possession of the WC, move to within 1.5 games of Anaheim and stay 2 ahead of NY if they can pull this win down tonight…this is a game we’d really like to get here.
We’ll need Washburn to go deep though…the pen is tapped.
August 4th, 2007 at 9:01 pm Quote
Another sloppy outing from Washburn.. He seems to wiggle in and out of trouble for 4-5 innings with that junky mid 80s fastball… But second or third time through the order he usually destructs.. and can’t get anyone out..
August 4th, 2007 at 9:13 pm Quote
since the velo dropped back to the 86-88 range, yes that is an accurate description. He was throwing 92 earlier in the year and finishing games just fine. I wonder if his knees are bothering him again…that’s the only explanation I have for the velo drop.
August 4th, 2007 at 9:17 pm Quote
Guy just gradually breaks down as the season progresses.. He’s hitting 91+ consistently in the Spring.. but come summer time, he’s down at 87…
May serve him well to serve a couple stints on the 15 day DL next year, when summer time rolls around… Would probably keep him fresh and more effective.. Cause it’s awfully hard to get results when your working at 86-88 and are a “challenge with fastball” pitcher like JWash is…
August 4th, 2007 at 9:23 pm Quote
RRS.. nasty stuff… love that curveball
August 4th, 2007 at 9:33 pm Quote
Would someone please now acknowledge my Zito comparison?
The dude is Zito Jr and should be starting.
August 4th, 2007 at 9:40 pm Quote
You know what…I take it back. RRS throws way too hard to be Zito Jr. Amped up for a 94 mph K of Drew there…WOW! Could someone please explain to me how RRS is NOT at least as good as George Sherrill?
August 4th, 2007 at 9:47 pm Quote
I dunno.. but why has he never been used as a starter?? Looking at his stats from the last couple years, he’s always used in relief
August 4th, 2007 at 9:51 pm Quote
He is pitching out of the bullpen. He’d probably have Zito-like velocity as a starter.
Of course he was turned into a reliever for a while ago so I can’t see the M’s using him as a starter now.
August 4th, 2007 at 10:01 pm Quote
they tried him as a starter in AA and he had good sabermetric numbers but the ERA was eeehh so they gave up. Typical idiocy. And I agree…as a starter, he’d probably throw more 92s than 94s…that still leaves him equalling Zito in ability and stuff and having better command.
August 4th, 2007 at 10:22 pm Quote
Should have won that game.. seems like we had two runners on every inning…
August 4th, 2007 at 10:30 pm Quote
yeah…I know losing hurts, but the team stayed very much in it the whole way and showed a lot of resilience out there…I put the game in the “out of reach” category when the Sox got their third run…the Ms stayed in it, which is a good sign.
August 6th, 2007 at 12:50 pm Quote
Who would have believed it if I had told you in early April that:
1. The Mariners would have no player slug .500, including Beltre, Sexson and Guillen, and that among the Mariners only Beltre would be within 50 points of it.
2. Jose Lopez would finish significantly below his 2006 production.
3. Betancourt would have a high error total.
4. Sexson would hit so poorly that he would be platooned and possibly benched in August.
5. Jose Guillen would play the whole year but only slug .433.
6. Raul Ibanez would hit like a middle infielder and not slug .400.
7. Kenji Johjima would fall a little below his production of last year.
8. As of August 6th the Mariners would get 46 starts from pitchers with a combined ERA+ in the sixties, the highest one of which scored a 74, and Felix would not exceed a 100 ERA+ by a significant amount.
9. That Mariners team was hanging within striking distance of the Angels, and hanging with Detroit, Cleveland and the Yankees for the wild card.
How long can this continue? This team needs to go on another sustained run to keep from falling too far behind. Will they do it?
August 7th, 2007 at 5:44 am Quote
How long can this continue? Good question. I decided to look at the season on a per-month basis and found this.
Month RS - RA — OPS / ERA - record
APR : 90 - 103 - .723 / 4.86 - 10-10
MAY: 161 - 143 - .778 / 4.66 - 16-14
JUN: 142 - 133 - .764 / 4.39 - 18-9
JUL: 113 - 126 - .694 / 4.40 - 14-14
With the exception of June, the club has played basically .500 ball all season. In April, the bullpen (and BOR suckage), allowed the club to play .500 ball despite the negative raw pythag. Then again, in May, though 18 runs to the good, the club was only 1 win over .500. In June, the club is +9 runs and +9 in the W/L column. Per PyMatt, the argument is good that a decent chunk of the plus record is ‘real’, and due in large part to the incredible pen. But even Matt shows the team a couple of wins ABOVE what they ’should have’ done.
In May and June the club was hitting .290. In June, the pitching was calming down, and Weaver was no longer a bottle of nitro every time out. But, one of my concerns EARLY in the season was that the lack of any rest for the starters would be a detriment in the long run.
I believe, to a degree, this is what is manifesting at this point.
Catchers, as a group, tend to slow down in the second half, (for very good reasons might I add), and while Joh is still solid, his OPS for July was .543. It won’t stay there. But he’s a 100-isn OPS+ guy — NOT the 120 guy he was showing early in the season.
Lopez and YuBet are doing pretty much what you expect from light hitting middle infielders, (though Lopez’ second half BA (.163) is also abberently bad.
Based on everything I’ve seen from the club, and the fact they have been roster-stagnant, I see a club that can most readily be expected to score and allow about 130-135 runs per month for the final two months of the season. Basically, a .500 team with a little nudge from the stellar pen.
The #5 slot in the rotation is a mess with no signs of getting fixed. Weaver is pitching better - but let no one think that he isn’t still a headcase who will implode at the first bad turn.
In the end, without acquiring that extra arm, I see the club playing roughly .500 ball the rest of the way, maybe a game or two above — 87-75 — if I had to pick an exact number based solely on ability. But I think August and September are often more psychological than physical. I think the lack of days off is more of a MENTAL drain than a physical one. I think the younger guys are more likely to struggle in the second half because they haven’t developed personal routines to get around or over the psychological ‘wall’ that is often spoken of in other sports.
With Cleveland and Detroit both sputtering a bit, Seattle might have a shot. But the Yankees have more total talent than either of those clubs and are finally showing it. Barring catastrophe, the Yankees are going to run away with the Wild Card, (or chase down Boston and shift the Red Sox into run-away WC mode.
Monday was rough as EVERY team in Seattle’s way won, while the Ms had an off day. While I think they have the talent to win 87, what I think is more likely is that if/when the Yankees pull 4-5 games up in the Wild Card race, the team could easily collapse. I think if the July problems were not fatigure related, then they are likely due to ‘pressing’. The club LIKES the new manage. They WANT to perform great for him. They aren’t. The natural reaction is to press. It was EASY to just play relaxed baseball when you had been written off as a 4th place team. It’s much harder when you realize that you’re only a couple of games behind the Angels and even closer to the Wild Card.
The worst part of all this is that if the club were “clearly” out of the race, then we’d likely be seeing Jones and Wlad and maybe even Clement getting some MLB playing time. But as long as they stay close, the organizational mindset seems to be that of fear — fear that changing ANYTHING will break what has worked better than anyone (except Matt) thought possible entering the season.
Best outcome I see at this point would only likely trigger in response to a major injury to an Angel. THAT would be the kind of shot in the arm that could replace the thoughts of “I’ve GOT to succeed right now” into “We CAN succeed right now.”
August 7th, 2007 at 6:07 am Quote
See…whereas I see a team that struggled through April+May due to total ineffectiveness from SP4 and SP5 and an offense that really didn’t get hot until May 25th or so…and that is now suffering through a dog-days struggle that even the Tigers can relate to (and some folks on this site were calling them the best team in baseball!) that leaves them still managing to play .500 ball despite FIVE hitters in their line-up hitting abberantly poorly compared to their norms during that span (Ichiro, Lopez, Sexson, Ibanez, Johjima). I expect them to score runs at a better clip than they have in July, I expect the pen to IMPROVE down the stretch (because they subtracted Reitsma and will be giving more innings to Lowe and Rowland-Smith who are awsome instead of Reitsma and O’Flaherty who are lame), and I expect Felix Hernandez to improve as our ace despite his shortcomings.
August 7th, 2007 at 9:03 am Quote
O’flaherty and lame in the same sentance just boggles my mind. The guy is 7-0 this season with a 3.50 ERA. He’s given up 14 earned runs all season, and 5 were in one game, (July 17 against Baltimore). If you’re saying O’flaherty is lame, then you MUST be saying his 7-0 record is a complete fluke, (which by itself takes Seattle most of the way back to a .500 team).
As for my post - one of the points I was making was yes, there are a number of regulars who had very poor results in July. But instead of accepting the concept that purely random chance led to 55% of the regulars dropping off the table simultaneously, that PERHAPS there was (and is) a root cause to said struggles.
I also expect “some” resiliency from the batters. Based on everything to date, I don’t think 130ish runs scored and allowed is a stretch at all. And my position isn’t just forming today. I’ve said a NUMBER of things that have by and large come to pass.
In April I was about the only man on the planet saying Weaver wasn’t nearly as bad as he was pitching. Today he’s viewed as a rock solid #4 — as everyone forgets that he’s got a 5 cent head. And because he isn’t getting blown out by the third, most people are missing that Weaver went oh-for-July. He’s a low 5 ERA guy at this point in his career. While his season ERA is higher than he’s pitching now, it doesn’t make him a good #4.
I said at the end of June, after two months of hitting .290, that the team could not sustain that level. They dropped to .262 in July. I’ve said from early in the season the club is a low .280s team. If the club rebounds to .280, they’re a .500 club, because Weaver and HoRam are still sub-par pitchers.
I said at the end of June that the lack of rest for the regulars, (coupled with the snowouts shrinking normal off days), that the bats could likely suffer later in the season. Maybe it really is just a random blip on the radar, but my gut tells me that the regulars are tired - probably more mentally than physically, but the manifestation is the same - lowered production. I expect the vets to push on through and rebound a bit, but I have greater doubts about the youth - and I have very little expectation that the club can bounce all the way back to the .290 they posted in May and June.
When the relievers were 16-4, I said that they couldn’t sustain an .800 winning percentage for the entire season. Today, they are 23-7. That’s still a fantastic winning percentage. That’s 7-3, so only one game different. I could end up being wrong - the final numbers will tell - but I’m still of the belief that even as good as the bullpen is talent-wise, that sustaining that kind of performance over a full season is so extremely rare that the odds are not in their favor of doing so.
August 7th, 2007 at 1:53 pm Quote
The HoRam nightmare is close to ending IMHO. He will probably be DFA’d in short order and replaced by either Jorge Campillo, Justin Lehr, Ryan Rowland-Smith or someone else I’m not thinking of at the moment and chances are, whoever we replace HoRam with won’t be the sucking chest wound that he is.
August 7th, 2007 at 8:36 pm Quote
Yay…I’m excited…tomorrow’s Felix Start I’ll be there live.
Of course it’ll be 96-99 F at game time with enough humidity to make the air more like jell-o than gas, but that’s the risk you take going to a summer game.
August 8th, 2007 at 6:54 pm Quote
Didn’t know where to accounce my return, but I’ll just copy and edit for profanity what I put up at LL for all you amigos (minus some pics):
What’s up everyone, just got back from my 7 weeks of summer training during which I was sleeping in if I got up at 0435 and feeling light if I was only carring 10-20 lbs of gear. I’ve been able to keep up a little on what’s been happening (no joke, I’d have someone send me one of Jeff’s recaps about once per week to give me a smile).
So, in the time I’ve been gone (not including today):
-The Mariners went 25-17 (.595)
-Adam Jones called up
-Hargrove resigned
-Ichiro re-signed after getting the All-Star MVP
-Putz blew a save ????????
-Lowe came back sorta
-Beltre hit .293/.370/.540 18:25 BB:K
-Felix went 9 starts pitching, 63 innings with a 3.29 ERA
-Most of our veteran starting players fell apart
-Bonds broke the home run record
-I missed LL/USSM night… gah
I notice the Angels are at +65 runs on the year, Oakland is at +10, and we’re at -3… go figure.
Anyhow, I can’t wait to watch games live again and be able to read all the recaps and alternately cheer and cry about the Ms. I couldn’t have asked for the team to do much better overall while I’ve been gone, and here’s to hoping we’ll be continuing in October.
August 8th, 2007 at 8:49 pm Quote
Hey!! Welcome back Fett!! I hope you’re better off for your summer training even if it was painful.
Good to see you again around these parts.
I’ll be posting a “view from the bleachers” style post in a few minutes so we can all discuss.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:01 pm Quote
In case anyone is wondering why I haven’t updated PythagenMatt in a while, m main computer which had the data on it is currently having problems…I’m only online through my laptop. When that situation gets fixed, the daily updates will resume.
August 17th, 2007 at 2:15 am Quote
Finally got my main computer back. Updates will resume as normal.
I my absence, the Brewers and Dodgers have slumped so badly that they’ve removed themselves from playoff contention in my eyes even if they’re still in it numerically. Meanwhile the Mariners have continued to tread water…we need to really go on a roll here if we want to outrun the Yankees and/or Angels.
August 18th, 2007 at 8:43 am Quote
Burnouts…aren’t the fun?
That flaming meteorite you see off in the distance…yeah…that’s the combined spectacular fall of the Tigers, Indians, Dodgers, As, Brewers and to a lesser extend, the Padres.
The Tigers held the PythagenMatt lead for a few weeks back in mid and late May and were for quite some time a solidly elite team with projected PythagenMatt win totals ranging from 95 to 105. A lot of that was aided by Magglio Ordonez hitting about .750/1.000/1.500 for the first two months (hyperbole…:) )…we all knew that wasn’t going to last. They’re a good team, but they have problems. There are holes in their rotation, they’re relying on a closer who’s about 180 years old and hasn’t been effective since the deadball era and every starter in their line-up except Polanco and Casey whiffs A LOT, which means they’re going to be streaky offensively.
The Indians were never quite so strong, but spent most of the first four months of the season in the top 5 in PythagenMatt, only to see their post-season credibility vanish as they now find themselves in the fringe contenders bracket. Problems in their rotation and major problems with their spotty team defense (which has allowed a BABIP that’s almost as bad as the Mariners) contributes here. That and their closer is Joe Borowski (oh the humanity!).
The Dodgers were a top ten team for most of the first half of the season and are now completely out of contention, the victim of what has turned out to be a badly overachieving offense and a return to earth for guys like Derek Lowe and Brad Penny. I was never a big fan of the Dodgers this year…their early success was mostly the product of unsustainable hot starts from a lot of their young players. I like their future, but this isn’t their year.
The As were always a bully team even when they were hot earlier in the year, but their June swoon and July good-bye have left them in the loser’s bracket with such luminary giants as…well…the Giants.
It is a welcome change of pace for the As to collapse when they usually surge, I’ll say that much. I am of the opinion that the As built this year’s team stupidly. They like the Weaver 3R HR offense, but their line-up has only two guys in it that are patient enough to make that work (Cust, who arrived late, and Buck, who’s still fighting for playing time). Chavez badly needs a change of scenery and some rest…hard to hit when everything hurts and you’re in a park that is murder on flyball hitters. Piazza was never the patient type. Swisher has power and draws some walks but he definitely overachieved last year relative to his minor league numbers. The rest of the cast is full of guys like Shannon Stewart (why is he still starting?), Jason Kendall (who got traded because he hit .200), Mark Kotsay, Dan Johnson (no discipline in the big leagues), Marco Scutaro, Bobby Crosby (he could out K Sexson if he played every day)…that just won’t fly in Oakland. They need line drive hitters in that kind of park and they need to forget about this station to station dogma and start putting the game in motion.
The Brewers are turning into quite the train wreck now. Without Ben Sheets, their rotation has gone from mediocre to horribly overworked and just plain HORRIBLE and their bullpen isn’t helping matters (outside of Francisco Cordero). Meanwhile, Braun and Fielder and hitting incredibly well but no one else in the line-up is on base for them. Holy solo home runs batman! They’ve blown what was at one point an 11 game lead in the NL Central and now are unlikely to make the post-season. The streaking Cardinals might wind up higher than them on the PythagenMatt leaderboard by the end of the season.
The Padres haven’t knocked themselves out of contention like the other five teams on my gloom and doom list, but they held the PythagenMatt lead from May 11th-24th and again from June 1st to July 3rd and now find themselves struggling to get back into the race in the NL West. The problem with the Padres is that their success was entirely one-dimensional. They won dozens and dozens of close low scoring games early in the year. It is more valuable to prevent an extra run than to score an extra run, which gives teams like the Padres unusually high Pythagorean projections (including PythagenMatt), but it is also much harder to sustain a -1.0 R/G defense (relative to average) than it is to sustain a +1.0 R/G offense. They traded away Linebrink and have recently made a habit of blowing leads. Add to that the even more aggravating struggles of their pathetic line-up and some poor performances from the back three in their rotation and you’ve got a team that moved from elite defensive powerhouse to pedestrian contender.
Doing this pythagenMatt thread has helped keep me in touch with large scale trends and I think I’m learning some things about the best ways to build a reliable team that can win consistently on a 162 game schedule.
If the Mariners didn’t have a sucking chest wound in the 5th rotation spot…they might just be a great example of the kind of team that can rattle off 16 wins each and every month. Offense build around playing the percentages on balls in play (very good for consistency despite objections to the contrary by Sandy and others), defense built around a DOMINANT game-crushing bullpen. That may be a recipe for success, believe it or not.
August 20th, 2007 at 1:02 am Quote
Unfortunately…we don’t match up well the next two games…if we can get one of the next two and make sure to get Batista’s start…we’re in good shape, but it’s gonna be tough. On the bright side, the Angels and Yankees are gonna beat each other up now, so hopefully we can gain some ground on someone even if the Twins’ series is a struggle.
August 20th, 2007 at 3:09 am Quote
You know you’re a good team when Yankee fans start complaining “you guys just won’t lose!” The Yankees are playing some of the best baseball they’ve EVER played as a team (outside of 98 that is) and they can’t catch the Mariners.
How cool is that?
August 20th, 2007 at 2:12 pm Quote
Very cool. I’d love it if the Mariners kept the Yankees from reaching the playoffs.
August 21st, 2007 at 3:13 am Quote
The sabermetric spectre of “team chemistry” appears to be carrying the Mariners now. Not only do I think we’re going to make the post-season this year…I think we’re going to climb over Anaheim to do it.
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:51 am Quote
We are now officially “not treading water anymore.” With a 7-2 win on 8/21, the Mariners climbed back into the “warm” category in L30 (.575 to .649 PythagenMatt in the last 30 calendar days). They’re essentially right back where they were before the AS break now in terms of momentum and current performance.
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:08 pm Quote
Hey, and the M’s [OPS+ plus ERA+] finally hit 200.
They’ve got a 108 OPS+ and a 92 ERA+.
……………………
It’s funny — I thought their teamwide pitching performance would be a lot better the last couple months (since Batista and Weaver jelled). But their team ERA is actually higher in July-August and the OPS allowed is about the same.
I wonder why.
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:13 pm Quote
BTW, Jose Guillen’s OPS+ is soaring — it’s up to 121, actually a little higher than his big year for Anaheim in 2004.
Jose’s .290/.360/.456 line is depressed by Safeco — his home numbers are lower than his road numbers. But not by much; Jose doesn’t allow the park to intimidate him. He is just a tough dude. Mentally.
The value of Jose’s batting performance in Safeco, is the same as if he were hitting .308/.381/.510 in a neutral park like Cleveland.
Picking a guy like that up on a 1-year plus option, at $5-8m, that’s our Frank Thomas.
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:24 pm Quote
In the spirit of systems that take into account blowouts, how’s this for one… Texas beats Baltimore THIRTY (30) to three. 29-57 with 8 walks, 2 doubles, and 6 homeruns. Anyone know the record for runs scored in a game?
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:36 pm Quote
Best Part: By pitching the last 3 innings, it was a save situation for TEX.
August 22nd, 2007 at 7:44 pm Quote
Fett42…the record in an official major league game is 47. This 30 is the highest total since 1897.
And this right here…is why PythagenMatt exists.
August 22nd, 2007 at 8:00 pm Quote
PythagenMatt exists so we can see more 30 run games?
…
…
JK
August 22nd, 2007 at 9:01 pm Quote
I’ll be eager to see the change in the Pythag and PythagMatt standings after this…
August 23rd, 2007 at 6:23 am Quote
Wow…the four blowouts played yesterday produced three new M-P extreme teams (TEX, BAL and LAD)…Texas gained 4.4 games in PythagenPat in their double header sweep including that 30 run game. And they only gained 0.9 PythagenMatt wins. P)
August 24th, 2007 at 5:26 am Quote
I think we can safely put Detroit and Cleveland out of our minds. Cleveland has a pretty good grip on the Central and the Tigers have fallen 5 games behind us and 3 back of the Yankees…both SEA and NYY are too good to give up that much ground IMHO. This is a three team race for two spots between NYY, ANA and SEA. Play ball!
August 28th, 2007 at 10:50 am Quote
Matt, I’ve got a question regarding the regular pythag projection.
Is the regular Pat projection based solely on runs scored and allowed? The reason I ask is simply this — if a team, (say the Yankees), scores runs at a .600 pythag pace, but in the first half, only win at a .500 pace, you’d get something like:
NYY: RS=450; RA=368; expected wins = 96; actual wins mid-season = 41; (7 under projection)
One of the problems here is that barring a “reason” for being well ahead or behind a pythag projection, one can expect a team to play only at the rate they are projected to do, not better or worse. So, NY in this theorhetical case would be projected to win 48 games in the second half, (89 wins total), instead of the 96 shown.
The reason I bring this up isn’t because I don’t think your system is better. I think it is. But where my mind was at was attempting to try and emulate in some small way what your system does without the need to keep track of every individual game. It occured to me that your system simply does a much better job at capturing the impact of what has ALREADY occured.
I then noticed that (as of this posting), the teams record was 73-53 and you have them projected to win 91. That would require the team to go: 18-18 the rest of the way. So, I’m thinking that an easy as-you-go-along tweak to pythag is to ONLY project the rest of the season, (at the current pythag pace). I know that as the season goes on, the already played games will become such a large portion of the pie that the utility may drop. But I think it might be a quick-and-dirty tweak to pythag that moves it toward PythagenMatt. Thoughts?
p.s. - I think at this point, projecting w/l of games remaining might be a nice additional column to include.
August 28th, 2007 at 12:02 pm Quote
Good point Sandy…that’s something I can add to the PythagenMatt calculator worksheet fairly easily. Of course…we missed most of the 2007 season so I don’t get to see what the projections looked like back when NY was running a 93 win Pat and an 89 win Matt at the halfway point in the season, but that would be a good way to test the accuracy of each system’s projections…I could run correlations between each projection (actual W/L, PythagenPat, and PythagenMatt) at various points in each season and what actually happened at the end of the season (using your idea of only projection what has already happened). I’m guessing I would get much higher R^2 values for both Pat and Matt and a bigger difference between pat and Matt if I did it that way, but that’s just a guess until I run the tests. I have a gamelog table for all seasons except 2007, so I can test ALL of the teams and show the results.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:26 pm Quote
That’ll be interesting to see if/when you can do it.
My own intuition is that your current system “already” naturally adjusts out the ‘luck’ factor as you go along - (the .500 record the rest of the way is my ‘tell’ on that). So, I’m thinking that while only adding future games to the raw Pythag is likely to close some of the gap with your system - I don’t have the same sense that it would be a boon to PMatt. Only running data will tell, but my hunch would be that if you take PMatt and then attempt to apply the W% only to unplayed games, you’d be factoring in the ‘luck’ factor of the played games twice - and you could end up with a less accurate system.
Ultimately, I think PMatt is going to be superior to raw Pythag and even Py+ (for lack of a better name). But I think Py+ is likely to move toward PMatt (making it more accurate than raw, but much easier to calculate).
August 28th, 2007 at 2:06 pm Quote
Like I said before, graph actual W%, Pat, and Matt over time and see how quickly each converges on the final W%. That should give an interesting visual result.
August 28th, 2007 at 3:18 pm Quote
Yeah EA…I can’t graph PythagenPat over time for the current season, but I CAN do that for any previous season…this is because I haven’t been recording the RS and RA for each individual game this year…just adding the run totals to my PythagenMatt summary sheet (which includes the calculation for PythagenPat) and then saving the PythagenMatt W% for each game.
I’ll crack open the gamelog table tonight and pull out a few example seasons to run a graphical presentation on…and then run some correlative studies W%, PythagenPat raw, PythagenPatCumulative (this would be where we count the games that already happened and project for the games that haven’t), and PythagenMatt and PythagenMattCumulative. Just to see what answers we get.
February 11th, 2008 at 3:39 am Quote
SMBRMatt, do you have the final table (or graph) of the PythagenMatt for the 2007 season? If so, could you please post it? I believe that almost all of us, if not all, who are aware of your work, are looking forward to the final results. TIA!
February 11th, 2008 at 4:26 am Quote
Dr D considers anointing Lakay the official bump-meister of the Seattle Mariners blog-o-sphere… :crowd goes wild:
February 11th, 2008 at 5:35 am Quote
LOL!
I stopped tracking PythagenMatt live for all of baseball when the Mariners’ season ended on August 26th (sorry…I just got too depressed…LOL) but now that I can download the 2007 gamelogs, I’ll produce a final table and some cool graphs.