Luck, or lack thereof

by odradek on May 18, 2008 11:06 PM EDT

I think it was Terry Pluto, a few years back in the Beacon Journal, who wrote that good luck is always in short supply for Cleveland teams. Cleveland rarely is fortunate. I’ll avoid all the clichés about Cleveland sports and limit my comments to the 2008 Indians.

A rational person will say it is irrational to complain about bad luck, and they’d be right. It’s a misinterpretation of chance, a superstition. A team in the throes of a losing streak only appears to be cursed. But what is the probability the Indians will go through an entire goddamn season without hitting a broken-bat chalk double with runners in scoring position? What do Bernoulli or Bayes say about that?

"It has been suggested that statisticians don’t believe in luck," writes Bill James. "Statisticians see luck as an Eskimo sees snow. To a statistician, luck is so much a part of our environment that we have difficulty being certain there is anything else."

Consider the past three games. The Tribe gets a favorable draw in interleague play, and runs into a sad-sack Reds team when they’re on a four-game roll. Now it’s a seven-game roll.

This season the Indians have amazing starting pitching. The bullpen, so far, has regressed some from last year’s excellence, but that isn’t unexpected. As we all know, there has been no correction whatsoever—none—from the offense. The Indians had (or we thought they had) down years last season from Hafner, Sizemore, Dellucci and Blake. We could possibly expect improvement from Garko, Gutierrez, Cabrera and Marte. If just a few of these players returned to form—or even got lucky and exceeded historic form—it was not improbable to anticipate an offense that could rank maybe fifth or sixth in the big leagues in runs scored. Instead, as Hans points out, we’re third from the bottom in team EqA. We're the worst team in the American League in team equivalency average!

The gambler’s fallacy says we’re going to start ripping up the park, that we’ll even out our bad luck with a proportionate run of offensive fortune. Garko will go 25 for 25 (with a lot of seeing-eye grounders) and Hafner will hit one or two home runs everyday, mostly off the foul pole. Except that’s not how it works.

Luck is the residue of design? Luck follows merit? We rely on BABIP for consolation, or SSS, regressions to mean, etc. But this has been going on for far too long. Broadcasters say luck has a way of evening out over the course of a long season. Except it doesn't.

Why do Wedge teams underperform to their Pythagorean expectations? Is this a function of Wedge’s management? I don’t think so. I think it’s a function of scoring runs (and allowing runs) at the wrong time. In other words, bad luck.

Is it too much to ask for the Indians to have good pitching and good hitting in the same season? Consider the White Sox in 2005. A magical year, where everything went their way: hitting, pitching, bullpen. White Sox players exceeded expectations, had career years, and most bounces and breaks favored Ozzie Guillen. Remember the dropped third strike against the Angels? Both Josh Paul and umpire Doug Eddings had to screw up that play for Pierzynski to get to first base. That was lucky, plain and simple. The White Sox had to wait a long time, since 1919, to get one of those years, but they got one. Now where’s the Indians’? Will they ever get a year where everything goes right?

Can a Cleveland hitter exceed expectations? Just one?

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Comments

good post.

The idea that this level of performance is our true mu (or population mean, or whatever other way you want to say “true level of talent”) is just so hard to swallow.

It’s plausible that Hafner suffers an extreme, tragic drop-off. BP went so far as to predict it, although i’m thinking PECOTA shot out something more along the lines of an .820 OPS this year, as opposed to the sub-replacement level numbers he’s been posting of late. But our team OBP right now is .316. Last year it was .343. We’re talking a thirty-point drop (!) with virtually the same personnel. I know some guys will likely improve (as another commenter mentioned, Jhonny’s BABIP is like 100 pts lower than his career average, so we’ll see that BA and OBP go up at some point). But thirty points!

by Cap'n Snegiryov on May 18, 2008 11:50 PM EDT 0 recs

But the point is that last season we were exactly avg. in regards to team OPS+ last season at 100 (so in general, league avg. offense) We were expecting an improvement in this area this season, particularly to offset the impending regression our bullpen would likely have, and this has not happened. We may in fact, and likely will come close to last years offensive production, but that is not what this team had expected based on design coming into the season. Its a disappointment not to improve on last years offense.

by hans on May 19, 2008 2:04 AM EDT up 0 recs

The big question about the luck argument concerns how well previous performance predicts this year’s performance. I know that they’re correlated, but there are also all kinds of reasons why the relationship can be weakened—a player aging (Blake, Hafner?), an injury (Martinez?), insufficent data (Garko? Gutierrez?). I’m not saying that none of these guys will get better, but one also can’t assume that they will just because they were better in the past. I would expect at least some of the Indians hitters to improve by the end of the season (hard to believe they can continue their current ineptitude), but I also wouldn’t be surprised if more than one has a significant drop-off from what was expected or projected. As Hans says, since we weren’t outstanding in the past, that’s a real concern.

A question for the assembled bloggers: what do people think about the Indians’ approach at the plate (seriously, now)? I’ve noticed several comments regarding how many pitches the Indians take. They actually don’t walk that much (around league average), but see a lot of pitches. Their OPS is below league average (would be even lower if they didn’t lead the league by a mile in HBP) because they are last in the league in hits (and well below league average). They are also way below average in Slugging (and way behind what they did last year in this area). So, are the Indians too passive at the plate; i.e., do they need to be more aggressive rather than taking tons of pitches to “work the pitcher?” I don’t know the answer to this, but wondered what others thought.

by peter m on May 19, 2008 10:26 AM EDT 0 recs

I notice I typed OPS—I mean OBP in the second paragraph above. Sorry.

by peter m on May 19, 2008 11:42 AM EDT up 0 recs

That high P/PA model worked in the past. If nothing else it would get the Tribe to Jeremy Affeldt or David Weathers, get four innings of a bullpen’s underbelly. But now we can’t hit even the back end of a bullpen. We used to walk more too.

Now I think it causes a lot of cautious swings, wasting pitches. A surfeit of strike outs,

I once read a Bill Selby quote about being aggressive at the plate, about how he was always ready to go to the plate and jump out of his shoes. He wasn’t buying into this high-pitch count stuff. I remember thinking, What an idiot. Thank god the Indians have players who are like tigers at the plate—this was a few years ago—who aren’t afraid to strike out. Being aggressive often meant swinging at the pitcher’s pitch, and swinging without control or purpose.

I think it’s time to adjust. A lot of pitchers know the Indians’ propensities, so they get that first-pitch called strike. Blake was taking pitches yesterday when Lee was on deck. If he walked, it just meant we cleared the pitcher’s spot for the ninth inning. Is that aggression?

We could use a bat control man. Victor is one. Maybe we could use a different philosophy of hitting. The hitters we have are high-K platers, so maybe you just live with it.

by odradek on May 19, 2008 11:07 AM EDT 0 recs

It’s an interesting thought. Are our hitters taught to be so patient that they’re getting overly tentative when it comes time to actually swing? This is how Hafner looks a lot of times, as if he can’t commit to swinging. And I mean even if we are still walking , it doesn’t really say much. Pitching at the ML level is hard. If a hitter were to stand and look at pitches without swinging every at-bat, he would probably still walk at a decent rate. Problem is, we need those walks as well as the hits, and we’re not getting them.

Burn on, big river, burn on...

by Turkmenbashi on May 19, 2008 11:29 AM EDT up 1 recs

Also! I wouldn’t be surprised if we really need to change our two strike approach as a team, we’re batting .167/.185/.217/.402 in 0-2 counts. Not that anyone can be expected to produce well in an 0-2 count, but just as comparison, the Red Sox are batting .224/.230/.256/.486 which is better than at least one of our everyday starters. Again, not sure how much that proves, but a cursory look at those line might show that Boston has a better idea of how to approach at-bats with two strikes—shorten up, and stop swinging for the fences. As you mentioned, odradek, bat control is important. Hitting in a 0-2 requires a different type of approach and swing, not the kind of giant hacks we see Jhonny and Grady taking when down 0-2.

Burn on, big river, burn on...

by Turkmenbashi on May 19, 2008 11:55 AM EDT up 0 recs

Are our hitters taught to be so patient that they’re getting overly tentative when it comes time to actually swing?

YES. That is EXACTLY the problem I think this offense is having. And why I think Shelton has to go. This isn’t only Proon’s problem. It’s the problem of 2/3 of our offense.

Give Marte a Chance.

by westbrook on May 20, 2008 1:18 AM EDT up 0 recs

Well, if luck is something that can fill a bucket, they poured off most of it last year, imo. Despite all the careful calibrations of The Plan, what put the Tribe into the playoffs last year was the completely unlooked for – namely, timely and/or consistent contributions from youngsters that just weren’t in the pre-season forecast. The list is pretty long: Carmona, Perez, Lewis, Cabrera, Guti, BenFran, Laffey, even Garko played far above expectation and won a lot of games.

You can say that depth is part of the plan, but I don’t think there was anything planned about what happened – the FO was forced by bad play and injuries, against its “better judgement”, to play and rely on untested youngsters, who came through and surprised everybody. So, I can’t say I’m surprised if the “luck” is balancing out.

However, I also think there’s another elusive quality that affects this team (any team, but we’re talking Wedge/Shap era Tribe), and that’s the “chemistry” factor. Why is it that the young players tend to have initial success followed by a downturn, in some cases obvious confusion or severe regression? Why do so many players with ML experience become “head cases” for long stretches? Why does the team take so long to get going almost every spring? Can you see where I’m going with this?

No, its not as simple as Fire Wedge, altho I do think he has a weird fetish for square jaws over hand-eye coordination. But I am beginning to think that one unlooked for negative result of The Plan is that it leads to an overcoached team. Hell, an overcoached system. Shap was in charge of the farm system before assuming the GM post, and built an admirable system with top-down coaching philosophies and more feedback loops from FO to coach to player than pretty much any other ML org. That was the Moneyball Move – don’t chintz on spending $$ for coaching and development, because that’s an inequity a small market team can exploit. More and more coaching talent and personal instruction and micro-management has followed, and it culminates in the 25 man roster where every verbal and statistical tool is brought to bear to work on the player’s weaknesses and oversee his development into a real “major leaguer”. Of course, other teams do this overseeing to varying degrees. I just think ShapCo does it in spades.

Despite the fact that the Tribe doesn’t have blue chippers at every position, its still one of the toughest rosters to crack (subjective impression). Hell, our AAA roster is tough to get onto (but once there…). I’m starting to think a big reason for the “luck” last year was that from the youngster’s perspective, they finally graduated from the intense schooling and responded with a “less thought, more instinct” natural reaction and just played to their talent level, in some cases over it.

But the reality is that the schooling isn’t over, and young players are constantly advised and coached even on the 25. I’m thinking mebbe the pressure to absorb information, work on squaring your jaw, and follow the corporate credo and be the type of player the FO obviously has in mind for you is pretty tough to accomplish for any player. Particularly on the offensive side, where really all that counts is reacting to the pitch and hitting the ball hard – a pretty instinctive act that every additional layer of feedback and rationale can tend to work against.

Short version – one of the byproducts of having a tightly controlled top to bottom system of player development is we tend to have more head cases than other teams.

by mcrose on May 19, 2008 12:23 PM EDT 3 recs

Very interesting. I think this ties in to my point about being tentative at the plate. Perhaps our players are “overthinking” to the detriment of their natural baseball instinct, and that results in more called strike 3’s, more check-swing strikeouts, etc. (no data there, just admittedly a gut feeling and an observation).

Burn on, big river, burn on...

by Turkmenbashi on May 19, 2008 1:09 PM EDT up 0 recs

The contrast becomes apparent with guys that have just been promoted (see last year). Right now, BenFran just seems to be in a different mental space than the other hitters, cuz he’s obviously looking for a fastball to drive, and he puts a good swing on it when he gets it. Oh, and I hear Aubrey hit a home run in his first ML start.

How many called strike fastballs did the rest of the lineup take this last series? It was just silly.

by mcrose on May 19, 2008 1:34 PM EDT up 0 recs

It is an interesting concept, but we have to be careful that we’re not just getting ourselves irrationally excited about something new and shiny (Francsico, Aubrey). Again, it would be great to quantfiy this somehow, but going on gut alone, I think you might be on to something.

Burn on, big river, burn on...

by Turkmenbashi on May 19, 2008 1:52 PM EDT up 0 recs

I like new and shiny things!

Free Andy Marte!

Pronk Needs You

by woodsmeister on May 19, 2008 2:02 PM EDT up 0 recs

Yes, and when you look at Brandon Phillips, who hurt us, he’s up there looking for something to hit quite aggressively. This can obviously backfire, as there are plenty of major league hitters who hack away and do pitchers a favor in the process. Taking pitches to get ahead is good if you have a plan. But, I do sometimes feel that the Indians hitters are either tentative in hitters counts or unselective in hitters’ counts. As an example, Garko’s obp after the count is 2-1 is .212. Someone like Bobby Abreu (reputedly a very patient hitter), is at .388. Manny Ramirez is at .474. Obviously, Garko is not the player that Manny is (or Abreu), but you ought to do better than that with the count in your favor.

by peter m on May 19, 2008 2:10 PM EDT up 0 recs

You are right in that it seems that many times our hitters go up without a plan – or with a plan that they abandon once they take a few pitches and get ahead or behind in the count. I think this is what Wedge is talking about when he continually complains that the guys are not putting together “good at-bats”. Is this a coaching problem? An execution problem? Have the guys stopped believing in the plans that they are putting together with the hitting coach?

Brandon Phillips has a plan – swing hard at anything fast that’s near the plate. Granted, it’s not always a good plan, but it’s high reward, high risk. Will changing the hitting coach get guys to actually execute their hitting plan better? It’s anybody’s guess right now.

Free Andy Marte!

Pronk Needs You

by woodsmeister on May 19, 2008 2:37 PM EDT up 0 recs

Swinging hard at anything near the plate was also Bill Selby’s plan.

by odradek on May 19, 2008 5:09 PM EDT up 0 recs

The point should be that let Brandon Phillips be Brandon Phillips and let Bobby Abreu be Bobby Abreu- they are both awesome hitters. A few weeks back there was a conversation that Phillips struggled in our system because he was aggressive and the Indians stress patience. If that is true, we have a very fundamental problem. Maybe its Barfield or Gutz that simply are not going to walk 100 times in a season, but they could still be productive hitters if they were coached up to be aggressive. A lineup full of Brian Giles and Bobby Abreu’s sounds wonderful, but if you can’t have that whats wrong with a couple Brandon Phillips or Vladimir Guerreros in there?

by DaytonDogg on May 21, 2008 2:01 PM EDT up 0 recs

I also suspect that there is some truth to this being a problem with the organization. Interestingly, they don’t seem to mind signing guys like that — Belliard being an obvious example. Just to argue the other side, though, it does appear that only a handful of players ever find any success this way.

Guerrero obviously is not a typical prospect, obviously, and it’s not certain that he wouldn’t have been even better had he been developed by — or ever coached by — someone who emphasized selectivity a little more. (I grant you that it’s unlikely Guerrero could have been any better, but my point is just that we don’t know.)

So it may be that only 1-2% of hitters should not be coached that way, and they’re not necessarily the hitters you think. Phillips doesn’t want to be selective, even as a highly touted prospect, there’s a high probability that he will fail if he can’t learn to be a little more selective. And you can see this in his stats throughout the minors, it would be very easy to demonstrate that his tendencies don’t translate well to the majors, and he’s going to be a super-toolsy bust — just one of hundreds if not thousands that you’ve never heard of.

We may also be seeing an evolving philosophy here. The Phillips debacle aside, it can’t really be denied that the Indians have groomed a ton of hitters successfully, with perhaps a half-dozen well exceeding expectations. What I find more interesting is the question of whether they have trouble sustaining their success, or if they’re developed to hit in such a way that makes them more susceptible than the average hitter to having the scouts eventually catch up with them.

And I say this only because, we seem to have a bunch of hitters who should be developing, peaking or only in very mild decline, and none of them seem to be quite as good as we thought they were.

by Jay on May 21, 2008 2:14 PM EDT up 0 recs

To me its apparent that, right now, the hitters have lost confidence and are in a hole as soon as they step to the plate. It’s not an orderly developmental thing where they’ve successfully absorbed a philosophy, applied it, and then the weaknesses of that philosophy have been found out by opposing thinkmeisters, who are communicating said weaknesses to their pitching staffs, who successfully employ the anti-Tribe pitching elixir against us.

I just think our hitters are playing way below their capabilities. When they hit a bump, instead of relying on their own basic strengths to get back on track, they get lost, then frustrated, then regress. Every single guy in the lineup has shown they are a better hitter than they are right now.

I’m not sure how much difference the actual content of a “hitting philosophy” makes. Its more a matter of how much than what. If you’re in the batter’s box trying to decide or remember what to believe in, you’re not going to have a very good at-bat.

by mcrose on May 21, 2008 3:25 PM EDT up 0 recs

I guess I wasn’t clear, I’m not talking about performance this season per se, only as added on to a series of disappointing years from players who seemed headed toward superstardom and/or damned near already there. Garko is stumbling badly in his second full season, Peralta did the same and only partially recovered. Sizemore, still a great player but seems stalled out — he didn’t really peak at 23, did he? And then there’s Hafner totally collapsing at age 30, not sure how that fits in. All of these players exceeded expectations in their first full seasons, very significantly except for Garko, and for the most part, there’s been a lot more falling back than stepping forward. Victor has had a more natural progression, and Hafner to some extent, and it’s less surprising to see Gutierrez and AbaCab struggle in their first full seasons. Can’t quite put my finger on it, and it’s probably nothing.

by Jay on May 21, 2008 6:35 PM EDT up 0 recs

I’m afraid I’ll have to leave any quantification to others – you’re right, this is observational. But the flip side to newbies doing well is watching hitters with ML exposure go into slumps ( a natural cycle) over the last couple years, and instead of returning to strengths, seeing them clearly get more and more frustrated and psyched out until they literally deteriorate as a hitter to a point where they become pretty much useless.

Barfield did this last summer despite close to 800 ML at-bats where he at least had some clue. Hafner has yet to pull out of his funk, despite being as solid a pro hitter as you could ask for. Cabrera is a natural contact hitter but is now following in Barfield’s path and has the lowest BA in the big leagues and is close to simply closing his eyes when he swings. And Franky was so locked in in ST but now has come completely undone. Not to mention some of the other position players who seem unable to make adjustments.

Interestingly, the same hitting malaise is system wide. The only regular players in the ENTIRE org that have an OPS over .850 are Chris Giminez and Nick Weglarz, and only then by virtue of an incredible walk rate.

by mcrose on May 19, 2008 2:42 PM EDT up 0 recs

That last stat is pretty nuts.

by supermarioelia on May 20, 2008 12:50 AM EDT up 0 recs

Weglarz’s ISO is only .167. Last year, it was .221.

by ClarkM on May 21, 2008 8:02 AM EDT up 0 recs

It’s a long season, and guys at that age are developing and physically maturing rapidly, and earlier on they’re adjusting to a new level (or two). Nick Weglarz is nobody’s concern and younger than practically everybody posting here.

by Jay on May 21, 2008 1:41 PM EDT up 0 recs

He’s certainly not a concern, but it needs to be pointed out, especially when he is one of the bright spots. I just wanted to expand on mcrose’s comment about the high walk rate.

by ClarkM on May 21, 2008 7:14 PM EDT up 0 recs

Weglarz just homered. He’ll be ok. He always is.

by hans on May 21, 2008 9:10 PM EDT up 0 recs

Actually, that’s the one stat that I’m not concerned with about Weglarz.

To me, the key stats to look for in Weglarz is his BA and his K rate. It’s sort of the inverse of what we typically look at, but that would show me that he’s doing a better job of eliminating the holes in his swing. If you strike out as much as he did last year in Low-A, you have holes in your swing. I have no concerns with his ability to draw a walk or with his power. He had over 50 XBH’s in low-A at a very young age, and his build and his frame also suggest there shouldn’t be a question about his power. The only question is if he will turn into Adam Dunn (who some like more than others, including me) or Travis Hafner circa-2006. And I think BA and K rate will help determine that. And I really like that he’s improved his K rate in Kinston.

by TribeJay on May 22, 2008 11:38 AM EDT up 0 recs

This is well put. I think it goes a long way toward explaining our situation.

Another phrase for this tightly controlled or overcoached team: tight-assed. Almost everybody goes up to the plate with a grim look on his face, expecting disappointment.

by odradek on May 19, 2008 5:11 PM EDT up 0 recs

from a deadspin post about the padres lack of success this year:

“The big reason seems to be the strikeouts-per-at-bats ratio, or as
scientists call it, tight booties. Just listen to occasional Padres
hitting instructor Tony Gwynn, who recalls former San Diego manager
Dick Williams once saying that players sometimes fail because of “a
tight butt.”

“I still use that line today. I just changed it up, but I tell the
kids you can’t play with a tight booty. There’s nothing you can do in
the game with a tight booty. You can’t run, you can’t pitch, you can’t
hit, you can’t do anything.”

by dwight on May 19, 2008 5:26 PM EDT up 0 recs

I approve of Dick Williams.

by odradek on May 19, 2008 7:24 PM EDT up 0 recs

So is it safe to say our players spend too much time figuring out how to impress the FO/Coaches and “fit in” so they can stay on the team long-term … instead of hitting a baseball so well that they can’t get rid of you?

Give Marte a Chance.

by westbrook on May 20, 2008 1:25 AM EDT up 0 recs

The former is probably easier.

by odradek on May 20, 2008 7:24 AM EDT up 0 recs

Look no further than our man Manny Marte. I’ve said it before, but the poor kid is up there every atbat with no clue what to do. And it’s not his fault in the least. It’s obvious he’s seeing the ball well, but you can tell he’s trying to process a million things at the same time. Should I be patient? Should I try to get bat to ball? Oh crap, I have to bunt now? Alright….wait swing away? But still be patient? Can I please just try and get a base hit?

by supermarioelia on May 20, 2008 9:36 AM EDT up 0 recs

Is it too much to ask for the Indians to have good pitching and good hitting in the same season?

Well, you may be just understandably venting, but I’ll answer your question anyway. Um, yes, I think its too much to ask. We did win 96 games last year, and this year we’re in the thick of the race. We’ve got a good team, not a great team. Not a run-away-with-the-thing team. A good team, with the potential to be an elite one. Step back for a minute – it’s great fun.

Now I know some of us thought this team might be great. So we may be slightly disappointed, but no fan gets to expect his team to be good on both sides of the ball. (Yes, even kids growing up in Boston this decade will learn this. I think.) We have some problems to fix, sure. But we’re right there.

I’m not just responding to you; there are others who are much more vocal. I was as pissed as anyone this weekend, and we all like to vent. But at some point let’s check ourselves before we go too far down this BLOW THE WHOLE TEAM UP path.

by dgcambridge on May 19, 2008 3:31 PM EDT 0 recs

Dually noted, Dave, but I doubt anyone who is suggesting a slight change in approach is advocating “blowing up the team.”

Burn on, big river, burn on...

by Turkmenbashi on May 19, 2008 4:16 PM EDT up 0 recs

You are correct. There’s a whole range of suggestions currently flowing around here.

by dgcambridge on May 19, 2008 4:50 PM EDT up 0 recs

You generously call it venting, but you could just as easily call it whining, I’ll admit.

I know we have it good. We’re not fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates. But just for once I would like to be really fortunate.

As mcrose points out, we were lucky last year, though I’m greedy, and wished Hafner had not hit into a double-play in the bottom of the first against Beckett in game seven of the ALCS last year.

Also, I’m not suggesting blowing up this team. They’re good but flawed, kind of like Ryan Garko. Well, maybe Garko isn’t that good, but you get my point.

by odradek on May 19, 2008 5:23 PM EDT up 0 recs

I wouldn’t call it the gamblers fallacy. There are some key differences between this and gambling.

It sounds like you believe in the hot hand theory and, by association, the reverse hot hand theory.

I have a hard time believing in the hot hand theory except for some circumstances.

We will hit better. The team’s career numbers indicate that they will. We are in a rough offenseive stretch. But so are the Tigers and they are an offensive powerhouse.

Anyway, the key difference between gambling and actual sports is the timing. Someone may think that the Tribe can’t possibly lose three games to the Reds so they bet on us to win the third after our first two losses. The thing is that over the course of the year the wins/losses and runs/not runs will balance out. Not over an arbitrary amount of time.

Yea, our luck sucks. I will never deny that. But too many of our problems came from stupid managemant rather than anything else. For the first time ever all three of our sports teams have competent plans and people in charge. We should enjoy that right now.

by gahnki on May 19, 2008 5:35 PM EDT 0 recs

Yeah, you’re right about hot-hand theory. That’s more what I was thinking of. I don’t know enough about statistics to know the difference, but I just read about it.

Either way, they’re fallacies, though.

I’m not sure it evens out. If Hafner goes back career-level OPS for the rest of the season he still doesn’t reach .800 this year, does he? Plus, we are squeezing the sawdust out of bats now, which affects the randomness of the plate appearances.

Boy, I would have bet the Reds to win yesterday. I didn’t like the thought of Edinson facing those hitters.

by odradek on May 19, 2008 6:37 PM EDT up 0 recs

I’m careful to say that the hot hand theory is a fallacy. I’ve seen times in basketball where a player just hits the shot from anywhere on the floor. LeBron James against the Pistons last year sticks in my mind as proof that the hot hand theory exists, but is greatly overused as an explanation during games or even life.

And the gambler’s fallacy and hot hand theory are linked together. They are very similar but I’ve always seen the gambler’s fallacy as what the name implies. The way most if not all gamblers think. Team B has lost 5 games in a row so they must be breaking out soon. When I’ve bet on games I know I’ve done it just because I’ve seen it happen before and it seems like a solid idea.

I view the hot hand theory as a way people explains the streaks themselves. Player X has hit three straight three pointers so they must be in the zone right now. When really, at most times, the players will miss three shots later to even out the average.

I know people who treat the theories as the same, but I believe there is a difference between them.

by gahnki on May 19, 2008 9:21 PM EDT up 0 recs

Batters do get hot, I think, though none of them are currently on the Indians’ 40-man roster. A hitter can get in the zone, see the ball well, and mysteriously do everything right. Then they cool off, and can’t get their batting stance back to where it was, or whatever. Obviously, it is inevitable that a hot hand cools off eventually.

But is the correlative true—that a good hitter with a -.120 OPS will suddenly go on a tear? Given enough at bats, I suppose so. But in the context of the Indians I don’t think it means they will be scoring 900 runs this season.

Maybe this is thermodynamics. You can go from hot to cold, but not cold to hot.

by odradek on May 19, 2008 10:18 PM EDT up 0 recs

It may well be that the “hot hand” is real — certainly we have all felt that it’s real on many occasions. But even if “hot hand” is real, playing the hot hand remains a fallacy. Nobody has ever found a way of determining when the “hot hand” will end, and playing the hot hand cannot be found to predict future performance better than more statistically significant methods, i.e., those involving much larger sample sizes.

by Jay on May 19, 2008 11:08 PM EDT up 0 recs

I just read a study that proved that exact stance. People tend to overestimate the length of a good hot hand and undervalue the length of a bad one. They do this because they desire a good hot hand to last longer and a bad one to end quickly.

by gahnki on May 20, 2008 4:21 PM EDT up 0 recs

I asked my mentor, Yoda, about this, and he offered this little tidbit: “Do or do not, there is no luck.”

by Thommy on May 19, 2008 6:52 PM EDT 0 recs

Tell it to the judge.

by odradek on May 19, 2008 7:24 PM EDT up 0 recs

Yoda would never say that.

by Jay on May 19, 2008 10:57 PM EDT up 0 recs

As for this point...

Why do Wedge teams underperform to their Pythagorean expectations? Is this a function of Wedge’s management? I don’t think so. I think it’s a function of scoring runs (and allowing runs) at the wrong time. In other words, bad luck.

It’s because Wedge-coached teams constantly score 10-15 runs one game then go a week and score 10 total. Thus, they have scored about 3 runs a game over an 8-game stretch … but in only one (or two) of those did they score enough to actually WIN.

Give Marte a Chance.

by westbrook on May 20, 2008 1:36 AM EDT 0 recs

That’s the observed fact, but what causes such severe run distribution? Is it bad luck? Paul Cousineau writes in DiaTribe that “56 of the 183 runs scored to date (30% of the year’s runs) [came] in 11 of the 388 innings (just under 3%) that the team has batted in.” I have no idea what’s normal. I can’t find runs scored by innings for teams anywhere, but it would seem if you score 30% of your runs in 3% of your innings you’re not distributing your runs well. Why is this?

by odradek on May 20, 2008 7:32 AM EDT up 0 recs

I don’t know if it’s still the case, but the Indians have tended at times in the past to be reliant on home runs to get runs. I don’t know if this is related to the “bunching” of runs in particular games or particular innings, but it’s a possible explanation. Someone more statistically astute than me would have to sort this one out.

by peter m on May 20, 2008 10:13 AM EDT up 0 recs

Here’s the B-Ref page where that info was gathered. The Tribe data was pretty easy to compile, mainly because of the limited number of multiple run innings.

Not sure how that compares to the rest of the league; but if you’re up to it, each team has an identical page.

by The DiaTriber on May 20, 2008 3:05 PM EDT up 0 recs

The Tribe data was pretty easy to compile, mainly because of the limited number of multiple run innings.

sigh … put the gun down…........

by gte619n on May 20, 2008 3:12 PM EDT up 0 recs

Withoug any research, I’d assume that fewer than 10 teams (generous estimation) have ‘poorer’ run distribution that we do.

Give Marte a Chance. FIRE SHELTON. Find Wedge a Hot Seat.

by westbrook on May 20, 2008 5:17 PM EDT up 0 recs

this is why I think Pythagorean wins means about 0 in baseball, or really any sports. Situations, they matter. All runs are not created equally.

by DaytonDogg on May 21, 2008 2:14 PM EDT up 0 recs

That’s very true but the Pyth. can give you a basic idea about a team and that’s useful.

by gahnki on May 21, 2008 4:32 PM EDT up 0 recs

Except for more often than not Pythag nails it within 3+/- wins by the end of the season. It means something. When we underperformed our Pythag by 11 or so games in ‘06, it shouldn’t have been to anyone’s surprise that we ended up one out away from making the World Series in ‘07.

by hans on May 21, 2008 4:36 PM EDT up 0 recs

oops, meant to say “one win away”

by hans on May 21, 2008 4:36 PM EDT up 0 recs

I can’t find 2007 expected wins, but weren’t the Indians still underperforming in Pythag wins for 2007? I seem to recall a two- or three-game falloff.

Does Wedge have the greatest career Pythag discrepancy in the majors?

by odradek on May 21, 2008 6:11 PM EDT up 0 recs