PECOTA has Rays at 89 wins

[jim]

Me, I just like seeing the Bloated Empires looking up at those scrappy, hungry, adjective-laden Rays. I guess the whole Devil thing really was holding them back. Who knew?

Young, talented teams like that are often more fun to watch than solid/stolid veteran teams. I wish more Rays games were on the tube here.

I'm not discounting that they play hard, but that's not why they are where they are. They are just a good team.

[Joe Wells]

No, I know they're a young, talented team. I said as much in the next line. The silly sports-adjectives are the kinds of things I hear elsewhere about them, primarily by folks rationalizing their success.

[mikechamp]

On the subject of the thread: I love the Rays and the way they've built their team. As long as it's not against the Cardinals, there is no team I'd like more to see win a world series.

++

I've come around on this team to the point where I told someone yesterday: I am jumping on the Rays' bandwagon. I hope they can win it all, if it's not at the Cards expense.

Also, for xlove, I don't have the link handy, but I saw where the Royals are mentioned in an article in the P-D about potential Matt Holliday suitors. That surprised me.

[xlovemybluex]

It surprised me, too. We've got an overload of outfielders both here and in AAA, and three of the four outfielders we're carrying right now hit left handed, but all four of them are valuable assets to this team- all the left handed hitters are viewed as parts of the future. I'll be interested to see what happens with that. Acquiring Matt Holliday would probably lead to Mark Teahen being traded and playing third for a contending, which would be sad for KC but good for him.

[greenback44]

Bump. The Rays just won #89 tonight.

P.S. Will Vegas take my wager against PECOTA?

Vegas always favors traditional powers on their over/unders.

They have the Rays at 73 wins...they have the Cardinals at 80 wins.

*heads to casino*

Wish I had done the same. With the obvious caveats about PECOTA and its ilk (see the AL Central projections, for example), this was an opportunity to exploit the knee-jerk evaluation along the lines of "They must suck, they're the Tampa Bay Rays."

[TheoSqua]

This thread got a mention on Viva El Birdos

And they laughed at Magneto.

[ghostrunner]

PECOTA has me at giving two [expletive].






sorry. That sounds rude. I couldn't help myself.

[greenback44]

PECOTA has me at giving two [expletive].

That's nice.

Too bad Magneto didn't promise us millions of dollars instead. Maybe the Fed would've bailed him out.

[Popeye_Card]

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.

Huh. I was wrong.

[cardsfansince82]

Bump. The Rays just won #89 tonight.

P.S. Will Vegas take my wager against PECOTA?

Vegas always favors traditional powers on their over/unders.

They have the Rays at 73 wins...they have the Cardinals at 80 wins.

*heads to casino*

Wish I had done the same. With the obvious caveats about PECOTA and its ilk (see the AL Central projections, for example), this was an opportunity to exploit the knee-jerk evaluation along the lines of "They must suck, they're the Tampa Bay Rays."

I really did put some money on the Rays. I almost bet against the Cards reaching 80 but decided against it at the last second, although it might be a winning bet or push at this point.