Five Days
This will sound overly dramatic, but it’s simply a realistic assessment of where this team stands - the Mariners have exactly five games to save the 2008 season. If they don’t perform well between now and Sunday, the rest of the year will simply be playing for second place, because the hole will be too large to overcome. They have five home games against below average teams, starting with Bedard and Felix to close out this series.
If the Mariners don’t win three of the next five games, they can cash in their chips and go home. The deficit would just be too large to believe that anything short of a miracle could cause them to win the division.
With the Angels and A’s both off to strong starts, you have to set the bar for minimum wins required at 93. It would take some historic collapses by both clubs for the division winner to finish with less than 92 wins, especially considering how well they’ve both played through the first five weeks of the season. So, the M’s target has to be 93+ wins.
If they go 2-3 to finish out this homestand, that would put them at 16-23 with 123 games to go. In order to finish the year with 93 wins, they’d have to play .626 baseball, a 77-46 mark. This team is just not capable of playing that well. Very few teams are, and this is certainly not one of them. If they can go 4-1, they “only” have to play .608 baseball the rest of the year - very freaking hard, but at least within the ream of possibility.
Two wins or less and it’s pull the plug time. The season will officially be over, and they can start shopping the veterans around and setting up the interview list for the new front office and management staff. Three wins keeps the team on life support, with a faint chance of contending still hanging by a thread. Four or five wins gives them a little bit of life as they head out on the road next week.
But they’re at a crossroads. Finish this week strong or fold your tents, because the rest of the year is a waste of time if they can’t beat the Rangers and White Sox at home with the season on the line.
It was time to mail it in when we got swept by the Orioles.
I hope Lincoln and Armstrong realized what they signed up for when for 2 years in a row they had a chance to fire Bill Bavasi but instead decided to keep him around.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:10 pmAs much as I want to see them defy the odds I just don’t see it happening. I hate to say it but the best chance the Mariners will have at a ring during their first 50 years of existence was the 2001 season. I truly hope I’m wrong but I don’t think I am.
There’s just an air of defeatism that has surrounded this team for the last few years…well, since the 2001 season. I’ve smelled this aroma before and it doesn’t end well.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:18 pmSo…..when does Seahawks training camp start again?
May 6th, 2008 at 11:21 pmWhile I think that most everyone will realize that this team doesn’t have a chance, somehow I wonder if Bavasi, McLaren, etc will see it that way, or just keep saying that the team just has to “get hot”. I realize that part of the reason is financial, if the M’s keep claiming their in the hunt when their clearly not, I’m sure that many naive fans will still go, hoping for 1995 redux.
On one hand, it’s depressing to be throwing in the towel this early in the year, on the other hands, I can’t help but have a glimmer of hope at the notion of Bavasi and Maclaren being told GTFO. However, I still fear who would be brought in to replace Bavasi. It’s amazing how this “old-boys club” mentality pervades this organization. When they got rid of Gillick, they brought in the “gritty washed up veteran” of GM’s in Bavasi . . . who has stocked the team with gritty washed up veterans. When they needed a manager, feeling burned by the “young and unproven” Melvin, they went for . . . the gritty washed up veteran in Grover. When he bailed . . . the gritty never was veteran bench coach was installed.
So the next question is who would Howard and Lincoln SERIOUSLY consider for GM? Do they view “stathead” analysis as a flash in the pan, meaning that guys like Antonetti need not apply? Anyway, here’s to praying that they will change their ways, but given the track record, we would probably end up with some other team’s GM castoff and the M’s brass will play it up talking about all their “experience” and how having “been through the wars” means they’ll do better this time than under Bavasi. Ugh, that would suck.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:26 pm2- I still can’t believe that 2001 was the last time we made the playoffs. It doesn’t feel that long ago to me yet, we’re now going on our seventh straight year without an October . . .
May 6th, 2008 at 11:28 pmSo long as Lincoln and Armstrong are at the helm, the Old Boys Club will be alive and well in Seattle. Meet Wayne Krivsky, you’re new GM of the Seattle Mariners.
I only see them embracing the “Stathead” GM as a desperation move to make money. Gut the payroll and let the new GM take the fall for it.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:29 pmI would love to see them bring in a guy like Paul DePodesta (I feel like he got a raw deal in LA). Alas, he is a nerd who lives in his mom’s basement and is not a “baseball man.”
May 6th, 2008 at 11:33 pmPaul DePodesta as a GM? No. As an assistant, yes.
Count me in for the Chris Antonetti fanclub.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:35 pmAntonetti would work for me as well. Since Seattle already has a reputation for being a nerdy city among the mainstream media (they drink lattes! They drive hybrids!), why not embrace the stereotype for once?
May 6th, 2008 at 11:46 pmBrianL-
May 6th, 2008 at 11:47 pmFunny you mentions Krivsky. I was thinking of him as I wrote my previous post. I REALLY hope that isn’t the direction decided for this team once Bill and Mac are gone.
#10
I think that if you visualize Krivsky as the GM now, it’ll be less painful when it happens.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:49 pmsketchy mariners. im slowly caring less and less that i turn the game on everyday.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:56 pmI hate to say it, but it’s starting to get redundant around here.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:12 am300ZXNA Says: I’m sure that many naive fans will still go, hoping for 1995 redux.
I really hope they spare us that ’95 hype we heard before when the season was over early – especially from Rizzs. Ugh, that would make the summer unbearable.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:18 amKIM NG for GM!
May 7th, 2008 at 12:22 amSooo…on 5/7/08, we stand at 14-20/.412. Not impressive.
On the other hand, on 5/7/05, the Astros stood at 11-18/.379.
Not to say we’re heading for a pennant, but can you blame me for at least grasping at a silver lining?
May 7th, 2008 at 12:23 amIsn’t there some talk that Brian Cashman will be looking for a job next year. If he’s available, the Mariner FO might go after him because he is a “big name.”
May 7th, 2008 at 12:29 amLincoln and Armstrong will look at the revenue forecast and if they’re really concerned about low attendance, they’ll make the Griffey trade to guarantee a ticket sales/merchandising spike. They know they can always play the Griffey card if they get desperate enough from a financial/attendance standpoint.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:35 amI have made a few Griffey comments here and for the most part I was joking (sort of)…
But this team is giving me absolutely no reason to watch their games (which I still do because I’m an idiot..I even watched the 10-1 Texas game right until the bitter end)or cheer for them. I am getting tired of watching this team hardly show up for the games anymore…they don’t even look like they want to win. Even Willie B. looks bored…
So I say…Make the Grifey trade!! And do it now…before he hits number 600…I would much rather see him do it in an M’s uniform anyways and at least it would give me something to cheer about it. Problem is Griffey wants to play for a contender…and a contender we are not…we lose to Texas tomorrow and we aren’t tied for last…we are last!
I’m sure everyone can give me lots of reasons not to make that trade and they would probably be correct..as long as BB is in charge, he’ll give up way too much for yet another veteran which injury issues ect. But I don’t care anymore…
This team is already done..stick a fork in ‘em! Trade for Griffey and put me outta my misery..give me a reason to watch this team..
Colorado needs starting pitching..maybe we can swing a three-way *grin* Washup/Batista or both and a bag of balls to Colorado they can ship someone of value/prospects to the Reds and we’ll take Griffey…
Sorry about my rant..I’ve had three Red Bulls tonight…
May 7th, 2008 at 1:11 amGeez, Wash gets toasted enough here as a “fly-ball” pitcher…can you how bad he’d get torched at that altitude?
Actually, I can. They were named Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:19 am*can you imagine*
My grammar sucks tonight…time to hit the sack! >:(
May 7th, 2008 at 1:21 amOn the other hand, on 5/7/05, the Astros stood at 11-18/.379.
And they ended up coming in second (11 games out) in a division where four of the six teams were .500 or below. Here’s a measure of how bad that NL Central division was: the next best team was the Brewers, at .500, and they were no better than the worst team in the NL East (Washington, also at .500). And still the Astros couldn’t take that division; they won the wildcard. You think the M’s are going to end up being the 4th best team in the AL this year?
Here’s the thing: if it was just the Angels out front, or just the A’s, you could hold onto some hope for a miracle. Pitchers get hurt, guys go into slumps, shit happens. But both the A’s and the Angels are out there, up front, putting dust down as they dwindle into the distance. You can’t reasonably expect both of them to collapse. There’s the improbable, and then there’s pigs, flying.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:21 amDamn..and I hate pork!
Even if the pigs, ponies or whatever start flying we are still way behind the A’s and the California Golden Angels of wherever they’re moving to to catch up. And if the magic number is 5…or is it four now…Felix better be starting all of those games and pitch shutout baseball because no one on this team can hit once a guy gets on base anyways…
Wow…these Red Bulls taste diferent when you put Jagermeister in them…
May 7th, 2008 at 1:31 amThe Rockies FO has gotten much smarter since the Hampton/Neagle debacle. I doubt they’d be willing to take on Wash or Batista.
Red Bull and Jager, eh? I have fond memories of that combo. And by “fond memories” I mean “waking up having no idea where the hell I am.”
May 7th, 2008 at 1:58 amOh I know where I am…
I’m in Baseball Hell
*grin*
night everyone…
May 7th, 2008 at 2:05 amI can’t believe we’ve already reached this point. That’s depressing.
Don’t have much else to say…that’s just really depressing. We’re a great fanbase, we deserve better.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:14 amJust like old times. This is the 1984 Mariners all over again. Only for a lot more money. I remember those days when a good day wasn’t a WIN, it was hey, Alvin Davis hit two doubles. Felix is Mark Langston. No one in the league even knows we’re here. No hope, no future, just some baseball games. At least it’s outdoors. They ought to bring back the Astroturf for us.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:27 am8.
Yup. He made some good trades during his one year with the Dodgers (getting Penny for LoDuca) and would not have wasted tens of millions on Nomar and Andruw Jones.
But he knew nothing about managing an organization. The Dodgers have decades of history, memories, ties between the team and community, and most importantly ties within the Dodger community. He laid off long-time Dodger employees without even a word of explanation or a goodbye. Now in many cases letting an employee go is the right choice — but there are right ways and wrong ways of firing people, and he did them entirely the wrong way, upsetting other people in the organization.
In a single year, DePodesta started to unravel decades of goodwill and continuity, both within and outside the organization. He had to go.
Now DePodesta was unfairly blasted by sportswriters and fans for his trades, which were on the whole good for the Dodgers. But he was correctly blasted for his abysmal communications skills, not just with sportswriters but within his own organization.
He was pretty much the anti-Bavasi (I’m not saying that DePodesta is not a good guy, but he certainly did not convey it the way Bavasi does). But an anti-Bavasi can be just as bad for an organization as a Bavasi.
Antonetti or Ng as others have mentioned could be good choices. DePodesta would not be, unless he’s improved his people skills and communication skills.
May 7th, 2008 at 4:51 amI think it would be more accurate to say that the Mariners are already hosed, as they have to play .617 ball the rest of the way to get to 93 wins. There’s no reason to privilege a measurement point five games from now.
There will always be some possible lucky streak that would make the numbers look more reasonable, but there’s no reason to (a) expect it to happen now or (b) require it to happen now. If you want to express the Mariners goal as needing to play .607 ball plus a “hot week” with a 4-1 record, the hot week could come at any time in the season.
May 7th, 2008 at 6:07 amThis is good. We need new management. Hopefully the new FO is competent.
May 7th, 2008 at 6:32 amWhat makes you think we’re getting a new front office even if Bavasi gets fired?
May 7th, 2008 at 7:41 amYou know,
we all like Ichiro here
But he’s not good enough to be the best player on your team.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:52 amWhat makes any of you think we’d be getting a new FO or GM? They haven’t fired His Royal Incompetence yet, why on earth would they do it now?
May 7th, 2008 at 8:09 amThis blatant reality is outrageously depressing. Unfortunately I do not see anything changing and yet another year chalked up to complete under achievement.
Sad almost decade for Mariner fans everywhere.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:15 amI’m starting to like my Baseball Mogul team better than the real one.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:22 amI’m an A’s fan living in Seatter for the last 9 years. I don’t think the Ms have much to worry about as far as the A’s go. They will certainly fade with all the young/inexperienced players they have right now. The Angels are obviously the bigger concern, and they don’t even have their best pitcher healthy yet.
I watch almost all the Ms games and there just seems to be something about this team that isn’t clikcing yet. Bedard doesn’t look nearly as dominant as he did with the O’s. And the bullpen is just not nearly as good as it had been over the last couple of years. Not sure what they can do, but I think they’ll still make it competitive with the Angels by the end of the year.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:26 amNot only are they losing, but they are committing the mortal sin of being boring while they do it. Watching the team score 15 runs a week is just not interesting enough to keep me engaged. Not only am I not buying tickets, I am starting to tune out on the games after 2 or 3 innings. I can only stomach so much incompetence per day.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:42 amThat’s not really that depressing a thing to say. Any team that wins 116 games in probably that team’s best shot at a championship - that’s a really good team.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:45 amFor those of you who’d like to do a rough-and-dirty calculation of the probability that the M’s win X more games out of the Y remaining, given that you believe that they are “truly” a Z-win team:
1) Let p = Z/162.
2) Calculate the probability that a Binomial(Y,p) >= X [ I use a statistical package called R to do this, but I'm sure it can be done in Excel or by finding some tool online ]
Plugging in X = 78 [ = 92 - 14 ], Y = 128 [ = 162 - (14+20) ], Z = 92 gives 0.094, or 9.4%. And keep in mind that’s *assuming* that the M’s are truly a 92-win team. Ugh… even the optimists have reason to worry.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:12 amThis is why I’m glad I have MLB 08: The Show.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:12 amWow, there is a lot of epic downers going on in this thread. I tend to think that the assertion that this is a lost season if the M’s don’t win 3 of their next 5 is excessive. The season is less is than 1.5 months old. This team can start hitting. Joh can figure it out, Sexson can approach .250ba (which puts his OBP around .400) and Wlad and Clement could hit .270/.340/.380, like we have been hoping.
I believe that this is a 80-85 win team, and I still think they will end up there. To make the argument to throw in the towel this early seems a bit ridiculous. There are a lot of things that could be switched that will make this a .500 team.
I don’t think the M’s will catch the Angels (and I’m not sold on them catching the A’s) but I do think they’ll compete the rest of this year.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:24 am#40
Do you have any idea how hard a sustained winning percentage over .608 is?
May 7th, 2008 at 9:25 amAn 80-85 win team is not going to be “competitive” with the Angels this year.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:29 amyes, its a 99 win season over 162 games. My argument is that its possible. Not that it will, or is even likely, but possible. My point isn’t that the M’s are still going to win the division, my argument is that throwing in the towel now is ridiculous.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:30 amI believe that this is a 80-85 win team, and I still think they will end up there.
If you thought that this team was going to win 80-85 games at the start of the year and you now know that they went 14-20 in their first 34 games, you are either required to believe they will win less than you originally thought or you have to believe the team is better than you thought at the beginning of the year. There are no other options.
Which is it? Have the first 34 games convinced you that you underrated the talent on the field and this was really a 90 win team, or do you believe that this team is still what you thought it was and will now win 77-79 games?
Taking a position of “nothing has changed” is just ignorance.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:33 am“Within shouting distance”? Is that a better description? How about (in the old Harry Caray voice) “if they run off a bunch’a wins, they can get right back in this race”
May 7th, 2008 at 9:37 amAnd I could score with Tamlyn Tomita. Possible, but very, very, very unlikely (particularly since she knows who I am).
It’s not a very strong argument, I’m afraid…
May 7th, 2008 at 9:37 amNot to make this a big GM discussion but if Antonetti didn’t want to go to St. Louis why would he want to work in Seattle?
May 7th, 2008 at 9:41 amI’m not sure this is true, its has been a little rough for the better part of this decade, but I certainly wouldn’t say that defeatism has characterized the organization for anything like that long. In fact desperate optimism seems to be the calling card of the last few administrations.
I wonder if in some respects the miraculous 1995 climb into the playoffs has hurt this team in the long run. Its hard to argue, especially since so much good obviously came of it in the short run. However, if you can come back from 13 games down in a short season then anything is possible. Virtually every season, when viewed through the rose colored glasses of 1995 is a season the Ms might “refuse to lose” again.
Sure, we can plug in the numbers and see the irrational odds… but we all saw 1995, right? So somewhere deep inside even the most pessimistic Ms fan knows that it can be done.
Is the current administration infected by this same irrational concept? Sure, headline names were part of the organization back then, but it is part of Mariners lore. How many advisers, scout etc. are still with the team from that halcyon summer? Or… is ownership/advertising just aware of this phenomenon among the fan base and use it to sell us on crappy teams year after year?
May 7th, 2008 at 9:41 amSo, let’s assume that the rest of the season consists of playing for a 500 record and falling short - a bit like 2006 all over again: Sod all hope of making the playoffs; a lineup that looks good once in a while, but finds ways to get shut down over and over again by mediocre right-handers; a rotation dominated (albeit not so clearly) by pitch-to-contact guys who can succeed for three or four games at a time, but get torched more often that not. Tack on an out-of-sorts J.J. Putz and the 2008 Mariners might be lucky to win 72 games.
A performance like that, with a budget of $112 or so, would be historically bad, certainly enough to earn Bill Bavasi and John McLaren an early retirement.
But Howard Lincoln will still be Chairman and CEO and Chuck Armstrong will still be team president. These guys crave safe choices the way my five year old craves her special blankie. Is there ANY hint that they would consider someone as “radical” as Chris Antonetti for the role of GM? Any chance that they’d install a rookie manager?
If Bavasi and McLaren go, we’ll see a clamour from the uninformed and the scared to replace them with a couple of retreads - say “proven” Ken Williams and “fiery” Ozzie Guillen when they get canned from the White Sox.
And so the history of the Seattle Mariners repeats itself - but skipping the tragedy bit and concentrating on farce.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:43 amThis doesn’t mean anything.
The Angels could also “run off a bunch’a wins”, opening the gap even wider than it is now.
Don’t get me wrong; we can still enjoy watching the M’s this year even if we analytically can understand that their season is pretty much over at this point.
There are things to appreciate, like King Felix and Ichiro; but fandom doesn’t require that we blind ourselves to the reality that this simply isn’t a very good team.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:44 amDave:
Uh, yes there are other options. If you look at the last couple years who won between 80 and 85 games, they had 35 game streaks where they were under .500. They also had 35 game streaks were they were significantly over .500. You have mentioned earlier this year (I believe over on frangraphs) that if certain players start out the year cold, we tend to ask “are they done?” when in fact, if they hit the same cold streak in the middle of the year, we would say “they are in a funk.” My point is that we say that about the M’s right now.
The first 34 games convinced me this team isn’t living up to Bavasi expectations, or even their own. That is all. Its a 162 game season, and circumstances change. They don’t play the same 34 games over and over again.
Nye
This is something I certainly agree with. But also to give up all hope of coming back to me is premature.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:46 amThere seems to be a lot of talk about BB and Mac getting fired lately. However, I think nearly everyone will agree that this team is underperforming right now. To what degree is up for debate, but for the sake of argument I think we can all agree on that statement.
Now, let us also say for the sake of argument that this team continues to perform at this level for the rest of the season, finishing well below .500 and out of first place. If that happens, would it not be safe to assume that Lincoln and Armstrong would STRONGLY feel that the team underperformed in 2008, considering the fact that they bet the farm on this season, thinking they would contend? If they do believe this it seems their blame would lay mostly with the players and perhaps not with our GM, manager, or overall baseball philosophy, would it not?
What I am getting at is that it does not seem entirely impossible for this team to continue this same old strategy with the same GM and manager even if this team does finish in last place. What does everyone think? Perhaps they would can Bavasi simply for PR reasons? But it seems almost naive to think that the team is going to change its entire philosphyand personel around because of one bad season in which everyone can agree that the players did not live up to expectations.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:48 amTwo thoughts:
- re #36 - It’s pretty sad when our most optimistic post is from an A’s fan.
- re earlier posts (4, 14) on dreading hearing “we’re not out of it yet” hype… get used to it. There’s no way in hell that anyone in the organization is going to open up to the press and say “we’re out of it” in May. I can’t think of a better way to make that 15k attendance figure a season high than to make a statement like that. In fact, I’d expect them to turn UP the hype, and start featuring as many heartwarming stories as possible to try to lure Joe Lunchbox to the park and compensate for the dull product they’re putting on the field.
They may not know how to evaluate baseball talent or put a roster together, but I’m pretty sure we can count on them for empty marketing slogans.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:49 amTbone, I disagree.
Players not playing to expectations: Ichiro and JJ.
That is it.
All other players are following normal career paths; the young ones are learning and the old ones are having more slumps. These are normal and should be expected.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:54 am# 54, are you saying that you completely expected the team to have this record right now? I’m not saying that at the beginning of the year I expected this M’s team to win the division, I didn’t. I also expected a lot of these guys such as Sexson and Vidro to have the terrible seasons that they are having. As you pointed out, you can’t really point to one player (except for Ichiro and JJ) who is having a completely unexpected slump, but what IS unexpected is that pretty much EVERYONE is having a slump at the exact same time. That is unexpected.
But mostly, my question revolves around the fact that I suspect that Lincoln and Armstrong probably think that this team is drastically underperforming.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:02 amWait. A team can play “under its head” for two months just as easily as a team can play “over its head” for two months.
I i think the Ms are a 85 win team it doesn’t mean that I think they are going to maintain a steady 53% win rate all season. In fact, I was pretty sure that we would see a month like this some time during the season. Isn’t projecting this performance out over the rest of the season the results based analysis that we often criticized the management for using when they concluded that the ‘07 Mariners really were an 88 win team?
May 7th, 2008 at 10:03 amTbone-I think there will be changes. They took the Bedard gamble as much to put butts in the seats ($$$) as to have a chance to win. Using that formula, they’re gonna lose money. The fault lies mostly with Bavasi. He just doesn’t know how to construct a team. Smoke em if ya got em. We’re goin down.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:04 amSomething to ponder:
If you were to predict the result of 162 coin tosses you should guess 81 heads and 81 tails.
But if you’d flipped the coin 34 times already, and come up with 14 heads and 20 tails, you would not then predict that the remaining 128 coin tosses would split 67 heads to 61 tails (which would restore the balance). You should guess that the remaining 128 tosses will split 64:64, in which case you’ll finish up with 78 heads and 84 tails.
However, to stretch my anology a little, you might examine your coin for a bias that causes it to turn up tails almost 60% of the time (say a preponderance of impatient right-handed hitters and an leaky bullpen) and change your prediction to 67 heads and 95 tails.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:04 amLast night, 9:15, I plopped my head on the pillow and turned out the light and turned on the radio to listen to the last few innings of the game. I tuned in just in time to hear Rizzie say it was the top of the 7th and the score was 10-1 Rangers. In less than a minute, the radio was off.
I would have kept it on if the score would have been closer, say 5-1. But this type of stuff is ridiculous.
There is little hope of catching the A’s or Angels. Let’s turn that hope toward just staying ahead of Texas.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:06 amMaybe true, but not particularly informative. You’re considering the probability of observing a streak this bad GIVEN that you end up winning 80-85 games (in fact, the way you’ve phrased it, you’re allowing yourself to look for such a streak at *any point* of the season, not just over the first month). What we’d like to know is, GIVEN that the M’s are way under .500 right now, what’s the probability they end up as an 80-85 win team? These aren’t the same quantities.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:06 amTo be fair, someone holding this position could have expected a weak start based on scheduling, or roster moves. A prediction of 80-85 wins may well have included an expectation that the team would improve through out the season by jettisoning Wilkerson, Vidro, and Richie, and moving Raul to 1B or DH.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:07 amI agree, couple caveats though. One coin flip is entirely independent of the next, which is not so in baseball. Also, say you weighted one side of the coin (giving you a preponderance of tails (losses)) because the team started out slow, but to get them back to their career average numbers, you weighted the other side of the coin (heads, wins) to get the average back to close to what it was supposed to be.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:09 amPony tails?
May 7th, 2008 at 10:09 amWow - I thought this was a “gotcha!” post at first, but apparently not.
Count me as believing it’s premature to call the season over based on a single-digit deficit in the first week of May.
Look, the most realistically optimistic projections called the M’s an 83-85 win team. And they’ll have to play .600 ball the rest of the way to get even there. That’s very difficult, I get it, and it likely won’t be enough to overcome the two teams in front of them.
But the sample size is just too small to make that pronouncement *now*. There are hot starts from surprise players all over the Angels’ and A’s’ rosters - Greg Smith, Dana Eveland, Joe Friggin’ Saunders - that have yet to normalize.
Yes, we’ll need plenty of things to break the M’s way to bridge the gap. But it’s a bit early to “cash in their chips and go home”.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:14 amLet’s not underestimate that the M’s first 1/3rd of the season was the “easy” part of their schedule. To expect them to improve their record when they start playing the harder portion of their schedule is unrealistic.
Stick a fork in them.
I totally agree that the greatest flaw in this team is that they are boring to watch in victory and defeat.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:26 amThey haven’t played 1/3 of the season yet.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:28 amIt is clear that the outlook for the Mariners is bleak but I think Dave’s post, if anything, understates the case somewhat.
93 wins is a realistic minimum target for winning this division. In the last 12 full seasons that the American League West has been a 4 team division (94 and 95 were shortened seasons) the winning team has had 93 wins or less 6 times and 94 wins or more 6 times. The Angels and the A’s are currently on pace to win 102 and 97 wins respectively. They can be expected to cool off some, but it is unlikely they will both fall below 93 wins by the end of the year.
The Mariners need to play at a .612 clip the rest fo the season to make it to 93 wins this year. In the last two years they have met or beat that pace in only two calendar months – June 2006 (18-8) and June 2007 (18-9). They have not played at a .612 clip over a half season since the first half of 2003.
This team is simply not capable of playing at a .612 clip for more than 2/3 of a season.
I predicted 78 wins for the Ms before the season and nothing has changed my mind since.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:32 amI’m sorry, but there’s very little reason to believe that cold streaks are predictive of future hot streaks, and still less evidence.
Further, to steal your analogy of having a coin weighted to one side and then the other, when is the switch? How can you predict that? And at what point do you wonder if instead of a trick hot/cold streaky coin, you’ve got one that’s going to only come up heads 45% of the time?
May 7th, 2008 at 10:37 amI wasn’t trying to make that argument. I was simply implying that the coin analogy wasn’t the best.
No, you can’t predict it. My argument is that those slumping will get back to career averages and the team will get closer to their 80-85 expected total. I don’t know when that will happen, or even if it will for sure. I’m not an optimist. Hell, I have a lot of running bets AGAINST the M’s winning 88 games. But over the course of 162 game season, players go through slumps, and then recover.
No coin only comes up 45% percent of the time forever and ever, if it is properly weighted, it will eventually go 50/50 after enough tosses. However, 162 tosses might not be enough, it might be 200, or 300….maybe the M’s need to play 200 games to catch the Angels.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:47 amI think we’re officially stretching the coin analogy past its breaking point.
While there is an element of randomness that comes into play in determing a team’s won-loss record, the team’s talent level matters far more, and saying “well they could run off a 20 game hot streak” doesn’t mean anything.
So could the Giants, but it wouldn’t mean anything about their true talent level.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:58 amThen you’re arguing that a player or team that gets off to a bad start will play well enough over their average to arrive at their average.
You’re arguing that a cold streak presages a hot streak (and presumably, the opposite as well).
This is not true, and goes exactly to the heart of where you’re not understanding probability correctly.
Let me try it this way:
I have a coin. I flip it twelve times and it comes up heads all twelve times. I take it to a coin-examining lab and after extensive analysis they declare it’s a perfectly normal coin and will come up heads 50% of the time.
I do another 100 trials. It comes up 50-50. Now I’m at 62-50. I do another 900… now I’m at 1012-1000.
Do you see where this is going? The coin doesn’t come up heads forever. But those flips don’t disappear in the sample just because they were improbable.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:00 amI’m probably as guilty as anyone for being negative about this year’s team. But I truly have seen no evidence, from the front office down to the 25th man (that would be Cairo) of signs of life. So I do not agree that there are five days to turn this around. The forks are silver and shiny and sticking in everybody’s back.
So what to do? It’s up to Lincoln and Armstrong. They need to find a way to put this moribund franchise on a new and exciting course. The principles of the recent past — veteran goodness, whatever — need to go. The Mariners need to get exciting new players, rebuild. They have the cash to do it, but as has been documented so brilliantly on this site by DMZ and Dave, have refused to make intelligent decisions.
The Mariners have more than 5 days to do that. They can change the course of this franchise at any time. If they do so, the fans will be back.
The 2008 Mariners are just a mirage, a lie. Unless someone takes the garbage out, the 2009 Mariners will in my opinion stink even more.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:02 amMmmmm, Tamlyn Tomita.
Do the M’s have enough to get a trade with ATL for Texeira this year and sign him now, or is he really going to wait for the offseason and be a FA?
Maybe this could be a new thread? A wish list of guys to get for nothing? Or spending money like the Yankees/Mets?
May 7th, 2008 at 11:06 amPanic! Panic! Panic!
May 7th, 2008 at 11:09 amI wouldn’t start to panic this early. Anything can happen and usually does. The Angels could have more injuries, the A’s could regress and there is always the wild-card.
vr, Xeifrank
and John Ellis, Minoru Arakawa, Chris Larson, Wayne Perry, Frank Shrontz and Craig Watjen if they choose to get involved.
Not to mention John Bauer, Carl Stork, Judith Bigelow, Raymond Ferguson, Rob Glaser, Jeff Raikes, Bill Marklyn, John Stanton, and Rufus Lumry.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:13 amFreddy Garcia threw off a mound yesterday. Wonder where he’ll sign…..
May 7th, 2008 at 11:17 amThank you Derek - that’s the idea I was trying to communicate. The coin is not obliged to come up with an improbable number of heads just to even out an earlier, improbable run of tails - no matter how often one flips it.
The 2008 Mariners have dug themselves a six game hole. If they are a true .500 team, the most likely scenario now is that they finish the season with 78 wins and 84 losses.
That would be “regression to the mean”. What okobojicat is suggesting is, “regression to a little bit the other side of the mean to make up for the earlier run of unlikely results” - which is not a statistical principle, but merely wishful thinking.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:19 amHere’s the way I see it….
Mac doesn’t act fast enough when his pitchers are in trouble. He could have limited this fiasco to 2 or 3 runs if he had taken Badtista out earlier. They had Baek up in the pen, and should have brought him in. There’s no better way to tell a pitcher “You suck tonight” than to take him out in the 2nd inning.
Also, Mac just sits there….the M’s need more fire in the manager. Scioscia runs all the way across the field to argue a close call at 1st in a game they WIN….Mac just sits….What does that tell his players?
As for slumps…Ichiro is in a SLUMP and is hitting .282….what about Richie Strikeout? 1-4 w/3 strikeouts? I don’t care if he hits 1 homer every 4 AB’s…he still isn’t helping, and his defense is avg/below avg.
Jeremy Reed, any decent pitchers from the Rainiers??? Any Farm Hands that could help better than our current lackluster roster? It doesn’t have to be permanent, just enough to send a message to veterans that thier job isn’t safe?
May 7th, 2008 at 11:22 amOkobjicat is simply repeating the Gambler’s Fallacy. He’s got to realize that he’s incorrectly understanding how probability works before this discussion produces any kind of useful fruit.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:24 am#56 - No, as a matter of fact, I rarely have my own expectations for how a season is going to go, mainly because I don’t have enough information to base an opinion on nor enough time to gather it. I leave that to others. My only point is that even if the FO WAS of the opinion that the season is a bust it is unrealistic of us to expect them to say so.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:30 amNot to make this a big GM discussion but if Antonetti didn’t want to go to St. Louis why would he want to work in Seattle?
Actually, Antonetti’s already turned down interview requests from the Mets, Red Sox, Pirates, Reds, and D’Backs. He’s picky, and he’s waiting for exactly the right situation. But he has to go somewhere eventually, and as Dave has explained several times Seattle is “actually a pretty attractive job within the game.” Nice modern ballpark, non-meddling ownership, fairly loyal fanbase, mostly uncritical media environment, four team division. Not to mention an upper-tier salary structure (with a fair bit to play with next year when certain players are off the books) and a city that is considered attractive in general (especially if you’re making a GM’s salary so things like housing costs aren’t a huge concern).
would it not be safe to assume that Lincoln and Armstrong would STRONGLY feel that the team underperformed in 2008, considering the fact that they bet the farm on this season, thinking they would contend? If they do believe this it seems their blame would lay mostly with the players and perhaps not with our GM, manager, or overall baseball philosophy, would it not?
Not necessarily. Sure, I could see them rationalizing it that way; in fact, alas, that may be likely. But there was a vocal minority (not just on this blog) who asserted that the team’s performance last year was a mirage, not a baseline to build from, and that the team was more than just one starter away from contending. If Lincoln and Armstrong begin to think there may have been some merit to that assessment — particularly given that it turned out to be right — they might conclude that Bavasi was misleading them, and himself, because he was unable to accurately assess the situation. More significantly, and more to the point, they’re running out of deck chairs. So far they’ve tried the big name free agent signings, the high-profile trade of prospects for a top tier guy, and bringing up the kids from the minors. What’s left to show the fanbase that they’re “doing something”? Sure, bringing in a new GM is going to start a new cycle of all of the above, but what else can they do? With Sexson coming off the books, the timing is actually pretty good.
Sure, we can plug in the numbers and see the irrational odds… but we all saw 1995, right? So somewhere deep inside even the most pessimistic Ms fan knows that it can be done.
Actually, I didn’t see that. I was out of the country, and hadn’t been following the M’s for almost a decade. So I think I’m realistic, unlike so many fans with distorted expectations based on one wildly improbable season. I’m sure something like that will happen again, but it is unlikely to happen in any of our lifetimes. It’s like being the guy in the urban folktale who happens to buy a Ferrari off the jilted wife for a dollar, and then expecting you’re going to be able to buy a car like that whenever you need one.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:32 amHey! I pretty much played the gambler’s fallacy 20 years ago at the Grand National Meeting at Aintree when I put my bus fare on the favorite in the last race, having lost my stake on all the nags I’d backed earlier in the day.
I got lucky and wound up with enough for a bite to eat and an extra pint. It’s not a great strategy though.
One thing to note: I’d played the fallacy to the hilt I’d have backed a long shot in a vain attempt to recoup ALL of my losses in one go. That would have made for a long, hungry walk back to Lime Street station.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:34 amthe critical word “if” is missing after the colon in my previous post. As in, “IF I’d played the fallacy to the hilt, I’d have backed a long shot”.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:37 amTrying *not* to divert the thread, but since most commenters here seem to be rather knowledgeable:
Where Texeira might end up
Regarding Mark Texeira:
First, how does Bavasi have a good working relationship with Boras?
Second, if it’s even a remote possibility, is there any way we could feasibly trade for him *now* and secure a L/T contract? I doubt he or the Braves would take it, but at this stage…what are the options?
Not sure why I’m asking. I doubt he’d want to come here, and I doubt we’ll compete with the Yankees in the off-season.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:44 amIt’s definition time, boys and girls! (Ronin, I’m not picking on you specifically, this comes up a lot)
The definition of realism is “expecting what is likely to happen to happen”.
The definition of pessimism is “expecting something significantly worse to happen than what is likely”.
The two terms are often used interchangably in the comment threads here, but they’re not the same.
If we were pessimistic about the 2008 M’s, we’d expect them to lose 110 games.
Or get trampled to death by wild ponies.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:44 amShocked. Shocked I am to learn that this team is not good enough to compete for the Division title.
Even after the team media continues to put smiley faces on their pregame shows?
Who would have predicted that this roster is not good enough to win 90 games?
Imagine my surprise.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:53 am#84
Boras is Beltre’s agent. That’s a start.
No way Texeira will sign a deal this season. It’s stated in the article. It’s been stated numerous times. He will test free agency.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:57 am#88
Unless the M’s FO offers him a deal he can’t refuse….which is about as likely as the M’s winning more than 80 games.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:04 pm#89
The M’s seem to be willing to overpay for players, why not Texeira?
May 7th, 2008 at 12:11 pmWithout speaking for Okobjicat, to me that doesn’t seem to be what he is saying. For example: if, before the season you thought that Johjima was going to hit .250 it didn’t mean that you thought he would go 1/4 every night. You thought he would go 0/4 some nights and 4/5 other nights etc. In such a scenario it wouldn’t be totally incongruent to expect him to still hit .250 at the end of the season, even if he started out at .189 through the first month and a half.
Your belief that he is a .250 is based on your belief that he will hit better than than for stretches and worse than that for stretches… not that the bad stretches predict future good stretches.
Likewise, if you thought the Ms would win 85 (or 73 or 93) games you thought so because they would play substantially over .500 ball some of the time and sub-.500 ball at other times. Being 6 games under .500 over a 34 game stretch doesn’t preclude any of those outcomes. After all, if someone truly believed the Mariners were a 90+ win team they also had to realistically assume that the team could exceed that win rate for substantial stretches of the season anyway.
As it is, I still think these Ms will be an 80-85 win team that will not seriously contend for a division title.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:16 pm#90
Well, there is Richie Strikeout….I can’t believe he’s getting $15M+….Pretty BAD Return on investment?
May 7th, 2008 at 12:20 pmIf they do believe this it seems their blame would lay mostly with the players and perhaps not with our GM, manager, or overall baseball philosophy, would it not?
The Cossacks work for the Tsar. Bill Bavasi and John McLaren are pretty much 100% responsible for the shape of the MLB roster, and if the Mariners stumble to 20th in MLB attendance and a 70-75 win season after an 88 win season AND making a bunch of moves that were fairly questionable to start with (but somewhat made sense IF you had a true-talent 88 win team), I don’t see senior management not holding Bavasi and McLaren accountable for their results. This is, after all, an organization that DOES value results and use them in their evaluations (Washburn’s ERA, win totals over pythag, and so on).
If your Five Year Plan doesn’t work (and Bavasi’s hasn’t), maybe you need to go away from a Soviet-style managed economy.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:24 pmIn such a scenario it wouldn’t be totally incongruent to expect him to still hit .250 at the end of the season, even if he started out at .189 through the first month and a half.
Yes, it would. This is the Gambler’s Fallacy. You believe that over a certain period of time, X will occur Y times. As new information filters in, you ignore it, believing that X will still occur Y times. Probability doesn’t work that way, and this line of thinking is entirely wrong.
If I asked you how many hits Kenji Johjima would get in 140 games (a full season for a catcher), and you believed he was a .250 hitter, you’d answer 140 hits in a year (given 4 at-bast per game). If I asked you how many hits he’d get in 106 games, you’d answer 106 hits. If I asked you how many hits he’d get in 12 games, you’d answer 12 hits. Your belief in the particular rate probability requires you to answer similarly in each scenario.
So, if you said that Johjima would get 140 hits in 140 games, and you don’t believe his underlying rate has changed, then you’d expect him to get 106 hits in the remaining 106 games. And if he currently only had 20 hits through the first 34 games, then you’d expect him to finish the season with 126 hits - not 140.
The only way to believe that your original 140 prediction is going to come true is to believe that he’s going to be better than a .250 hitter from here on out, and the only reason to believe that’s going to happen is if you believe that his true talent level has changed (and he’s now a .270 hitter instead of a .250 hitter) or that you’re believing in the Gamblers Fallacy, where a cold run will be evened out by a hot run.
Those are your only two choices. True talent level change or gamblers fallacy - there are no other alternatives.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:25 pmOn a sports board I frequent my signature reads:
The 2008 Seattle Mariners: 2nd place or bust!
This team is well on its way toward the latter. And acquiring Texeira wouldn’t be a solution. Expecting a huge win increase from a midseason acquisition is asking for a lot. And that doesn’t include what Seattle would give away in a potential trade. If Wlad and Clement are dealt their replacements (hello Willie and Vidro) would negate some of the increase. Think of it like two steps forward, one step back.
The way this team is constructed unless Bavasi wants to torch the minor league system the Mariners have to hold ground and hope they can ride out this wave of awfulness.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:25 pm@ Jeff Nye (86) and joser (82) - That is quoting me out of context.
@ joser - I was pointing out an event that does still effect the psyche of this franchise’s fan base (for better or worse) - not saying that we or anyone should EVER expect it.
@ Jeff Nye - I wasn’t accusing anyone of pessimism, but I understand why you guys might be prickly about that statement. However, my point was that it is entirely possible to expect the to be very bad… but not quite be able to write them off.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:30 pmWhat this team needs is more grit. If the M’s had 25 players with 1/10th of Bloomquist’s veteran grittiness, we’d be soaring at the top of the standings. I suspect Tug Hulett could provide some of this elusive grit the team lacks.
They also need more commercials that illustrate the “family friendliness” of the team.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:33 pmThey need to just play the season out, finish third, realize they were wrong, and go from there…hopefully they don’t take up all the freed up cash and pull a Bavasi…
May 7th, 2008 at 12:35 pmSorry, I tried really hard to be clear that I wasn’t trying to pick on you, but I apparently wasn’t clear enough.
It’s just something that DOES come up a lot, here, and I felt your post was a good opportunity to illustrate the difference between realism and pessimism. I certainly didn’t feel your post was accusatory in nature.
My apologies!
May 7th, 2008 at 12:38 pmNow I think I realize why I was never successful at Texas Hold ‘Em. Thanks Dave!
May 7th, 2008 at 12:56 pmI don’t see how anyone can be anything but pessimistic about this season … and I believe right now that pessimism like many people on this blog have so eloquently put it is actually: realism
pointing to 95 is what I’ve been doing SINCE 95 … and here I am more than 10 years later never getting a run of that type - and do not ever expect to see something that surreal again.
Also … lets be real - that lineup BLEW our current one out of the water… we have no (zero, zilch) comeback ability this year.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:57 pmyeah. sorta like those losers Bob Melvin, Felipe Alou, Joe Torre … boy, when that Torre sits on the dugout bench during a game, hands in pockets, stone-faced during a game, you can really see why it keeps his team from winning.
If fire in a manager means one who goes out on the field and then gets tossed– McLaren was ejected 3 times last year. In a half-season of managing. The same number of times Scioscia did, in a full year.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:57 pmOh my god, I hope Tex doesn’t own a racing horse.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:58 pmOne of the reasons I read this blog is because of the understanding of statistics such as those referenced in the mentions of the gambler’s fallacy and monty hall problem. Excellent.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:11 pmSexson can approach .250ba (which puts his OBP around .400)
Even in his prime, Sexson has never OBP’d .400. He’s not going to do it in the twilight of his career.
I root like crazy for Richie and still think he has the chance to put up a non-awful season, but an OBP of .400 is out of the question. If Richie hits .250, his OBP is more likely to be .350, probably even lower considering the difference between his BA and OBP over the past few years.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:11 pmMy point is that I never really thought Joh was a .250. I thought he would be a .230 hitter some of the time and a .270 hitter some of the time (and everything in between and beyond). In coming to the original conclusion that Joh would hit .250 you have to assume that the “colds” and “hots” AVERAGE out to that. If you didn’t think “Joh” could hit .270 or better for a good chunk of the time then predicting that he would hit .250 never made sense.
Similarly, if you didn’t think the Mariners could play like a 100 win team for extended stretches it never make sense to pick them to win 93 game in the first place.
There is a difference between expecting a player/team with a certain history to “turn it around” and planning on your team playing at a 100 game level for an extended period just because you expected them to win 93 games and they are 6 games under .500.
Example: we can say that Ichiro will probably still end up with a very good average because we have regularly seen him start slow and have seen him maintain very high batting averages for extended periods. If I said that Ichiro! could still hit .330 this year some people might disagree, but most probably wouldn’t dismiss it as irrational based on past information. Unfortunately, these Mariner’s don’t have Ichiro’s history to fall back on. I don’t believe that falls under the Gambler’s Fallacy.
The slippery slope, as always, is when does a slump (or hot streak) stop being an anomaly and a new point of reference going forward.
Also, thanks for the discussion. I’m hope you can see what I’m driving at, or at least why I think it differs from the gamblers fallacy.
@ Jeff Nye - No problems. I didn’t think you were picking on me - you were perfectly clear about that :D. I just wanted to clarify.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:30 pmFascinating thread. And a huge example of why we cannot trust thinking that merely feels or sounds logical. We see so much of it in politics - messages designed not to be true, but to SOUND true, that it is interesting to see it at play in what is really math logic.
The idea that it will all even out starting… now… sounds right. It sounds so right that this happened:
1. Someone makes the claim.
2. Dave refutes the claim - very logically, I thought.
3. The power of “it sounds right” is so strong that even faced with clear refutation, they still stick by their original argument.
4. Colm politely and clearly shows by example why the logic is flawed. The coin flip.
5. The belief is STILL held, claiming that the logic doesn’t apply to their premise.
6. Then DMZ and others weigh in, putting it in other ways, trying to make it clear.
7. Then, a NEW PERSON comes in to defend the original premise, convinced that all the others are the ones that don’t understand the idea.
It’s actually kind of awesome to see this level of discussion on a baseball board.
But really… it is the Gambler’s Fallacy. It really is.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:33 pmJeff, I liked your definition of realism. To that end, the most likely outcomes at this point (if you believe model that the outcomes of games can be thought of approximately independent coin tosses of a biased coin) are:
If you believe the M’s are a…
95-win team: 89 wins (78, 99)
92-win team: 87 wins (76, 97)
89-win team: 84 wins (73, 95)
85-win team: 81 wins (70, 92)
82-win team: 79 wins (68, 90)
79-win team: 76 wins (65, 87)
The numbers in parentheses are 95% confidence intervals.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:38 pmRoninX:
Thank you for trying to help me clear up my point.
Dave:
The gambler’s fallacy is dependent upon each hand (or coin flip being independent). My argument is that each game, each at bat is not independent. We cannot assume that each game is completely independent, or each at bat is independent. Hitters figure out their swings, start seeing the ball better, or start guessing pitches better.
Johjima, as such a perfect example had stretches last year where he .191/.217/.326 (during the month of July). I’m saying that only taking the sample at the beginning of the year and stating that all of the remaining games of the year he will only hit at his career averages is wrong. Johjima also hit .375/.402/.568 during August last year. Those also aren’t his true talent numbers either. USSM discusses reverting to the mean and my point is that Johjima’s (and the rest of the team) will eventually revert to the mean.
This team, if most of the players play to expected, extrapolated abilities (which means that most of the players remaining will have to overplay their expected talent levels*) they should win about 80-85 games. Not the 93 they need to win the division, but also not the 72 to fall behind the Rangers.
I guess that if you can make the argument that each game, each at bat is independent of the previous then yes, I am biting hard into the Gambler’s Fallacy. However, I don’t believe they are independent.
Finally, to get to 80-85 wins, the team has to play better than .530 baseball the rest of the way (81 or 82 wins). Difficult, yes, but far from impossible. If they had played .530 baseball from the beginning of the season, they would have won 85 or 86 games (I’ll let you round how you like).
*So yes, I am saying that they will overplay their true talent level-for a portion of the season-as every player does every year. Are Mark Reynolds or Nate McClouth the best players in the game? No, but they sure played like it for a bit.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:49 pmRoninX:
YES.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:50 pmRoninX, your argument for Johjima is the same as the coin flip. When we flip a coin a hundred times, predicting a tails rate of fifty percent, we know in advance that there will be thirty percent and seventy percent stretches. That doesn’t mean that if it starts out thirty percent, it will be balanced by a later streak of seventy percent. Another thirty percent streak is just as likely. Similarly, when you say that Johjima will of course have .230 stretches and .270 stretches, and he starts out with a .230 stretch, the chance of another .230 stretch is just as likely as a .270 stretch. Do you see? So if he starts the season with a .230 stretch, he has made it less likely that he will be a .250 hitter on the year, if .250 is his true level of ability.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:53 pmEvery streak, bad or good, has a narrative ready to be imposed on it. We like pattern. Experimentation has shown time and again that humans believe in explanations for things that are overwhelmingly likely pattern distributions: people don’t understand how statistically common streaks are, just randomly.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:56 pmUm. These SOUND good, but of these three, only the first really might occur as batters develop bad habits due to, say, injury.
Seeing the ball better? Athletes talk about it, but, rationally and mechanically, does that happen? And guessing pitches betters is just another way of saying random variation—there’s nothing changing here and there’s nothing DEPENDENT going on.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:56 pm#102
You have to see a MAJOR difference in the teams they are winning with, and the M’s….Melvin won 95 games with the M’s…..but the talent was there.
The DBacks have TALENT…and more importantly, talent that PERFORMS….I’m pretty sure Beltre is VERY talented, but just isn’t performing. Ichiro…no argument on talent….but Pitching talent…we have a severe lack of that. And even the decent talent isn’t performing.
Torre, and Melvin don’t HAVE to have fire….they’re winning.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:58 pmI didn’t want that entire thing bold. Sorry.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:58 pmokobojicat,
Independence and the expected number of games that the M’s will win are separate issues. Mathematically, dependence between coin flips (at bats, games) does not affect our “best guess” about how many successes (hits, wins) we expect over the long run. What *is* true is that in a finite sample (say a season), we might expect more uncertainty about that “best guess” due to longer or more frequent streaks than we might have expected.
So even if you don’t believe in the independent coin tosses model, you shouldn’t quibble with the expected win total. And if you’re predicting that the M’s will “pick it up”, then you’re putting your faith in a strange sort of dependence which prolongs winning streaks but doesn’t do the same for losing streaks.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:03 pmI think this is truer of probability than any other subject. Every argument about probability happens like this thread: a bunch of explanations with examples trying to demonstrate a counterintuitive truth, with a few folks who seem earnestly and sincerely unable to see it.
It is true that this is not as random as a coin flip; it’s possible that Johjima’s chances of hitting his true level have been depressed by some effect. It is still illogical to say “those slumping will get back to career averages”, as a group. As a group, they very likely will not.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:04 pmQ: What is the difference bewtween Hillary Clinton and Bill Bavasi?
A: Hill throws her own money into a sinking ship while Bill uses other peoples’ money.