Comments on: Lucky Teams

By: Ender

Ender — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:50:32 +0000

I would think baserunning and bullpen are the most likely culprits. These are areas the Angels are almost always strong in and harder to judge with basic metrics. Also while “small ball” gets a bad name, looking at things like advancing runners from 2nd to 3rd with no outs etc you generally see the teams who excel at this score more runs than their stats suggest (I’m looking at you Twins). Kind of hard to know if this is repeatable or just luck for any given team though.

By: Alireza

Alireza — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:03:38 +0000

At what point is the pythagorean W/L system completely reevaluated? The Angels seem to be perennially “lucky”, yet haven’t dropped out of contention in years.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:43:08 +0000

All I can say is you’re full of crap. This whole site is a joke.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:28:15 +0000

If the luck drops off for the Angels and the Rangers it could be a real tight three-way race in the West (assuming these stats are accurate).

(Go M’s!).

By: Toffer Peak

Toffer Peak — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:43:35 +0000

One area where I feel that any pythag system fails is that they consider all runs scored/allowed the same; however we know that runs in high leverage situations are more important. While leverage tends to average out one situation where it does not is with relievers. A good place to start would be to count high leverage reliever’s tRA more than low leverage reliever’s tRA. Do we really care when scrub relievers give up four runs in a blowout and should those runs count against their runs allowed?

By: R M

R M — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:20:43 +0000

Strength of schedule completely depends on the players that the opponent is fielding. Say you face Kansas City, and for a 3 game series, and the first 2 games they start Zack Grienke and Gil Meche. Grienke is averaging 7 innings a game with a 1.97 FIP, and Meche a little less than 6 with a 4.20 FIP. That series is going to be a lot harder than a series vs. KC with Luke Hochevar and Brian Bannister, and Bruce Chen starting the 3 games. See my point? There are too many variables to go by anything to do with winning %….it is too general and reminds me of the LD +120 BABIP formula….over-simplified and inaccurate. It would be better to eliminate strength of schedule from the formula than to include it and have it be completely inaccurate.

By: Johnny

Johnny — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:44:05 +0000

How do you equate intangibles such as losing 4 pitchng starters to the dl, the back end of the bullpen also being in the dl, key hitters missing a lot of time from the batting lineup, and the death of a player? I guess that makes you the 6th luckiest team.

By: Evan

Evan — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:23:30 +0000

Eh. The Astros have enough talent on their team to be successful. True, Drayton McLane is paying a lot of money for a .500 team, but at things could be worse. I guess they have a roster of “poor pitchers”. Go look at their pitchers in terms of RAR, and they’re an average NL club. Chris Sampson is best relief pitcher in the NL Central, in terms of RAR. Oswalt and Rodriguez at the top of the rotation aren’t too shabby…Hampton has been a cost efficient one year rental.

True, their pythag record is poor, but they have a number of blowout, outlier type games that make them “luckier” than they should be. Throw out those outliers, and they’re just right on pace.

It’s also tough to deny the Astros are a strong second half team. Maybe they’ll be terrible in the second half this season, but I doubt it.

By: awcom

awcom — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:16:08 +0000

hilarious. fagnraphs never ceases to amaze me.

By: Matthew Carruth

Matthew Carruth — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:25:29 +0000

When somebody finds a way to quantify why that happens, then I will acknowledge this sort of opinion. Until then, I am going to treat it like any other fair coin landing heads seven out of ten times. (The Angels do not pop up as lucky every single year. Just a majority of the past ten or so)