What these saber blogs have wrought. I spend a little time on the major Mariner blogs (and even delve into Fangraphs here and there, though last time I did, I was immediately accused of lying, so, it's not too pleasant, but I digress). Recently, I had this strange interaction over at Big Blog, which made me wonder if it's time to call for a beam up:
Commenter 1: One day at a time. I don’t want to believe anything definitive with Ackley right now.
Frankly, Zunino concerns me more. I’m a bit desensitized with Ackley, but I would be heartbroken if we’re seeing Zunino’s peak.
It’s incredibly annoying hearing people suggest his HR’s make him an offensive asset.
I responded, annoying guy that I am, thusly:
Why on earth would you feel that a 23 year old catcher with 534 PAs in the major leagues is hitting his peak, (Commenter 1)? Wow, that is depressing. A .429 slugging percentage with a .219 ISO from a defensively good catcher is pretty exciting. It must be the Jesus Montero experience that has you spooked into thinking it may not get any better than it is now.
Commenter 2:
Rick m, hopefully (Commenter 1) [is] not on to something, but…..
Fangraphs did recent research to suggest aging curves have changed such that players essentially are at their peak when they arrive in the majors.
Commenter 3:
It’s summer, the days are sunny, I’m on vacation, Dustin Ackley is hitting.
I’ll bite my tongue and refrain from arguing with Rick regarding Zunino for now, since Zunino isn’t Ackley.
Hey that balm is doing wonders.
I did a quick search on Fangraphs to locate this research but wasn't successful. But there apparently is great fear out there in saber land that Zunino may have peaked. I suppose that *could* be true, but it just seems to me that when your research is moving you away from a common understanding of how things work, you may want to, oh I dunno, take a step back and breathe a bit. And, to be fair, the kind folks at Big Blog did just that - we're feeling good, hope we're wrong, we aren't going to go after you, Rick. Just be aware that we know what we're talking about.
I know there is fear, understandable, that we rushed Mikey. But, yeah, OBP problems and all, I think those who watch the games have to conclude his offense has been an asset. Not sure what we are reasonably expecting from a catcher that would be better. Is Mike somehow under replacement value offensively for a catcher?
Very strange. Nice to be back on the USS Enterprise.
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(The M's have already lost 9 more games than they did in 2001. You think Jeff Sullivan would explain his jokes for you? I think NOT.)
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Esto Es Mi Barrio, dept.
Bring a gold tooth and a sock fulla nickels, if you're going to wander into the AL West. The "Simple Rating System" at baseball-reference.com has these 3 teams as the best out of 30 teams both NL and AL:
- 1 = Oakland
- 2 = Angels
- 3 = Mariners
Would like to know when we saw the 3 best teams in the NFL, NBA or MLB all in one division.
Yes, Egbert, we know that the M's haven't exactly established themselves as the #3 team in all of baseball. ... however, those are also the 3 top MLB teams per the Pythagorean Theorem. Maybe the Nationals are a scant tick ahead of the M's, day-to-day, but most teams are WAY back of the leaders.
But, hey. With the Mariners jelling, and the league differential casting a bit of doubt on the Dodgers, there's nothing far-fetched about the ranking.
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When Kendrys gets rolling, and Austin Jackson, and they get one other guy going, say, Ackley, the Mariners look well capable of winning it all.**
** In the sense that 8 or so teams have that capability. Man, this town toasts my oysters. It sooooo weakens the "read," when the Shtickmeister has to spell out the quid pro quo's like that every other paragraph. At least we ain't Sully vs. the Fangraphs crowd, right? Small favours...
No, Kendrys doesn't have his rhythm yet. He's gettin' there. At least this paragraph is material to the discussion, even if you had forgotten what we were talking about. I know I did.
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Playoff Odds Report
All systems have the AL playoff race as now 6-to-make-5, with the top 6 far ahead of the pack. That's the same as saying it's 3-to-make-2: two of the Tigers, Royals, and Mariners will probably go.
As you know, Dr. Detecto does NOT cosign these playoff odds, and most especially he doesn't /cosign them in late July when there's a tight pack of teams. The computer doesn't take seriously the chance that (say) the Yankee$ or Blue Jays could get hot.
But still. As it boils down... if the Mariners have the #2 run differential in the AL after 70% of the season, then you would project them to win the 2nd-most games the rest of the way, now wouldn't you.
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Just to make LrKrBoi29 happy, we'll remind that No Team Is As Good As They Look In a Winning Streak. Love your enemy, brother. Just not over the weekend series.
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Easy Squeezee Postseason Blueprint
In Detroit, the Mariners get to skip Max Scherzer, as well as Verlander and Sanchez, obviously. As we recall, those three starters went for nice money on roto draft day. As we future-ly recall, the Tigers have er, had the last 4 Cy Young winners, when you count the year 2014.
Felix is not a Cy Young candidate. A Tiger*, or Chris Sale, wins the Cy Young, and Felix wins the exhibition.
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Detroit's other Cy Young SP, David Price, will be cancelled like a stamp by Felix Hernandez. So we're drooling over the toothless Tigers like the Legion of Boom laughing over Peyton Manning end-over-end "passes" on game film. Should gain +5 games in the standings against Detroit this weekend.
After snacking on the Tigers lunchable, the M's get to fricasee three straight feeb opponents over the fires of their dual bullpens. The first feeb, Tejas, has exactly one (1) SP who is not an embarrassment and naturally, he is making a run for the DL border as we speak. Kendrys will definitely "get his timing down" in that series.
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So we'll be +20 games over .500 shortly. However, again in faithful service to LrKrBoi we'll point out that the M's are 37-24 against winning opponents and below .500 against losers. They've "played down to their opponent" all year. Think they're done with that?
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Arrow Lands in Detroit
Rodney tonight revealed that the Arrow is launched in order to --- > let people know the Mariners are coming. Like the flaming arrow over the parapets, Declaring War. No word on whether he'll fire a ballista into Texas to declare a competitive team and a nice night at the ballpark.
Detroit has a full-on panic going; here is an article that screams "The Tigers Are Imploding!" and another one that says "It's Very Likely to Get Worse." I dunno - what's worse than imploding? Like, rupturing? Standing before the King's Court? Knowing that you've got Brian Roberts rather than Robinson Cano?
Ouchie,
Dr D
Comments
I might get off cruise control and on to the gas pedal were I the Angels. 10-9 recently, after wins the last two games.
Of course, our 8-1 streak will end. But you can ride these wild horse-hot streaks all the way to the playoffs.
Put the spurs to her boys!
moe
BTW: In its Simple Top 10 ranking system for all of baseball, B-R has the Orcs #1, Halos #2 and the M's #3!.
"Just be aware that we know what we're talking about."
That is why I visit that site only about once per quarter....and never ever read anything from the original (or his minions).
Sorry to be harsh.
and they are shrouded on Mount Olympus. Their deliberations are beyond our ken...but they know. Boy do they know. We're really lucky to have them, otherwise we would have no access to The Truth.
And he moved from "suggests" to --- > dogma --- > in 0.43 seconds? Refusing to cite the single "study"?
You edit a biology periodical. You can tell the difference between scientists, and these sabes, without a map.
At SSI we are most certainly aware that USSM posters, as a group, do NOT know what they are talking about.
It is exactly as in chess. There are masters, and there are "knowledgeable amateurs," who are a pox on the skittles room. The guys who DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY DON'T KNOW are a peril to themselves and everybody around them.
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Just as one example, their failure to grasp the difference between:
A convincing meta-study, with general consensus, and awareness of the minority opinion, vs
"I think I might have read an article somewhere" a/k/a "recent research suggests"
Is appalling. But the elitism is more so.
We've read dozens, maybe 100, answers like the below from Bill James. James is the guy who works in a "peer-reviewed journal" context, as it were (as opposed to working in an echo chamber). Sabes are welcome to challenge his "Meta-Study" mind and orientation, but they almost never do. That's important. James is a reasonable substitution for a general consensus. That's rare, but it happens.
Anyway, a sample answer in Hey Bill:
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I seem to remember you writing that there was a strong correlation between the age someone established himself as a major league player and greatness. Assuming that I haven't totally distorted what you were saying, who is having the more impressive season: Trout or Harper? In Harper's favor is that Trout could not handle major league pitching at age 19. The argument for Trout is that he's made such a leap forward that Harper is unlikely to be able to improve that much in his age 20 season.
Asked by: Hank Gillette
Answered: 7/5/2012
Well, the reason that the age a player gets established in the majors correlates strongly with greatness is that (1) players have to work themselves up from level to level to level, and (2) the odds are most favorable for younger players. Considering just (1) first. ...Suppose that you have 1000 players at the level of "Regular Major League Player", and that a player must step forward four times to become a major league player (Good Regular Player, Marginal All-Star, Perennial All-Star, All-Time Great.) Suppose that 30% of players take a step forward each year. If you start player out at age 25, almost none of them will make four steps forward by age 30. But if you start them out at age 21, some of them will.
Factor (2) is that if that percentage that steps forward is 30% at age 25, it's 40% or 45% at age 21. It is never true that MOST players take a step forward or that players can be counted on to take a step forward. Many young players never improve very much, like Alex Rios and. . .what's his name, the Upton who plays center for Tampa Bay. They reach a certain level; that's just where they are. It's really unfair to those players to EXPECT them to be something that they're not.
But if a player gets established at age 21, then he has a lot more time to consolidate his gains and take another step forward.
Trading off the age 21 vs. age 19 and one level of performance vs. another level of performance, putting that all into one sausage grinder. . .well, that's complicated math, and I wouldn't have a lot of confidence in my ability to do it well or anybody else's, frankly. Al Kaline was a great player, but he was never really any greater than he was when he was 20 and 21 years old, or not much greater anyway. Ted Williams was never greater than he was at 22. Young players SOMETIMES make explosive steps forward in ways that players almost never do after the age of 25.
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In another answer, Bill summarized that the GROUP of established 23-year-old hitters are probably about 90% of what they'll be at their peak. Figure on maybe 100 points of OPS+ incline from there.
But that is for the group, and it is presuming that the 23-year-olds have already adjusted to the league, had stock minor league backgrounds, etc etc. Some 23-year-olds are late bloomers, obviously; it is why teams with no resources "gamble on young players improving" rather than going to the FA market.
There are any number of Carlos Guillens, Alex Gordons, Raul Ibanezes, etc who are not sheep in the middle of the age-curve herd. It is not illogical to believe that Player X is something other than ordinary.
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On catchers, James originally said that their age-arc slides +2 years later, but he has recently said it may be more like +1.5 years. Zunino's curve may be skewed (either way) by the weird lack of prep time.
A few minutes' clicking around will find tons of catchers who hit much better at age 28 than at age 23. (And some who wash out.)
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As McClendon says, Zunino is "just a pup" and as the almanacs say, Dustin Ackley was a #2 overall. Alex Gordon OPS+'ed 90 at age 23, but 140 at age 27.
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In any case, beware the man who believes he has 970 of 1,000 light bulbs on. There are actually billions or trillions of light bulbs out there.
- See more at: http://seattlesportsinsider.com/article/ps-mariners-2-blue-jays-0#commen...
Deductive = taking a general principle, and slapping it onto some specific case.
We see this constantly, the Fangraphs editor being the most egregious violator: "23-year-old hitters average 82 points of total OPS gain at their peaks. Therefore Mike Zunino's correct projection is to gain 82 points of OPS."
From a scientific point of view, you would ask for a more fine-grain demographic .... can we ask what 23-year-old CATCHERS gained? can we ask what they gained if they were the #3 overall? Can we ask what they gained if all the people around them said they worked harder than Jesus Montero? Can we ask what 23-year-old catchers gained, if they'd missed the minor leagues? Can we ask what they gained, if the scouts singled them out as special?", etc.
From a chessplayer's standpoint, it is precisely the awareness of exceptions to general rules that makes the difference between tournament-class play and coffeehouse play. I hate to see this oversimplification, and over-reliance on a single isolated idea.
What I would add is that mean values are given far too much value. Sure a gain of 82 points of OPS is average, but what is the variance? Is the distribution symmetric? My guess is the variance is greater than the mean. In other words, there is a high likelihood it drops 20 points or rises 200. The problem with 'predictive' baseball tools is that the variance is so large the mean values are not useful.
You identify this intuitively. Somehow I have to reduce the variance so that the mean is more significant -- only look at catchers, for instance, as you suggest. Maybe a GM down selects based on personality, work ethic, and shoulder MRIs, information she has that the general public lacks. Future performance is strongly correlated with health, if I could take out the health variability, I would expect the variance to narrow.
One of the ironies of fangraphs style analysis is that because of an obsession with, and misunderstanding of, sample size they mix in oranges with the red apples and wonder why the expected color distribution of red apples has an asymmetry to the orange part of the color wheel. If we just had a larger distribution of red apples and oranges the asymmetry would go away!?! It's like saying UZR takes three years to stabilize, when we are know for a fact player performance can have extremely large variance over a three year period. What does it mean to stabilize a measure of an intrinsically unstable property. Averaged over all human history, people look effectively dead. Averaged over their lifetimes, Adrian Gonzalez has produced more than twice the WAR per year as Gil Hodges, he must be twice the player!?!
And thanks for the nodding acknowledgement (on that point) from your camera angle.
Been 30+ years since calculus class and don't have the advanced stats training, so it's always fresh to hear a tidbit here and there, more formally. (Did get a fair number of credits in probability theory, simple stats, experimental design & control but nothing comparable to a stats or chem degree.)
James is also not a formal statistician -- he cheerfully concedes the points at which things go over his head. But it always boggled the mind how he --- > saw at a glance the things that others can't get in a month's study. If there's any faint echo of that at SSI, we're glad.
Dr. G, Dr. K, Mojo, Rick, SABRMatt, all the amigos who bring in the detailed training, it's always a treat. And obviously the check-and-balance is welcome, as it is at BJOL.
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Taking your point a bit emotionally further :- ) it drives me batty to hear guys intone "sample size" when anything further in the discussion - variance, asymmetry of curves, confounding variables!, what a representative sample is, etc - goes instantly over their heads.
But ... "Be aware that we know what we're talking about here," eh Panda :- )
As Sinbad would say, "You ain't from the 'hood. Be y'self."
Shortly after it took place and just shook my head. Not only was he applying theory as if it were fact, large samples as if they apply evenly to each 1. It sounded like he was saying "Ackley was a top 5 pick that came up quickly and took forever to improve, so Zunino seems likely to do the same." The list of differences between the 2 is so long that there's really no reason I would compare that pair. More like contrast. But on big blog he's using a sample size of 1 plus some half understood or wholly made up study without a link and it doesn't get panned? Those are all things that weren't OK before I got booted for not agreeing exclusively on that site. Now that just goes largely ignored? Derek or Dave pouncing and dispelling that bs before others start repeating it was preferable to the state that's left now. This is what happens when only "yes men" are allowed to comment.
On the depth of roster? The rotation situation is the weirdest I can recall. Relying on guys who either missed a lot of time to injury or are approaching new single season highs for IP everywhere except for Felix. Then there's Wilhelmson. The pitching could actually improve over the stretch, not that I'm saying that's my expectation. It could go either way.
I think the offense is actually at a point where we could see different guys producing every night. Once Saunders returns I count 11 guys on offense that are fully capable of having a big game. The defense has been surprisingly solid. Like, what do you mean, league leading? How did that happen?
As a fan I can see they're not afraid of any opponent anymore. I'm not either.
No detailed training here, I can't live up to that. I'm a consumer of what you all master and offer in these pages, and if I can ask the right questions, and get the right answers, I'll be happy.
It would be interesting for someone who is so inclined to do a study of catchers who broke into the bigs at age 22, offered an OPS+ of 88 or more through the first 600 or so PAs, and went downhill from there. My guess is that it would be a very rare occurence. And I would suspect that the list of 22-23 year old catchers who skyrocketed from what they produced in those "peak" years would be pretty impressive. Probably would have to control for those catchers who make the all star game as rookies, only to get taken out by ugly injuries from aggressive showboats diving into home plate to score the winning run. I'd like to run the numbers myself, if I weren't all thumbs when it came to using b-ref tools.
You are being overly complementary. I've never taken a statistics class, but you learn the rudimentary skills along the way in the physical sciences. I do know calculus, though I am a bit of a math dunce for my chosen profession, though I do acknowledge it's an skewed comparison set.
While I doubt I made it clear in my fast response, the key issues should be clear to a thoughtful person if appropriately presented. Take something simple like travel time from Seattle to Palo Alto. Taking an average of all the different means of transportation -- driving, biking, flying, walking -- is just not that helpful given the wide variance in times associated with the different means of travel and the fact that you will choose one of the methods of locomotion, not the average of all four. A good scientist knows that what they conclude is no better than their weakest assumption, but even good scientists get caught up in the technical wizardry of advancing an established area of investigation and lose sight of the areas that really need the attention because the path forward is unclear -- just add another epicircle, and the Ptolemaic model can be forced in alignment with observation, rather than changing the foundations of the model.
James has no statistical sophistication, but he is insightful. Einstein was also, supposedly, a pedestrian mathematician for a theoretical physicist, but insightful. Humanity needs insight, not intellectual gymnastics.