So if a player performs well at all levels than it will predict a good season.

you hold on to those projections reeeeal tight when you’re 20 games back in September

According to the numbers you just spat out, the Halos had less than a a quarter of a percent chance of doing what they’ve done over the past five years. How you’re going to shake your head when they do it again this year.

…and thank vivaelpujols for the best laugh I’ve had in quit a long time. It’s a remarkable dislay; lack of self-awareness, several layers of irony, and obliviousness to one’s own arguments.

ZuLong dropped this 5000 lb bunker-busting stat bomb in the middle of the PECOTA bible; "The Angels have averaged +10 Wins over their projections every year for the last five years". Take a moment to savor THAT statistic.

Now PECOTA is based ENTIRELY on statistics! So, one would think a stathead defender of PECOTA would take this information back to the calculator and start re-crunching numbers. Did that happen? Nope. Did viva even consider re-questioning the interpretation of the raw data? Nope.

Viva’s response to Zu’s bomb? "That has nothing to do with anything". Now there’s some deep analysis of the numbers!!! Ha! In other words, we believe in the sanctity of our statistical projections with such faith that statistics obliterating our conclusions are dismissed as meaningless. Is this what candidate Obama was referring when he talked about "…people bitterly clinging to guns and religion?"

So at THIS point, Zu’s bomb has detonated, PECOTA statistial modeling is a smoking hole, and viva had emerged from the wreckage like the black knight to state in essence "it’s nothing but a flesh wound". He then adds more irony by throwing out these numbers that prove Zu’s point; "…standard error for PECOTA is around 10 wins, meaning that around 30 percent of the time, a given team will miss it’s projection by 10 wins."
The irony is so rich…the religion of statistical projection destroyed by statistics. Thanks viva. I couldn’t have made this up if I had tried!

Even Nate Silver recognized that the Angels seemed too consistent in beating the projections and theorized that there is probably a reason for it. You’ll note in that article he mentions this:

It turns out that there is no team that has beaten its PECOTA projection in each of the last five seasons (nor has any team underachieved its projection for five years running).

In fact, if you take a look at his chart you find that there are only two teams that had streaks of four years going into last season, the Orioles and Angels. The Orioles beat their projection by two games and so their streak has been busted. That makes the Angels the only team to have been consistently on one side or the other for five consecutive years. The other thing that you notice, looking at that chart, is how consistent the Angels have been. +10, +12, +8, +8, and in 2008 they were +12. Unlike the White Sox, another team with “heart” accordiing Nate, the Angels aren’t based on one good year. They’ve stayed in the same range, season after season.

Bottom line? You can tell me all you like that it’s luck. But I don’t think it is, not over that kind of time period. PECOTA’s been wrong too often for me, and most Angels fans, to care what they say.

LIBRAS are known to be BALANCED and objective. We have a +12 zone rating when it comes to objectivity.

your sig is PUJOLS so you don’t strike us as an Angels fan, you talk down to anyone who doesn’t perceive the game thru the filter of your choice, stats, and specifically stats that are hair-splitting measurements of less than 5% of the action on the field. You are not the victim here.

77 comments on lookout landing and 1,000+ on Viva El Birdos say otherwise.

that some guy shouldn’t cite them as a stat without providing the percentage of Gold Gloves that were incorrectly awarded. You demand us to back up our arguments and you just play the “NO GG” card without saying why.

Put it this way – the Gold Gloves have been given to some bad defenders, but the percentage of teams Rob Neyer touts as contenders in preseason picks is actually near that same rate.

Where were you a couple hours ago? I wouldn’t have needed to say all those things. Seriously, I quit.

Let me just say my final point on the subject. The reason that the Angels have beaten their PECOTA projections is the same reason that the Angels have beaten their Pythag record. PECOTA basically breaks down players by how many runs they contribute above a “replacement level player” (like Gary Matthews JR. last year). They then use the same Pythagorean formula to figure out how many runs = 1 win. The answer is around 10. But as we know, 10 runs doesn’t always equal 1 win, that is evidenced by the Angels Pytahg-Normal record disparity.

So if we established that the Angels are particularily good at overachieving there expected record, the reason is probably because they win a lot of close games. That is obviously true as the Angels are allways near the top in saves and 1 run wins.

So then we ask, it is luck or skill that the Angels are so good at winning close games. History will tell you that it is luck, however, the Angels might actually have a lot more control over it then other teams. 1 reason is that they often “play for the run” in the 9th. Scocia is a guy who likes to steal and move runners across the base paths. By that, he is probably able to create an extra couple of wins a season.

Antoher reason might because the bullpen is so good. K-Rod, Sheilds, Donnely, Arredondo, Percival and other have provide an incredible back end of the pen oer the past 5 or so years. So the Angels have won a lot more close games in the past than any other team, because they are really good at winning close games.

The next question is can the Angels continue that success next year? They still have Scocia, however there lineup has gotten a lot old. Guys like Hunter, Guerrero, Abreu, Wood, Morales and Napoli are slow and won’t be able to adequately play Scocia’s game in the late innings. Aybar and Figgins will be the only speedsters on the team (or Willits if he plays), so it might get harder to play “Angels baseball” next year.

So now what about the bullpen? Well they lost K-Rod, and replaced him with the inferior Fuentes. Arredondo got pretty lucky on batted balls last year. His Fielding Independant Pitching (which attempts to strip luck out of the equation) was 3.10, meaning that he will have a real hard time putting up a 1.62 ERA next year. Furthermore, guys like Shield and Oliver are one year older and are approaching the age where pitchers start to decline.

Ok. So if we can agree that the bullpen won’t be as good as it has been in the past, and the lineup is a lot less speedy than before, than we can expect that the Angels won’t (shouldn’t) win as many close games as they have done in previous years.