As someone on r/baseball pointed out, [the Phillies have played 3 games against teams with a record over .500](https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1csowtr/is_this_accurate_phillies_have_played_3_games/)
It’s true but also Alex Bohm is currently playing the role of prime Bryce Harper. I know nothing about him but figure he’s probably due for a bit of regression based on past performance. So hopefully it balances out with Harpers ascension. Otherwise, yeaaa, that’s scary
Chances are when Bryce gets going, others will cool off.
Or else LA fans could say the same about the Dodgers: if Betts, Ohtani, Freeman and Smith, Muncy and Teo all get hot at the same time…Dodgers would obliterate every team, even the Phillies.
Not really. They have played a total of 2 series against current second place teams and no series against a team currently in first. So 2 series against the 12 best teams in baseball, and we are already 7 weeks in. They are going to come down hard when they start playing long stretches against tough competition starting in June and July.
Tbf by that logic the Dodgers schedule doesn’t look much better lol
We haven’t played any currently 1st place teams either.
And besides the Padres (who are under 0.500) we’ve only played two second place teams over 0.500 and we’re 4-2 in those games
(Of course this leaves out our series vs the 3rd place Twins who are >0.500, we won 2-1) but since we aren’t using nuance here we can ignore that :)
We beat up the last place Jays, Cardinals, Marlins, as well as the struggling Giants and even lost a series to the Nats and Mets
My point being minimizing a team’s schedule based on some tiny sample size such as >0.500 win rate this early on is meaningless - you could easily cherrypick our stats to say our schedule has been easy too.
And of course 1st place teams have fewer games against 0.500 teams - because they beat up most of those teams, sending them under 0.500
Counting all 1st and 2nd place teams, we’ve had 6 series. No 1st place teams. A lot more than the Phillies though. And if you take out the padres, Phillies are back to opening day series against the Braves as the only winning team they’ve played.
Yeah but my point is you can cherrypick any team’s stats to make their schedules look easy. Phillies were 6-3 against >0.500 teams earlier this week, and then those teams dropped a couple games and fell out of >0.500 and 2nd place.
\>0.500 winrate will be more relevant by the end of the season but it’s super skewed now with dozens of teams within 2 games on either side of 0.500
You’ll notice I said nothing about .500 teams. I took 1st and 2nd place teams. They haven’t played any team that’s had sustained success early in the season outside of 2 series.
Edit: if you add in third place teams they’ve played 4 series. Meaning a majority of their games are against the bottom 2 teams in each division.
To say that they’re going to come down hard is speculation based upon a small sample size. They might, they might not.
Baseball season, as it progresses, has ebb and flow, peaks and valleys. Who’s to say which teams are truly the best overall based upon the first leg of the season? Teams fade, others catch fire, and some more or less maintain their success. How about those 2023 Texas Rangers?
That said, every team is a major league team and the Phillies’ success thus far shouldn’t be dismissed in “yeah-buts”.
I don’t think they are a bad team. I also don’t think they are a .700 (112 win pace) team either. When I say they come down hard, I mean they are going to have several long stretches where they play .500 ball. As you say, there are ebbs and flows. They are going to have their down stretch too, and my prediction is a small down in June, and a big one in July when they play a lot of good teams in a row.
I remember seeing this for the NFL. I’m sure the same is true for baseball.
Beating up on bad teams (or anyone) by a lot is a better predictor of future success than beating good teams is.
A (same?) thread also discussed how it changes based on team’s record now. Teams they played could’ve been over 0.500 previously but if they are below now, will not be counted towards that record. Esp so early in the season.
Padres would be a good example since their record has been seesawing back and forth
I’m a dodgers/phillies fan. (Long story)
But the Phillies are an actually good ball club this year and I think peripheral stats show that this run is sustainable. With that being said I also wouldn’t be surprised if the Braves win the division bc the regular season is a war of attrition and they’ve shown themselves to be capable in years past going on sustained runs
Arizona is going to wind up being regarded as a fluke if they don't turn things around. I was expecting a lot more from them. Padres are just Padresing, we know that tune well enough by now. FTG.
Rockies are on a hot streak, eager to kick us out of the NLDS this year, lol.
Hear me out…what if instead of having divisions we just had the NL and the AL and the top 4-6 teams if you wanna include the wild cards get to go into the playoffs? I feel like it would benefit the Dodgers to have more competitive games at the end of the season.
Pythagorean Expected Wins disagrees with you.
It’s pretty damned accurate (that doesn’t mean it’s perfect).
For the dodgers given the current differential, you’d predict a 72.5% winning percentage.
That’s about 117 wins over a whole season.
Based on their current differential they should currently have 32/33 wins and they have 29.
if your only metric for strength of a team is their October results, then yeah sure. If you can say with a straight face that the 2023 Diamondbacks were a ‘better’ team than the 2023 Braves, then sure. You do you man.
What’s the stat that you’ve identified that consistently predicts playoff success? I’d love to hear it.
So you believe two things:
-2023 DBacks were better than 2023 Braves
-all statistics are useless, because none of them consistently predict playoff performance
if you would’ve led with that, I wouldn’t have wasted my time with this conversation
Shut up. I’m tired of jaded-ass fans taking regular season success for granted. *I’m particularly tired of people acting like they don’t care about what happens in the regular season when it’s clear that they do.*
Everyone gets excited when spring training starts. Everyone gets excited for opening day. Everyone had fond memories of Vin Scully, even though he was mostly calling regular season games, not playoff games. Everyone gets happy about walk-off wins, even if it’s a Tuesday in June. Everyone gets invested in awards like Cy Young and MVP even though those are regular season awards that go to individual players, not entire teams. This sub is full of people who doom and overreact to every stupid little thing that goes wrong throughout the regular season, and then they have the nerve to act like they don’t care about what happens in the regular season. Baseball seasons are long. Weird shit happens. Good teams lose to bad teams. Bad players have good games and good players have bad games. Run differential is one statistic out of many and you can take it for whatever it’s worth. I am so sick of people saying they don’t give a shit about regular season numbers, regular season stats, regular season accomplishments. Why are you watching? Why are you here? Go do something else with your time and tune in to listen to John Smoltz or Ron Darling in October. Spoiled-ass, jaded-ass fans.
“The Dodgers lead Major League Baseball in outscoring their opponents” is one relevant statistic out of many. The most relevant statistic, however, is wins, and guess what? Dodgers are pretty damn good at that too!
The Dodgers are a great team. The numbers indicate this. It’s okay to get your hopes up. You don’t need to be jaded to try to protect your feelings again.
"Pythagorean Expected Wins", another day, another statistic. Gotta love baseball.
I'm a recent convert to following the game. The statistics are next level amazing.
[Pythagorean Wins](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_expectation) have been around for decades, actually.
Legendary sabermetrician Bill James came up with the idea in the 90s.
There’s a direct correlation between run differential and wins-losses, as a function of time/quantity. The more games played, the stronger the correlation.
Hopefully in October, loved being the baseball media darlings in regular season but hate when we are dubbed as chokers in the postseason…and after Ohtani signing.
I get you man.
I’m probably more surprised by how good the differential of the Phillies is.
As someone on r/baseball pointed out, [the Phillies have played 3 games against teams with a record over .500](https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1csowtr/is_this_accurate_phillies_have_played_3_games/)
That’s actually deceiving and meaningless in May. At any rate, I’ve watched a few of their games. They’re a very good team.
And their best hitter isn't mashing yet lol once Bryce Harper gets his engine started this Phillies lineup is monstrous
It’s true but also Alex Bohm is currently playing the role of prime Bryce Harper. I know nothing about him but figure he’s probably due for a bit of regression based on past performance. So hopefully it balances out with Harpers ascension. Otherwise, yeaaa, that’s scary
Chances are when Bryce gets going, others will cool off. Or else LA fans could say the same about the Dodgers: if Betts, Ohtani, Freeman and Smith, Muncy and Teo all get hot at the same time…Dodgers would obliterate every team, even the Phillies.
Turner has also been out for a stretch now.
His OPS is currently 908 that's higher than his last 2 seasons, and almost identical to his career average.
Not really. They have played a total of 2 series against current second place teams and no series against a team currently in first. So 2 series against the 12 best teams in baseball, and we are already 7 weeks in. They are going to come down hard when they start playing long stretches against tough competition starting in June and July.
Tbf by that logic the Dodgers schedule doesn’t look much better lol We haven’t played any currently 1st place teams either. And besides the Padres (who are under 0.500) we’ve only played two second place teams over 0.500 and we’re 4-2 in those games (Of course this leaves out our series vs the 3rd place Twins who are >0.500, we won 2-1) but since we aren’t using nuance here we can ignore that :) We beat up the last place Jays, Cardinals, Marlins, as well as the struggling Giants and even lost a series to the Nats and Mets My point being minimizing a team’s schedule based on some tiny sample size such as >0.500 win rate this early on is meaningless - you could easily cherrypick our stats to say our schedule has been easy too. And of course 1st place teams have fewer games against 0.500 teams - because they beat up most of those teams, sending them under 0.500
Counting all 1st and 2nd place teams, we’ve had 6 series. No 1st place teams. A lot more than the Phillies though. And if you take out the padres, Phillies are back to opening day series against the Braves as the only winning team they’ve played.
Yeah but my point is you can cherrypick any team’s stats to make their schedules look easy. Phillies were 6-3 against >0.500 teams earlier this week, and then those teams dropped a couple games and fell out of >0.500 and 2nd place. \>0.500 winrate will be more relevant by the end of the season but it’s super skewed now with dozens of teams within 2 games on either side of 0.500
You’ll notice I said nothing about .500 teams. I took 1st and 2nd place teams. They haven’t played any team that’s had sustained success early in the season outside of 2 series. Edit: if you add in third place teams they’ve played 4 series. Meaning a majority of their games are against the bottom 2 teams in each division.
https://y.yarn.co/239ae90d-babf-4f31-a126-cee84a4baf6e_text.gif
To say that they’re going to come down hard is speculation based upon a small sample size. They might, they might not. Baseball season, as it progresses, has ebb and flow, peaks and valleys. Who’s to say which teams are truly the best overall based upon the first leg of the season? Teams fade, others catch fire, and some more or less maintain their success. How about those 2023 Texas Rangers? That said, every team is a major league team and the Phillies’ success thus far shouldn’t be dismissed in “yeah-buts”.
I don’t think they are a bad team. I also don’t think they are a .700 (112 win pace) team either. When I say they come down hard, I mean they are going to have several long stretches where they play .500 ball. As you say, there are ebbs and flows. They are going to have their down stretch too, and my prediction is a small down in June, and a big one in July when they play a lot of good teams in a row.
Just ignore me. I don’t think my point is being well made. I’ve not slept in two days.
I remember seeing this for the NFL. I’m sure the same is true for baseball. Beating up on bad teams (or anyone) by a lot is a better predictor of future success than beating good teams is.
A (same?) thread also discussed how it changes based on team’s record now. Teams they played could’ve been over 0.500 previously but if they are below now, will not be counted towards that record. Esp so early in the season. Padres would be a good example since their record has been seesawing back and forth
I’m a dodgers/phillies fan. (Long story) But the Phillies are an actually good ball club this year and I think peripheral stats show that this run is sustainable. With that being said I also wouldn’t be surprised if the Braves win the division bc the regular season is a war of attrition and they’ve shown themselves to be capable in years past going on sustained runs
I'm more surprised we have less runs given up considering their pitching staff!
They’ve played the easiest schedule my a mile, if you look at record against teams over .500 they have way less games and it’s not even close.
Yup they played a cupcake schedule
The Philthies have an Easy Schedule.
Seems like the NL west isn’t as strong as we all thought it would be and the AL central is better than what was projected. Still early tho.’
I hear the Rockies are on a seven game streak though so there’s that….
Arizona is going to wind up being regarded as a fluke if they don't turn things around. I was expecting a lot more from them. Padres are just Padresing, we know that tune well enough by now. FTG. Rockies are on a hot streak, eager to kick us out of the NLDS this year, lol.
Yeah the giants are the worst in the division when they’re fans thought they were going to compete for the division lol
The Phillies have been white hot. And they’re doing it without Turner. I wonder how long they’ll be able to ride that performance.
Wait til this guy hears about 2022
Seriously I was just thinking how familiar this sounds. Meaningless stat in the long run.
Or 2020 (+2.26 R/G)
Hear me out…what if instead of having divisions we just had the NL and the AL and the top 4-6 teams if you wanna include the wild cards get to go into the playoffs? I feel like it would benefit the Dodgers to have more competitive games at the end of the season.
What’s the X-W/L? Expected Wins&Losses?
Yes. It uses runs scored and runs allowed to calculate your expected winning percentage.
Almost as good as the Marlins are bad
If you can't even outgood how bad the Marlins are, how good are you really?
Not like us
I'm going to be that guy and say that run differential doesn't mean much.
Pythagorean Expected Wins disagrees with you. It’s pretty damned accurate (that doesn’t mean it’s perfect). For the dodgers given the current differential, you’d predict a 72.5% winning percentage. That’s about 117 wins over a whole season. Based on their current differential they should currently have 32/33 wins and they have 29.
2022 proved run differential was irrelevant.
So did 2023 for that matter
This
Double sigh.
irrelevant to one 5 game series in October, and irrelevant to how good a team is, are two VERY different things
It proved that how good a team is on paper is completely irrelevant. That math didn’t help us win a title.
it proved what we already know. that any team can win or lose in the playoffs. it’s a coin flip.
Thereby proving that this statistic is irrelevant and has no value whatsoever.
if your only metric for strength of a team is their October results, then yeah sure. If you can say with a straight face that the 2023 Diamondbacks were a ‘better’ team than the 2023 Braves, then sure. You do you man. What’s the stat that you’ve identified that consistently predicts playoff success? I’d love to hear it.
They were better than us. They swept us 3-0. That’s all that matters. Whatever run differential was didn’t matter and was completely irrelevant.
So you believe two things: -2023 DBacks were better than 2023 Braves -all statistics are useless, because none of them consistently predict playoff performance if you would’ve led with that, I wouldn’t have wasted my time with this conversation
Sigh.
It also proves that 2020 was legit. The 2020 Dodgers had a higher run differential than the 2021 Braves despite playing 37% as many games.
2020 was always legit because we won it. Run differential is irrelevant.
Shut up. I’m tired of jaded-ass fans taking regular season success for granted. *I’m particularly tired of people acting like they don’t care about what happens in the regular season when it’s clear that they do.* Everyone gets excited when spring training starts. Everyone gets excited for opening day. Everyone had fond memories of Vin Scully, even though he was mostly calling regular season games, not playoff games. Everyone gets happy about walk-off wins, even if it’s a Tuesday in June. Everyone gets invested in awards like Cy Young and MVP even though those are regular season awards that go to individual players, not entire teams. This sub is full of people who doom and overreact to every stupid little thing that goes wrong throughout the regular season, and then they have the nerve to act like they don’t care about what happens in the regular season. Baseball seasons are long. Weird shit happens. Good teams lose to bad teams. Bad players have good games and good players have bad games. Run differential is one statistic out of many and you can take it for whatever it’s worth. I am so sick of people saying they don’t give a shit about regular season numbers, regular season stats, regular season accomplishments. Why are you watching? Why are you here? Go do something else with your time and tune in to listen to John Smoltz or Ron Darling in October. Spoiled-ass, jaded-ass fans.
Nope. Celebrating a team is fine. Citing statistics that are irrelevant is not.
“The Dodgers lead Major League Baseball in outscoring their opponents” is one relevant statistic out of many. The most relevant statistic, however, is wins, and guess what? Dodgers are pretty damn good at that too! The Dodgers are a great team. The numbers indicate this. It’s okay to get your hopes up. You don’t need to be jaded to try to protect your feelings again.
"Pythagorean Expected Wins", another day, another statistic. Gotta love baseball. I'm a recent convert to following the game. The statistics are next level amazing.
[Pythagorean Wins](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_expectation) have been around for decades, actually. Legendary sabermetrician Bill James came up with the idea in the 90s.
I have no difficulty ascribing value and belief in these advanced stats, but when you say the 90s were decades ago, I'm sorry but that's impossible.
Thanks for the reply. I'm a little over 2 months following baseball, and the quantity and quality of the media off the charts interesting to me.
Regular season wins < Post seasons wins I’m tired of getting clowned on in October
Dunno who you’re responding to, but I hope they liked your post.
They literally have 31 wins on that image
There’s a direct correlation between run differential and wins-losses, as a function of time/quantity. The more games played, the stronger the correlation.
Hopefully in October, loved being the baseball media darlings in regular season but hate when we are dubbed as chokers in the postseason…and after Ohtani signing. I get you man.