Schilling, Byrd are off the market. So what now for Phils?
As I previously noted, I had mixed feelings about the possibility of the Phillies signing Curt Schilling. Fortunately, I won’t have to worry about it any longer. He’s going back to Boston.
And in other news, Indians pitcher Paul Byrd and his HGH rumors are returning to Cleveland for one year and $7.5.
So now, as a Phillies fan, I’m stuck wondering: where will the Phillies find more pitching?
There are, as I see it, three options.
1. They can promote a prospect. The Phils have a couple of promising pitchers in the minors. The first is Josh Outman, who should make the major league roster just because he’s got a great, great name. He also led the A-league last season with a 2.45 ERA, and earned a promotion to AA.
The second is Carlos Carrasco. Here’s how Phuture Phillies describes Carrasco:
Carrasco is a long ways from a finished product, but he does have a pair of major league pitches. He throws a plus fastball that sits at 91-92 mph and touches 95 with good life, as well as a quality changeup. His mechanics are nearly picture-perfect, as he looks like he’s throwing an easy side session while popping 92s and 93s.
It’s possible both Carrasco and Outman will see time in the bigs next season, but it’s doubtful either one will start the season in the majors.
2. They can sign a free agent. But who’s available? Andy Pettitte says he’ll only play for the Yankees, so he’s out. Kris Benson is a free agent. The Phils probably won’t sign him, because he’s coming off Tommy John surgery. On the other hand, I think Anna Benson would be a big hit in Philly. I’m secretly rooting for the Bensons to come to town. And by secretly, I mean openly.
If not Benson, there are the following guys to consider, according to MLB Trade Rumors:
Shawn Chacon (30), Matt Clement (32), Bartolo Colon (35), Josh Fogg (31), Jason Jennings (29), Kenshin Kawakami (33), Joe Kennedy (29), Hiroki Kuroda (33), Brian Lawrence (32), Kyle Lohse (29), Rodrigo Lopez (32), Mike Maroth (30), Odalis Perez (31), Kenny Rogers (43) - Type B, Kazumi Saito (30), Carlos Silva (29), Jeff Weaver (31), David Wells (45), Kip Wells (31), Randy Wolf (31), Jamey Wright (34), Jaret Wright (32).
Randy Wolf would seem to be a good fit, since he has pitched in Philadelphia his entire career, except for last season, when he briefly chased his dream of pitching in L.A.
I wouldn’t mind seeing the team roll the dice with Matt Clement, who clearly has some upside. Lohse would be welcome back, but he will probably be looking to make more money than the Phils will be willing to pay.
3. They can trade for a pitcher. But who’s available? The names floating around include John Garland, Noah Lowry, Dontrelle Willis and Johan Santana. Let’s assume Santana is a pipe dream. Willis, as Paul pointed out in a previous post, isn’t a good investment. Lowry won 14 games for the Giants in 2007, so he must be doing something right.
(But will somebody please explain to me how Lowry won 14 games, despite the fact that his WHIP was an unsightly 1.55 and he walked as many guys as he stuck out? Moreover, Matt Cain managed to lose 16 games pitching for the same team, and his WHIP was way lower — 1.26 — and he stuck out twice as many guys as he walked!)
Then there’s the rumor that the Giants are shopping rookie phenom Tim Lincecum. Word is San Fran is looking for a big bat. I’ve been killing myself trying to figure out somebody the Phillies could swap for Lincecum, but I just don’t see it happening. I think the Giants would want more in return for Lincecum than Pat Burrell and the one year he has left on his contract. Shane Victorino is a fun player, but hardly a “big bat”. Chase Utley is going nowhere. You hear me, Gillick? NOWHERE.
That leaves Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins. Howard is a former NL MVP and Rollins is a candidate for MVP this season. Can the Phils trade an MVP for a pitcher who has yet to prove himself at the big league level?
Probably not. Well, they certainly can’t trade Howard. He is one of those once in a lifetime players.
But Rollins is just very good, not great. More than anything, he’s very well rounded. He’s a good fielder. Good base stealer. Good hitter. But not irreplaceable. Moreover, after his big-talkin’ big hittin’ 2007 season, Rollins will never be more valuable.
Plus, Lincecum is still making rookie money, so acquiring him for a high priced player like Rollins would free up money to sign a guy like Aaron Rowand. Or another pitcher, like Wolf, Clement or Lohse. OR — dare to dream — Mike Lowell.
And the idea of pairing Lincecum and Cole Hamels is tantilyzing. All of a sudden, next year’s starting rotation look like this:
Cole Hamels
Tim Lincecum
Kyle Kendrick
Jamie Moyer
Adam Eaton
Ok, so ending that list with Adam Eaton leaves a sour taste. But, like I said, there’s no reason the Phils couldn’t sign a guy like Wolf to replace Eaton, bumping the disappointing starter to the bullpen.
Of course, the Phils would be giving up on Rollins (who is my favorite player in the universe). And they’d have to find a new shortstop, either via trade or free agency. And it’s a thin free agent crop. Let’s say they go with David Eckstein, who is supremely overrated, but would be a hit in Philly. That would leave them with a lineup that looks like this:
1. Shane Victorino CF
2. Chase Utley 2B
3. Ryan Howard 1B
4. Pat Burrell LF
5. Jason Werth RF
6. Mike Lowell 3B
7. Carlos Ruiz C
8. David Eckstein SS
Not bad, right?
Now if the Phils can just figure out how to fix the bullpen.
November 6th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
How bout a deal with the White Sox for Garland and Crede? Neither is great, but would be useful. And Gillick and Kenny Williams have shown they like to deal with each other.
And in that potential line-up you have there, how can you have Lowell sixth behind Burrell and Werth?
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November 6th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Doogan, calm down. We can tinker w/ the lineup AFTER we sign Lowell. Jeez.
And, just curious, who are the Phils trading for Garland and Crede? I may be crazy enough to trade J-Ro, but I’m not crazy enough to trade him for a guy w/ a 1.30 ERA and another guy who’s coming off back surgery.
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November 6th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Trade Rollins? I’m not privy to the Phil’s locker room, but I sense he is the heart of that team. The sane solution that won’t happen is to move Myers back into the rotation.
PS - Did you mention Benson just so you could throw in the pic?
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November 6th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
No, no, no. There will be no trading Rollins for Garland and Crede. I agree completely with joe. No trading Rollins and Myers should go back to the rotation.
I haven’t thought about who to trade for Garland and Crede, but it wouldn’t take all that much, would it? We could give Victorino or Bourn and a couple prospects? I’m not gonna look any deeper into than that. Just basically saying, Gillick and Williams have a rapport together and the White Sox have a SP and 3B available, which fits the Phils needs nicely.
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November 6th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Technically, Ken Williams should send Joe Crede and John Garland to the Phils for nothing, along with a note that says, “Sorry for that whole Freddy Garcia thing.” But he won’t. Moreover, I doubt he’d want Bourn (a fourth outfielder) or Victorino (a scrappy little guy) for two potential all-stars in Crede and Garland. I don’t think that would satisfy his need for a big bat, though I guess it would get him the center fielder he’s been looking for.
Rollins is certainly the heart of the Phils team. And he’s my favorite player. But he’s also supremely overrated and he’s never going to be more valuable than he is right now. And if your goal is to put together the best team possible, not taking intangibles like “leadership skills” into account, then trading Rollins for Lincecum (and maybe a bullpen arm) is, I think, I pretty savvy move.
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November 6th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
I was going to suggest that the wife-beater should move back to the rotation, except I drew a total blank and temporarily forgot his name. I could only remember that he is a foot taller and literally twice as heavy as his wife, who he punched with a closed fist on a public thoroughfare. Why can I remember all of these details (and even remember what the guy looks like) and forget his name?! No wonder I never have any fun at my class reunion…
As for intangibles, I don’t know when we will stop calling them intangibles. I mean, there are literally *thousands* of books published on leadership and teams and maximizing performance and entire studies have been done showing that happy teams can outperform more talented teams, yet we still look at those skills as somehow “soft.” If J-Ro is the heart of the Phils, they shouldn’t trade him. Period. Would the Indians dump Sizemore? Would the Red Sox move Varitek? Would the Yankees trade Jeter? Of course not. Because there is more to running an actual team than there is to running a fantasy team.
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November 6th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
This just in: the Jays have let it be known that they’d consider offers for AJ Burnett—sounds like they want three prospects. He has one of those opt-out thingies at the end of next season.
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November 6th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Sarah, there are literally *thousands* of books published on how to find the right man. But how many are worth the paper they’re printed on?
Similarly, I’m sure there are a lot of books that say leadership skills win championships, but so what? Tell me which book makes a convincing argument in favor of leadership over talent. Point me toward the studies that say the happy teams are the best teams.
As far as I’m concerned, winning breeds happiness. And Tim Lincecum (who looks like a very happy guy in pictures) would help the Phillies win. And that would make me happy.
Lincecum and Hamels could be Philadelphia’s Glavine and Smoltz. We’d be only one Maddux away from greatness!
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November 7th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Well, Coley, you can look them up in a fishwrap called the “Harvard Business Review.” They have a lot of articles about this stuff, including one that became the bestselling book “The No Asshole Rule.” Despite the popular conception of the tortured genius or the brilliant misanthrope, to be successful most people also have to be likable. I’m not talking about ass-kissing; it’s just a fact that a happy workplace is a productive workplace. You suggest in your comment that it’s the other way around, but really, if your boss is an asshole, you will not be as productive as you would be if your boss were nice. It just seems like common sense to me.
Why should sports be different from other lines of work? There was a recent study that got written up in the “Financial Times” and “The Economist” about a Cambridge boat crew that actually rowed faster when they had a less skilled but more likable oarsman join the team. His personality brought the team together, and helped the other rowers get more out of themselves. Let me repeat: when this LESS SKILLED rower joined the boat, the boat TRAVELED FASTER because the other rowers were happier with this guy on the team. Teams are more than just the sum of their parts.
Athletes aren’t robots. Statistics can show that athletes have hot and cold streaks, but they can’t explain *why.* People talk about “Moneyball” like it ‘proved’ that so-called intangibles are worthless compared with statistics. That’s actually not true at all. Anyone who reads the opening chapters on Billy Beane’s struggle to go from top-flight prospect to actual major-leaguer can see that his struggles with the strike zone had a lot to do with his mindset. In other words, it was an *intangible* problem. He crumbled under the pressure. Just because SABR can’t come up with a metric for crumbling under pressure, or getting the best out of your teammates, or the negative impact assholes have on the clubhouse, doesn’t mean that those factors do not affect baseball teams in real, visible ways.
For my part, I think the statistician and blogosphere resistance to this truth—the commonsense notion that team chemistry influences team performance—really stems from the fact that none of those people have press passes. We don’t meet the guys. We don’t get to know them. We don’t travel with them. We don’t talk to them. So whether you are a sabermetrician “in your garage” as Peter Gammons would say, or a blogger sitting in your windowless cubicle, you would prefer to think that you had all the information the beat writers and newspaper columnists had, that there’s nothing they know that you don’t, that whatever edge they have in access you can make up for with your designer statistics. In fact, we don’t have all the information they do. Could most mainstream journalists use a crash course in VORP and win shares? Absolutely. But while statistics can provide a seductive level of certainty about a player, they aren’t the whole story. Hitting a baseball, throwing a splitter, catching a line drive—those are skills. Leadership is also a skill.
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November 7th, 2007 at 11:51 am
No chance the Giants trade the missing Linc. One, we’re not that lucky. Two, the way they shut him down late this season showed that he is their biggest investment, and they’re not really going to shop him. Id’ be shocked if they dealt Lowry or Cain either, but I’d gladly overpay for either right now.
Clemental is worthless. And Eaton will never see a minute of bullpen time, much to our chagrin, because he’s awful in his early innings, needing to settle down.
Also, you should have been a doctor. Colin Ward to the Colon Ward, please. Colin Ward to the Colon Ward.
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November 7th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Matthew, it looks like somebody’s done a lot of maturing since the 5th grade.
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November 7th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Sarah, the problem with intangibles is just that - they’re completely intangible. Until we can measure them, and more importantly, until we can find something that is at all replicable from year to year, they are essentially worthless to us. It would be foolish to sign a guy with worse career numbers just because he is alleged to have “leadership skills” until we have any evidence at all that those leadership skills are worth more than the numbers he’s not putting up. Which we don’t.
This is different from saying that “leadership” as a skill doesn’t exist. I think we all have some idea that these intangibles *do* exist and *are* worth something. But I suspect that what they are worth is far far less than what the media types who KNOW because they’ve BEEN IN THE LOCKER ROOM say it is. It’s probably like clutch hitting - maybe it makes like a 1 or 2 percent contribution to winning or something, the rest of which is comprised of actually getting it done on the actual field.
Because, look, if “team chemistry” is as valuable as you columnists all say it is, then how do we account for all the teams that won World Series but totally hated each other? How do we account for all the teams that loved each other and loved their manager, but never won? How do we account for the fact that, even in the middle of the hottest hot streak, or the coldest cold streak, a player’s chance of getting a hit in his next at bat is pretty much *exactly* equal to his career batting average?
The fact is, stats from previous years and other factors such as a players age and his career trajectory are FAR better predictors of performance than any alleged leadership skills. And the cumulative statistics of a team are FAR FAR better predictors of win-loss record than who the manager is or whether Derek Jeter is the greatest team leader since Hannibal convinced all those guys to cross the Alps in winter on elephants.
Also, your analogy to rowers makes no sense, because rowing requires actual team work, where as virtually everything a baseball player does, he does alone, with the possible exception of double plays, and pitcher/catcher touchy-feely goodness. But even those come down to making a good feed or a good throw to a glove or a spot, which is a very individual process. So then it all just comes down to pyschology or whatever, and if you are a player who is going to do worse because you don’t like your team or your manager, then you are just a bad player, and that is already going to show up in your stats.
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November 7th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
I mean, when we look at young Billy Beane, we can either say that he was missing certain intangibles, OR we can just look at his stats, see that he is batting .200 and realize that he is a bad player. Either way, we don’t re-sign him, but which way is easier?
Also, you are totally missing Michal Lewis’s point about Billy Beane as a player, since Lewis was saying the exact opposite of what you are. Lewis was making the point that all the scouts looked at Billy Beane and saw all these intangible qualities that would make him a star, when they should have just looked at his stats, saw that he couldn’t control the strike zone, and dumped him.
Instead they kept giving him chance after chance because he seemed to have intangibles that the stats didn’t show.
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November 7th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
But Nick, a big part of the reason Beane couldn’t control the strike zone because he couldn’t handle the pressure of being this super hot-shot prospect.
I see the point you are trying to make about baseball not *really* being a team sport, like rowing, but it is actually a team sport. Despite the individualistic element, there is actually a team out there on the field. Your estimate of a “1 or 2 percent contribution” of leadership and other so-called intangibles to winning completely misses the point. It’s not a percentage! You can’t measure it! Nonetheless, I believe you can see the impact those factors have on and off the field. I’m not saying that clubhouse chemistry can make up for a pitching rotation anchored by, say, Casey Fossum. But if you have two teams that are pretty much alike in talent, the team with better leadership and a better mindset will win. We *just* saw this happen in the 2007 ALCS.
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November 7th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Yes, Nick, I agree with you 100 percent. Furthermore, to bring the point back home, the Phillies were praised by the local media this season for their character. Any Philly beat writer will tell you this was the most likeable team that’s played in the city of brotherly shove in a long, long time. Utley, Rollins, Howard, Rowand — these are good guys. But that didn’t prevent them from hitting negative one-million in the playoffs. And it didn’t mask the fact that the Rockies simply had better pitching.
Trading Rollins would be a bummer. Everybody likes him and, more importantly, he’s a really good player. But Lincecum seems like a nice guy, too. And he’s got the potential to be a star pitcher. And when you have the chance to trade an overvalued shortstop for an undervalued stud pitcher, you don’t think twice.
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November 7th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Sarah, a couple points. The Red Sox were a better team than the Indians so I’m not sure you can go with the “they won because they liked each other more” argument. And how do you know that the Sox had better team chemistry than the Indians did?
And again, it’s not like statisticians don’t believe that things like team chemistry exist or that it’s not a positive thing. But no one’s been able to show to what extent this has an effect, which is the problem.
To me, quantifying team chemistry is akin to an athlete thanking god in a post-game report. There’s no way in hell I can prove that god had absolutely nothing to do with it. But there’s no way I can prove that god did help either. Therefore, I cannot add god to the final box score. I cannot give god a “save”. The argument here isn’t whether or not god exists. It’s if we can prove that god helped. I definitely can’t and therefore cannot factor it into my thought process. Same goes with team chemistry.
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November 7th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Sarah, if you go back and read my little comment on Billy Beane, you will see that I fully recognize the fact that he may well have been striking out due to intangible factors such as not dealing with pressure.
But my point was that you could already tell that he was a bad player by looking at the stats! So even though the intangibles were real and were there, you didn’t have to try to figure out what the intangibles were because all you had to do was look at the numbers.
Which tied into my larger point, which is that most intangibles ALREADY show up in the stats!
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November 7th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Paul, if there is a God, he (or she) probably is a baseball fan, but I can’t imagine that he (or she) actually intervenes on the field.
As for the Red Sox, they were not a better team than the Indians—at least, not by the numbers. In fact, the Red Sox and the Indians had the EXACT SAME regular season record, and when I was doing my “who has the edge” column, which was entirely based on statistical measures, it was split right down the middle. The one advantage the Red Sox had was veteran leadership and mentality: Schilling and Ortiz’s team meeting, Manny’s relaxed attitude, Varitek’s steady guidance, Mike Lowell’s postseason experience. Thus, your impression that the Sox were the better team is *only attributable* to the fact that they had leadership, chemistry, and other so-called intangibles.
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November 7th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Well, the Red Sox did have a lower ERA, a higher OPS and about 100 more walks as a team than the Indians did. So I feel like Paul can say they were better.
But the real question is, if the Indians had won (and you very well know that they could have), would you then be forced to say, by your own logic that victory in that particular series is “only attributable” to intangibles, that the Indians had better intangibles?
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November 7th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
One thing we can all agree on is that the Red Sox had more intangibles this season than the Yankees, who have been a ship adrift ever since they lost that great clubhouse leader Paul “Mr. Five WS Rings” O’Neill.
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November 7th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Well, yes. In the small sample size of the post season, especially considering the added pressure of those games and the fact that the players have already played a full season of baseball, I think so-called intangibles become magnified. If the Indians had won (which they did not) and the Red Sox had lost (which they did not) then yes, you could say that the Indians had better intangibles (which they did not). As for the Indians’ chokage at the end of the ALCS, that too is clearly attributable to intangibles, or the barely tangible, such as a squishy little something statisticians have “demonstrated” to be negligible, called home field advantage. Is it really so revolutionary to suggest that next year, if the Indians do make the playoffs again, their experiences in the ‘07 postseason will help them? Or is it all just averages and medians, and trend lines and data points?
As for which team is better, while the Red Sox may had more patience at the plate, the Indians had a more dangerous lineup top-to-bottom. Plus, there was no way to know that Sabathia and Carmona would crumble in October. Carmona versus Schilling is a good case in point: Carmona has better stuff than Schilling at this point, but Schilling’s so-called “intangibles” (experience, wisdom, gravel-in-his-guts-and-flint-in-his-eye, whatever) clearly tipped the balance in his favor.
What you guys call “intangibles” matter across every other aspect of life—why should baseball be the exception? But if it makes y’all feel better to pretend you can see all the inner workings of the game on your Excel spreadsheets, by all means continue to cleave to those calculators.
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November 7th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Well, Coley, and since they added the wonderful intangibles of Alex “My middle name is Clubhouse Chemistry” Rodriguez.
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November 7th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
You can make the case that some extra pieces of gravel in Schilling’s gut helped in comparison with Carmona.
Or you can look at Carmona’s stats and see that the man pitched 230 innings of his 304.67 inning career in 2007 and say that he was just gassed. Or that this was just two starts in the 35 he made this year and that it’s too small a sample size to determine any real cause. Or that he seemed to have absoltuely no problem going head to head against Andy Pettite in the first round. Or that the patient Red Sox lineup and therefore experience/pressure didn’t have anything to do with it. Or that in those two playoff games against the Sox he walked nine batters in six innings and that prior to this he had never walked more guys than innings pitched, which could again mean that he was gassed or that he didn’t know what to do with a patient Red Sox lineup or that he was hurt or a little of everything.
For every situation where we can blame the lack of intangibles, we can think of just as many or even more potential explanations using stats. Again, I’m not saying that these things don’t matter. It’s just that we have no idea if intangibles matter more or less than these statistical, tangible explanations.
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November 7th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
By the way, this is more of a general question: if/when A-Rod gets a WS ring, will this mean that he’s now a good, likable teammate?
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November 7th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
“It’s just that we have no idea if intangibles matter more or less than these statistical, tangible explanations.”
Fine. I can live with that. You have no idea if they matter more or less. So-called intangibles are one element of many. That’s all I’m saying.
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November 7th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Intangibles seem to be something that people like to talk about a team having after they have been successful. It is much easier after a team’s success to say that they won not only because of their great play but x, y, and z as well and that may be valid. I will say you rarely hear someone say before a series that the statistically weaker team is going to win because of their chemistry or determination. The Red Sox beat the Indians because they had better pitching. Do you think any of Boston’s intangibles would have meant much without Josh Beckett? If they had traded pitching staffs the Indians would have most likely won. I’ve heard many former big leaguers say that chemistry is the result of winning. It’s much easier to get along with 24 other guys when your team is winning. Poor performance on the field tends to create “bad” chemistry in the locker room. “Bad” chemistry doesn’t necessarily create poor performance which is evidenced by winning teams that didn’t like one another off the field. The Yankees’ recent failings have had much more to do with the inadequacies of their pitching staff than A-Rod’s effect on the clubhouse.
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November 7th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Re: Beane, the scouts in Moneyball were saying idiotic things like, “he’s got the Good Face.” They were not blind to his stats because of any “intangibles”—they were blind to his pro stats because he “looked like a ballplayer” and could run really fast and had awesome high school numbers (despite a senior year drop off). I mean, you can look at his pro stats and say, “Wow, he sucks, let’s dump him”—presumably, after a suitable enough sample size to satisfy the bean counters—or you could watch him smashing up your dugout after striking out yet again and think, “Hmmm, maybe this guy doesn’t have the right kind of temperament to be a pro ballplayer,” and, if you still don’t want to cut him, get him a sports psychologist and have him do a little more work with the hitting coach.
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November 7th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Melissa, in my experience, people also say after a given team wins, “Well, of course that was the better team.” They then cite whatever it was that won them that particular series—such as, in this case, the unparalleled performance of Josh Beckett. Now, we can all say, in hindsight, that Carmona and Sabathia clearly (obviously!) fell apart because they had no gas left in the tank. That would be true—in hindsight. But when I was comparing these two teams for my preview column, it was not clear who would be the victor in the series. It was not clear that the Red Sox had superior pitching, because their ace, Beckett, would be going up against the probable Cy Young winner, and Schilling was old, Daisuke erratic, and Wakefield coming off an injury. In fact, despite the Red Sox being “clearly the better team” (at least on this comment thread), the Indians needed to win only one game out of the last three in order to advance. The Red Sox had a much greater challenge to surmount: win three straight or go home. I’d say that’s a textbook pressure situation where things like mentality make a difference.
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November 8th, 2007 at 12:12 am
Well, the Red Sox were the better team. In addition to the stats that Nick provided, the biggest proof may be the run differential. Pythagorean W-L for the Sox was a 101-61. The Indians Pythagorean was 91-71. Boston underperformed their expectations and the Indians overplayed theirs. But the fact remains, the Sox had something like over a 100 run swing over Cleveland in run differential.
But that’s not to say that I EXPECTED Boston to win the series. I didn’t. I picked Cleveland because of Carmona and Sabathia in a seven game series. Didn’t turn out that way. But saying that things like team chemistry was the reason they won, I think, takes something away from the credit that the Sox players deserve. If the Red Sox and Indians had played 100 times, I’d guess that Boston would win 55 times or so. But in a 7-game series, I took Cleveland. Doesn’t mean that Boston was the underdog in any way shape or form. They were freaking good.
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November 8th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Sarah, Boston and Cleveland were two very evenly matched teams and either could have won. I just think in this series overall Boston’s pitchers were better and that is why they won. I do not discount intangibles by any means and would agree with you that often times they can make the difference, especially when the teams are comparable. I think you might have a stronger argument for intangibles if you used the Rockies’ run up to the Series as an example. What would have been the statistical likelihood of them winning 21 of 22 to get into the World Series? It was extremely unlikely to occur if you looked at their performance during the season prior to that run but it still happened. It’s highly likely that intangibles did contribute to that success. Most likely intangibles contributed to the Mets epic collapse as well.
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November 8th, 2007 at 3:54 am
Sarah, statisticians have never “demonstrated” that home field advantage is negligible. I’m not sure if you just made that up because it sounded like something stats guys might do.
But, quite the opposite, I think most stats people agree with the idea that the home team has a slight advantage in baseball has been statistically proven beyond all doubt.
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November 8th, 2007 at 10:39 am
In other news, the Phils traded for Brad Lidge and plan to move Brett “We were having communication problems” Myers back to the starting rotation.
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November 8th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Nick, the guys on BP talk about the negligibility of home field “advantage” literally all the time. It’s in that book I borrowed from you. Here’s a quote from Nate Silver during this year’s pennant race:
“To be honest, I’ve been pretty disengaged about the fight for home field advantage in the AL East. According to our research in Baseball Between the Numbers, the home team wins a whopping 51.5% of the time in a 5-game series, and 51.3% of the time in a 7-game series, assuming that it is of equal quality to the road team; that’s what the Red Sox and Yankees are fighting for.”
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November 9th, 2007 at 5:39 am
Oh, I totally thought you meant home-field advantage in the regular season, over 162 games. Nobody has refuted that.
But as for home-field advantage in the playoffs, I dunno. But if the numbers say it’s that small, are you saying that those numbers are wrong?
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November 9th, 2007 at 9:15 am
The issue here is the trend versus the individual case. In general, those numbers are accurate. But in the individual case, it depends. Think of this World Series: can you think of two ballparks with more homefield advantage for their teams than Coors Field and Fenway Park? Part of the thing that annoys me about statisticians is that they are always (by their very nature) looking for trends, but then sometimes (as above) apply those trend findings to specific cases where it may not actually apply quite the same way.
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November 9th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Sarah, I think you’re pointing out what’s frustrating sometimes about the way statisticians are perceived. There are some guys out there who want you to think that they’re stats oriented but in fact have no idea what the hell they’re doing. Far too often, they look at a data set that’s so much smaller than they should and claim that their findings prove something. It doesn’t. All it shows is that they don’t understand the importance of sample sizes.
And this is the problem with things like statistically demonstrating the home-field advantage in a specific playoff series. It’s not possible. Especially for a team like the Rockies. They’ve made the playoffs twice in their franchise history. You’re not going to be able to find anything of significance by looking at these numbers. The sample size is far too small. Which is why statisticians sometimes take a broader view by incorporating situations that may seem like they shouldn’t apply. But in order to find anything of value, sometimes, it has to be done. And that’s basically the big difference between a good statistical study and a poor one. The good ones understand things like sample size and gather suffieicient information without compromising the initial intent of the study by bringing in completely irrelevant data to beef up the amount of information from which to work. The bad ones claim they’ve found something when in fact they haven’t proven jack. They look at things like 50 ABs and try to find trends. It’s a pointless exercise.
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November 9th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Well, yes, and it’s also annoying to generalize. We cannot do without *some* generalizations, of course, but rather than dismissing home field advantage in the playoffs, as Silver does above, you’d have to look at the specific park factors and try to draw some conclusions about them. High altitude, it’s fair to say, is a problem for visiting pitchers in Coors Field, just as thin air is a problem for their breaking pitches. The dimensions of Fenway’s left field wall allows a player like Mike Lowell to hit a lot of doubles and a player like Manny Ramirez to pass as a decent defensive outfielder. And, to loop back to my previous comments about intangibles, I think it’s reasonable to say that a visiting rookie pitching in Yankee Stadium for the first time might have some serious nerves to shake off (more than, say, if he were pitching in the Trop) due to unmeasurable-but-potentially-impactful factors like scary New York fans and the weight of history bearing down. Then there’s factors like prevailing winds (always an issue with construction in and around the park) or humidity (always an issue with a knuckleballer) or midges (always an issue when global warming causes a freak insect-hatching in Cleveland in October). So I get annoyed when people say that over time, whatsyfutsy only has a 1 or 2 percent impact on the game, when on any given night, it could be a decisive factor. After all, isn’t the “any given night” unknown the reason we watch?
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November 9th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
That’s why they play the games folks…
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November 9th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Absolutely. Which is also why even statisticians love to watch the game. Look, there’s no way to predict exactly what’s going to happen at any given moment. No one ever claims to be able to do this. But here are certain things that happened in 2007 that stats predicted:
1. The terrible White Sox season. All the key players overplayed their projected numbers in 2006. Therefore, it was expected they revert to their career norms, which will lead to much fewer wins.
2. The Cleveland Indians much improved record. They had a positive run differential ( 88) last year and inexplicably finished 6 games under .500. As long as each player performs at the projected level, they will be playoff contenders in 2007 without changing a thing.
3. The Mariners falling out of the race in the AL West. Their run differentials are far inferior to their actual record.
4. The Rockies resurgence. OK, so no one in their right mind would have guessed in early September that they’d be in the playoffs. But again, their on-field performance was far better than their actual record. So while it was a total surprise that they won so many games at the end, it wasn’t a surprise that they improved their winning percentage considerably.
On the flip side, no one can seem to pin point how the Diamondbacks won the NL West, aside from the fact that the entire division was crappy. That’s a situation where a lot of stasticians picked the D-Backs to win but no one guessed correctly how they’d do it.
So stats can fairly accurately predict how things can play out over 162 games. It’s far more accurate than anything I can predict in my head without stats. But stats cannot predict what happens in any given game. It can’t predict what happens over seven games. There are far too many variables. Again, no one using stats should even try to say that it can be done consistently. So if you ever see something like it, don’t even bother reading it. It’s pointless.
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November 9th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Those are some great points in your last comment, Sarah, of which I agree 100 percent with all. Just to be fair to the BP guys however, you are taking a rather old quote from them. One of the BP guys just wrote an excellent column about how Coors Field has consistently provided the Rockies with the greatest home-field advantage in all of baseball. So Nate Silver might have changed his tune by now (like the rest of us he also probably never dreamed the Rockies would make the playoffs anytime soon).
Here’s that article:
http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6898
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November 9th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Nick, it’s not accurate to describe that quote as old. It was from mid-September of this year! And while I’m always interested to see things like run differentials and projected records, those things are only compelling when you compare them to what actually happens and when you try to explain *why* a certain team underperformed or overperformed. As anyone who suffered through Introduction to Literary Theory with me knows, I am a bit of a literalist.
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November 9th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
One last interjection - I think.
I think it’s important to remember that a lot of the studies that the good statisticians are doing have never been done before. There are bound to be mistakes. You start with a hypothesis, and you do your best to see if it holds true. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it looks like it works and then someone or some event goes and disproves it. Then you go back and see where you went wrong. Again, I don’t think of the things that SABR guys do as fact. Ultimately, they’re all theories. Some make sense to me, others don’t.
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