Hold up your hand if you realized this: the 2008 LA Angels won 100 games ... with a 94 OPS+.
Or if you realized this: the 2007 Angels won 94 games ... with a 100 OPS+.
Neither team had an ERA+ over 111, either.
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In 2005 and 2006: it was exactly the same thing: offenses of 95-99, pitching around 110-115 ... 95 and 89 wins.
At what point do we start acknowledging that those guys down South don't need more than about three starters and a closer to own the division? At what point is it something other than luck, that they win all the time?
Last year it was 100 wins, slap me silly, a good 40 games ahead of the Mariners, and we still don't buy in. :- )
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Much Seattle rejoicing ensued, over the Angels' snub of Team Boras and Teixeira. By me too. After we put our VORP/$ slide rules away, it seems we all have a good feel for what a Mark Teixeira means to a pennant race, neh? :- )
At the same time, we hear this every year: "The Angels just aren't that good." That's what I thought, too, after 2007, when their team OPS+ was a piddling 100. How could a team luck into 96 wins with a 100 offense?
In 2008 the Angels lucked into another 100 wins, despite a Pythag of only 88 wins. (!!!)
You amigos is going to have to face it. The LA Angels know how to win. That's the fact Jack. If you can't watch those guys play one weekend series, and comprehend what we are talking about by expecting to win, you'll never get it. We mean that in a good way.
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The first problem the Mariners face is how to deal with the fact that the Angels think they own baseball, and the Mariners think they own the rights to 550 AB's. ;- )
The second problem the Mariners face is that in 2009, the Angels will probably skimp along with Adam Dunn or Manny Ramirez in Tex' spot.
But supposing you can deal with those two problemos, we remind that the target is very simple: to contend, your OPS+ and ERA+ will have to add up to 210.
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Go through b-ref.com, flipping through historical teams who had staff ERA+ of (say) 114 and team OPS+ of 104. Or reverse the two: it doesn’t matter. You’ll find that such teams were usually contenders and that it is nothing usual for a pennantwinner to have a 114-104 type profile.
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This has been another unfortunate Seattle theme: that if your OPS+ and ERA+ are not BOTH over 110, you might as well write off the season. Flip through the b-ref.com team pages and you will see otherwise.
Sad as it may sound, I'm a Bill James wannabe: baseball history, templates, pattern recognition at the age of 45, a sense of proportion … that is D-O-V's gig. Sabermetrics are fine, and our aiki-tools scouting gig is fine, but it is really the 30,000-foot view you get at D-O-V. Sabermetrics are the 3rd string to our bow here.
You'd be surprised how much you can see by looking, Yogi. At baseball history.
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Flip through the team pages! You will quickly discern the following rule of thumb: For every point of combined OPS+ and ERA+ over 200, you can figure about 1.7 to 2.0 wins over (or under) Pythagorean .500. It varies a lot, but that's the rule of thumb. So here are a few teams from 2007:
Cle - 100 and 114 - 14×2 = 28 … 30 over .500, 20 over per Pythag
LAA - 100 and 108 - 8×2 = 16 … 26 over .500, 18 over per Pythag
Det - 110 and 100 - 10×2 = 20 … 14 over .500, 16 over per Pythag
NYY - 118 and 099 - 17×2 = 34 … 26 over .500, 32 over per Pythag
Bal - 095 and 089 - -16×2 = -32 … 34 under .500, 20 under per Pythag
There are fliers: the 2007 Mariners were one of them. By this napkin formula, they were 104+91 = -5 and "should have been" actually 7-10 games under .500, if their roster composition were typical.
But the point is, if you have a 110-115 offense and 100 defense, or vice versa, you can figure on contending, kids. Flip through the pages and see!
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MOST playoff teams are excellent at EITHER offense or defense, and solid in the other. You can be a pitching team, or a hitting team, and contend. You get excellent in both, you’re going win 100-108 games. 100 wins is not the minimum standard before trading for an ace.
If you do some of your own b-ref.com browsing, you'll quickly decide, for yourself, that a 112 staff and a 100-105 offense targets the playoff drought for termination.
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None of that will buy you a belief in yourself, though. For that you need a different cosmetics counter. Gotta like the shopping the M's have done so far.
Cheers,
jemanji
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I don't know if I buy into that. Its a lot like '07 Ms. Sometimes you do just get lucky.
It'd be interesting to see if there is a trend in the past decade for the Angels outperform their pythag. Intuitively, I just don't think they've been that good the past two years.
Angels and Pythag history: (21st century)
Year -PYT - sv
2008 +12 - 66
2007 +4 -- 43
2006 +5 -- 50
2005 +2 -- 54
2004 +1 -- 50
2003 -3 --- 39
2002 -2 --- 54
2001 -2 --- 43
The numbers suggest not only that Anaheim may be "onto something" Pythag-beating-wise, but that they may actually be improving on it. The +12 from 2008 is a major outlier, of course. But the pattern is 5 straight seasons of Pythag-beating, with the numbers trending obviously upward.
With so many moving parts one could come up with hundreds of potential explanations for this. It has been suggested that stellar bullpens are pythag changers. There's some evidence to support this -- the Angels have been generally as good (or better) than Seattle in churning out and assembling top 10 bullpens. They didn't skip a beat moving from Percival to K-Rod. (But they failed to get any huge pythag boost in 2002 - despite 54 team saves - and a bullpen that was unabashedly dominant: (4.00 starter ERA -- 2.98 bullpen ERA -- .733 starter OPS -- .641 bullpen OPS).
But, I have an idea. That (though this could be REALLY hard to prove sabrmetrically), it is not a question of "how good is your bullpen?" It may be a question of "HOW is your bullpen good?"
The dominant Seattle pen of 2007 had a scary-good closer who struck fear in the hearts of batters. And the rest of the pen was chock full of guys with nasty stuff -- even if they could be erratic, (Morrow?). A closer like Percival, (or Hoffman), might be an excellent closer -- but he's not "scary". K-Rod is scary. At their peaks, guys like Gagne and Smoltz were scary. The opposition just hated to face them.
So, while Percival didn't deliver a plus Pythag - I wonder -- did Gagne and Smoltz?
Gagne: his great run from 2002 to 2004 -- 52, 55, and 45 saves -- EXACTLY 82.3 IP each season!?!?
Dodger Pythags those three seasons?
2002 +3
2003 +2
2004 +4
Smoltz had a similar 3-season reign of scary dominance. (2002-2004) -- SAME 3 seasons. Could TWO different guys with two different teams perform the same magic?
2002 +5
2003 +5
2004 +1
If you take the Smoltz/Gagne and K-Rod samples of closing dominant seasons, then you get a 100% correlation with Pythag beating. Of course, the numbers are pretty small, mostly 1 to 5 games. But, even if you assume the +12 for K-Road '08 was flukey, you'd kind of expect some kind of fluke in the opposite direction. (Maybe the +1 years ARE flukes).
This is one of those cases where I have a hunch that the "common wisdom" may have some hidden teeth. Manages LOVE dominant HARD-THROWING closers. They tend to be less enthused by change-up artists, even if they are good. It just "FEELS" more reliable when your closer can hit 98 on the gun -- or toss a 93-mph slider up there. This is where I think the residual pythag-plus might be made manifest -- it is the PSYCHOLOGY for both the dominant closers team and the opponent that churns out those extra 1-5 wins. It is NOT the ability that is key -- it is the BELIEF. It is those half dozen games where one team is thinking, "This is our game!", while the other has already concluded, "oh, well, we'll just have to get them tomorrow," that actually makes the difference.
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In fairness -- choosing closer-dominant seasons to find my candidates is slanted methodology. It could be a chicken-egg thing here. But there is so much noise and static and random fluctuation in baseball, ANY time I find 100% correlation (even if the impact is low), I tend to pay attention.
In truth, I don't think JUST a dominant closer is enough. I think you need the dominant closer AND the stellar setup staff to pull off pythag beating. When Seattle lost its dominant closer in 2008, the rest of the pen actually came around and had a very strong season, (better in the aggregate than in 2007). But being that Seattle just went from +9 to -6 with its Pythag -- if my theory holds water -- a 12 or more game drop from Anaheim could EASILY materialize.
The drop from K-Rod to Shields in production may not be huge. The drop from K-Rod to Shields in "perception" is much larger.
Any realistic hope of a "miracle" season in 2009, where Seattle is a playoff contender pretty much has to start with a belief that Anaheim has a significant swoon. If Anaheim JUST loses its +12 pythag from 2008, and manages to maintain everything else -- that's 88 wins. (Gee, do I know of any dismissed team that recently pulled an 88-win campaign out of their butt despite a number of gaping holes in their opening day roster? Hmmmm - let me think awhile on that).
In another thread, Doc mentioned the James study that discovered teams that beat their pythag in season A "tend" to have good years the following season. The hint is that beating your pythag - while not imminently maintainable - indicates that you're doing "something" correct.
I suspect that the general correlation between good bullpens and positive pythags is likely in play. Typically, if you beat your pythag - you "probably" had a good closer/bullpen. And in most cases, you hold onto your closer. I imagine someone with more time and resources could go and attempt to isolate positive pythag teams -- identify those who retained and lost dominant closers - and then look for trend-lines for swoons versus pythag (or just versus wins in general).
What's odd here is that there have been a number of SABRmetric jaunts into attempting to devalue the "closer", (James one of the leaders here). The proposition is that the 1-inning closer and the save countables are simply not as valuable as perceived. I think, to a degree, there is some truth to this. The "countable" is not reliable, because of the screwy nature of save-qualification. The 3-run lead save is NOT the same as a 1-run lead save.
But, I think the purists also have some truth in this discussion. The psychological value of a Rivera or K-Rod creates value beyond the straight mathematical model -- just as the Bonds creates his own psychological bubble which can (and often does) overwhelm the mathematical models. The statisticians trade is most readily plyable when the data pools are deep -- and the outliers, by definition, do not play by the rules of mere mortals.
Good stuff Sandy. I'd agree that great bullpens help beat pythag. I'm just not sure at what degree that they have an impact.
What I'm really trying to get accros here is that I'm unconvinced that the Angels have a really great team. The history shows their some games below pythag, a couple above, were a few games above in '06/'07 and were WAY above pythag last year.
In any case their bullpen is going to be much weaker next year. Even assuming that they do beat out pythag from here on out at a +2 mark, they're still looking at a loss of 10 games just there, no more Texeira, no more flukishly good Saunders (ran a 130 ERA+ last year), K-Rod, Arrendondo, or Oliver, an aging outfield, a worse bullpen, and regression from I think its pretty likely that they stop beating their.
They're probably a high 80 wins team with a Dunn or Ramirez added to the roster, and thats being generous (more likely a mid-80s win team). Theres a lot of downside on that team... It'll take a breakout season from guys like Wood, Bulger (probably the most likely), Adenhart, Napoli/Mathis, or Kendrick to really help them out.
That team really isn't that good.
