Eminor3rd

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 04:15 PM) Their are inherent biases in the algorithm which will tend to favor certain teams, thus making where you fall, relatively biased based upon the team you have. Like what?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 02:17 PM) The White Sox number is 78. What does that tell you about the team you didn't already know before this number was revealed? Last year, Baltimore and Chicago each had a number of 75. One team won 96 games, the other 73. Washington had a number of 88, they won 96. Boston had an 89, they won 71. The number doesn't matter. They didn't take Baltimore's division title away because PECOTA gave them 75 wins before the season started. Here's what I thought when I saw the projections: "Whoa, shouldn't that be higher? It seems like they added enough talent to be projected at at least .500. Christ, I keep forgetting about Danks and Noesi. The projections don't like them. Yeah, it sure makes sense why they don't like them. Those guys were both worse than they seemed last year, and could easily be even worse this year. I guess that's more of an issue than I originally thought. Also, this projects Sale and Quintana and Abreu all to take major steps back. I guess i can;t really EXPECT a Cy/MVP season out of those guys. Sure they're capable, but I wouldn't BANK on it. Why are these guys so high? Ah, they get a ton of value from their depth. When I look at the White Sox, I don;t see a lot of capable backups. i suppose it makes sense that when people get hurt, Leury garcia has to play, and that's going to make a big difference."

I'm not saying I care, but this would slow the games down, and it doesn't seem like they're gonna do stuff that slows the game down for a while.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 01:26 PM) But even what they are saying should happen is open to debate. I like BP. I get it every year. In fact, it was delivered yesterday. But I don't know what makes their projection something we should hold up on a pedestal. At the end of the day, if they project the White Sox to win 60 or 95 ,it doesn't matter, and that has been my point all along. It IS open for debate. That's what we're doing. No one is holding anything up to a pedestal! In your issue of BP, does it say anything at all about how these projections are so accurate we don't even need to play the games? Or, instead, does it say something about how they provide a useful and interesting frame of reference and then go onto cite its shortcomings? They DO matter. The number they land on doesn't matter, but that number in context of the other tell us things about our team. Every week, some random sap wins the freaking lottery, even though his odds were one in 2,000,000. He didn't actually buy 2,000,000 tickets to ensure a victory. But the odds were the odds.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 11:56 AM) Projections feed discussion. You just don't like opinion that is different than yours. Sorry. If you want to ignore the past and think this is a really accurate "tool" as you like to say which lets you know where every team is at, fine. I think you are wrong. That's a ridiculous thing to say. You have asked, like seventy times, "what is the POINT of projections?" and we have answered it all seventy times. I'm not telling you to like them or agree with them, I'm just telling you why they're useful. It has nothing to do with my OPINION of them. You haven't even ASKED my opinion of them, and I haven't even offered it. I HATE chapstick. But you can tell me why it's useful, and I believe you. But its benefits don't interest me and I don't like using it. But I'm not trying to s*** on everyone who DOES use it. My opinion doesn't change the fact that it has uses. It doesn't objectively suck simply because it doesn't permanently cure chapped lips.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 11:29 AM) But why? Projections are made for fun. At the end of the year, most will look like a fool, and if you didn't one year, chances are, you will the next. It amazes me how serious some are over these things. It's a freaking projection. Not a tool. I feel sorry for anyone who bases their excitement of their team based on something like this. Fandom is also made for fun. Nothing about sports really MATTERS. But we all get a lot of enjoyment from following this team and sport closely, so we do. Projections feed discussion and discussion is why we're here. You don't have to care -- but if you don't, then just don't participate. Don't crap on everyone else for caring about stuff you don't give a s*** about.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 10:36 AM) I was just typing this, got exasperated, and stopped. Thanks for doing it.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 10:36 AM) Quit talking down to me, or anyone else that doesn't take these things seriously so we obviously miss "important things." This isn't an important thing. It is a projection that has proven to be way off in the past. I am not a White Sox fanboy who just assumes they will win 150 games a season. I don't even like Samardzija. I think Duke is a waste of money. If this projection had them 25 games better than anyone else, I would still be saying you have to play the games. The most accurate thing at the end of the day isn't xFIP, or WAR or any other advanced number, it is the actual record at the end of the season. I'm not talking down to you -- I'm talking about "fans" and "human beings," both of which are groups of people I also belong to. I'm not exempting myself from these baises, I am part of them. We all are. That's why this is useful.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 10:03 AM) Here is how teams really fared compared to their 2014 projection: Boston -18 Tampa -12 NYY +2 Tor +3 Balt +21 Det +2 Cleve +6 KC +10 Sox -2 Min -1 Oak correct Ana +11 Tex -18 Sea +5 Hous +4 Wash +8 Atl -6 Phil -3 Mets +5 Miami +8 Stl +2 Cinci -7 Mil +2 Pit +10 Cubs +2 LAD -4 SF +1 SD -4 AZ -15 Colo -8 That is 11 teams who have a projection 8 games or more inaccurate. If you did a projection which said every team would finish 81-81, there would be 16 8 games or more off. So a little better than mindless. Still meaningless. I don't see anyone but BP getting paid for these projections. I like looking at projections just like anyone else. But I can't understand why people think they actually mean much. You can still look at rosters and see which teams should be better than others. I cannot fathom why you're still hung up on this record-for-record stuff. I'm trying to tell you that isn't the point. The record is a frame of reference that is based on projected player performance. It's a ROUGH total of what you'd expect to happen if every player acted exactly like they were a typical guy of their age and ability. It will NEVER work out exactly this way and no one has EVER said it will. They are still useful because they stack teams up against one another on a mean-performance basis, which is a reasonable proxy for "true talent." This can be eye-opening for a lot of people, primarily because it provides an objective method for factoring playing time somewhat accurately (whereas fans only seem to look at the starting 9, assuming they'll all be healthy not doing a good job of factoring in how important bench and depth are), and because fans have a tendency to assume that players that have had good seasons will repeat those seasons, whereas players with bad seasons can improve, despite the fact the the good players regress downward just as much as the bad players regress upward. For the 2015 White Sox, it illustrates that our talent drops off sharply from our stars, it illustrates just how bad John Danks and Hector Noesi really are despite the fact that we seem to feel comfortable with the former because his name still carries value and we can hang "innings eater" on him, and the latter because he appeared to improve when he came to us last year, even though he faded BIG time down the stretch. It also reminds us that we likely saw Chris Sale and Jose Quintana's ceilings last year, and that while those guys are still good, it isn't likely for them to perform at the same level again. Once again, the actual number of win ISN'T the point -- the point is how the teams stack up against each other, and the utility is to encourage further analysis of the completeness of each team. Teams can project shockingly HIGH too -- like the 2015 Mariners. Why? Well when you look closely at them, you start to see how quickly having a decent player EVERYWHERE can add up. You also see how much of their success is pinned on the further development of James Paxton and Taijuan Walker, and so you can easily see what could go wrong with that team. The way fans are wired misses some important things. It's not different than how our brains perceive everyday life. Our brains filter input that they haven't evolved to retain, but we KNOW some things are happening because we can measure them with instruments. Fans tend to overvalue stars versus solid players, for example. Fans tend to ignore depth, underestimate the risk of injury, and irrationally favor positive regression more than negative regression. Tools like these are like sensors that measure radiation -- they tell us about things that are happening that are bodies aren't able to reliably sense on our own.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 09:49 AM) Ohhh. You're in trouble now you old guy that doesn't like stats. Where are you people finding people making a case that baseball is a mathematical equation?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 10:40 PM) i don't know what that has to do with projected wins in January. Man I don't know how to boil it down any more.

QUOTE (thxfrthmmrs @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 05:19 PM) You're right, bullpen is important in the playoffs, but you are not looking at this in context. Many say that this team is built better for the playoffs because our top 3 is among the best in the league. But come playoff time, are we really comfortable saying we have an edge in our starting pitching if Q can only go 4 or 5 innings for us and we have to rely on a shaky bullpen to hold down the fort? If you're the Royals, sure, if you're the White Sox, no. That, along with no playoff experience, and Sale's second half fatigue really poke a lot of holes in the claim that "we are built for the playoffs". I'm not arguing that we're better for the playoffs than the regular season -- so I may agree with you there -- I'm just saying that it's not BECAUSE Quintana will only go 5 innings. On a per-inning basis, reliever perform better than starters.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 07:08 PM) What exactly is the purpose of the BP projections? This stuff: QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:15 PM) They only look silly if you get caught up in it being "right or wrong" depending on exact numbers. It's an extremely useful raw look at the total amount of talent on each team with respect to playing time (like how Boston has a 56 good OFers, but they aren't going to get full value form all of them because they can't all play at once) and statistical regression (like how Chris Sale isn't likely to pitch as well as last year, simply because guys aren't likely to throw Cy Young caliber seasons, even if they have the talent to do so), which are two things that are very hard for fans to account for mentally. The exact number is much less important than the order in which the teams fall, and the gap in the differences. QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:34 PM) What they do is provide an objective frame of reference for us to consider. They are very good at this.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 06:54 PM) See Oakland A's, 2014. And for evidence to the contrary, see Brewers, 2008 (Sabathia). That said, Dick Allen's point here is generally correct.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 06:32 PM) So you agree that trading 4 players for 1 year rentals is a good idea? It's going to cost a great deal of money to keep them or continually losing 4 players from the minor league depth will eventually wear it down. What? How did you possibly come to that conclusion from his post? The whole point of this thread, and his response in summary, is that the team has reached a point where it can AFFORD to make some moves with prospects and still be left with a middle-of-the-pack system. The key to maintaining that is moderation -- realizing that the cost of going ALL IN is too high and return too little in the current MLB environment, and that a balanced approach to remaining competitive without ebing the best team in the league allows you to also maintain a decent farm which leads to sustained competitiveness. What you just said I agree with is exactly the opposite of what I agree with.

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. Understanding this is essential if one is going to make an informed criticism of projections. Also, RE: the bolded -- the errors bars depend upon the confidence level you set. Usually people use 90 or 95%, so you might say "I'm 90% sure that the Sox will win between 71 and 85 games." If you want to be 95% sure, you've got to widen it. If you only want to be 50% sure, you can narrow it. The actual number these projections land on is the mean of whatever confidence interval they set.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:58 PM) Scout.com gives the White Sox 3 in the top 100 also. 13. Rodon 84. Anderson 87. Micah Johnson http://mlb.scout.com/a.z?s=243&p=9&amp...=88&yr=2015 Wow, they're VERY high on Glasnow.

QUOTE (shysocks @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:58 PM) For whatever reason. Those surprises occur often enough that it would be unwise to praise the projections as gospel. But again, no one does. It's a strawman argument (that I know you're not making) that dodges the actual utility of these systems.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:58 PM) No you didn't say it is a fact, but those of us that don't really fall in line with what they are projecting are out of touch of reality, according to you. It's a credible point of data that he's using to support a claim. There's no problem with this. Just because humans can't predict the future yet, doesn't make this information useless. It's not PROOF of anything, because proof of the future doesn't exist. But it is evidence to suggest the likeliness of a particular outcome, or more accurately, range of outcomes.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:22 PM) Of course. Why don't we compare these "standings" with what Harold Reynolds picks the day before the season, with what the posters here pick when that thread pops up, and I would bet you anything, there isn't a significant difference in accuracy. If you need PECOTA to come out to tell you what the talent level on each team is, that is very telling. It has been proven that teams significantly outperform and significantly underperform their projection. Again, this is only an issue if you use the tool simply to predict exact win totals, which is pointless. This is another situation where the only people discussing how well projections do at picking exact outcomes are those who are already against them. Literally no one -- not even the creators of the systems -- think they're useful in that manner. These are mean projections, which means that they are simply the most likley INDIVIDUAL outcome, but the field is ALWAYS more likely. No one should be shocked by this and no one has ever claimed otherwise. I've always felt that these numbers would be more accessible if they were presented as a confidence intervals, but that doesn't really make them any more useful for what they help, it would just make it harder for people to misuse/misapply. What they do is provide an objective frame of reference for us to consider. They are very good at this.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:08 PM) PECOTA has spoken. No reason to play the season. The FACTS are, even if you think these projections are beyond accurate, the Sox are 4 games out of the playoffs. You said they average about 7 wins above their projection. So, there should be no reason to think they aren't contenders at this point. Again, missing the point completely.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 03:51 PM) Baltimore outperformed their projection by 21 games. Boston underperformed theirs by 18. 39 games difference. They are fine conversion and argument starters, but the reality is, things happen. Players get hurt. Some suck, some are great who have no business being great. Projecting wins in January is silly. They only look silly if you get caught up in it being "right or wrong" depending on exact numbers. It's an extremely useful raw look at the total amount of talent on each team with respect to playing time (like how Boston has a 56 good OFers, but they aren't going to get full value form all of them because they can't all play at once) and statistical regression (like how Chris Sale isn't likely to pitch as well as last year, simply because guys aren't likely to throw Cy Young caliber seasons, even if they have the talent to do so), which are two things that are very hard for fans to account for mentally. The exact number is much less important than the order in which the teams fall, and the gap in the differences.

QUOTE (gatnom @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 02:37 PM) Gambling with veterans is more often successful, but when it's unsuccessful it's a massive blow. Which is where my second point comes in. It's not about hoarding prospects or hoarding high priced veterans. It's about being able to trade 4 prospects away for a Jeff Samardzija, and still have a farm system that's got some talent in it. If some of our signings bust from this offseason, we aren't necessarily screwed for the next few years like we were last time. Yes, well put.

QUOTE (thxfrthmmrs @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 02:27 PM) Nitpicking a little bit here. But I don't think you can really count on this yet. The trio of Sale, Q and Shark has exactly 0 playoff starts at the moment, it isn't the biggest concern in the world, but it matters to a certain extent. On top of that, Sale has looked gassed in the last month of the season each of the past 3 years. We'll need some creative planning to keep him fresh in the postseason, but that will come at the cost of valuable regular season wins, and that matters a lot to this team as it stands. Lastly, I am not convinced Q is a quality playoff starter, at least not one where I would say he a clearly a better number 3 than the other team's number 3 in a series. Without opening a can of worm, Q doesn't go deep in games, and always seems to blow up in the 5th or 6th inning because hitters hit him better the second time around. It's hard to trust a guy like that, especially if he has to pitch 2 games in a series. Quintana has been a 200 inning guy both of the last two years. He doesn't have any more of a problem going deep into games than any other guys in the league now. Also, the logic is flawed -- in a short series with lots of off days, going deep into a game is LESS important than in the regular season, where day-to-day durability and rest of the bullpen is concerned.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 02:16 PM) I don't understand. Their shortstop had a 2.4 WAR last year. It's not a weakness for them. Their SS is as good as Alexei for waaaaay less money. There is a TON of skepticism of how well Flores can actually handle SS over a representative sample. He's done well so far, but everyone agrees that he's done so against the odds.