Reddy

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 01:53 AM) FanGraphs. I don't know how BP calculates their WAR off hand but Shields has been 4.5, 3.9, 4.5, and 3.7 the last 4 seasons. That works out to over 4 per season, but a drop off last year is concerning. Also dropping off to 1.6 seems unrealistic to me. That's an incredibly steep drop off for a player who hasn't lost velocity and is coming off 4 really good seasons. Fangraphs WARs are usually higher than BP or Baseball Reference, which had Shields at mid to high 2s the last few years. I... tend... to go with the more conservative ones, but it's personal preference. I'm sure Shields' projections on FG are better than 1.6. We'll see though.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 10:40 PM) i don't know what that has to do with projected wins in January. It's not about the exact number of wins, it's how each team stacks up against each other team. So yes, we're close with Detroit and Cleveland, but both are probably slightly better teams on paper. Of course, s*** happens, people get hurt, and players breakout. So things fluctuate. But the projections give a baseline.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 10:13 PM) Wite brought up a good point earlier. What percentage chance would you give us to make the playoffs? What chances would you have given us at the end of 2014? What chance would you have been happy with us improving to at the end of 2014? I'm frickin thrilled. At least playoff talk isn't crazy. I also like our top 3 starters against any in baseball. Yessss. agreed. I know it sounds like I'm a debbie downer, but I'm super stoked about the season, and that we can even ARGUE about competing.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 09:15 PM) The funny thing is you can also take Garcia's three partial seasons so far, and it compares to Magglios first season. He has nowhere near the power of Maggs. And Magglio also had a 9% K rate compared to Avi's 22%. yyyyeah...

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 09:37 PM) Is that good? for 1.5MM? yeah it's f***ing good. and to compare Billingsley to Clayton Richard is laughable. He had a 3.67 before pitching became as dominant as it is right now. He had WARs from 3-5 before he got hurt. We paid 2MM for Beckham. Enough said.

QUOTE (LDF @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 08:49 PM) then you tell me why they didn't do it, and if you know the answer then why ask the question. anyway, it was the FO that said, that the sox don't have the money and are on a budget. they also said that they went over the budget...... so i was just simply replying with the same words the sox FO said. goodness.

Exactly. Can you imagine if we'd had TWO Viciedos on this team? How maddening would that have been!? Haha

QUOTE (WhiteSoxLifer @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 08:02 PM) Because he's essentially Felipe paulino. Hasn't pitched since April of 2013. Had Tommy John and another surgery. Um... he's immensely more talented than Paulino. He has a career 3.67 era or thereabouts.

BB% / K% / ISO / BABIP A 5.2 % 22.7 % .136 .329 B 5.3 % 21.6 % .170 .291 A .272 / .314 / .408 / wOBA .316 wRC+ 97 B .254 / .298 / .424 / wOBA .315 wRC+ 95 Which one is Avi and which is Viciedo?

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 07:35 PM) By my count that's the 155th player the Sox have missed out on. Shameful. agreed

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 07:27 PM) f***ing nerds are ruining all that was once precious in this country.

QUOTE (LDF @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 07:23 PM) b/c the sox do not have the money and they spent their budget. You're seriously equating 1.5MM with 20MM? huh.

My real question is why we didn't sign Chad Billingsley for 1.5 MM like the Phillies just did.

Although in the spirit of being consistent, BP projects a regression for Shields, too 1.6 WAR

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 06:28 PM) Some of the stuff in here is crazy Heavily overrated? The guy's been a 4 WAR pitcher each of the last 4 years and I don't see him suddenly falling off a cliff at this point. I imagine he'll be a good starter each of the next 2 years and a league average starter the 2 years after that. The 5th year could get ugly. If we're using projections to determine win totals, we have to use projections to figure that James Shields isn't going to turn into junk because he's 33. Ervin Santana signed a 4 year contract worth $14 million. James Shields is a much better pitcher than Ervin Santana. Ok not "heavily" overrated, but he's overrated in the same way Shark is. They're very, very similar pitchers. You're right though, that Shields has been better than I remembered. I missed a lot of last season being away on a ship EDIT: In what world is he a 4 WAR pitcher? BP never has him above 3.0 and that was his sophomore season

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 06:20 PM) But the "most likely outcome" doesn't mean that it happens a lot, it just means it happens the most often in simulations and based on expectations. The bell curve of possible outcomes has a median of 79 wins, but it's a very large error bar and the odds of hitting exactly 79 wins is incredibly small. In fact, I've seen suggestions that the error bar may be as high as 8 games. If that's the case, then everything within 1 standard deviation leaves the Sox between 71 and 87 wins, which is either one of the worst teams in the league or one of the best. There's all kinds of noise that isn't accounted for in projections because they literally can't account for it. Injuries, roster additions, roster subtractions, players breaking out, players disappointing, luck, and whatever else, they are very inexact. They should be looked at because, as you've noted, they indicate the baseline talent level of the Sox, which is probably an average team (if we used a range of +/- 2 on that 79 wins, it'd 77-81 wins, which is less intimidating), and there are plenty of reasons to believe they can outplay that projection. There are others to believe they will not beat it. I expect about 85 wins. I won't be surprised in the least if they win 90+. I won't be surprised if they win 75, but (not that it's a surprise) something catastrophic will have happened for them to win that little. at the end of the day we completely agree on the projections of this team, then. I expect around 85 as well, though we differ in that I'll be a *little* surprised if we win 90.

QUOTE (LDF @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 05:43 PM) i agree with you, but considering he is the last somewhat good sp, he is the only option..... but not more than 3 yrs. can you envision, come wild card series, Sale has pitched 200 innings as well as Q and Jeff S. you going to need to run out a pitcher for a tie game. Rodon has pitched 150 + innings.... up next, Beck, Erik Johnson, Hector. Um... the wild card series is 1 game. And the Giants just won the WS with 3 pitchers

QUOTE (LDF @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 05:37 PM) but none ready to carry a heavy workload let alone pitch extremely well in a playoff hunt. Shields is heavily overrated and not WORTH the money. Why do you want us to take on another bad contract? We've already got Danks.

QUOTE (shysocks @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:58 PM) A similar argument occurred about this Fangraphs post a while back, and essentially I think everyone here is a little bit correct about projections. The post wasn't about PECOTA specifically but about projected team WAR, but I think the same generalities apply. The reason projections are helpful: Of 20 playoff teams the past two seasons, 19 were projected for at least 30 WAR prior to that season. So that is solid evidence that projections are a good assessment of where teams stand. The reason projections are not always helpful: Because when I look at the graph with the faded Orioles logo in its background, I see probably 10 teams who exceeded their projected WAR by 10 or more, and another 7 or so who fell short by that margin. That is a full third of the sample (!!) where the projection whiffed considerably. For whatever reason. Those surprises occur often enough that it would be unwise to praise the projections as gospel. It's because of standard deviations and luck - which can't be projected. The '05 White Sox were massively lucky, and got career years out of our entire bullpen - which was the major reason for our hot start out of the gate. That kind of thing happens every once and a while. It could happen for us this year. But the point is that the MOST LIKELY OUTCOME is what these projections are for. Each team doesn't take into account the others, so just because no one in the Central is slated to win over 82 games, doesn't mean no one will. It simply means that for each individual team, the MOST LIKELY OUTCOME, statistically speaking, is that they hit their projected win total. And obviously there are caveats for teams like the White Sox who have a system that can't be projected quite as accurately as the others.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:52 PM) Not even close to that. I see PECOTA as a reference, a point of view, not a fact. I have never once said it's fact. Of course it's a reference. It sets a decent baseline, from which standard deviations exist.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:49 PM) This is my point exactly. By not factoring in things like that, there are biases against certain franchises. If you aren't adjusting player performance for franchise input, you are missing out on key data points. What data points can you attribute to a player because Herm Schneider is a good trainer? Instead you just see that they avg a 7 win boost from their PECOTA and that's your adjustment.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:45 PM) Depending on what sorts of franchises are out there, it could definitely be biased towards certain types of teams, meaning franchises that are run a certain way. The Sox seem to be one of those teams that usually gets under-predicted. If the bias were truly neutral, that should disappear over time, and not be reinforced. PECOTA does it based on individual players past performance and creates all of those player projections FIRST, then creates the team projections by conglomerating the info. How teams are run don't factor into the results, which is why they can't account for us having the best pitching coach and training staff in the game.

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:42 PM) Thank you, K. Said it better than I could have. You as well, DA. This is just a Hawk vs. Sabermetrics situation. Older guys don't appreciate statistics saying their team isn't good as they "feel like" it is.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:12 PM) That is completely not true. There had to be assumptions made in order to make the model. There are built in biases for sure. my point is, they're not fans, biased towards one TEAM over another.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:06 PM) He isn't wrong, he is telling you to stop telling everyone else is wrong because HEY PECOTA SAID SO. I get it, you don't believe the Sox have what it takes. But don't point to projections and say "see? I'm right!" As if they are facts Everyone else is basing their opinion on their own personal gut feeling about the team as a biased fan. These projections are completely unbiased and considered the best in the business amongst the entire baseball industry. How dare I subscribe to one over the other. Also I'm very excited about the team. I'm happy it's a much better team, and I think Hahn's done an amazing job. That doesn't mean they're winning the WS.