Trash Sox at Okay Jays - June 16-18

[So_Fresh]

I will guarantee you that 83 wins will not be enough for a Wild Card spot, which is our current average expected record per Fangraphs. If we make the playoffs, it's because we were quite a bit better than an 83 win team.

Yes, of course. This is the same fallacy people fall back on when very few (or zero) players are projected to bat .330 or hit 40 home runs, or relief pitchers projected to have an ERA below 2.00, etc. No single player is likely to do it, but it will certainly be done by at least a handful of people every season due to variance. And the ones that project to be the best in those areas are the most likely to do it. Prior to the season Andrew Miller was projected for the best reliever ERA in baseball at 2.04 but that doesn't mean the best relief pitcher in baseball will have a 2.04 ERA. It does mean, though, that Andrew Miler has the best chance at leading the league in ERA.

Right now, the Jays are projected to have the 5th best record in the AL. It's unlikely they'll be exactly 5th in the AL or finish with exactly 83 wins. We know a lot of teams will overperform, and a lot will underperform, we just don't know which teams will be in either of those groups until after it happens. Right now we only know the Jays are more likely to make the playoffs than any one of the Rays/Rangers/Tigers/Mariners, etc.

If I knew what the lottery numbers where in the next Lotto Max jackpot i'd be a millionaire too!

[Schad]

I will guarantee you that 83 wins will not be enough for a Wild Card spot, which is our current average expected record per Fangraphs. If we make the playoffs, it's because we were quite a bit better than an 83 win team.

Yes, of course. This is the same fallacy people fall back on when very few (or zero) players are projected to bat .330 or hit 40 home runs, or relief pitchers projected to have an ERA below 2.00, etc. No single player is likely to do it, but it will certainly be done by at least a handful of people every season due to variance. And the ones that project to be the best in those areas are the most likely to do it. Prior to the season Andrew Miller was projected for the best reliever ERA in baseball at 2.04 but that doesn't mean the best relief pitcher in baseball will have a 2.04 ERA. It does mean, though, that Andrew Miler has the best chance at leading the league in ERA.

Right now, the Jays are projected to have the 5th best record in the AL. It's unlikely they'll be exactly 5th in the AL or finish with exactly 83 wins. We know a lot of teams will overperform, and a lot will underperform, we just don't know which teams will be in either of those groups until after it happens. Right now we only know the Jays are more likely to make the playoffs than any one of the Rays/Rangers/Tigers/Mariners, etc.

You're telling me almost precisely what I wrote, namely that someone will be substantially better than that mark, whether us or another team. The margins are impossibly fine...Fangraphs currently has ten teams projected between 77 and 83 wins, and luck will ultimately play a major role there. It's a terrible idea to gamble on us being the team to get that luck.

As for having exactly the 5th-best record in the AL: that's probably precisely what is necessary. Fangraphs has three teams with sky-high odds of making postseason, and a fourth making it three-quarters of the time. In all likelihood, our route to the playoffs involves outperforming every team in the peloton to edge the second Wild Card.

[Skin Blues]

I will guarantee you that 83 wins will not be enough for a Wild Card spot, which is our current average expected record per Fangraphs. If we make the playoffs, it's because we were quite a bit better than an 83 win team.

Yes, of course. This is the same fallacy people fall back on when very few (or zero) players are projected to bat .330 or hit 40 home runs, or relief pitchers projected to have an ERA below 2.00, etc. No single player is likely to do it, but it will certainly be done by at least a handful of people every season due to variance. And the ones that project to be the best in those areas are the most likely to do it. Prior to the season Andrew Miller was projected for the best reliever ERA in baseball at 2.04 but that doesn't mean the best relief pitcher in baseball will have a 2.04 ERA. It does mean, though, that Andrew Miler has the best chance at leading the league in ERA.

Right now, the Jays are projected to have the 5th best record in the AL. It's unlikely they'll be exactly 5th in the AL or finish with exactly 83 wins. We know a lot of teams will overperform, and a lot will underperform, we just don't know which teams will be in either of those groups until after it happens. Right now we only know the Jays are more likely to make the playoffs than any one of the Rays/Rangers/Tigers/Mariners, etc.

You're telling me almost precisely what I wrote, namely that someone will be substantially better than that mark, whether us or another team. The margins are impossibly fine...Fangraphs currently has ten teams projected between 77 and 83 wins, and luck will ultimately play a major role there. It's a terrible idea to gamble on us being the team to get that luck.

As for having exactly the 5th-best record in the AL: that's probably precisely what is necessary. Fangraphs has three teams with sky-high odds of making postseason, and a fourth making it three-quarters of the time. In all likelihood, our route to the playoffs involves outperforming every team in the peloton to edge the second Wild Card.

That's not precisely what you wrote. We can dispute the 83 win projection, that's fine. But that's not what you did. You said even if it's accurate, it wont' be enough to win a WC spot which is a fundamental (and common) misunderstanding of what a projection means. Rarely is a team projected for enough wins to win a division. Last year 3 teams in the AL East won 89+ games. By 538's pre-season projections, not a single team in the AL East was projected for that many in 2017. Should the Red Sox have just packed it in because they were only projected for 88 wins?? Or should we take into account that despite the fact that their 88 wins won't be enough to win the division (just like the jays' 83 projected wins won't be enough for the WC), they have a very good chance of doing so anyway because the variance might favour them either directly via positive variance, or indirectly by negative variance of other teams in the AL?

[Schad]

That's not precisely what you wrote. We can dispute the 83 win projection, that's fine. But that's not what you did. You said even if it's accurate, it wont' be enough to win a WC spot which is a fundamental (and common) misunderstanding of what a projection means.

Except that I wrote:

"If we make the playoffs, it's because we were quite a bit better than an 83 win team"

I'm not misunderstanding; you're reading around the bits you don't want to read. I'm aware that there is variance, and aware that a team that wins 83 games on average stands a good chance to be significantly better (or worse) than that. I don't put a lot of faith in us having the highest odds of winning the fifth playoff spot because the margins between the teams involved are impossibly fine, and come down to the fact that there are only four teams in the American League who can at current claim to be good. If there happened to be a fifth such team, our odds of making the playoffs would be far lower, because we're projected to be thoroughly mediocre...it just so happens that Fangraphs is projecting everyone else to be mediocre, as well.

Rarely is a team projected for enough wins to win a division. Last year 3 teams in the AL East won 89+ games. By 538's pre-season projections, not a single team in the AL East was projected for that many in 2017. Should the Red Sox have just packed it in because they were only projected for 88 wins?? Or should we take into account that despite the fact that their 88 wins won't be enough to win the division (just like the jays' 83 projected wins won't be enough for the WC), they have a very good chance of doing so anyway because the variance might favour them either directly via positive variance, or indirectly by negative variance of other teams in the AL?

Check the NL; there are four teams currently projected to win 90+, and extremely high team-to-team variance in projected records from top to bottom.

The reason there is very little variance in the AL is that, beyond a couple teams, it's an undifferentiated pile of mediocrity.

[Skin Blues]

It sounds like you have a disagreement with the 83 win projection and associated 36.7% chance of making the playoffs, rather than the idea that a team with those odds should still be trying to make the playoffs. 36.7% chance is relatively good; if teams below that threshold went into sell-now mode there'd only be 4 teams left competing in the wide-open AL race.

[Schad]

It sounds like you have a disagreement with the 83 win projection and associated 36.7% chance of making the playoffs, rather than the idea that a team with those odds should still be trying to make the playoffs. 36.7% chance is relatively good; if teams below that threshold went into sell-now mode there'd only be 4 teams left competing in the wide-open AL race.

No, I have a disagreement with the notion you had posited that kicked this off: that having a .533 projected winning percentage from here on our means that we're actually a good team. It doesn't! It means that we are a mediocre team that, in any normal season, would be almost assuredly unloading assets. The Yankees' winning percentage when they traded away Chapman was .516...that's higher than Fangraphs' projection for our season. And if one or two teams break away from the pack that are not us, we'll be similarly situated, because by every available metric we are thoroughly middling.

As for whether teams should go for broke chasing the second Wild Card spot, probably not! You know as well as I that the coin flip game is exactly that: the prize of getting to fifth is about a 50/50 chance to advance to the first round proper. Doesn't mean that every team should sell, but teams that have pending free agency/payroll problems should definitely be considering it, and the others probably should be making additions on the margins if they add at all. Given the situation we're in -- a situation you have readily acknowledged -- financially and in terms of team control, chasing a less than 50/50 proposition to reach any postseason competition, and a less than 25% chance to play an actual playoff round, is not an ideal situation to push the chips in.

Still weeks to go, though. Hopefully we'll have a little more clarity when the deadline approaches, because this -- where we're hovering around .500 but close enough to a playoff spot that we won't risk losing the crowds -- is the absolute worst-case scenario for this season, IMO.

[Skin Blues]

The Yankees' winning percentage when they traded away Chapman was .516...that's higher than Fangraphs' projection for our season.

What were their odds of making the postseason? I think it was down around 5% at the time of the trade,and 4.5 games back of the 3rd place team in the AL East, in late July. If you're going to make a comparison, do apples to apples. You aren't making any sense.

[Schad]

The Yankees' winning percentage when they traded away Chapman was .516...that's higher than Fangraphs' projection for our season.

What were their odds of making the postseason? I think it was down around 5% at the time of the trade,and 4.5 games back of the 3rd place team in the AL East, in late July. If you're going to make a comparison, do apples to apples. You aren't making any sense.

Yeah, again, it helps if you read the totality of the post, rather than cherry-picking one line. In this case, you only really need to have read the preceding line, even! Let's try this again:

No, I have a disagreement with the notion you had posited that kicked this off: that having a .533 projected winning percentage from here on our means that we're actually a good team. It doesn't! It means that we are a mediocre team that, in any normal season, would be almost assuredly unloading assets. The Yankees' winning percentage when they traded away Chapman was .516...that's higher than Fangraphs' projection for our season.

2016 was a normal season. In that normal season, they had terrible odds of making the postseason with the same sort of record we are projected to head toward. That was written as a counter to your assertion that we are actually good given our projected winning percentage, because we most decidedly aren't...we're benefiting from a unique set of circumstances in which the vast majority of the American League is a giant slagheap of meh.


Now, please, before responding that this doesn't make sense, read the whole post. Every sentence. All of it!

[Skin Blues]

2016 was a normal season. In that normal season, they had terrible odds of making the postseason with the same sort of record we are projected to head toward.

Odds of making the playoffs are all that really matters when deciding to buy or sell. You compared the Yankees' 5% odds to where we are right now using the logic of current winning %, which makes no sense. Whether we're winning 50% of our games or 70% of our games, if we're 4.5 games back of 6th place in the AL in late July like the Yankees were last year we should be - and would be - selling any expiring assets. Our chances of making the playoffs will have vanished, because winning % in a vacuum is irrelevant. You seem to have completely missed the whole point of the argument I made regarding variance and how it may help or hurt us, so you can't make assumptions based on if we play exactly to our projected record. Using that logic the Red Sox would have went into sell-now mode this past off-season because they were projected for a .543 W% at the start of the season which in 2016, a "normal season" would have them finish in 4th place in their division.

You are contorting reality and cherry picking statistics to fit your ideal world of always trading MLB talent for prospects. Maybe in late July it will make sense to go that route but right now (and the past two seasons) it absolutely does not make sense.

[Schad]

Odds of making the playoffs are all that really matters when deciding to buy or sell.

And those odds vary wildly between "very bad" and "still well short of a coin flip".

You compared the Yankees' 5% odds to where we are right now using the logic of current winning %, which makes no sense.

How many times do I need to quote the same **** line before it becomes apparent that this is not, in fact, what I was doing? You had made the assertion that we are a good team. We are not a good team. We have not been a good team, we are not projected to be a good team.

Whether we're winning 50% of our games or 70% of our games, if we're 4.5 games back of 6th place in the AL in late July like the Yankees were last year we should be - and would be - selling any expiring assets. Our chances of making the playoffs will have vanished, and winning % in a vacuum is irrelevant. You seem to have completely missed the whole point of the argument I made regarding variance and how it may help or hurt us, so you can't make assumptions base don if we play exactly to our projected record. Using that logic the Red Sox would have went into sell-now mode because they were projected for a .543 W% at the start of the season which in 2016, a "normal season" would have them finish in 4th place in their division.

I didn't miss your argument regarding variance. I mean, ****, I made it first. And I made it with precisely this point in mind....because there is so little differentiation between the teams who are conceivably in the Wild Card race, the odds have and will continue to swing wildly, because nothing separates those teams either in current record or projection.

You are contorting reality and cherry picking statistics to fit your ideal world of always trading MLB talent for prospects. Maybe in late July it will make sense to go that route but right now (and the past two seasons) it absolutely does not make sense.

No one is arguing for us to trade players right now! Exactly no one has suggested that we will or should do this! Two posts ago I specifically said that there are still weeks to go! You are arguing against people who do not exist!

[Skin Blues]

You had made the assertion that we are a good team. We are not a good team. We have not been a good team, we are not projected to be a good team.

Then either your definition of good is wildly narrow, or as I said multiple times earlier, you simply disagree with the ROS winning % taking into account the remaining schedule, in which we rank 4th in the AL.

there is so little differentiation between the teams who are conceivably in the Wild Card race, the odds have and will continue to swing wildly, because nothing separates those teams either in current record or projection.

You could say the same thing about almost every single MLB team during every offseason. It's the nature of the game and a non-argument.

No one is arguing for us to trade players right now! Exactly no one has suggested that we will or should do this! Two posts ago I specifically said that there are still weeks to go! You are arguing against people who do not exist!

Don't even tell me that GM Schad wouldn't be trading away every 25+ year old asset in a heartbeat! They'd all probably have been traded away before the season started anyway during which time we had similar playoff odds.

[Schad]

Then either your definition of good is wildly narrow, or as I said multiple times earlier, you simply disagree with the ROS winning % taking into account the remaining schedule, in which we rank 4th in the AL.

My definition of good is a team that is not reliant on the aberrant mediocrity of the rest of the league to look good, especially when it remains only theoretically good and has yet to spend even a single day of the season at or above .500. I would be the star pitcher if placed on a team of 8 year olds; this does not make me a good pitcher in broad terms. In fact, it would probably result in a charge of negligent homicide, because I throw pretty hard but any semblance of control I might have once had has vanished.

Think of the NL West at its worst: the Padres won it with an 82-80 record. Hell, they won it running away. They were also not a good team!

You could say the same thing about almost every single MLB team during every offseason. It's the nature of the game and a non-argument.

But this isn't the offseason! We're almost 40% of the way through the season and every team in the AL is within 4.5 games of a playoff spot...the worst team in the league is on pace to win 73 games, and the nominal second Wild Card team is on pace for 83. That's weird as hell! Variance always plays an outsized role when things are close, but this is one hell of a high-variance season, on account of scant few teams being demonstrably good at baseball.

Don't even tell me that GM Schad wouldn't be trading away every 25+ year old asset in a heartbeat! They'd all probably have been traded away before the season started anyway during which time we had similar playoff odds.

I've said every step of the way that we will ultimately be waiting for July, because nothing happens before July. And I didn't expect that we'd blow it up in the summer, either, but rather do what we have: make a bunch of short-term plays that give us some shot at completing but also allowed us to blow the team sky high in July if need be.