Pirates now have lost 4 in a row, when it was theirs for the taking , what happened? I mean we have a great team according to data and stats, and should be in first place by 10 games. When anyone defends the pirates owners or management, you know they are just stupid
OT: Pirates. It is Cutch. Not Clutch.
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And yet, despite being an apparent shill, I have never predicted the Pirates would make the playoffs or win more than 88 games in a season. I also never thought last year's team was a true 98-win team, just like I was arguing with people about the Pirates back in 2011 and 2012 and saying they were going to collapse.
The difference is, you believe that every result in baseball is totally merit based and controllable, whereas I know that baseball is a ridiculously fluky, luck-filled, unpredictable game.
I'm pretty sure owners and GMs would absolutely love it if they had half as much control over how things play out in a one-year sample as fans and antiquated media types believe. But that lack of control is why GMs and owners don't play for one season unless their farm system is dried up and their team is old; it's why so many credible sites and writers can consistently predict what most teams are going to do before they do it. Teams play the long game, especially small market teams, and because of that they tend to act rationally and predictably.
Here's a quote from Fangraphs that was posted yesterday while speaking about the Diamondbacks' current front office fiasco. It's the crux of how front offices function, and how they are effectively evaluated: "If there’s one underlying theme in most of the analysis and commentary we publish here, it’s that good processes lead to good decisions more often than not, and we’re generally better off judging the quality of a decision by the information available at the time rather than using hindsight to try and guess whether a person accurately predicted the future."
Literally all I do is say, "this is the information, this does/doesn't fit their usual methods, this does/doesn't align with small market tendencies, this has/hasn't tended to work out for them".
Not much in your post I disagree with and what you say about last year's 98 win team is something I've said for months and a view for which I have taken a lot of flak.
On the luck issue, you have misrepresented my position. Sure luck can play a role in the outcome of a pennant race or a playoff series but that's not to say, as you seem to contend, that the outcome of EVERY pennant race and playoff series is pure kismet and fortuitous because it's not. Most times the team with the better personnel wins. That's why oddsmakers and bookies are able to stay in business.
And I don't oppose the use of stats to assist in decision making as long as that use is tempered by common sense and a recognition that they shouldn't necessarily drive every decision- there are intangible factors that need to be considered and smart decision makers understand that.
The problem is there's a difference between a team not being a 98-win team and not still being a very good team. Even when a team is projected to win 90-games on paper (i.e. they're a team that has 90-win talent), people will start to get uncomfortable and hedge because that requires a LOT of things going right -- or, at least, a lot of things not going wrong. Then, obviously, once you take a team's on-paper talent there is a ton of randomness and variance that inflates/deflates wins along the way. Record in one-run games is incredibly unpredictable, for instance, as is a team being "clutch". Those wins are banked, and they count, but they don't tell you anything about a team's ability to sustain success because those things aren't sustainable. For instance, there is a correlation of literally 0 (like, the r-value is 0) when you plot a team's "clutchness" in the first half of the season compared to their "clutchness" in the second half. It is, essentially, just randomness. Being clutch in the first half doesn't increase or decrease your chances of being clutch in the second half, and the inverse is also true.
And there are certainly intangible things that matter, but I think the intangibles considered are different than people are used to. For instance, "clutch" has been shown as something that doesn't really exist. It's not something that's a skill. However, I think teams are definitely going to look at, say, the type of pitcher a guy is whenever they're choosing between 2 guys on paper. Maybe the stats for one guy look better, but the other guy fits the profile of a pitcher they have had a ton of success with, and they choose the latter guy because they think they can coax some value out of him that the statistics aren't reflecting. Or, maybe they just don't want to add a dickhead like Papelbon into their clubhouse.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on the playoffs. I think there's just always going to be a huge divide there between young and old.
Well you will be happy to at least know that your latest post reminded of correlation analyses I had to complete once upon a time. Happy to have gone on to other things!
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