Optimism: The math version

[Docwaukee]

This may not be everyone's cup of tea.  If you don't have interest in more advanced stats, then look away.  This exercise in only meant to provide a little insight into the future and how things might not be what you think or what you see.  Granted, the outcome of each game is always going to be what's most important because wins and losses are what ultimately what determine whether you make the playoffs.  But sometimes, especially in a 60 game season, the outcomes can be severely impacted by a small sample size and what was 'expected' may not actually align with what happened.  

So with that being said, I give you 'baseruns'.  This has been mentioned in several threads on the board but I thought it might worthy of it's own discussion.  Again, take it for what you think it's worth, but I find it valuable in helping to assess the future.  

Here is a link to how baseruns work:

https://library.fangraphs.com/features/baseruns/

It a nutshell, it's an exercise of what should have happened vs. what we know happened.  

The current AL WEST standings would be as follows if things went as expected.  

Oakland 29-25 .539
Angels 30-26 .528
Astros 27-28 .490
Mariners 22-33 .403
Rangers 20-35 .370

So the Angels and Oakland would be in a dogfight for the division title going into the last 4 games with Houston having and outside shot.  The Angels have 5 less wins than they should and the A's have four more wins than they should.  

The Angels should have scored 5.04 runs per games vs. the 4.96 runs per game they did score.  Not a huge difference.  

They should have allowed 4.75 runs per game and have allowed 5.32.  A big difference and likely related to poor defense as many have mentioned with @Inside Pitch ringing the bell on this very early.  

So what do I think this means?  

To me, it means that we are probably better than we all might think.  Still not great or without needed upgrades but we could improve our record more quickly that it might appear.  What it also means to me is that the A's probably aren't as good as their record shows and that the division is truly wide open for next year.  

We very well could have an opportunity here to open a window of success for the next few years without needing an act of God for it to happen.  

 

[ScottT]

Said it a couple weeks ago and ill say it again. The Angels aren't a bad team. 

There are areas that need improvement, but I could easily see them contending for the division title next year.

[Angelsjunky]

Yup. You came to the same conclusion as I have, but by a different route: whether you look at the total of the individual performances, or at runs expected (baseruns essentially being a more sophisticated version of Pythagorean record).

This should both adjust our expectations of what is needed to be competitive next year, and (hopefully) give Arte a sense of Eppler's underlying process. As I said in another thread, this is a team that--given a full season--likely would have won 85+ games, despite the terrible start. If the Angels go into the offseason with the view that this is a "true" 85-win team, then they can think about how to improve it by 5+ games, which is a far difference approach than, say, the 15-win swing required from 75 to 90 wins.

[Docwaukee]

3 minutes ago, ScottT said:

Said it a couple weeks ago and ill say it again. The Angels aren't a bad team. 

There are areas that need improvement, but I could easily see them contending for the division title next year.

I think the most overlooked part of this is the rest of the division.  Houston won 100 games three years in a row.  That's insane.  Oakland is good team, but they're not 100 wins three years in a row good.  

[UndertheHalo]

We’ve definitely got a couple of rays of sunshine from several new guys.  And that is much needed.  We just need to carry over.  If Barria and Canning keep this going and if Walsh proves to be the answer at 1B.  The Angels problems obviously seem manageable.  Stassi I think is a huge X factor.  If he can replicate or be reasonably close to what we saw this year that would be incredible.  Hope for the best with these guys.  Hopefully we get some pitchers this off season. 

[totdprods]

37 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

I think the most overlooked part of this is the rest of the division.  Houston won 100 games three years in a row.  That's insane.  Oakland is good team, but they're not 100 wins three years in a row good.  

Oakland is also starting to tread very close to their cycle where they start flipping stars or good players for prospects too. 

I called their resurgence a few years back - you could see how good Chapman and Olson we’re going to be, and they always find pitching. 

I’m calling their re-tooling phase now too. They’ll flip Laureano or Olson this offseason, this season, or next winter if their young starters keep getting hurt, and it’ll start the next cycle for them.

[Warfarin]

This was discussed in another thread, but part of it too is that it was likely going to take some time with our coaching staff to work with our players and help them along.

We saw a number of players struggle from the start, but then come back and perform better.  Walsh and Ward are often discussed, but Ohtani is looking better now after his recent "off" period, Barria has looked pretty good (today aside), Mayers has been great, etc.

A lot of these guys can go into the offseason, armed with the knowledge the coaching staff has provided them with, and hopefully continue to advance their games accordingly.

We still have more room to improve, and we definitely need at least one significant FA SP, but we are trending in the right direction and "have hope," so to speak.

[T.G.]

Nice thread. Good conversation. Breath of fresh air.

Great insight. Gives me a bit of hope and some optimism - something we could all use.

But all the math isn't going to fix the culture. My optimism is tainted a bit by the owner's inability to let smart people do what they do best. 

I hope he proves me wrong.

In any case - it will be an interesting off season... yet again.

[jsnpritchett]

19 minutes ago, True Grich said:

Nice thread. Good conversation. Breath of fresh air.

Great insight. Gives me a bit of hope and some optimism - something we could all use.

But all the math isn't going to fix the culture. My optimism is tainted a bit by the owner's inability to let smart people do what they do best. 

I hope he proves me wrong.

In any case - it will be an interesting off season... yet again.

I want to be optimistic (god knows there's enough bad news in literally every other aspect of the world these days), but I'm still finding it hard to be.  Seems like there have been threads similar to this one (or AngelJunky's, or...etc.) every year for the past few years--yet the end results are still the same: mediocrity.  Whether it's "culture," bad talent assessment, poor financial resource management, something else altogether, or a combination of things, I honestly have no idea at this point.  I'm all for stats, data, deep analysis, etc. (data is a huge part of my career), but for whatever reason, it seems like we're always looking for some silver-lining, saying that FIP or baseruns, or whatever other metric someone wants to cite actually shows that the Angels should have been better.  But they aren't.  So there's a disconnect somewhere.

I fully realize I'm just rambling at this point.  Not having a great week and genuinely looking for hope somewhere.  Clearly struggling to find it.  Ha.

[Docwaukee]

2 hours ago, jsnpritchett said:

I want to be optimistic (god knows there's enough bad news in literally every other aspect of the world these days), but I'm still finding it hard to be.  Seems like there have been threads similar to this one (or AngelJunky's, or...etc.) every year for the past few years--yet the end results are still the same: mediocrity.  Whether it's "culture," bad talent assessment, poor financial resource management, something else altogether, or a combination of things, I honestly have no idea at this point.  I'm all for stats, data, deep analysis, etc. (data is a huge part of my career), but for whatever reason, it seems like we're always looking for some silver-lining, saying that FIP or baseruns, or whatever other metric someone wants to cite actually shows that the Angels should have been better.  But they aren't.  So there's a disconnect somewhere.

I fully realize I'm just rambling at this point.  Not having a great week and genuinely looking for hope somewhere.  Clearly struggling to find it.  Ha.

I agree that there have been tons of the 'it could be better soon' types of threads over the last 5 years but I haven't seen many 'it's better than you think' types.  This is the first time where our performance doesn't match our record for a while.  Right now, without doing anything, we should be better next year. 

My point is that we haven't had a real semblance that what they've been trying to do was actually working until now.    

And I said this earlier but it's also important that there isn't a 100 win team in our division.  93 wins could take the west next year.  That hasn't happened for awhile.  

[Inside Pitch]

2 hours ago, jsnpritchett said:

I want to be optimistic (god knows there's enough bad news in literally every other aspect of the world these days), but I'm still finding it hard to be.  Seems like there have been threads similar to this one (or AngelJunky's, or...etc.) every year for the past few years--yet the end results are still the same: mediocrity.  Whether it's "culture," bad talent assessment, poor financial resource management, something else altogether, or a combination of things, I honestly have no idea at this point.  I'm all for stats, data, deep analysis, etc. (data is a huge part of my career), but for whatever reason, it seems like we're always looking for some silver-lining, saying that FIP or baseruns, or whatever other metric someone wants to cite actually shows that the Angels should have been better.  But they aren't.  So there's a disconnect somewhere.

I fully realize I'm just rambling at this point.  Not having a great week and genuinely looking for hope somewhere.  Clearly struggling to find it.  Ha.

I get what you're saying but if there is only one difference between this year and any year in the last five-seven years it's this..

Name	Age	G	GS	IP	K%	BB%	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	GB%	HR/FB	ERA	FIP	xFIP	WAR
Dylan Bundy	27	11	11	65.2	27.0%	6.4%	0.69	.272	69.2%	40.6%	8.2%	3.29	2.93	3.73	2.0
Andrew Heaney	29	11	11	62.2	26.1%	6.6%	0.86	.297	67.1%	40.6%	9.5%	4.02	3.19	3.88	1.7
Mike Mayers	28	27	0	28.2	36.6%	6.3%	0.31	.226	69.4%	33.9%	3.4%	1.57	1.61	3.10	1.2
Griffin Canning	24	11	11	56.1	23.5%	9.7%	1.28	.307	73.4%	36.3%	11.8%	3.99	4.31	4.79	0.8
Jaime Barria	23	6	4	30.1	22.0%	7.3%	0.59	.262	73.7%	35.3%	5.1%	3.26	3.24	4.86	0.7

Thats four SPs all pitching well, and none of them are looking at surgery or recovering from surgery

.

[Hubs]

On 9/23/2020 at 1:45 PM, Dochalo said:

I think the most overlooked part of this is the rest of the division.  Houston won 100 games three years in a row.  That's insane.  Oakland is good team, but they're not 100 wins three years in a row good.  

Houston has definitely come back to earth. You can say it's missing Cole and Missing Verlander, as their pitching staff has given up 1/2 run more per game (vs. 2019) and without those two in the rotation, but they've also hit much worse, in 2020, they've scored 4.6 runs per game, as opposed to 5.67 in 2019, 4.92 in 2018, and 5.53 in 2017.

I wonder what the difference is.

 

[Docwaukee]

23 minutes ago, Hubs said:

Houston has definitely come back to earth. You can say it's missing Cole and Missing Verlander, as their pitching staff has given up 1/2 run more per game (vs. 2019) and without those two in the rotation, but they've also hit much worse, in 2020, they've scored 4.6 runs per game, as opposed to 5.67 in 2019, 4.92 in 2018, and 5.53 in 2017.

I wonder what the difference is.

 

[failos]

F the Blue Jays

[failos]

No actually F the Skanks

[failos]

No, no, actually, F the Asstros

[failos]

No, no, no, actually, F the Rangers

[Tank]

3 hours ago, Hubs said:

Houston has definitely come back to earth. You can say it's missing Cole and Missing Verlander, as their pitching staff has given up 1/2 run more per game (vs. 2019) and without those two in the rotation, but they've also hit much worse, in 2020, they've scored 4.6 runs per game, as opposed to 5.67 in 2019, 4.92 in 2018, and 5.53 in 2017.

I wonder what the difference is.

 

is it the marine layer? I'll bet it's the marine layer. 

[Jay]

Doc was past due on his annual "optimism" thread.

But he got it done.

 

 

[Angel Oracle]

First time in five years having a good September?

That is encouraging.

[Docwaukee]

20 hours ago, Jay said:

Doc was past due on his annual "optimism" thread.

But he got it done.

 

 

but this time..I actually believe it.  

[Hubs]

On 9/24/2020 at 2:36 PM, Dochalo said:

I hope you know I was being sarcastic.

Brantley, who was a successful hitter in another organization and Kyle Tucker, a rookie?, have been the main cogs behind their offense this season. Bregman has been hurt but the rest of their 2017 and 2018 team who still remain are all down. So it's obviously the cheating.

[Docwaukee]

18 hours ago, Hubs said:

I hope you know I was being sarcastic.

Brantley, who was a successful hitter in another organization and Kyle Tucker, a rookie?, have been the main cogs behind their offense this season. Bregman has been hurt but the rest of their 2017 and 2018 team who still remain are all down. So it's obviously the cheating.

of course.