ConstableRabbit

I'm getting my wisdom teeth out at 9:30 and as of now, winshares and the pythagorean expectation will be the last things on my mind before they turn the gas on... :D

Yes, if there are 2 players with identical stats on 2 different teams, the player on the team with more wins gets more winshares, and because Pujols' and Lee are so close statistically, any additional wins out of the pythagorean expectation for him and any less than expected for Lee sway the winshare advantage to Pujols. Even though they are neck and neck, Lee should have more and Pujols should have less. I'm not a statistician either, the thing is, a math (and baseball) geek, if not genius, Bill James, sat down and found that that formula is ridiculously close to what has happened to every team in baseball history. In my 5 minutes of trying to find out how close it actually is to perfect, I did find that there have been efforts to get as close as possible, with something called "the pythagenport formula" (invented by Clay Davenport), which is: 1.5log[(runs+runs allowed)/games]+.45 Either way, it's a Bill James creation that was the result of trial and error with the history of baseball. There's no specific reason as to why it works, but it has and does. I'm not sure of the actual numbers pertaining to how accurate it is (anyone want to volunteer to crunch all of those numbers? :shock: ), but like you suggested (I think), more often than not, it's very close. With regard to your 14 run win, 1 run loss argument, runs allowed are equated, and like I said, a good bullpen will screw with the numbers.

"That kid will learn to respect me" :lol: My favorite Bonds moment.

Oh yeah, one more thing. The difference between the projected and actual winning percentages aren't 100% luck... a quality bullpen can also sway the verdict for or against a team (which would make a lot of sense in this discussion, haha) Also, I crunched those numbers on the 2nd, and while they're probably not much different, they have probably changed a bit since then.

Haha, I know you're not. Ok, it's like this: A winshare is a third of a win, so if a team wins 80 games, there are 240 to go around. Obviously, the point of the stat is to find out how many runs a certain player is directly responsible for. Now, I dont know if youve read Moneyball or not, but anyone in baseball knows that there is an element of luck involved in the game. The thing is, math proves that some teams and players are luckier than others, which is proven by the Pythagorean projection (or expectation), the formula of which is as follows: Winning pct= runs scored squared/[(runs scored squared) + (runs allowed squared)] Now, for whatever reason, this formula was the one which was derived and it works most of the time. Here's the deal, sometimes it doesnt work out.. When a team wins more than the projection, they are said to have won those games due to luck. Likewise, when a team loses more than the projection, they are said to have lost those games due to luck. In the case study at hand, the Cardinals have won more than their projection (albeit by just a little bit) and the Cubs have lost more than their projection (by a larger margin than the Cards won due to luck) This means that the Cardinals have more win shares to go around and the Cubs have less to go around, so naturally, Pujols will have an unfair winshare advantage to Lee, at no fault to either player, giving Lee the overall advantage. I hope I explained that well... :wink:

So if win shares are predicated on pythagorean record, how do we know that the pythagorean projections are correct? I mean no stat is perfect right? There are always some variables at work that any given stat can't take into account. This isn't me just being argumentative, I just wonder sometimes about some of these sabermetrics. and for that matter why didn't Bill James use the pythagorean record? You know, I DID mathematically state and prove this 2 pages ago or so.... "You know, win shares are great most of the time, but many use them as a failproof way of determining player value, when, in fact, the stat does have a large flaw which most overlook: Players who play for teams that win more games than expected, (found by using the Pythagorean expectation), will receive more win shares than players whose team wins fewer games than expected. Beacuse a team going over or falling short of its Pythagorean expectation comes to such a conclusion by chance (according to Bill James anyway), you cant give out credit based on wins. (and no, I'm not just making this up, you can read into it) Sure enough, when calculating the Pythagorean expectation for Stl, the winning % is .629, lower than their actual % of .634. They are winning more (albeit a bit more) than expected due to chance. but that's not all... The Cubs have a much greater difference from expectation to reality, and of course, they've got the short end of the stick. Pythagorean expectation for the Cubs: .491 Actual winning % for the Cubs : .474 The Cubs are losing more than expected, due to chance, and are doing so by a much larger margin than the Cardinals are winning due to chance. So... Pujols is getting more win shares than he deserves, and Lee is getting less than he deserves, due to chance, and not value. I wouldn't have mentioned it if everyone wasn't making such a big deal over winshares and how the two were tied. Winshares are usually great, but in this case, they're flawed, and in reality, Lee has the advantage. " -ConstableRabbit, Sept 2 2005

Correct. There's a reason they call them "career years". Let's see if Lee's finally figured it all out, or if this was a fluke. I too say we give him the benefit of the doubt and see what happens - even at career numbers, he's a solid player. Besides, he's carried the team this season... the least we can do is give him a shot to repeat.

Haha, I was thinking the exact same thing, but I didn't want to say anything.

Is there any obvious reason I'm missing as to why Matsui hasn't been mentioned? Is he assumed to be an automatic Yankee next year, will be be too expensive, or do posters here just not want him?

I thought it was when they interviewed a charectar from a beer commercial (while he was still in charectar) during the World Series. ConstableRabbit don't remember dat. It was Leon from the Bud commercials. I know it was Leon, I was making a parody of him by speaking in the first person. Wade thinks you mean third person. ouch. I'm usually a grammar nazi too. :oops:

It is an accomplishment when you have an injury plagued rotation and an overworked bullpen. He saves those guys the extra work, and he puts in quality innings as opposed to just leaving someone in for extra innings and watching them get shelled. i dont' know...i guess i don't really care if our bullpen gets taxed. everyone out there sucks anyway, and when you're carrying 19 pitchers, nobody should really get that worn down. maybe i'd feel different if we had the same guys out there all season, each with their own defined roles. a guy only going five innings w/ that setup would screw with the use of the pen more. i'd rather have five good innings than six so-so innings. I know what you mean. I think it would be a much different situation if we had an organized bullpen.

I just don't fault a pitcher because his team is shut-out or only scores one run on a day he pitches. A pitcher's job in the "win" equation is to give up as few runs as he can over as many innings as he can. He has little, since he bats I won't say no, control over how many runs his team scores. Clemens value decreases none if his team is unable to win; his team just failed to take advantage of the value he brings. I quantify "value" with "importance". How "important" is it that he only gives up 1 run, if his team isn't going to score? He may as well have give up 6, and he would have been just as "important". I've read 35 pages of this circling argument and I've come to the conclusion that K-Town feels that the Cy Young goes to the most valuable pitcher to his team whereas the rest of us think that it should go to the best pitcher, i.e. whoever has literally pitched the best.

Um, sure, if you're simply looking at Wins: Zambrano - 28-13 Maddux - 27-22 Prior - 16-9 Wood - 11-13 But he has the worst two-year ERA of the four, the lowest K/9IP, and this year, the worst WHIP. He also leads the 2005 Cubs in losses, HR allowed, Hits allowed, lowest Pitches/Start, and earned runs. Those facts are misleading... doesn't he also have better run support to go with his higher ERA? Why does the run support matter? It's not like he has a .900 OPS to help make up for the difference, it's out of his control. I don't know how/where to get his actual run support numbers but I've said this before: If one pitcher on my team has a high era and high run support, and ends up with a good win-loss record, he's more valuable to my team than another pitcher on the team with a low era and lower run support. Sure, the latter has pitched better, but was he more valuable to the team? If I was looking for a free agent pitcher, I'd almost completely ignore his win totals, because that can obviously change depending on a team (see Russ Ortiz), but during a season, wins are simply the bottom line, and for whatever reason, sometimes the team hits better when a certain guy is on the mound, or worse for another.

Um, sure, if you're simply looking at Wins: Zambrano - 28-13 Maddux - 27-22 Prior - 16-9 Wood - 11-13 But he has the worst two-year ERA of the four, the lowest K/9IP, and this year, the worst WHIP. He also leads the 2005 Cubs in losses, HR allowed, Hits allowed, lowest Pitches/Start, and earned runs. Those facts are misleading... doesn't he also have better run support to go with his higher ERA?

I'd like to see the A's win the WC because they'd completely trounce the White Sox in the first round and I've always wanted to see them get far in the playoffs to disprove the lives of Joe Morgan.

I thought it was when they interviewed a charectar from a beer commercial (while he was still in charectar) during the World Series. ConstableRabbit don't remember dat. It was Leon from the Bud commercials. I know it was Leon, I was making a parody of him by speaking in the first person.

Likewise, but I do dislike Hou

:lol: :lol:

Only on Pay-Per-View.. Was this discussed earlier? http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2153735 Christiansen was creamed, whereas Bonds was "creamed".... thank you, thank you

The coaches are probably encouraging him to, you know, so he can blow out his shoulder. After all, Macias deserves to play more, dude.

You could make a case that Colon has been the most valuable to his team, but the Cy should go to whoever has literally pitched the best, so I have to agree. I think it's a little different than just "the MVP of pitchers", so I'm inclined to believe that one can be difficient in stats they have less control over (e.g. wins) and still come home with the Cy. If they are tops in wins by far and boast top rankings in the other stats as well, they might as well be the MVP, imo. All of that being said, Santana, then Halladay.

Or "cleared" to run the bases *ducks* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA :lol: I was waiting....

You may be right. Hopefully his recent hitting will sway their opinion and we can get him back somewhere... for the right price

So wins shouldn't matter. This is a merry go round argument, isn't it? I was hoping not to get sucked in. I already stated I weight wins more heavily than most on this board, but mostly because I think the actual pitching performance within the microcosm of one game factors pretty heavily into whether a pitcher gets a win or not. I don't think ERA tells the entire story. In your opinion, who should win the AL Cy? Colon with his 18 wins and 3.24 ERA or Rivera? I tend to agree. I mean, I know this has been a topic for discussion in the past, but I think we're looking at wins the wrong way. If I was going to trade for a pitcher or get a free agent, I wouldn't really look at wins at all - I'd look at ERA. See, wins are a team thing, you dont know how a pitcher will pitch on a completely different team based on wins. However, a pitcher who is on my team who has an ERA of 4.00 who gets 5.00 runs of support per game is more valuable to my team than a pitcher with an ERA of 2.50 who gets 3.00 runs of support per game. However, the former may not be a "better pitcher". So the question is whether the Cy is given to the Most Valuable Pitcher to his team, or the pitcher who has literally "pitched" the best.

I'll take him