Popeye_Card wrote:So they're going to increase by 23 wins mostly based on some minor league equivalents?
I'll believe it when I see it.
Good point, but they really underperformed their third order wins last year. They had 75 W3 wins last year.
On the field, they had 66.
When it comes to a bunch of young guys with potential playing together, I'll go with what I see on the field until they prove otherwise. The psychology of "knowing how to win" and all that. It's overblown of course, but I still think it's a factor.
its not a factor. why don't you back it up by doing a little research yourself?
it isn't hard. I'll tell you how to do it. Just look at say the majors since 1990. Find a weighted average of the players age (using PT percentage). Then find the difference between wins and pwins for the team. Look for some sort of correlation (linear or not). If you don't find a significant one (and you won't) then you are wrong. Even if you do find one you'd have to a bit more analysis...but we won't arrive at that pass.
He referenced players' psychology, not age. I don't believe that there's a way to quantify something like that, and strictly looking at a player's age isn't going to do it.
I'm not trying to argue that psychology and the like IS a factor. I just don't think it's something that can really be quantified.
Popeye_Card wrote:So they're going to increase by 23 wins mostly based on some minor league equivalents?
I'll believe it when I see it.
Good point, but they really underperformed their third order wins last year. They had 75 W3 wins last year.
On the field, they had 66.
When it comes to a bunch of young guys with potential playing together, I'll go with what I see on the field until they prove otherwise. The psychology of "knowing how to win" and all that. It's overblown of course, but I still think it's a factor.
its not a factor. why don't you back it up by doing a little research yourself?
it isn't hard. I'll tell you how to do it. Just look at say the majors since 1990. Find a weighted average of the players age (using PT percentage). Then find the difference between wins and pwins for the team. Look for some sort of correlation (linear or not). If you don't find a significant one (and you won't) then you are wrong. Even if you do find one you'd have to a bit more analysis...but we won't arrive at that pass.
He referenced players' psychology, not age. I don't believe that there's a way to quantify something like that, and strictly looking at a player's age isn't going to do it.
I'm not trying to argue that psychology and the like IS a factor. I just don't think it's something that can really be quantified.
this is even easier to test. on a year to year basis roster turnover is very small. If this idea exists then we'd expect a team that over (under) performed their PWins in one year would over (under) perform their PWins the next season. There's no year to year correlation for PW-W, so no such luck.
I always thought one factor as to why they sucked was because they play NYY and BOS 16 to 18 times (each) every season, and are being outspent by each of those teams to the tune of 4 to 5 times (or more).
mikechamp wrote:I always thought one factor as to why they sucked was because they play NYY and BOS 16 to 18 times (each) every season, and are being outspent by each of those teams to the tune of 4 to 5 times (or more).
that wouldnt factor into their PWins, since PWins is based off of actual runs scored and runs allowed. to factor out scheduling quirks we need to look at P3-wins.
PWins - Based off Runs Scored, Runs Allowed
P2Wins - Based off EqR scored, EqR allowed
P3Wins - Based off EqR scored, EqR allowed adjusted for schedule
Now that i read it, the 75 wins was P3 Wins. Their PWins was 66, and they won 66, so there's NO them sucking relative to their expected total. We expected them to win 66 wins based off their actual runs scored/allowed. The question then becomes if there were "psycholigical" effects that caused them to score 40 fewer than they should have and allowed 15 more than they should have (which equates to 71 wins so theyre -5). The runs allowed difference is well within one STDEV of the differences, so that's just random luck. The 40 run scored difference is a little different..
Popeye_Card wrote:So they're going to increase by 23 wins mostly based on some minor league equivalents?
I'll believe it when I see it.
Good point, but they really underperformed their third order wins last year. They had 75 W3 wins last year.
On the field, they had 66.
When it comes to a bunch of young guys with potential playing together, I'll go with what I see on the field until they prove otherwise. The psychology of "knowing how to win" and all that. It's overblown of course, but I still think it's a factor.
its not a factor. why don't you back it up by doing a little research yourself?
it isn't hard. I'll tell you how to do it. Just look at say the majors since 1990. Find a weighted average of the players age (using PT percentage). Then find the difference between wins and pwins for the team. Look for some sort of correlation (linear or not). If you don't find a significant one (and you won't) then you are wrong. Even if you do find one you'd have to a bit more analysis...but we won't arrive at that pass. I would actually tend to believe that, if anything, younger teams would generally outperform their pwins. Younger teams generally run more and in high leverage situations the SB% breakeven point drops. This is logically consistent with the idea that clutch is relatively ignorable.
im not saying you're wrong. im saying you're probably wrong.
I could do all of that.
Or I could wait to see them match their PECOTA projections, and/or exceed their third order wins. Then I can either say, "Huh. I was wrong." or "I guess PECOTA was wrong."
I really don't care enough about the Rays to crunch a bunch of numbers. I'll probably forget to be right or wrong by the end of the season anyway. If it were the Cardinals, it would be different.
Going back to my original point, I don't think they have enough exciting young talent to jump up 23 wins. Whether that's because of psychology, bullpen issues, back-end of the rotation issues, or whatever--looking down their roster, I don't think they're an 89 win team, despite what PECOTA says.
Physological effects like that most definitely exist. The question is, how much? I think of it from a personal standpoint and my current job.
I have a skill, web design. When I was an intern I used that skill under a more observed circumstance and I was paid more to get better at what I was doing than I was specifically for my results. Now i'm in a corporate job where i'm paid more for my results than I am for my professional progress. My actually skill set hasn't changed all that much in the last few years, but what has changed is my ability to communicate, organize, and focus. If you compare my ability to do my job now to what it was two years ago, you'll see a significant difference. I'm way better at my job now than I was then, even though my primary skills for my job, or what my job is, hasn't really changed. In a round about way, the same thing can be said for any profession, even baseball.
In baseball, the minors are more for "development" much like my internship was for me, and hitting the majors is more like being in the big corporate job pinned on production. That's the whole point of "seasoning" in the minors and "being ready" for the majors, etc. You obviously learn to adjust to more elite pitching, hitting, etc. But a player's primary abilitiy from the minors to the majors generally doesn't change. Most sinkerball pitchers in the minors are sinkerball pitchers in the majors, most power hitters in the minors are power hitters in the majoers, etc. They still have the same skill and ability, the difference is how they adjust to a more professional atmosphere. To say that maturing and getting used to that change doesn't play a factor in a players performance is silly, in my opinion. It's obviously based primarily on skill, but making adjustments and maturing does affect performance.
Things like learning to have better focus, being able to adjust to and prepare for deviations in performance, learning how to work with teammates, and other mental/emotional things do play a role in performance. Adjusting and being more comfortable in specific surroundings makes someone more confident, and confidence place a huge role in performance, especially in baseball. Mentally adjusting and growing into a situation like that isn't the end/all be all of measuring how someone performs. Pure ability will always trump that, but to completely dismiss it as having absoltely no effect on team or individual performance is being silly.
You constantly hear pitchers say that they went from a "thrower" to a "pitcher" as they adjusted and made changes in their approach that made them a more effective baseball player. That part is entirely mental, in my opinion, and does affect performance.
Asmodai wrote: The runs allowed difference is well within one STDEV of the differences, so that's just random luck.
Just because an anomaly falls within a standard deviation does not mean that it is random luck.
All it really means is that it's insignificant. I could be right that it deals in part with psychology. You could be right that it's just random luck. Maybe it's a combination of both.
EDIT: And I don't want to insinuate that I think psychology and "knowing how to win" really hold the Rays back. I'm more saying that I don't think projections based on minor league numbers are very reliable, and with teams like the Rays, you're basing a significant portion of their team projection on a lot of unreliable projections, which leads to a very unreliable final projection.
I would see a PECOTA projection as +/- 10 wins. I think it's odd to project the Rays at 89 wins, +/- 10. I'd put them more at 79 wins, +/- 10.
Last edited by Popeye_Card on March 13 08, 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I guess the reason I doubt they'll increase by 23 wins over last season is that historically, it's pretty unlikely that will happen. I don't know the answer, nor do I know where to find it, but how many teams have experienced that type of increase from Year A to Year B?
My wild guess is less than 2% of all teams in the history of the game.
Combine that with knowing how competitive and financially capable NYY and BOS is, and I just don't see it happening. If I'm wrong, then "Yea, PECOTA!"
