Northside Blues

Because he's Kerry Wood. He's our Derek Jeter, only he's not a complete enigmatic black hole we have to play if he's a 7th or 8th inning guy. And most importantly, there's room for upside. It wouldn't be a terrible baseball move so long as he doesn't cost a ton. If we're not going anywhere next year, then bring him back. I'd rather lose with him than without him. If I knew keeping him off the team would help us make the playoffs, then fine. I don't think we'll be in a position to make the post season so I want to sleep better at night and have dreams of Kerry Wood leading the Cubs.

Take half of the PAs in the sample. Find the OPS of that sample minus his true talent level. Take the other half of the sample. Find the OPS of that sample minus his true talent level. Then find the correlation between (OPS1 - true OPS) and (OPS2 - true OPS). In theory, if no streaks exist then for the 300 PAs we're going to get a normal(ish) distribution around the players true OPS. Thus when we take a sample of 150 PAs. We should get a normal(ish) distribution around the players true OPS. So if we take our OPS over the 150 PAs minus the true talent level OPS, we're going to get two numbers that are completely unrelated.

jesus christ it's not fair to be a big market team, and get a ridiculous discount on someone as good as lee.

Jon Heyman tweet two hours ago. "Lee may leave up to $70 mil on table to sign with Philly. If he gets it done with them, he will truly be able to say it wasn't about the $."

Phils going for four years, 90 mil (or three). Leaving 70 mil on the table is what I've read for their offer. So that's a 90 or so mil contract. Can't be more than four years, can't be less than three. Either way, it's a great deal for the Phillies.

Yes, it is. In that number of PA's roughly 25% of players can be +/- 100 points of their actual production. The other 75% of players will be +/- 50 points. That's purely through luck. You need At Least 1000 PAs to start getting a good handle on their real ability. As was alluded to earlier, what if he goes off for a .326/.395/.515/.910 line over his next 323 PA's? Does that mean he's a #3 hitter? Does that mean he was unlucky those first 323 PAs, or was he really lucky the second 323 PA's. You're basing your proclamation on the equivalent of a half season of production. That's nowhere near enough of a sample. You just made that number up. My point isn't that it's predicative. My point is that there is a reason. Randomness isn't it. His true talent level during those 323 PAs was not his career average.

i think you're trying to agree with me... im the one saying that streaks exist and that performing above or below true talent level in the short term isn't completely random. that's all i am saying. my argument has little to do with him being "better" batting third. my argument is that short term fluctuations exist, that they're not entirely random, and that's partly why his numbers differ in different spots, because those ABs in each spot tend to come in groups. thats been my argument the entire time and why i said it wasnt a "random sample" of 323 ABs.

Awesome now THIS is awesome. Consider this. Let's say we take players the first three months of the season, minimum 200 PAs. We then split up their PA's into two equal sets, randomly. You can do this with a rand function very easily. If you don't want to do that, just alternate them and throw them into two sets that way. I chose the first method. Then in those two sets, calculate OPS. Keep in mind that these two sets have 100-175 PAs max. Then for the players calculate their true talent level the best you can. A simple way is to weight the three previous years, hence why we wanted to look at the first three months of the season. You can also use a projection system to come up with one. Then take the difference between their "true" OPS and their actual OPS's for each set. If it were truly random like you all (and they) say, then we would expect this correlation to be zero, or very close to it. Since doing well (or poor) in one set of 125 PAs shouldn't have anything to do with the other set of 125 PAs. However, when you look at the data you'll find a correlation that's in the .30-.40 range between the differences. Meaning that the two are certainly related and that high fluctuations in short term true talent level exist. It's even more surprising considering that each set is around 150 PAs. Thus, their hypothesis can be thrown out the window and they are simply wrong. How many tests did you perform? If it is a small number of tests, then a correlation of .3 - .4 is really not sufficient evidence to back your hypothesis. over 1000 and I did it twice. the second time using the rand function again to split up the PAs differently. Got similar results.

Awesome now THIS is awesome. Consider this. Let's say we take players the first three months of the season, minimum 200 PAs. We then split up their PA's into two equal sets, randomly. You can do this with a rand function very easily. If you don't want to do that, just alternate them and throw them into two sets that way. I chose the first method. Then in those two sets, calculate OPS. Keep in mind that these two sets have 100-175 PAs max. Then for the players calculate their true talent level the best you can. A simple way is to weight the three previous years, hence why we wanted to look at the first three months of the season. You can also use a projection system to come up with one. Then take the difference between their "true" OPS and their actual OPS's for each set. If it were truly random like you all (and they) say, then we would expect this correlation to be zero, or very close to it. Since doing well (or poor) in one set of 125 PAs shouldn't have anything to do with the other set of 125 PAs. However, when you look at the data you'll find a correlation that's in the .30-.40 range between the differences. Meaning that the two are certainly related and that high fluctuations in short term true talent level exist. It's even more surprising considering that each set is around 150 PAs. Thus, their hypothesis can be thrown out the window and they are simply wrong.

I am not treating it as zero.

It's not a random sample, for one.

My point is that over the course of a season 40 pitchers may put up xFIPs under 4.00. However, not all forty of them do it every year. A lot of them are *true* 4.00-4.50 pitchers who had a good season. Instead, the next year some of the other 4.00-4.50 guys (a large percentage of the world) will have sub 4.00s to make the number still be 40ish. A much smaller number are actually consistently sub 4.00 xFIP guys. There are only 24 pitchers who have a sub 4.00 xFIP collectively the last four year (min 40 starts). There are also just 23 starters who had xFIPs below 4.00 each of the last two seasons. I should also note that xFIP isn't park neutral which is a bit of a problem in the numbers above. So regarding Garza, if you want to complain about him not being a sub 4.00 xFIP guy, well you're just complaining that he's not a top 25 pitcher. He's probably a #3 guy on a good team. That's not an insult.

I don't care what they said. They're simply wrong. There's about a 5% chance that a .282 true talent levels hitter hits .326 in 300 PAs or so. No one's saying that the the 300 PAs is indicative of his future. No one is saying that he hit well there because of his spot in the lineup or that his jockstrap was folded in the perfect manner. I am only saying that for those 300 PAs his true talent level was not .282 or whatever you want to say it is. It's that simple. Was it .326? No. There are more streaks in baseball than anticipated if you just keep true talent and say it's 100% random. The fact is true talent level fluctuates enormously in the short term in the sense of how good the player is AT THAT PRECISE TIME. If you want to think of true talent level as an average of the short term true talent levels, be my guest. I'm merely saying for those 300 PAs he's simply was a better player than he normally is. One way you can test this is to look at a random sample of two months. Take half the PA's. Every other one or however you want to do it. Then look at that ran against the other half. Look at the difference between that and their long term true talent level. There's a relatively high correlation - which is not what you would expect if the short term true talent level was the same as the long term true talent level.

Usually we only get an offseason of speculation for player acquisition sploogefests (six months), now we get a full year!

I'm counting about 38 starters at sub-4.00 xFIP. That would be, basically, the ace of each staff plus a few. Two things. 1. xFIP is inherently league based do to the league constant. This year was an extreme low, that alone will increase. So all xFIPs will increase. 2. Sure, there are 38 starters below 4.00. If 100 people flip 10 coins about 17 of them are going to have 7 heads or more. That doesn't mean that 17 of them have a "true ability" to flip a coin on heads 70% of the time. Of those 38 starters only a little over half probably have true ability of a 4.00 or lower xFIP. It might even be lower if you include point #1.

Yes, it is. In that number of PA's roughly 25% of players can be +/- 100 points of their actual production. The other 75% of players will be +/- 50 points. That's purely through luck. You need At Least 1000 PAs to start getting a good handle on their real ability. As was alluded to earlier, what if he goes off for a .326/.395/.515/.910 line over his next 323 PA's? Does that mean he's a #3 hitter? Does that mean he was unlucky those first 323 PAs, or was he really lucky the second 323 PA's. You're basing your proclamation on the equivalent of a half season of production. That's nowhere near enough of a sample. You just made that number up. My point isn't that it's predicative. My point is that there is a reason. Randomness isn't it. His true talent level during those 323 PAs was not his career average.

A third team in New York/Newark would probably be the best for TV. The New York CSA has a population of 22mil, so that's about 7 mil per team. For comparison, Boston's CSA is a little over 7 mil total. A team would take years to survive in either city. The hardcore fans already have their allegiances and the casual fans do too. The Mets were able to survive as a knew team because the Giants and Dodgers left only five or six years earlier so their fans were "free agents" so to speak. That won't happen this time around. If you go by actual TV markets size, largest without teams #13 Tampa/St Petersburg #19 Orlando #20 Sacramento #23 Portland #25 Charlotte #26 Indianapolis #28 Raleigh Durham #29 Hartford #30 Nashville #32 Columbus #34 Milwaukee (Smallest in MLB) Portland, Sacramento and Orlando all only have one pro team in the big four (all in the NBA too). Vegas, I believe, is the largest CSA without a professional team. Hartford is the largest TV market without a professional team, it looks like, though one would think they are heavy NY influenced. Greenville SC would be the largest TV market without one if you don't include Hartford (#36). Vegas is #43.

If Byrd has another season like 2009 in the third spot - .904 OPS in 85 PAs – his OPS would improve 110 points. You can start to see a trend, maybe, in 323 PAs, but it's not enough of a sample size to make a declarative statement because it can fluctuate a bunch in a minimal number of PAs. You'll generally want at least a full season's worth of PAs to start getting a good, large sample size. Even then, if they're spread out over multiple different seasons (like RISP numbers generally are) you have to look at other factors such as if he just sucked overall in one year or had a breakout year in another or something. It's a lot more telling if you're looking at a full season's worth of PAs in no more than a season or two worth of time. there's a reason he performed poorly in those 323 PAs. It's not very random.

FWIW xFIP seemingly has every pitcher as a 4.00-5.00 pitcher. it's 100% regression to the mean, essentially. There are maybe 20 starters who are true sub 4 xFIP guys,

323 PAs is not a small sample.

whats funny is that the sox probably had the als best offense in 2010, or atleast number 2.

im not so sure marshall wouldnt be a similar starter to garza.

1 fukudome, rf 2 byrd, cf 3 ramirez, 3b 4 pena, 1b 5 soto c 6 soriano/colvin lf 7 castro ss 8 dewitt 2b

Soriano was coming off a season where he hit 46 homers and had an OPS over 900.

I never said they were. I'm merely saying if they were it doesn't mean we shouldn't pull the trigger.