Note the First: I don’t even remember what KOTD means. (Edit: Now I do!)
Note the Second: This may be boring, so I at least made some pictures. Some pictures may be more boring than others.
Note the Third: This is in no way an effort to singly identify why teams are good or bad this year. There are deeper things to it than just this (Team pitching BABIP was mentioned, for example) and people are more than welcome to take the info here and run with it however they like. I just got curious when it came to comparing some info and it led to this.
Now then.
The A’s are sitting atop the AL West with a record of 35-22, their best start to a season since some number of years ago. They’ve done it with a huge run differential that’s already 296-181, or +115. Next best team? The Giants (+59). Next best team in the AL? The Blue Jays (+39).
You can add up the second and third teams and they’re still 17 runs off what the A’s have done. Starting with the third team, you can add any three together and not come close to +115.
Last year the Red Sox finished at +220. The Cardinals were +193, the Tigers +173, and the A’s +140. Nobody even finished over +129 (NYY) in 2012.
At the pace they’re on, the A’s would finish with a run differential of about +327. Is that going to happen? I’d love to say yes, but I think we know better than that. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds on BB-Ref to know how the A’s are where they are:
They’re blowing the hell out of other teams and preventing the same from happening to them. We can figure out the formula for that: score a lot more runs than the opposition. When you look a little closer, how good are they really? How sustainable is it?
It may be a little surprising, but the A’s are playing exactly .500 ball when you eliminate games in which the final score is 5+ runs apart.
Let’s look at that.
BB-Ref is very useful for telling us the records of teams in games decided by 1 run or the “blowout” category, so it was a simple matter of grabbing overall records and filling in the in-between, the 2-4 run range. In numerical form only, this is how it breaks down for both leagues:
These are both ordered by divisional standings. The A’s are 8-7 in 1 run games, 12-13 in games decided by 2-4 runs. That’s just 20-20, pretty average when you consider the Tigers are a combined 23-16 in the same games. On the other side of the bay, the Giants are 30-17 in those while the Brewers are 26-16.
It’s the 15-2 record the A’s have in games decided by 5+ that stands out, and then some. The only other team all that close is the Rockies at 12-5, which is negated by their 16-23 record in all other games (and you know a lot of those blowouts are at home).
Sidenote: poor Rangers, LOL. They have more blowout losses than 10 teams even have blowout games total.
We could stop right there and say “The A’s have a great run differential because they dominate in games that aren’t close.” That would be very true. I still wanted to run a few more numbers and make some graphs, because I’m still a visually-oriented person.
The next pair of charts shows the percentage of games won and lost out of each category. You might have to scroll up a bit to check the numbers (noting the Rangers have played 22 games decided by 5 or more while the Mets only have 9), but here you go:
Not too much to get into here except to note a few things for the sake of comparison:
AL’s best win% in 1-run games goes to, of all teams, the Rangers so far (10-6), and the worst is the Royals (4-14).
AL’s best win% in 2-4 run games flips around for the Royals (15-6), with the worst team being the Rays (7-19).
AL’s best win% in 5+ run games is obviously the A’s (15-2), but bringing up the rear is the Astros (6-11). Probably no surprise there, but they are showing some good signs of improving.
NL’s best win% in 1-run games is the Braves (13-8) with two others just behind them, and the worst is the Cubs (3-10). Poor Cubs.
NL’s best win% in 2-4 run games goes to the Giants (19-8), while the worst team is the Padres (10-17). The Cubs are right there, though. Poor Cubs.
NL’s best win% in 5+ run games would be the Rockies (12-5), just ahead of the Giants, but the worst team is the Diamondbacks (2-10). Oddly enough, the Cubs are just shy of .500 in this category. Poor Cubs.
The last set of numbers has to do with each team’s percentage of overall wins, losses and games played by run category:
Using the A’s as an example, out of their 57 games played so far, 26.3% have been decided by 1 run and 22.9% of their wins are of that type. 43.9% of their games fall in the 2-4 run range, with 34.3% of their wins there. 29.8% of their games finish with a 5+ run difference and a whopping 42.9% of their wins have come here.
By comparison, the Rockies have the same percentage of wins in the blowout category, though they have 7 fewer wins overall. Where I think this set of data is a little more interesting is mainly in seeing some of the outliers. The Blue Jays have only had 9 games this season decided by 1 run, though they have one of the highest percentages in the 2-4 range. That’s sensible. Nearly 2 of every 5 games the Rangers play ends in what’s considered a blowout.
On the other hand, the Pirates are very close to half their games being decided by just 1 run. Oddly, that’s where they’ve been at their best with a 15-11 record compared to 11-19 in anything more than 1 run apart. That percentage of 1 run games will surely go down.
GRAPH TIME!
I threw together AL and NL graphs that show the composition of each team’s wins. Take a look:
This all goes together with the info above, but you can better see how large a chunk of wins the A’s have in that 5+ run range compared to the small numbers for the Royals and Blue Jays in 1 run games in the AL, or the big blue mark for the Giants in the 2-4 run range along with the high mark the Pirates have in 1 run games compared to the rest.
The team with the most even win split is the Rangers, with a 10/10/9 count, but that doesn’t take into consideration their 13 blowout losses. You would expect them to be challenging the A’s for first place given their 20-15 record in closer games, especially with the A’s 20-20 in comparison. The Angels are also following the same pattern as the A’s so far, going 19-20 in closer games against 11-6 in blowouts. Naturally the A’s helped themselves with that sweep.
I also made graphs that highlight each section. First are those games decided by 1 run:
As noted, the Rangers are good here and the Royals are bad. The Red Sox are also struggling, though the 10-game losing streak they had is enough evidence of that (LOL Boston). The high number of 1 run games for the Pirates shows well here, along with how bad the Cubs have done in their relatively few really close games. Poor Cubs. Most of the teams in the league are somewhere between 15-19 games decided by 1 run.
Naturally, most MLB games fall into that 2-4 run range. This is probably the best indicator of how good most teams really are. The 1 run games may or may not mean much, especially since a lot of those outcomes probably come down to one or two plays. There’s a lot of luck involved.
On the flipside, you can’t assume too many games will be laughers one way or the other, but it’s those games that have the greatest effect on making Pythagorean records that are wildly different from actual ones. Ex: the A’s being 35-22, still the best in the AL, while their Pythagorean record is 41-16. Does that mean they’re really underachieving by a full 6 games two months into the season? Of course not. It’s all in that abnormal 15-2 blowout record. Here are the graphs, first:
Take the Blue Jays, who are 18-12 in these games. They’re 5-4 in 1 run games and 11-8 in 5+ run games. Their record is 34-24 and they have a Pythagorean record of 33-25. I see no real abnormalities in the way their record breaks down. They don’t play many 1 run games but they’re neither good nor bad in those, they’re strong in that middle range, and they’re holding their own in the blowouts.
In comparison, go back to the Pirates. I mentioned their 15-11 mark in 1 run games and the combined 11-19 in everything else. Though their record is 26-30, their Pythagorean record is 24-32. That’s still close, at least.
What about the Cubs? 20-34 overall with a 25-29 Pythagorean record. They’re respectable in blowouts, but they absolutely suck in anything close, going 13-26. So, who are they? Aside from a bad team, I think the 7-8 record in 5+ run games is just an outlier.
I also brought up the Rangers and their high amount of blowout losses. That’s taken a 29-28 record and given them a Pythagorean record of 26-31. It’s their better play so far in closer games that’s defied the expected record.
The last graph is the fun one for us, the 5+ run breakdown:
Gotta love that blowout record, but like I’ve basically said I think it’s masking the fact this team has been entirely average in closer games. They’re one of those teams that is usually going to keep the other side from putting up a bunch of runs (they’ve only allowed more than 6 runs a total of 4 times) while having the capability of some quick, big offense (more than 6 runs 16 times, and 10 or more 10 times already). On the other hand they’ve scored 2 or less 12 times and allowed 2 or less 22 times, including 7 shutouts in just over a third of the season.
Then again, who knows what this team is really capable of this year? Their offense has been much better than I think we all expected, but so has their pitching given the injuries they’ve had to deal with. The depth will still be a question mark as the season drags on, but how many times now have we seen this team do what they shouldn’t be capable of doing? They’re firmly in place for another shot at getting rid of some postseason demons, but we all know how many times that’s been the case.
What it all comes down to for me is just when I think I have this team figured out, they surprise me again.
Also, if you’re snoring by now, sorry.
(Poor Cubs)
I do think this is interesting. I wonder how tightly our blowout wins correlate to facing shitty pitchers. As a fan I feel like we absolutely punish bad pitching and get stifled by good pitching (i.e. there’s a sharp cliff rather than a smooth line), but that’s probably b.s. anecdote/data conversion.
I’ll dig into that in a moment.
I have thought that for some time-really since the winning started in 2012. And (again B.S. anecedote) it fits a couple of other things we see.
-The opening game streak: You are always facing an ace.
-How now matter how good we are, Felix, Wever, etc seem to have our number-admittedly, that is by definition what Aces are suppose to do.
-The playoffs: We dont get to have that game against a #4-5 starter to rough up, use their bullpen up, get the bats going.
What they did against Weaver yesterday means a lot more to me than any blowout of the Astros.
It’s the playoffs thing that gets them the most, yes.
4/2: 6-1 win vs. CLE. Corey Kluber allows 5 R/ER in 3.1 IP. He’s 6-3, 3.04 ERA, 2.22 FIP (best in AL). VERDICT: Good fortune for the A’s.
4/7: 8-3 win @ MIN. Kevin Correia allows 6 R/ER in 5.2 IP. He’s 2-6, 5.87 ERA, 3.96 FIP, career nobody. VERDICT: Bad pitcher.
4/10: 6-1 win @ MIN. Mike Pelfrey allows 6 R/ER in 5.0 IP. He’s 0-3, 7.99 ERA, 7.50 FIP, career nobody. VERDICT: Bad pitcher.
4/18: 11-3 win vs. HOU. Jarred Cosart allows 7 R/ER in 0.1 IP. He’s 4-4, 4.18 ERA, 4.46 FIP, promising potential but little track record yet. VERDICT: Bad pitcher (for now).
4/24: 10-1 win @ HOU. Brett Olberholtzer allows 6 R/ER in 3.2 IP. He’s 2-6, 4.76 ERA, 3.59 FIP, rather inexperienced so far in MLB. VERDICT: Bad pitcher.
4/25: 12-5 win @ HOU. Brad Peacock allows 5 R, 3 ER in 5.0 IP. He’s 1-4, 4.76 ERA, 4.32 FIP, unimpressive in MLB so far. VERDICT: Bad pitcher.
4/29: 9-3 win @ TEX. Martin Perez allows 8 R/ER in 4.2 IP. He’s 4-3, 4.38 ERA, 3.63 FIP, now injured after elbow surgery but he dominated the A’s the start before in Oakland and had gone three straight scoreless starts. VERDICT: More toward good pitcher, possibly starting to deal with arm problems at the time.
4/30: 12-1 win @ TEX. Robbie Ross allows 10 R, 6 ER in 3.1 IP. He’s 1-4, 4.94 ERA, 4.47 FIP, converted to starting after being in the bullpen 2012 & 2013. Entered this game with a couple good starts under his belt. VERDICT: More toward nothing special. He’s back in the ‘pen, so it seems they’ve given up on him starting for now.
5/9: 8-0 win vs. WSN. Doug Fister allows 7 R, 5 ER in 4.1 IP. He’s 3-1, 3.34 ERA, 4.01 FIP in his first few starts of the season. Has been average against the A’s in the past. VERDICT: Nothing special, but a reliable starter from DET on.
5/11: 9-1 win vs. WSN. Gio Gonzalez allows 7 R/ER in 4.1 IP. He’s 3-4, 4.62 ERA, 3.50 FIP. VERDICT: I think we know how good Gio normally is.
5/13: 11-0 win vs. CHW. Scott Carroll allows 6 R/ER in 5.0 IP. He’s 2-3, 5.14 ERA, 5.35 FIP, first MLB season. VERDICT: Bad pitcher.
5/16: 11-1 win @ CLE. Zach McAllister allows 8 R/ER in 1.1 IP. He’s 3-4, 5.89 ERA, 3.83 FIP. Had a decent 2013, has been unimpressive this year. VERDICT: More toward bad pitcher.
5/18: 13-3 win @ CLE. Justin Masterson allows 7 R/ER in 4.1 IP. He’s 2-4, 5.21 ERA, 4.09 FIP. Has been an improving pitcher but he’s done poorly overall this year. Did dominate the A’s on Opening Night. VERDICT: Good pitcher caught in a bad stretch.
5/26: 10-0 win vs. DET. Drew Smyly allows 6 R/ER in 5.0 IP. He’s 2-4, 4.10 ERA, 4.53 FIP. Back to starting after pitching in relief last year. Numbers were much better out of the ‘pen. VERDICT: Good, but nothing special.
5/31: 11-3 win vs. LAA. Tyler Skaggs allows 4 R/ER in 6.0 IP. He’s 4-3, 4.14 ERA, 3.61 FIP. He’s an up-and-coming pitcher the A’s finally got to in the 7th, then the bullpen’s soft underbelly made it worse. VERDICT: Good pitcher so far, fortunate to finish as a blowout.
————–
The majority of these pitchers are guys you’d figure a good team should handle, but the A’s did take care of business emphatically.
Their only two blowout losses came 8-3 to Seattle’s Roenis Elias (who pitched well twice against the A’s and just picked up a CGSO of the Tigers yesterday) and that 7-1 loss to Boston at the hands of Clay Buchholz.
They avoided another blowout loss in the Jon Lester start thanks to 3 in the 9th.
Interesting. So not nothing to it, but it isn’t as much of an explanation as my B.S. eye test would have it.
And 5Aces’ point about the playoffs is exactly the concern I have too.
There are the aberrations too, like the success the A’s have had against Darvish so far.
We’ve had success against Weaver, Darvish, and Felix (even if we ultimately didn’t win that one). Not necessarily blow outish, but got runs, etc.
And doing ANYTHING against Weaver and Hernandez is cause for celebration.
I wonder how much bullpen performance to date has affected the close game numbers. For example, the Cubs reliever Clutch score is -2.48, almost double the next worst team’s -1.25 (the Twins). And the Cubs’ suckitude here is surpassed by only one team in the whole of the majors: The A’s, with -2.50.
If anything, I would take that as a good sign. The A’s may be .500 in close games so far, but that’s with the worst reliever Clutch score in the majors (and it would be by far the worst if the Cubs weren’t doing their best to keep pace). If we’re assuming that the A’s wrecking ball ways in blowouts will regress toward the mean, we should assume the same for their bullpen performance.
You’d figure there should be some balancing there. Cook is about to be back, barring anything unexpected. O’Flaherty is starting his rehab outings but we’ll have to see how effective he is. Gregerson’s been worse than hoped for but he’s still capable. Abad’s been a nice addition but is not as good as he started out. Johnson..yeah.
if nothing else, cook and O’Flaherty limit otero’s inning and push abad into low leverage lefty situations.
I just wish I saw Johnson as “below average” and not “gas can.” Having a Ziegler in the pen is nice.
Ha. Otero will still always pitch even when there are others who can do it. It’s the Melvin way!
Posnanski: http://www.nbcsports.com/baseball/mlb/oakland-way
Good read, thanks for posting. Loved this quote:
Here he has to go and really explain how the A’s are doing it!
So much for my retirement plan.
Used to work ion the same organization as this woman named Hope. I swear every time you asked them how they were going to something they said that Hope would take the lead on the porject, or she would write the call routing, etc. “Hope isnt a strategy” became our standard battle cry for like 6 months.
Wow. Heads are turning.
Is Bed still burning?
time will come
A fact’s a fact.
read the f(k), ed
In fairness, you grilled it which was still an appropriate place.
Great work here. I would enjoy to see a graph comparing the 1986 Mets’ metrics with these guys. That’s who this group resembles most to me, although those comparisons might not square up statistically and it’s more of an abstract impression I get having seen this sort of thing only once before in a lifetime of baseball obsession.
Thanks.
That particular year they were 108-54 with a +205 run differential (783-578). Breaking it down:
1 run games: 29-20
2-4 run games: 52-25
5+ run games: 27-9
Obviously the A’s have a bit of work to do if they’re going to come anywhere close to 81-45 in games closer than 5 runs.
Maybe that’s the mean they’ll progress to and this won’t be so much a season as a coronation. What this weekend made me feel, watching the history lesson and the frenzied packed houses and the cartoonishly ridiculous, Harlem Globetrotters stuff going on between the lines, was almost without precedent for me.
As everyone has said-thank you for the work on this. You mentioned them in the top, but maybe the group to compare them to is the M’s team. Although I sure as hell hope we dont end up with similar results.
Posnanski was the one to bring them up. Here’s that season:
1 run games: 26-12
2-4 run games: 56-24
5+ run games: 34-10
Run differential: 927-627 (+300)
And, thanks.
LOL-So I just confused you with one of the better sports writers of our time. The power of the Kraut ;)
I’ll take it.
Oh, and that year? Seattle was 10-9 against the A’s, with their 102-60 record. Otherwise the Mariners were 106-37.
That season the A’s went like this:
1 run games: 21-19
2-4 run games: 50-34
5+ run games: 31-9
Run differential: 884-645 (+239)
KOTD is Kraut of the Day…literally kraut/cabbage-related. Your post, though excellent, may not qualify.
Also, the Diamondbacks sure get their asses kicked a lot.
Any good suggestions for a suitable category?
f(k)
Thanky.
f(k) is a math joke (functions doing work on a variable are often written that way: eg. a function adding one to any number could be written f(x) = x+1)
I thought about this awhile and why that’s always the meme, “How do they do it?” You got it from Posnanski today, it’s every day on the sports channels and talk radio, it’s in the title here, although James has extended it — in the realm of statistical representation of the results — properly to the other teams’ similarities to ours and kind of pushed me to my point.
Which is that the question isn’t how do they do it; like James alludes to, everybody does and Farhan and the Double B and the rest of the formidable team he has assembled with tell you that 8 days a week and thrice on Sunday after the pie and the Gatorade come down.
It’s not “How do they do it?” It’s “This is the way it is now done, with further innovations coming as necessary.” We are so lucky, we get to watch our pal Brad Pitt here invent the living future of this entire game, which will develop and blossom in a hundred million directions long after we are all dead and gone from this world. Got to win the last game now. Got to.
To take it from you-know-who would be unimaginable and as deeply Karmic as any sports tale ever told, and I can’t help but feel that is where this is all headed.
The numbers and the feel line up.
Other years, it was like “This is the year we could do it!”
This year, it’s more like “(Burp) That was tasty. Next!”
Thanks for putting all this together. The only logical conclusion is that the bullpen is not Mexican enough.
You might just be right. Thanks, too.
can someone tagline
“The only logical conclusion is that the bullpen is not Mexican enough.”
?
I don’t know how to do that but this should make the cut IMO.
Taglined!
Thinking about it, of course, I guess the case could be made that the A’s are somewhat underachieving based on their overall record. Even if you justifiably say a 15-2 record in blowouts is beyond normal, 12-5 or 11-6 would be reasonable. Then again, as good as the pitching’s been, they’re not one of the likelier teams to get blown out often.
But, it’s reasonable to also suggest they should be better than their 20-20 record in closer games. A lot of that can be explained by a few of those bullpen meltdowns. I’d suppose if their record in closer games was 22-18 or 23-17, a 12-5 record in blowouts would bring their Pythagorean record a few games closer to their actual one.
Yes? No?
My uneducated guess is “yes”.
Agreed. The blowouts are exactly the games that shouldn’t be chalked up to luck — even if some balls had taken unlucky bounces, they still would have probably won those games. The warning sign to me would be a team that is overachieving in close games without winning many blowouts. I think the one knock against the A’s would be that they have had a somewhat easy schedule at this point in the season, though the average winning percentage of the teams they have played against is .495 (not guaranteed to converge to .500 because of unbalanced schedules). But the team has done nothing that would suggest that they aren’t legitimately very good.
Yeah. We know they’ve got a difficult set of games leading toward the break, but after that the schedule also gets easier. This next month ought to be a firm test to see where they’re at for the short term, and they have a great chance to leave themselves in fine shape with a strong showing.
And a 5-run game could have easily been a 4-run game and fallen into that middle category, so there’s bound to be a little “noise” mixed in there.
What’s notable about their 15 “blowout” wins is the margin of victory:
5: 3x (which happen to be the first 3)
6: 1x
7: 1x
8: 4x
9: 1x
10: 3x
11: 2x
The funky thing with the A’s scoring is the bimodal distribution:
It’s like they are two hitting teams, a decent one and a great one.
Runs allowed has a more conventional shape
So are there just some days when the offense is “on”?
They’ve only scored 7 runs once? HUGE CAUSE FOR CONCERN!
They’re twice as likely to score 11 as they are 5!
Not anymore! They were obviously reading FK today.
Do we have comparisons to other teams?
Not offhand, no. They should be Poisson distributed though.
(That means the graph should look like a French fish.)
Needs a beret.
or more tongue.
Weibull.
Even though it is continuous?
Here the author uses a mixed discrete uniform and Poisson with the weight derived from the 2013 season’s data
f(R) = 0.25 * DiscUnif{0,⌊λ⌋} + 0.75 * Pois(λ)
Well, you can define a discrete distribution from a continuous one by integrating over each unit interval. Admittedly, that is kind of ugly. Also ad hoc, but so is any other approach that fits the data decently.
Poisson by itself is definitely wrong, since runs scoring are not independent events for a couple of different reasons: 1) a hit can drive in multiple runs, advance other runners, and/or put another runner on base 2) pitcher quality varies.
I think that’s the nub … we’re looking for a distribution that fits the data rather than deriving one ab initio from the data-generating process.
I once tried to prove that Weibull satisfied the latter, to no success. But it fits the data really, really, well with only two fitted parameters. Each parameter has a physical interpretation, too. One is related to the average number of runs scored (the scale parameter) and the other is the pythagorean exponent (the shape parameter).
The latter is a really amazing result: based on the analytical form of the Weibull distribution, you can derive the familiar pythagorean theorem of baseball. It’s one of the reasons that I think it should be possible to prove the Weibull ab initio, although as I said I have not figured out how.
I tried to do something like that once too (trying to derive the distribution from first principles) and didn’t get anywhere.
NERDS!
I have some ideas on this. I’ll try to follow up. Probably still won’t get as far as a nice closed-form solution, though.
(Some good stuff in there about good plays vs. misplays and so on)
Thanks for the work, James.
Also, if it had not been posted yet, see if you can find which celebrity you might know was quoted in the latest Grantland article, The Myth of the First-Pitch Strike
Before clicking, I’ll post my guess. Is it you?
Nice job by one of ours. Votto’s comments come across as very thoughtful.
Huh, Sal.
I miss overlooking him.
I miss looking over him.
I look over lots of people.
Good to see his old articles still receiving views. Even if it was 8 (!!) years ago.
Nothing terribly analytical from me, but if you ever need some numbers run and compared with some images to go with it, I’m your man!
(Thanks)
A small source of pride on a Monday night. It was nice to see. That was one of my favorite articles to research. Tangotiger had a great related comments thread on his blog which I can’t find at the moment.
One of the things I have tried to learn as I progress in life is how to be proud of my accomplishments without being attached to them. It turns out this is more difficult than I thought.
And the follow-up: http://www.hardballtimes.com/more-on-pitch-sequences/
The Grantland article is kinda bad. Like most of its kind it gives the worthless and really misleading numbers for PAs that end on a particular count instead of the numbers for “after” a particular count which are the ones that matter and are not misleading.
1-0 vs. 0-1 is a very big difference, not as big as the huge difference between 2-1 and 1-2, but still very big and worth saying it’s important if you’re an announcer. Also, those numbers don’t really say anything about the advisability of swinging at the first pitch. I’m not sure what Alderson thinks hitters are supposed to make of looking at the count-based outcome grid.
And why not at least include 0-2 and 2-0 in the chart? The first pitch determines which of those counts is possible.
that’s why the “after” part matters (and any 2-strike count using their numbers will be WAY worse than non 2-strike counts, because suddenly a strikeout is a non-zero possibility)
And the A’s would NEVER bet on Bubba Starling, not even if he grew up inside O.co stadium.
Stomper’s secret child issues a mournful bleat from his hidden lair under the Fun Zone.
It’s time to let go of the Landon Donovan storyline.
Really good read!
Thanks, and go As.
VOGT!!!
That was so awesome, it had to be posted in two threads.
hey now. one man, one vogt.
Vogter fraud.
Should be accessible through the Twitter link. I saw someone didn’t want to waste a paid click or something?
i might be cheap but i won’t steal!
just kidding. thanks.
It’s true that it’s nothing earth-shattering but it’s good to see a little more attention. Plus, Tyler is a brother of a couple good friends who have a band in Austin. They all did the KP Baseball Monthly back in the day, though it was mostly Tyler’s project with one of the brothers doing the drawings for the covers.
Are there any rumors going around about talks between the A’s and Donaldson’s agent? He only had 1.158 years of ML service time going into this season. What do people think it would take to buy out his arby years along with 1+ free agent years?
Money.
How can that service time calculation be right? He played more than half a season’s worth of games between 2010 and 2012.
Years.days
So he was just under 2 years.
(1 season = 182 calendar days. There is something about 172 days counting for a full season, but I don’t remember if that applies if they are split across different seasons.)
So either he’ll be a Super 2 next year or in 3 Year Arby?
If I’m reading it right, that would make him a Super 2. Which sounds like a good thing for us. Sort of.
Ah, that explains it. Pretty FKing confusing.
Ahhhhhhh…I am dumb. Good stuff for the A’s though.
Going into Arbitration after being an MVP doesn’t sound good for the A’s outside of this season… well… actually even if he gets PAID, still good stuff for the A’s, just expensive stuff.
I had already assumed he would go to arb in 2015. The good thing is that they have four more years of team control after this one, rather than three (though he will be holy shit expensive in 2018 if he keeps this up).
I just copied from Cot’s. According to bbref, he played in 247 games in 2010+2012+2013, so that should be at least 1.5 seasons. 907 PA sounds like 1.5 seasons too.
How many games did he sit on the bench tough?
It’s got nothing to do with games played, either.
I think it’s because the service time calculation is not what we think it is. 1.158 is not “1 year and 15% more,” it’s “1 year and 158 days.”
See here: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/principles/contract-details/service-time-super-two/
(Don’t worry, I just learned that myself)
What would it take to get Ben Zobrist from the Rays? Team option in 2015, FA in 2016.
Johnson and Punto!
I dunno. Punto offers a lot of positiional flexibility.
bench and…..?
Warming. Never can have too much of that when you’re in Detroit in October.
between ones and tenths.
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We apparently had the chance to trade JimJo for the 39th pick in the draft:
http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/eye-on-baseball/24580512/report-marlins-tried-to-acquire-jim-johnson-from-athletics
Your All Time Top 25 Teams for Run Diff through 58 Games:
Those are some silly numbers at the top.
That ’39 Yankee team was a beast. So was that 1902 Pirates team.
The ’39 Yankees had a 7-day stretch where they won 9 games, by these scores:
14-5
7-2
16-4
11-5
11-0
8-2
6-1
13-3
18-2
All on the road
It kind of reminds of that stretch the A’s had earlier in May.
Turn these A’s loose on those St. Louis Browns and see what happens.
Worst all time is the 1932 Red Sox -349
More impressive: NONE of those games were against the Astros.
LOL
Both the A’s & the Browns had -300+ diffs that year. I’m sure that helped. But interestingly enough, in the AL that year no other team was over +100. Next best was Cleveland at +97. All the other positive AL diffs combined was only +297.
Damn. The A’s were a -311 and the Phillies were a -303. Must have sucked some serious ass to be a Philadelphia sports fan that year.
Usually does.
Good point.
This doesn’t hurt:
Not what I would expect with our middle infield, but Donaldson is having a good year with the glove and I guess Lowrie/Sogard/Punto/Callaspo are getting the job done.
See below – getting more specific.
I think Sogard is a very good defensive 2Bman. That’s why I don’t feel any urgency to replace him.
He is, at least under this specific set of measurements:
mark ellis at the top, how surprising
And:
Another:
And the other side of it:
Donaldson has the big UZR numbers, but Lowrie so far is doing much better on defense than he was last year (with obvious caveat that one-third of a season of UZR has no predictive power).
this is very surprising.
I am sure positioning has a lot to do with it, and lowriesnew found range.
Side note, I find it odd when the catcher throws towards short stop on a strike out with no one on.
I think the most likely thing is that Lowrie just had a couple of good months. I don’t think this should really affect our overall opinion of his defensive ability.
I haven’t been able to find it, but I recall a recent article that commented about his ankle injury and how all last year it still wasn’t 100%, and his better range this year is a result of it finally getting better.
Those are the defensive efficiency numbers I mentioned the other day, though I didn’t have the breakdown.
Let’s look a little more closely:
Flies/liners: A’s have made about 2% of 847 plays, or 17 plays total, more than average. UZR says +8 runs in LF, -6 in CF (it hates Crisp this year), +8 in RF. 10 runs = 12 plays, so the individual and team numbers agree pretty closesly.
Grounders to 1B side: About 2.5% of 340 plays better than average, or 8 plays total. UZR says we are basically average (+1 run at 2B, -2 runs at 1B), so the discrepancy is a little bigger, about 9 plays, but still well within margins of error (just over 1 sigma).
Grounders to 3B side: 6.5% of 434 plays better than average, or 28 plays total. UZR says +1 at SS, +10 at 3B (which is already impressive). 11 runs = 15 plays, so the difference is another 13 plays, which is about 1.5 sigma.
In total, that’s 53 more plays made than the average team on liners, flies, and grounders, but UZR says that our fielders have only made 26 plays more than what average fielders should be expected to do.
UZR counts plays made due to range and plays made due to positioning/shifts the same, so the other 27 are (presumably) accounted for by having easier to field balls in play than average. That’s actually a smaller number than I thought, and within the limits of what you might expect from luck or measurement error of the different metrics. We have not broken DIPS after all.
(In addition, our pitchers are a bit above average at generating infield flies, which is partly a park effect, and also helps the over team defensive efficiency rating.)
For an underperforming team, we sure seem to be doing ok.
Under performing or unlucky?
Yes.
Under performing on offense. Under performing on the mound. Man, this team sucks.
Seriously. We should be 3-5 wins better! #seasonsruined
we.are.all.going.to.die.
The Padres. Oh my god the Padres.
This comparison should probably include HRs, which BABIP does not. That explains some of the discrepancy for the A’s. For example, Detroit with a similar hard-hit ball rate, has a lead on Oakland of about 24 points in BABIP (excluding HRs), but only about c19 points in BA on contact (including HRs).
Yeah, I was about to ask whether “hard hit rate” includes balls that go over the fence, since those are definitely *not* included in BABIP.
I’ll ask Mark if it’s possible to get a version of that with the HRs included.
Otherwise, I can always add the numbers to it in some form.
Oh, it looks like you already did ask him that!
Wait wait wait…andeux is @gloriousmundy on Twitter?
And gloriousmundy is @andeux on Twitter. It’s a crazy world.
Mind. Blown?
Yeah…I knew that at some point. I’ve been meaning to change my username.
I don’t think it matters. Who are the 8 people who bothered following him?
Yeah, unfortunate coincidence.
I’ve been using Ruppert Mundys as my fantasy team name since like 2006, left ** before gm joined there, and took that username on twitter (because some japanese guy has @andeux) before he joined here.
I should change mine, really. I think my followers are 2 real people and 6 bots.
Here we go: