witesoxfan

QUOTE (Jose Paniagua @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 01:21 PM) JJ Stankevitz calls Courtney Hawkins' athleticism 'elite' here http://www.csnchicago.com/white-sox/espns-...pth-farm-system Can we get to the bottom of this right now. Is Hawkins a CF in the future or is the more accurate assessment corner OF right now? He's likely going to end up in RF, but that doesn't mean he won't be able to play CF. Given his body structure and how he's filling out, there's a good possibility he slows down.

OK. You win. I'm still going to pay attention to projections and cite them in the future, but OK.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 12:04 PM) Then I will rephrase, what SHOULD have happened, and what a guy like Harold Reynolds who obviously doesn't have a big fanbase thinks WAS going to happen, wasn't so different accuracy-wise. I also think most if pressed to be accurate with predictions, will use what SHOULD happen vs. what they hope or think will happen most times. Right, but there is a distinction. If you asked Jeff Sullivan or Dave Cameron what will happen, they will say "I don't know."

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 11:40 AM) Killing the vibe? I have been the one accused of ignoring the projection just thinking the Sox will be great. I think they will beat this projection and be a good team. Certainly capable of making the playoffs. Debbie Downers are the ones taking this projection and thinking the team isn't very good, with little chance at the playoffs. It's whatever. We know how you feel about projections. I think they will beat them too. I hope we're right.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 11:07 AM) You think my posts are stupid and pointless, yet you keep responding. If you read my first post in this thread, I would have been done. But for some reason, people kept responding. I don't think your posts are stupid and pointless, but you brought up a legitimate question as to why you felt they should be taken seriously, you've been given a multitude of responses as to why we feel they should be taken seriously, and you continue to ignore those points and say "they were off by 6.7 games." As I said, if they were predictions, which would be attempting to predict the future and give us accurate numbers for what will come up, I'd agree, these shouldn't be taken seriously. These are not predictions. They are a series of numbers that are determined by previous numbers to try and determine talent level of the 30 teams in the majors taking context out of the equation. Context and what happens is a huge, huge part of the equation, which is why we do the whole "playing the game thing." Without that, these numbers wouldn't exist in the first place. If you can get past the difference between predictions and projections, you may see that these aren't designed to predict the future but to project a likely outcome based on previous information. It's a learning tool. You may also continue to ignore them, and that's fine, but if you are going to continually s*** on them, it may be worth more to you to leave the discussion. This isn't a threat or anything, and you can continue to say how you feel, but just know that by doing so, you're being a Debbie downer and really killing the vibe.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 10:56 AM) Projections feed discussion. You just don't like opinion that is different than yours. Sorry. If you want to ignore the past and think this is a really accurate "tool" as you like to say which lets you know where every team is at, fine. I think you are wrong. I don't go into the soccer thread and say "soccer is stupid, it's pointless and doesn't do anything." Because I really don't care to watch soccer and I don't think it's that entertaining, I stay out of the discussion. If you find projections are that useless and baseless, why are you discussing them still?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 10:29 AM) But why? Projections are made for fun. At the end of the year, most will look like a fool, and if you didn't one year, chances are, you will the next. It amazes me how serious some are over these things. It's a freaking projection. Not a tool. I feel sorry for anyone who bases their excitement of their team based on something like this. I'd subscribe because more information and more inputs are always better than less, especially if you can properly contextualize the information. Also, I'm not basing my excitement for the White Sox on a 78 win projection. I'm basing my excitement on the White Sox because I think they are going to have a really good and fun team. On top of thinking Garcia is going to have a good year, I also think Micah Johnson is going to win the 2B job and be a 1.5-2 WAR player, I honestly do not mind Gordon Beckham being on the roster as long as he's not the starter (or if he is, hopefully it's because he's finally hitting well), I'm really excited for what should be a much improved bullpen, and I'm really hoping Rodon can come in and be a shot in the arm and great back of the rotation starter.

Joba struggled quite a bit in the second half but I'd take him.

Hey HEY YOU go to Google and type in "Tyler Danish scouting report."

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 10:21 AM) I will have them when the season starts. As I stated earlier, it is still January. Yet another reason to take these with a grain of salt. Besides, if I was more accurate, how would my projections be considered a useful "tool"? If your projections were significantly more accurate on a yearly basis, I would subscribe to Dick Allen Analytics and would start using dWAR as my go to number.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 10:08 AM) If you take the number of inaccuracies and divide it by 30 teams, the average team's projection was off 6.7 in 2014. You can give me as much hard time as you want for saying a projection means nothing, and for thinking this isn't some useful "tool". The fact is, when the games count, this projection, like any other, doesn't come into play. You're right. But the teams aren't playing now and I like talking about baseball and this gives me some food for thought until they do. At the end of the year, when the projections are inevitably off, we're going to sit back and say "what happened for Team A this year that they played [better/worse] than their projected standings? OH, [pitcher/hitter] played [better/worse] than their projections, but how did he get there?" and so on and so forth. These projections give the baseline numbers and from there we continually ask WHY. My gut instinct says that the guys that make these projections would rather be wrong so we can not only continually improve the projection models but to also look into the beauty of the game itself where players, young and old, have great seasons out of nowhere and we try and decipher why they did. If we took this to literally mean that this was going to happen - as if these were predictions, instead of projections - then I'd agree with your point that they're useless.

The last time Keith Law thought a Sox pitcher was going to be a reliever, Chris Sale became one of the best pitchers in the league. Can't wait for Danish to do the same

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 05:32 AM) Exactly what are they used for? Baseball is a game not a mathematical equation. Every player can have the exact same stats and teams could have a wide range of records. I actually read BP every year. My copy came yesterday. I doubt anyone in the White Sox front office is losing sleep over these projections. I also would imagine if they did win 78 games, like they are projected from this system, Robin Ventura would be considered even a bigger idiot than he currently is considered. LOL at accuracy. This system was off 39 games between the projected first and last place team in the AL East last season. They had the team that won 96 games finishing in last, and the team they projected to win 89 wins up in last. A point of reference. That's it. Based on the information we have on hand, those are the projected win totals. It's January and we want to talk about something and using prior statistics to look at the strengths and weaknesses of a team or multiple teams is fun and interesting to do. It's not a secret that Avisail Garcia has yet to produce a full, good season yet and arguing otherwise is silly. I personally feel that he's going to have a nice year, but I'm an optimist and a homer, but I understand why projections don't figure him to breakout. It's not a secret that the Sox aren't great defensively either, and it's likely that will cost them a few games too. It's also damn near impossible to project relievers to have big years based on the volatility of the position. You know as well as anyone that a pitcher's overall numbers can be skewed by 5-6 games, which is incredibly hard to account for in a projection system as well. The Sox also shouldn't be losing sleep over their projection. They've done a great job this offseason. I've said that you could see this team winning the division, especially when it appears the division will be weaker overall this year, but there are also a lot of scenarios where you can see them falling short. You also continue to use the most egregious error between the Red Sox and Orioles, but the Red Sox projection was based on them having Lester, Lackey, and Peavy all year with Buchholz not pitching like dogs***. None of those things happened, and Peavy didn't pitch particularly well when he was with the Red Sox last year either. Meanwhile, the Orioles got really nice production out of Nelson Cruz (I'm not sure those projection systems figured him in at that point) and production from Steven Pearce out of nowhere. They had unexpected surprises that the projection system couldn't calculate. These things happen. If Chris Sale pitches like a Cy Young candidate, Samardzija and Quintana both pitch really well, Garcia has a good year, Flowers and Gillaspie show, to some extent, that last year wasn't a fluke, and the rest of the guys do their jobs, you are talking about 8 wins of improvement off of their projections right there. They aren't designed to be accurate down to a T. They are designed to take in depth looks at teams in a sort of philosophical manner. QUOTE (ptatc @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 08:49 AM) Ohhh. You're in trouble now you old guy that doesn't like stats. This really isn't necessary.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 06:16 PM) Ok not "heavily" overrated, but he's overrated in the same way Shark is. They're very, very similar pitchers. You're right though, that Shields has been better than I remembered. I missed a lot of last season being away on a ship EDIT: In what world is he a 4 WAR pitcher? BP never has him above 3.0 and that was his sophomore season FanGraphs. I don't know how BP calculates their WAR off hand but Shields has been 4.5, 3.9, 4.5, and 3.7 the last 4 seasons. That works out to over 4 per season, but a drop off last year is concerning. Also dropping off to 1.6 seems unrealistic to me. That's an incredibly steep drop off for a player who hasn't lost velocity and is coming off 4 really good seasons.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 09:08 PM) He has nowhere near the power of Maggs. And Magglio also had a 9% K rate compared to Avi's 22%. yyyyeah... The contact issues are valid. Magglio played at a time when it was easier to make contact, but he made better contact comparatively speaking. Garcia's power is perfectly fine, if not better.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 09:40 PM) i don't know what that has to do with projected wins in January. If you are going to be so adamant that projection systems are as useless and baseless as you claim they are, and that anybody can do this sort of thing and be similarly accurate, I am challenging you to create your own projection system that incorporates whatever data you want to come up with legitimate predictions and projections for the 2000 or so players they project, and then you can use those projections to help determine your predicted wins and losses. In the meantime, quit pissing in everyone's cheerios.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 05:32 PM) So you agree that trading 4 players for 1 year rentals is a good idea? It's going to cost a great deal of money to keep them or continually losing 4 players from the minor league depth will eventually wear it down. It depends. If I were in the Twins or Phillies position right now, not at all. If I were fairly close to being a competitive team, and the prospects weren't special by any stretch of the imagination, I'd probably do it most of the time, but I'd evaluate each on a case by case basis. The Sox also got a prospect out of it too. We can't simply forget about Ynoa.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 05:25 PM) Understanding this is essential if one is going to make an informed criticism of projections. Also, RE: the bolded -- the errors bars depend upon the confidence level you set. Usually people use 90 or 95%, so you might say "I'm 90% sure that the Sox will win between 71 and 85 games." If you want to be 95% sure, you've got to widen it. If you only want to be 50% sure, you can narrow it. The actual number these projections land on is the mean of whatever confidence interval they set. A 99% confidence interval for the Sox would be something like "I think they will win between 55 and 103 games this year." Cool story bro. (working through this, some college statistics lessons are coming back to me)

Some of the stuff in here is crazy QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:40 PM) Shields is heavily overrated and not WORTH the money. Why do you want us to take on another bad contract? We've already got Danks. Heavily overrated? The guy's been a 4 WAR pitcher each of the last 4 years and I don't see him suddenly falling off a cliff at this point. I imagine he'll be a good starter each of the next 2 years and a league average starter the 2 years after that. The 5th year could get ugly. If we're using projections to determine win totals, we have to use projections to figure that James Shields isn't going to turn into junk because he's 33. QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 05:16 PM) exactly. Shields wants a long term contract of at least $100M. He is up their in age. Make it like 3 or 4 years max at about $14M and it's more realistic. Not sure we have that extra money anyway and we are sitting pretty darn good pitching wise right now Ervin Santana signed a 4 year contract worth $14 million. James Shields is a much better pitcher than Ervin Santana.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 04:32 PM) It's because of standard deviations and luck - which can't be projected. The '05 White Sox were massively lucky, and got career years out of our entire bullpen - which was the major reason for our hot start out of the gate. That kind of thing happens every once and a while. It could happen for us this year. But the point is that the MOST LIKELY OUTCOME is what these projections are for. Each team doesn't take into account the others, so just because no one in the Central is slated to win over 82 games, doesn't mean no one will. It simply means that for each individual team, the MOST LIKELY OUTCOME, statistically speaking, is that they hit their projected win total. And obviously there are caveats for teams like the White Sox who have a system that can't be projected quite as accurately as the others. But the "most likely outcome" doesn't mean that it happens a lot, it just means it happens the most often in simulations and based on expectations. The bell curve of possible outcomes has a median of 79 wins, but it's a very large error bar and the odds of hitting exactly 79 wins is incredibly small. In fact, I've seen suggestions that the error bar may be as high as 8 games. If that's the case, then everything within 1 standard deviation leaves the Sox between 71 and 87 wins, which is either one of the worst teams in the league or one of the best. There's all kinds of noise that isn't accounted for in projections because they literally can't account for it. Injuries, roster additions, roster subtractions, players breaking out, players disappointing, luck, and whatever else, they are very inexact. They should be looked at because, as you've noted, they indicate the baseline talent level of the Sox, which is probably an average team (if we used a range of +/- 2 on that 79 wins, it'd 77-81 wins, which is less intimidating), and there are plenty of reasons to believe they can outplay that projection. There are others to believe they will not beat it. I expect about 85 wins. I won't be surprised in the least if they win 90+. I won't be surprised if they win 75, but (not that it's a surprise) something catastrophic will have happened for them to win that little.

QUOTE (shysocks @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 03:58 PM) A similar argument occurred about this Fangraphs post a while back, and essentially I think everyone here is a little bit correct about projections. The post wasn't about PECOTA specifically but about projected team WAR, but I think the same generalities apply. The reason projections are helpful: Of 20 playoff teams the past two seasons, 19 were projected for at least 30 WAR prior to that season. So that is solid evidence that projections are a good assessment of where teams stand. The reason projections are not always helpful: Because when I look at the graph with the faded Orioles logo in its background, I see probably 10 teams who exceeded their projected WAR by 10 or more, and another 7 or so who fell short by that margin. That is a full third of the sample (!!) where the projection whiffed considerably. For whatever reason. Those surprises occur often enough that it would be unwise to praise the projections as gospel. I like this post very much.

The AL Cy Young winner will probably be ahead of him as well.

We seemingly do this every year, but projections don't mean nothing. They establish a baseline by which we can try and determine how good teams are. Taking them at their exact word and saying that anything over 79 wins is "overachieving" shouldn't be done either. A projection of 79 wins suggests that the Sox have holes around the team, but that they should be an OK team.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 01:13 PM) The research has shown midseason acquisitions rarely pay big dividends. I hope the Sox get away from the philosophy of being OK being a little short thinking adding in July will put them over the top. That hasn't worked. If you are trying to win, try to be as strong as you can day 1. Hahn has admitted they still are not where they want to be. It obviously takes some time. But there is no doubt they can win. There have been seasons they weren't as highly thought of as they are now, and made the playoffs. This team might win 95 games. They might lose 95 games. No one really knows until the games are played. I think the best thing to do with midseason acquisitions is replacing a blackhole with a positive value player. I hate the idea of acquiring the traditional high value players at the deadline for the reasons you've implied. Personally, I think the best midseason acquisition the Sox have made in recent memory was acquiring Youkilis. That move alone nearly sent them to the postseason simply because he was an OK player replacing a terrible player.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 01:16 PM) I don't understand. Their shortstop had a 2.4 WAR last year. It's not a weakness for them. Their SS is as good as Alexei for waaaaay less money. Tejada is not a real good SS and there are big time concerns with Flores' defense there, even though the numbers translated well at the MLB level.