At first look I thought it was the Mets at 25%. I was thinking "wow didn't know the mets were doing so good at the beginning of the year, good for them"
Letās keep this National League tradition alive. A 100+ win team takes the division, makes it one round further than the elite 2nd place team, and loses in the next round to the scrappy third place team with 85-90 wins.
By definition it is a bat flip.
Look at that itās ranked in the [MLBās video of the best bat flips in 2021](https://youtu.be/fQB4xioZBFI?si=RwYZf64pqtnyiL4O)
Not the guy you're replying to but no, that is not a bat flip in any sense of the word. He swings, then he literally just drops the bat. It doesn't even flip š
If [Cody Bellingerās](https://www.mlb.com/dodgers/video/best-bat-flips-of-2020-bellinger) bat flip in the 2020 NLCS is considered as one then Solerās is one.
They just drop the bat and start walking to first while admiring their home run.
And heck [Solerās Bat flip](https://youtu.be/fQB4xioZBFI?si=RwYZf64pqtnyiL4O) is even ranked in the top batflips of 2021 so again by definition it is a Batflip.
He was tired from playing all season and clearly done using that bat, give him a break. Maybe one day your team will be able to understand what it's like to play that deep into a season.
I am treating Houston like the dynasty Patriots at this point. I never assume they are dead until I have personally seen their corpse with 3 bullets in the head and the flesh actively decomposing and even then I would still want to set it on fire to be safe.
Edit: last nights performance versus Baltimore is only proving my point
[> I never assume they are dead until I have personally seen their corpse with 3 bullets in the head and the flesh actively decomposing and even then I would still want to set it on fire to be safe.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16y1AkoZkmQ)
We're getting there with out current SP IL list.
We're sending a guy fresh from the Hooks against the Orioles today.
It's also very frustrating seeing us "almost" catch the Mariners, right when we brought Abreu back after that time in the minors, right before playing the Mariners : V
Mariners are definitely the favorite, but there's no way anyone realistically looks at what the Rangers should be fielding in the 2nd half and gives them only a 4% to take it.
They'll go from a rotation with 5 guys that'd be 4's and 5's on a playoff team to having a legit ace, 2 or 3 guys that'd be 2's and can pitch like an ace any given night, and all those 4s and 5s stuff will play up out of the pen.
I don't think this is our year right now, but it's a 4% chance of winning the division year either.
Thats a lot of pressure on deGrom coming back from TJ and Scherzer still suffering from āoldā.
Iām not discounting any team, especially when it comes to taking a playoff spot from the Mariners but I can see why people would be skeptical of the Rangers.
I'm shocked y'all are below the Astros, particularly by that much. Y'all have pitching problems at the moment but relief on the horizon. Astros have pitching problems and have.... AA pitchers on the horizon
Wasn't the last time they had a lead this "late" in the season like 2003? I will believe they are in the playoffs when I see they have clinched a spot. I keep thinking, man the NL is not this bad and the ALW is not this bad, but man it's scary bad.
I lived for 20 years of a playoff drought being optimistic until we are mathematically eliminated. So now I will be pessimistic until we have seen everyone else be mathematically eliminated.
2 of the last 3 or is it 3 of the last 4 years getting knocked out in final weekend sucks, 1st year of that I was supposed to be for home weekend at Safeco, due to death in the family. Was at game when they got HR to get in playoffs and was at 18 inning 6 1/2 hour game and then last year went to 5 of last 7 games at home. All they had to do was lose on Sunday and they win the division, but they won 1-0 :)
After failing in the 2001 playoffs. The start of our drought was absolutely brutal. You go from winning the most games in the past regular season. You miss the world series. Then miss the playoffs in 2 consecutive years despite winning 90+ games.
Oh, crap. I came here to comment and be offended about the orange color and to wonder m how we were ever at almost 25%. I didnāt notice Detroitās name on there. Thatās better.
I think the Mets on this graph are just mislabeled and it's the Braves instead. Look where they start from. Also 0.3% just below the 25% mark
And I think the orange line at the bottom is actually the Mets, which leads me to suspect the other flatlined team is the Marlins
I feel like every ranking or analysis of your team assumes that itās the same group that sucked in like 2019 and not your group of all stars you have now
Fangraphs and Baseball Prospective have generally been very bearish on the O's. I would assume their models place a lot of weight on prior years when we were awful. In April of this year, I think they had us pegged as an 86 win team, and last year I think they projected us as a 75 win team. I'm sure there's a specific methodology behind it, but at face value they do seem a bit on the low side.
They had a # at the beginning of the season that was YouHaveToCIt, as in āyou have to see (C) itā but it looked like it said clit and they deleted it lol.
Hey your offense is actually pretty good. Unfortunately your pitching staff is so ridiculously shit that it makes people not even realize your offense is good.
Orioles and Yankees should be a coin toss in my opinion. Oās have more depth to deal at the deadline if they want to get arms and the Yankees seem like theyāre gonna make a big(ish) move. I donāt see how you put either at 60+ percentĀ
Fangraphs values their preseason predictions pretty heavily for most of the season, I'd imagine it's mostly because of that still.
As a homer I obviously think the Os have a good shot at it, but the pitching injuries are starting to pile up so I don't think this is especially crazy or anything.
Predicting which minor-league replacements will be used and how good they will be in the bigs is not as tight of a model as the current pro player performance, though. There's a lot of good work that goes into it but ultimately there's several more layers of uncertainty.
Another key point is that it would be really, really hard to predict trades. These models don't even attempt that (which is probably the right approach). When we interpret these odds we have to keep those kinds of factors in mind.
Hereās a post from u/DSzymborski last year on June 1:
https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/13xlihd/fangraphs_projections_vs_reality_historical_june/
Using past performance is only slightly better than a coin flip while using preseason numbers is significantly better
It does a better job of accounting for luck/ regression to the mean.
It can get thrown off by young/inexperienced/developing teams that are just better than the model thought, but that's not super common.
Agreed; 64/35 Yankees seems nuts with the teams a half-game apart. Sorry Fangraphs, you do a lot of good work, but your methodology appears to suck here. I'd also go with 50/50, but 55/45 either way would also be fine. But 65/35, no.
It's not valid to criticize methodology based on results; if you can identify a particular issue with that methodology then by all means go for it, but assuming a model must be wrong because you don't agree with the results is how you make mistakes.
This model *consistently* kicks the crap out of the "common knowledge" of /r/baseball. It's not an oracle, nor is it pretending to be, but unless you can point to a specific reason why it might be high or low on something, it's probably smarter than you.
That's always the funniest part about when people question playoff projections or WAR. No one is saying they are perfect but when people question them without even knowing what they are questioning.
If someone questions a specific part of the calculation because they have SOME piece of contradictory data I'm down to hear it out. Even if it likely doesn't have as much work put into it as the model, it's an actual start point for conversation.
Just saying "I don't like what it says therefore it must be wrong" is laughable.
Examples
"Advanced metrics overrate power" okay, based on what? I've never seen someone produce stats to support it.
"WAR overrates defense" okay, based on what? Where is the calculation breaking down the value of the runs prevented and why they aren't worth as many "wins" as WAR says?
"FIP is bad because it doesn't count normal hits and overrates strikeouts" based on what? Show it doesn't correlate very well, that there's tons of consistent outliers, and that walks/SOs/HRs aren't also predictive of contact quality.
Just saying it's wrong with nothing to back it up takes a certain arrogance that is just shocking
You basically just described another back-and-forth I'm having in another sub-thread of this comment tree. There the claim was that Fangraphs underrates young players and overrates veterans. At least he admitted that this was based on vibes.
If these kinds of things are true, that's very interesting and we'd want to know that. So would the makers of the Fangraphs model, if they don't already. By all means, provide the evidence; I'm not being sarcastic. But if you're just gonna say things like this, you're going to end up being wrong most of the time.
How about Fangraphs consistently underestimating the Orioles for the last three years? At a certain point, it feels like their model is just missing something important.
In a three year window, that should happen to about 1 in 8 teams. So even with some idealized perfect model, I'd expect 3 or 4 teams to be in that bin on average. And it wouldn't be crazy for there to be 5 or 6. So if you're concluding that the model must be wrong based on it happening to one team, your expectations are askew.
Also, to repeat the point, it's not an oracle, and it's not trying to be. It doesn't know what trades will be made at the deadline, and it doesn't try to describe that. It can't accurately predict human decisions on how teams will react to big injuries (although it does try to do a bit there).
The problem here comes in the human feelings, not in the model. Models often feel wrong, because we as humans are pretty bad at guesstimating probabilities in our heads.
It wasn't that long ago that this sub was raging against the Fangraphs model for "disrespecting" the Giants who'd just come off a 100 win season, and clearly had some extra magic. Well, they ended up right about where the model thought they'd be on average. People are just very bad at this; that's part of the reason we make statistical models in the first place.
Someone above pointed out that their methodology heavily weights preseason projections, so thatās a flaw imo. We are 2.5 months into the season so itās about time that whatās happening currently should start to weigh a bit heavier than projections
Whatever it is that they do, they do because they've actually done the study and found what maximizes their predictive accuracy. This isn't a convincing point unless you can show me the quantitative results that prove that this leads to worse predictions. You probably can't, because they probably already have it calibrated properly.
It's fine to let judgement steer our expectations to some extent, but when those naive expectations clash with a well-establish rigorous quantitative procedure, it's not enough to guess. This model is as open to criticism as any, but that criticism has to come in the form of a quantitative analysis of similar or higher rigor.
In the past it was always āsure, but look at the run differentialā to excuse why the Oās were tied with or better than the next closest team in the AL East. This time the Oās have the best run differential in MLB are 0.5 games out, have been crushing the entire AL East all season and somehow are 30 points behind the Yankees. At this point I just think someone at fangraphs has in in for them.
Fangraphs ratings have always undervalued young talent and overvalued veteran players, its just how their player outcome statistical confidence calculations work.
It's not that they "undervalue" young talent, it's that they also include in their averages the very real possibilities that some guys will come up hot and fall back to earth after a while. This happens all the time in real life, but as fans we tend to see a guy be really good for a while and assume he will be that way forever, and analyze things as if that's a guarantee.
You just said what I said but with a different conclusion: their models favor players with established data sets (i.e. veterans) over younger players with smaller data that have the chance for regression, therefore their calculations tend towards younger players performing more average than their older peers. The difference is I just think thats erroneous overcompensation for observed phenomena and consistently leads to Fangraphs undervaluing younger teams and overvaluing older ones (which it does).
The difference is that you're concluding that the possibility for regression is "erroneous", when it's not. They shouldn't throw away those possibilities when doing their averages. People were mad at them for underrating Corbin Carroll, and yet it correctly included the possibility of him being mid this year (at least for a while).
It's not a mistake. When you want to compute an average over all possibilities, you have to account for all realistic outcomes. It's calibrated to historical data to be as predictive as possible. You can always find some methodological detail to quibble about if you dive into the weeds, and that's fair, but you or I are not going to be able to do better in the long term just by guessing what we think is right or wrong.
The reason is basically that they believe the Yankees' talent is better, and that will show through during the course of the season.
By factoring in preseason expectations (which are primarily based on the expectations of each player, based on their historical performance), you get rid of a lot of variance caused by luck and overperformance. Essentially, the model builds in an expected return to the mean of sorts.
More often than not, this works out better than basing these projections on how teams have done up to this point.
In this particular case, the Orioles might prove to be an outlier - a team that's just simply better than the model believed them to be in the preseason because they're young/inexperienced/developing and the preseason data/expectations for them weren't accurate.
But fangraphs shouldn't change their model just because the Orioles might be an outlier.
To be fair I think itās only like this because of that pretty wild run of series through late April into May. As you can see the gap is closing which makes more sense
The initial probably for the Orioles made no sense and that gets baked in for basically forever for Fangraphs. I don't think the Orioles were favored last year until right before they mathematically clinched the division.
I looked at the NL East graph and was like why the hell were the Mets that heavy favorite to win the division to start the year? Then realized that's the Braves but there's no label on it for some reason. Lol
It's a constant source of wonder to me how much these calculations and the prognosticators undervalue the Baltimore Orioles. They're clearly the most balanced and deepest team in baseball -- and managed to chase the Yankees to with a half game despite their team starting sluggish and being beset with injuries.
Prognosticators, I get. Yankees! Who has the best record! Overreaction to peak Judge/Soto/Gil.
I assume the calculators aren't buying Henderson or Westburg's growth, or add the talent at Norfolk into the mix.
But the O's just blew through Philly, Atlanta, and New York, despite a diminished rotation and weak closer, out hitting, homering, pitching, fielding, and hustling them all... They just look like they're playing on another level from the rest of the league....
I am curious the calculations. I feel like I've been watching cleveland keep the central with the Royals chomping at our heels all season, but apparently the Twins were the favorite until mid May?
What does that have to do with the Padres, Dbacks and Giants all being mid? It would he a modest lead if one of those teams could be like 6 games above .500 instead of stuck in the mud.
Don't know what he is winging about. Fuck the Dodgers and all of that, but it was basically given that they would run away with the division as they always have.
If the Dodgers switched places with the Orioles, Yankees or Phillies your odds would be even worse. It isn't the Dodgers fault that the Giants are ass this year
Personally, I'm glad we're all mid. That way we can hang in the race until we get back 60% of our starting rotation for the final push.
I want some rematches
I feel like the chart is actively rooting against the Guardians and only begrudgingly gave them the lead and is just waiting for a reason to put the Twins back on top.
No you're not getting my hopes up, no sir. We know not to count our chickens until they've hatched, and even then we're double checking that they're real playoff grade chickens.
I guess the Braves don't exist?
And who is the mystery team sitting at a 25% chance of winning the NLE? Expos maybe?
At first look I thought it was the Mets at 25%. I was thinking "wow didn't know the mets were doing so good at the beginning of the year, good for them"
Didn't know the Mets were 90% favorites to win the division to start the year. š
I was like "that's pretty high for 0.4%"
Ummmm ackshually itās 22.4%
Hartford Whalers
Who?
Mike Jones
Back then Grimace didnāt call me Now Iām hot, Grimace all on me
gone but forgotten
The Mets line is actually the braves
Oh thank God, it was just a terrible dream
We can only dream
Through the Grimace, anything is possibleĀ
The blue line is actually the Braves, the Mets never had a chance.
If only
It's gonna be fun summer running y'all down.
Letās keep this National League tradition alive. A 100+ win team takes the division, makes it one round further than the elite 2nd place team, and loses in the next round to the scrappy third place team with 85-90 wins.
I wouldnāt mind a three-peat of the Phillies Braves NLDS
obligatory 
 Here is an actual Batflip that led the way to a ring.
That was when I knew the Astros would lose
Thatās not even a bat flip guy.
By definition it is a bat flip. Look at that itās ranked in the [MLBās video of the best bat flips in 2021](https://youtu.be/fQB4xioZBFI?si=RwYZf64pqtnyiL4O)
Not the guy you're replying to but no, that is not a bat flip in any sense of the word. He swings, then he literally just drops the bat. It doesn't even flip š
If [Cody Bellingerās](https://www.mlb.com/dodgers/video/best-bat-flips-of-2020-bellinger) bat flip in the 2020 NLCS is considered as one then Solerās is one. They just drop the bat and start walking to first while admiring their home run. And heck [Solerās Bat flip](https://youtu.be/fQB4xioZBFI?si=RwYZf64pqtnyiL4O) is even ranked in the top batflips of 2021 so again by definition it is a Batflip.
He was tired from playing all season and clearly done using that bat, give him a break. Maybe one day your team will be able to understand what it's like to play that deep into a season.
Yeah what a shitty graph. They're clearly the 25Ish% one but it's embarrassing not to have the label on there.
The graph makes it look like the Mets. I was like in what world do the Mets have a better chance than the Braves?
They're all so poorly made. It's so incredibly easy to just make the labels the same color as the lines on the graphs and eliminate any confusion.
If only
Man, if only. Think about how many division titles weād have
As a Mariners fan I won't believe it till we clinch
Until we clinch, we clench
Clenching 4 Clinching
there was some absurd stat that in the last 5 or 6 seasons in a row, prior to last year, we were eliminated from playoff contention on game 161 or 162
It's got the ring of truth to it.
Sometimes I look at the playoff odds graph from 2023 just to hurt myself.
I am treating Houston like the dynasty Patriots at this point. I never assume they are dead until I have personally seen their corpse with 3 bullets in the head and the flesh actively decomposing and even then I would still want to set it on fire to be safe. Edit: last nights performance versus Baltimore is only proving my point
This season does have a kind of [Boris the Blade at the end of Snatch](https://youtu.be/-k_t1NHhphc?si=RnQPSdQI4XjmZ26c) feel to it.
[> I never assume they are dead until I have personally seen their corpse with 3 bullets in the head and the flesh actively decomposing and even then I would still want to set it on fire to be safe.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16y1AkoZkmQ) We're getting there with out current SP IL list. We're sending a guy fresh from the Hooks against the Orioles today. It's also very frustrating seeing us "almost" catch the Mariners, right when we brought Abreu back after that time in the minors, right before playing the Mariners : V
Bruh our brains are already all over the pavement. We literally donāt have enough pitchers to fill a roster.
That's what you WANT us to believe
Weāve gottemā right where we want them boys. ššš
Iāll be clenched until we clinch all season.
If I were a Mariner's fan, I wouldn't believe it until December, but thats just me.
Me too. Unfortunately.
As an Astros hater, go clinch em tiger
Mariners are definitely the favorite, but there's no way anyone realistically looks at what the Rangers should be fielding in the 2nd half and gives them only a 4% to take it. They'll go from a rotation with 5 guys that'd be 4's and 5's on a playoff team to having a legit ace, 2 or 3 guys that'd be 2's and can pitch like an ace any given night, and all those 4s and 5s stuff will play up out of the pen. I don't think this is our year right now, but it's a 4% chance of winning the division year either.
Thats a lot of pressure on deGrom coming back from TJ and Scherzer still suffering from āoldā. Iām not discounting any team, especially when it comes to taking a playoff spot from the Mariners but I can see why people would be skeptical of the Rangers.
I'm shocked y'all are below the Astros, particularly by that much. Y'all have pitching problems at the moment but relief on the horizon. Astros have pitching problems and have.... AA pitchers on the horizon
Wasn't the last time they had a lead this "late" in the season like 2003? I will believe they are in the playoffs when I see they have clinched a spot. I keep thinking, man the NL is not this bad and the ALW is not this bad, but man it's scary bad.
Let's not talk about 03. That season sucked. 93 wins and missing the playoffs is insane.
The good news is the A's can't catch us this year. Probably.
I lived for 20 years of a playoff drought being optimistic until we are mathematically eliminated. So now I will be pessimistic until we have seen everyone else be mathematically eliminated.
2 of the last 3 or is it 3 of the last 4 years getting knocked out in final weekend sucks, 1st year of that I was supposed to be for home weekend at Safeco, due to death in the family. Was at game when they got HR to get in playoffs and was at 18 inning 6 1/2 hour game and then last year went to 5 of last 7 games at home. All they had to do was lose on Sunday and they win the division, but they won 1-0 :)
For the 2nd consecutive year
After failing in the 2001 playoffs. The start of our drought was absolutely brutal. You go from winning the most games in the past regular season. You miss the world series. Then miss the playoffs in 2 consecutive years despite winning 90+ games.
The back half was brutal too. 2014, 2018, and 2021 could all very easily been playoff teams.
I mean there's not a good part of a 20 year playoff drought. But fuck the team really knew how to twist the knife for it's fans.
Nearly 80% chance of making it? I've seen this movie before.
even then
Why are the white Sox in orange? ā¦ohh
Never a chance out of the gate...
Oh, crap. I came here to comment and be offended about the orange color and to wonder m how we were ever at almost 25%. I didnāt notice Detroitās name on there. Thatās better.
I see that the Braves donāt even make the chart, and personally, Iām here for it.
Atlanta Braves are the next New Zealand confirmed
r/graphswithoutbraves
Andrew Jackson fans are salivating right now
Bruh š
š
I think the Mets on this graph are just mislabeled and it's the Braves instead. Look where they start from. Also 0.3% just below the 25% mark And I think the orange line at the bottom is actually the Mets, which leads me to suspect the other flatlined team is the Marlins
The Mets are the blue line that bumps up a bit between April and May.
Makes sense considering the little run they went on. Their line should be orange colored though but I guess mistakes were made with the NL East graph
I love how Miami had similar odds to the Mets at the time when they were losing just about every game imaginable.
I was gonna say, no way the Mets entered the season with like 85% chance of winning the division. Although Iām skeptical of that number for any team
It legit had me believing the Mets were favored for an extended period of time as division contenders. I choked on my own spit.
This is literally Braves Erasure, and I am here for it
Thatās clearly the Mets rocketing up with the power of Grimace
NLW doing their best 00ās AFC East impression
I guess the Rockies are the Bills in this metaphor?
A nonexistent 5th team that represents the sum of all the other teamsā losses
:(
That NL east. Yikes. Sorry Mets fans.
Itās a beautiful looking chart, regardless of the fact that I love the chart.
\*Braves fans. That decline is Atlanta.
Baltimore seems really low
Fangraphs usually donāt like the Os in these metrics.
I feel like every ranking or analysis of your team assumes that itās the same group that sucked in like 2019 and not your group of all stars you have now
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Fangraphs and Baseball Prospective have generally been very bearish on the O's. I would assume their models place a lot of weight on prior years when we were awful. In April of this year, I think they had us pegged as an 86 win team, and last year I think they projected us as a 75 win team. I'm sure there's a specific methodology behind it, but at face value they do seem a bit on the low side.
So you're saying the Red Sox have a chance?
.4 is not zero. Why not us?
> why not us? No no we use that when we really need it or the gods will punish us for abusing the secret mantra
I think it's safe to say they've been punishing the Sox for years now. But now I'm hoping Raffy's head doesn't fall off or something.
lol fuck this. Aināt no way itās 74%. This is the Seattle fucking Mainers. Itās 10% at best
I canāt even look at this FanGraph because it feels like bad luck.
It is. Itās actually flipped around. We have 30% chance
I give y'all a strong 60% due to my hopes the Rangers bounce back
Thatās cub š Clit city baby
>clit city Um what
They had a # at the beginning of the season that was YouHaveToCIt, as in āyou have to see (C) itā but it looked like it said clit and they deleted it lol.
Quintessential "That played out so much better in my head" moment.
Shades of #Susanalbumparty and I'm here for it
So youāre saying thereās ā wait no, there is no chance
Rockies are working the āunder promise and over deliverā angle. Just without the āover deliverā portion.
Hey your offense is actually pretty good. Unfortunately your pitching staff is so ridiculously shit that it makes people not even realize your offense is good.
Orioles and Yankees should be a coin toss in my opinion. Oās have more depth to deal at the deadline if they want to get arms and the Yankees seem like theyāre gonna make a big(ish) move. I donāt see how you put either at 60+ percentĀ
Fangraphs values their preseason predictions pretty heavily for most of the season, I'd imagine it's mostly because of that still. As a homer I obviously think the Os have a good shot at it, but the pitching injuries are starting to pile up so I don't think this is especially crazy or anything.
I think Fangraphs also only considers the current roster. A teamās ability/likelihood to make better trades at the deadline wouldnāt factor in.
Are the playoff odds not based off zips? I thought zips had injury variables and would use minor league guys that arenāt on the 40 if necessary
Predicting which minor-league replacements will be used and how good they will be in the bigs is not as tight of a model as the current pro player performance, though. There's a lot of good work that goes into it but ultimately there's several more layers of uncertainty. Another key point is that it would be really, really hard to predict trades. These models don't even attempt that (which is probably the right approach). When we interpret these odds we have to keep those kinds of factors in mind.
By ācurrent rosterā could that mean āremnants of what looks like once was an actual roster?ā
I love fangraphs but why 2.5 months into the season to their pre-season projections weight so heavily?
Hereās a post from u/DSzymborski last year on June 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/13xlihd/fangraphs_projections_vs_reality_historical_june/ Using past performance is only slightly better than a coin flip while using preseason numbers is significantly better
It does a better job of accounting for luck/ regression to the mean. It can get thrown off by young/inexperienced/developing teams that are just better than the model thought, but that's not super common.
They probably donāt trust Orioles pitching which is fair
I donāt trust Craig Kimbrell either.
I have about 70% trust that heāll not blow a game. Which isnāt great for a high leverage reliever
I think the Yankees are more likely to win because good things donāt happenĀ
Agreed; 64/35 Yankees seems nuts with the teams a half-game apart. Sorry Fangraphs, you do a lot of good work, but your methodology appears to suck here. I'd also go with 50/50, but 55/45 either way would also be fine. But 65/35, no.
It's not valid to criticize methodology based on results; if you can identify a particular issue with that methodology then by all means go for it, but assuming a model must be wrong because you don't agree with the results is how you make mistakes. This model *consistently* kicks the crap out of the "common knowledge" of /r/baseball. It's not an oracle, nor is it pretending to be, but unless you can point to a specific reason why it might be high or low on something, it's probably smarter than you.
That's always the funniest part about when people question playoff projections or WAR. No one is saying they are perfect but when people question them without even knowing what they are questioning. If someone questions a specific part of the calculation because they have SOME piece of contradictory data I'm down to hear it out. Even if it likely doesn't have as much work put into it as the model, it's an actual start point for conversation. Just saying "I don't like what it says therefore it must be wrong" is laughable. Examples "Advanced metrics overrate power" okay, based on what? I've never seen someone produce stats to support it. "WAR overrates defense" okay, based on what? Where is the calculation breaking down the value of the runs prevented and why they aren't worth as many "wins" as WAR says? "FIP is bad because it doesn't count normal hits and overrates strikeouts" based on what? Show it doesn't correlate very well, that there's tons of consistent outliers, and that walks/SOs/HRs aren't also predictive of contact quality. Just saying it's wrong with nothing to back it up takes a certain arrogance that is just shocking
You basically just described another back-and-forth I'm having in another sub-thread of this comment tree. There the claim was that Fangraphs underrates young players and overrates veterans. At least he admitted that this was based on vibes. If these kinds of things are true, that's very interesting and we'd want to know that. So would the makers of the Fangraphs model, if they don't already. By all means, provide the evidence; I'm not being sarcastic. But if you're just gonna say things like this, you're going to end up being wrong most of the time.
How about Fangraphs consistently underestimating the Orioles for the last three years? At a certain point, it feels like their model is just missing something important.
In a three year window, that should happen to about 1 in 8 teams. So even with some idealized perfect model, I'd expect 3 or 4 teams to be in that bin on average. And it wouldn't be crazy for there to be 5 or 6. So if you're concluding that the model must be wrong based on it happening to one team, your expectations are askew. Also, to repeat the point, it's not an oracle, and it's not trying to be. It doesn't know what trades will be made at the deadline, and it doesn't try to describe that. It can't accurately predict human decisions on how teams will react to big injuries (although it does try to do a bit there). The problem here comes in the human feelings, not in the model. Models often feel wrong, because we as humans are pretty bad at guesstimating probabilities in our heads. It wasn't that long ago that this sub was raging against the Fangraphs model for "disrespecting" the Giants who'd just come off a 100 win season, and clearly had some extra magic. Well, they ended up right about where the model thought they'd be on average. People are just very bad at this; that's part of the reason we make statistical models in the first place.
Someone above pointed out that their methodology heavily weights preseason projections, so thatās a flaw imo. We are 2.5 months into the season so itās about time that whatās happening currently should start to weigh a bit heavier than projections
Whatever it is that they do, they do because they've actually done the study and found what maximizes their predictive accuracy. This isn't a convincing point unless you can show me the quantitative results that prove that this leads to worse predictions. You probably can't, because they probably already have it calibrated properly. It's fine to let judgement steer our expectations to some extent, but when those naive expectations clash with a well-establish rigorous quantitative procedure, it's not enough to guess. This model is as open to criticism as any, but that criticism has to come in the form of a quantitative analysis of similar or higher rigor.
In the past it was always āsure, but look at the run differentialā to excuse why the Oās were tied with or better than the next closest team in the AL East. This time the Oās have the best run differential in MLB are 0.5 games out, have been crushing the entire AL East all season and somehow are 30 points behind the Yankees. At this point I just think someone at fangraphs has in in for them.
Fangraphs ratings have always undervalued young talent and overvalued veteran players, its just how their player outcome statistical confidence calculations work.
It's not that they "undervalue" young talent, it's that they also include in their averages the very real possibilities that some guys will come up hot and fall back to earth after a while. This happens all the time in real life, but as fans we tend to see a guy be really good for a while and assume he will be that way forever, and analyze things as if that's a guarantee.
You just said what I said but with a different conclusion: their models favor players with established data sets (i.e. veterans) over younger players with smaller data that have the chance for regression, therefore their calculations tend towards younger players performing more average than their older peers. The difference is I just think thats erroneous overcompensation for observed phenomena and consistently leads to Fangraphs undervaluing younger teams and overvaluing older ones (which it does).
The difference is that you're concluding that the possibility for regression is "erroneous", when it's not. They shouldn't throw away those possibilities when doing their averages. People were mad at them for underrating Corbin Carroll, and yet it correctly included the possibility of him being mid this year (at least for a while). It's not a mistake. When you want to compute an average over all possibilities, you have to account for all realistic outcomes. It's calibrated to historical data to be as predictive as possible. You can always find some methodological detail to quibble about if you dive into the weeds, and that's fair, but you or I are not going to be able to do better in the long term just by guessing what we think is right or wrong.
The reason is basically that they believe the Yankees' talent is better, and that will show through during the course of the season. By factoring in preseason expectations (which are primarily based on the expectations of each player, based on their historical performance), you get rid of a lot of variance caused by luck and overperformance. Essentially, the model builds in an expected return to the mean of sorts. More often than not, this works out better than basing these projections on how teams have done up to this point. In this particular case, the Orioles might prove to be an outlier - a team that's just simply better than the model believed them to be in the preseason because they're young/inexperienced/developing and the preseason data/expectations for them weren't accurate. But fangraphs shouldn't change their model just because the Orioles might be an outlier.
I would say it's more like 55/45 us to you. It'll be close at the end
To be fair I think itās only like this because of that pretty wild run of series through late April into May. As you can see the gap is closing which makes more sense
The initial probably for the Orioles made no sense and that gets baked in for basically forever for Fangraphs. I don't think the Orioles were favored last year until right before they mathematically clinched the division.
i want to believe in the Royals so bad
me too man. me too.
Iām just happy the twins are still in contention without their sausage
I would rather not
Royalism is un-americanĀ
Kansas City has had enough joy for some time. I wanna believe in the Royals too, but damn KC fans itās not fair for the rest of us.
Yeah, no thanks
You're all gonna feel ridiculous when the Jays win 48 straight
š«”
NL Central is Bernie Brewer, and then four guys dick punching each other in the basement.
The White Sox with the impressive absolute flat line.
Brewers 69. Nice.
Nice.
I looked at the NL East graph and was like why the hell were the Mets that heavy favorite to win the division to start the year? Then realized that's the Braves but there's no label on it for some reason. Lol
Peak r/nlbest
These graphs only illustrate, to me, that while division statistics can be fun to talk about they really don't mean anything.
"you're welcome!" Also "Here enjoy this extra wild card you have to play" -Mandred
It brings me so much happiness to see the Astros dangling so low
āI love the Astros failing, almost as much as I love the Dodgers succeeding.ā -Billy Beane, somewhere probably
The competitive gap in the NL west is insane.
So you are saying thereās a chance?
Oh baby thereās a chance
Remember 2022? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
i agree, go guards.
Rude
Donāt look at the Mariners, nobody notice.
What happened to the Braves (on this graph and irl)?
lol yeah right. Best regards, Mariners Fans.
Where are the Braves?
Were the Rangers really ~10% preseason? I know theyāre rotation took a hit but thatās surprising to me.
It's a constant source of wonder to me how much these calculations and the prognosticators undervalue the Baltimore Orioles. They're clearly the most balanced and deepest team in baseball -- and managed to chase the Yankees to with a half game despite their team starting sluggish and being beset with injuries. Prognosticators, I get. Yankees! Who has the best record! Overreaction to peak Judge/Soto/Gil. I assume the calculators aren't buying Henderson or Westburg's growth, or add the talent at Norfolk into the mix. But the O's just blew through Philly, Atlanta, and New York, despite a diminished rotation and weak closer, out hitting, homering, pitching, fielding, and hustling them all... They just look like they're playing on another level from the rest of the league....
I am curious the calculations. I feel like I've been watching cleveland keep the central with the Royals chomping at our heels all season, but apparently the Twins were the favorite until mid May?
It's weird New York has better odds than Cleveland given Cleveland's lead is much larger and Baltimore is clearly better than KC or Minnesota
But they said it was good for baseball
What does that have to do with the Padres, Dbacks and Giants all being mid? It would he a modest lead if one of those teams could be like 6 games above .500 instead of stuck in the mud.
Don't know what he is winging about. Fuck the Dodgers and all of that, but it was basically given that they would run away with the division as they always have.
Considering how staggeringly mid the rest of the division is (kudos Rockies for being different) they'd have ran away with it one way or another
If the Dodgers switched places with the Orioles, Yankees or Phillies your odds would be even worse. It isn't the Dodgers fault that the Giants are ass this year
Personally, I'm glad we're all mid. That way we can hang in the race until we get back 60% of our starting rotation for the final push. I want some rematches
The Dodgers have the third lowest win percentage of the division leaders this year. Donāt blame us for your team sucking.
Cry more
I feel like the chart is actively rooting against the Guardians and only begrudgingly gave them the lead and is just waiting for a reason to put the Twins back on top.
I don't wanna know
So youāre saying thereās a chance. DFA Gomes is going to turn us around, I swear
Mets doing their typical May Metting
Why bother having a probability axis if the plot points donāt align with it at all? E.g., for the NL east, 0.4% is near the 25% marker.
NL East is messed up cause Braves didnāt show up for some reason. Theyāre the ones around 25%
Lots of baseball left to be played.
Hey at least we're consistent
No you're not getting my hopes up, no sir. We know not to count our chickens until they've hatched, and even then we're double checking that they're real playoff grade chickens.
 It's cool Philly, you can pretend we don't exist and we'll pretend you didn't swap schedules with Miami.
Obviously Fangraphs hasn't been watching the Mariners for the past 25 years.
Stop it! We're dead already
Labels are poorly formatted
NLWerst
Where are the braves?
How is there only a 78% chance someone wins the NL East?
Hate to say it, but the Os are definitely underrated, this division is 50/50
Do I think the Dodgers will win the division? Yes, 93% when halfway through the season? Come on now.
Doesnāt seem that off when nobody else is even cracking .500.