Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1063: Should Fans Pay Attention to Projections?

Episode Date: May 27, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Pokémon as a baseball show, Mike Montgomery’s workload, whether the Yankees are preparing to turn heel again, and the AL’s early interleague dominance, then discuss whether baseball fans are better off with or without an awareness of projections and playoff odds. Audio intro: Steely Dan, "Gaslighting Abbie" Audio outro: Harry […]

The long weekend that's coming up fast, let's get busy, just too much to do. That black mini looks just like the one she's been missing. She's a little sexy, she's all that I'll do. Hello and welcome to Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by Fangraphs, but most importantly by our wonderful and numerous Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs joined, as always, but not as always, by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer

in Jamaica. Hi. Hi. You made that sound almost sarcastic. They are wonderful and numerous just to clear that up for anyone who might be wondering, but yeah. Good cough, bad cough. Yes. So, this is our second podcast that we've done since you've been in Jamaica. How have things changed or are things wonderful or are things not wonderful?

Things are still wonderful. I went swimming a lot in various bodies of water and enjoyed myself quite a bit. Various bodies of water. Doing more of that. Yeah. Fresh water and salt water, or I guess chlorine water and salt water. I don't know. Is two bodies of water enough for various? Well, the pool was subdivided into a few different bodies of water. So I'm counting that.

Okay. That's a fair point. So I don't know how much attention you are paying to baseball these days, but good news. It doesn't matter. Let me tell you, not a whole lot, but all right. I do want to call everyone's attention to a post I saw in Kotaku this morning called Pokemon played baseball and it was insane. So you can Google that headline if you want, or I'll link to it in the podcast post. But I have a feeling that this will save us the trouble of answering a few future listener emails because there's all kinds of craziness going on here if you were ever on the verge of emailing us to ask what would happen if someone hit with a bat that transformed into a fishing rod and then back into a bat again pokemon's got you covered if you wanted to know what would happen if a pitcher

threw a ball of lightning instead of a actual baseball, again, Pokemon's got you covered. If you wanted to know what would happen if the baseball were a sort of putty-like substance and could be depressed by the hand and spread out and then snap back into shape, again, Pokemon's got you covered. So go watch these videos that Kotaku collected of this episode and save your emails. these videos that Kotaku collected of this episode and save your emails. It's vaguely reminiscent of, what was it, XKCD that asked what would happen if someone hit a baseball at the speed of light? Yeah. Hit a baseball at the speed of light? Yeah.

Yeah, either one of those. Do you ever stop and wonder, like, in 15 years what the emails are that are going to be pouring in? Like, you know, there's still going to be the Mike Trout hypotheticals because he's going to be a 15-war player at that point. But outside of that, like, there's going to be so many layers. Like, can you remember the first weird email? Or, like, I don't know, the first atypical, I guess, hypothetical email you got?

Maybe what if baseball had no fences and the ball just kept rolling forever, which was the case in early baseball. That was, I think, a formative one. What would happen if if runners had to run the bases backwards was a an early one i remember but i don't know what the first one was but they haven't gotten any less crazy over time that's for sure like how the first one you bring up is something that actually happened in the early days of baseball it's not even that weird and as for the running the bases backwards isn't there that what scandinavian baseball-ish brand of a game where they kind of run to third first i'm not gonna i can't really explain it but in any case yeah one thing i i did notice about actual baseball before we get to your

topic presumably mike montgomery had a four inning save on thursday and he's now pitched 31 and two-thirds innings through the Cubs' first 46 games, which would put him on pace for 111 and a half innings or something like that, which is really crazy because the last time we saw even a 100-inning reliever, and I'm talking about guys who pitch exclusively out of the bullpen, I think was Scott Proctor over a decade ago, 2006. He pitched like 102 innings and everyone in New York was complaining about Jotori ruining Scott Proctor's arm, which I guess did eventually happen. But Mike Montgomery's on pace for almost 10 innings more than that.

And I don't think there's another reliever on pace for 100 innings. There are a couple of guys who are close. Chris Davinsky, of course, use Meripetit, one or two others, but no one has been worked as hard as Montgomery. And he's been really good, obviously. And the Cubs have largely used their other relievers, I think, in a pretty formulaic fashion and just an inning at a time and usually in the same inning but Montgomery is just getting worked to death here so I'm curious to see what will happen I guess he is a not too distantly converted starter so maybe that helps but this is uh one maybe slight sign of innovation in bullpen usage just in that he's getting worked harder than we've seen any reliever get worked in quite a while. I don't know if it'll continue, but he is on pace. Yeah, we've talked a lot before about Chris Davinsky. In fact, I think that somewhere around the end of April, there must have been a memo sent out that it was Chris Davinsky week and everybody, like everybody had something to say

about Chris Davinsky. Davinsky at that point was on pace for something like a hundred000 strikeouts in a season and something somewhere north of 100 innings. And what's interesting, Chris Davinsky has thrown 28 innings over 16 appearances, and Mike Montgomery has thrown 31.2 innings over 16 appearances. Mike Montgomery has now surpassed Chris Davinsky in pace. One thing that Mike Montgomery has only barely surpassed is a strikeout to walk ratio of one because he has 21 strikeouts and 20 walks. And if you throw in the two hit by batters, he's actually under one. So Mike Montgomery, oddly good. He's got a low ERA, but the numbers aren't promising. Chris Davinsky, meanwhile, has an ERA that's risen into the threes, which is a little astonishing, but his numbers are still fantastic. So bet on Davinsky moving forward.

But clearly the Cubs like something about Mike Montgomery. And I don't know. I'm not one to talk. I haven't watched him pitch that much. Low ERA. That's fine. He's done it two years in a row. OK, I guess another thing that we can talk about sort of quickly, and maybe this is going

to be another Friday thing that morphs into the full topic instead of the actual full topic. But Jeff Basson revisited the upcoming free agent market not for this coming winter but for the winter after that the one where everybody good is a free agent there's uh the potential for clayton kershaw there's bryce harper there's manny machado there's i don't know all the other ones i don't i haven't gone through the entire list but name a good player in baseball aside from mike trout and he's probably a free agent that winter and so jeff passon was going over who is positioned well who's not positioned well and it's not a whole lot of stuff that you couldn't have already guessed we

kind of knew that like the phillies are in a could be in a position to strike whereas the tigers we've been saying that they're screwed for a while but the name of course that rises to the top is the new york yankees and passengers floating idea that not only could they challenge the dodgers in their attempt to presumably try to re-sign clayton kershaw but he said in a tweet that the yankees will have the flexibility to conceivably add both bryce harper and manny machado in the same winter. I don't know if it's actually possible to negotiate two mega contracts sort of at the same time and land them both. I don't know if you can try to sell one on being able to land the other as well. But I don't want to overreact to something that hasn't happened

because it hasn't. And even if it does, it's still some years off. But the Yankees have gone through an interesting phase here where they were the New York Yankees and everybody hated them and they were the evil empire. And then they started to come down a little bit and they entered their rebuild. They didn't dive headfirst into the rebuild, but they got worse and they saw what had to happen. And the Yankees are succeeding this year, a little ahead of schedule and almost as a feel good story story you know like as much as the Yankees could ever be kind of like a feel-good team there they are they're in first

place they're doing better than the loathsome Red Sox who just stacked up on stars like Chris Sale and David Price and the Yankees are winning with these homegrown or sometimes, I guess, homegrown elsewhere, but acquired while young players on the Yankees. So there's a feeling where you can sort of root for the Yankees and not feel dirty, even if you're just a classic baseball fan who, you know, you're not supposed to root for the Yankees. But there could be a return. There could be a return to the evil empire days, I guess you could say, where if they

got in this hypothetical Harper and Machado or even just Harper and some other premium free agent, that's going to, it's just going to, I can't think of the right word, but I guess return baseball in a sense to a feeling of normalcy where I guess there's an enemy right now, right? There's no, I don't know, league-wide heel and has something been missing since the Yankees sort of abandoned that position? I don't know. I doubt that anyone who hates the Yankees, which is everyone, would ever root for the Yankees to be good so that they could have a more hateable adversary. I don't think that's the case. So I'm sure Yankees fans have been happy that the Yankees weren't as good as they historically were. Although I know that at least for some anti-Yankee fans, it's been even more frustrating, really, that the Yankees have not been terrible, that by all appearances, they should have been terrible. They have managed to win more games than they lost despite being outscored, which may be

his luck, maybe his bullpen, maybe his Girardi combination of all of the above. But whatever it is, they managed to weather what was supposed to be this dry spell in between two really long-lasting good teams. And they never had the bad team, and now they're good again. And as we speak, they have the third best record in baseball. And now they're good again. And as we speak, they have the third best record in baseball. And to think of them then building on top of this team by adding the best free agents would have to be scary and might make you just loathe them in advance. And yeah, I mean, it's going to happen, right? I don't think the Yankees are now not going to be the big spenders anymore. I mean, they still are big spenders. I think they have maybe the third highest payroll. And that's kind of at what was supposed to be the nadir of their rebuilding phase.

They're still spending a ton. It's just that the production is not coming as much from the people they're paying a ton to. So, yeah, I think they're eventually going to spend. Maybe they'll get under the luxury tax one year and not have to pay as much for every dollar going forward. And then they will be really off to the races once the free agent class is out there and the last contracts from these old expensive teams are off the books and there will be no stopping them seemingly. I wonder if the old feelings are sort of going to be irreversibly softened just because the Dodgers now are always going to spend up around the tax and the Red Sox are always going to spend up around the tax and even like the Phillies could conceivably get up around the tax. The Yankees aren't going to be alone up there like they used to be where they were just sort of the dominant spender. But the other reality is that we never have the true internal team estimates,

but I'm pretty sure the Yankees remain far and away the most valuable organization in baseball, if not in North American sports. And so they always have the potential to outspend everybody else. It's just there. Everybody knows it. It's been lurking there. They could wield that power again. Not that I think building through free agency is anyone's model of how to be great but when you get the chance to sign people in their mid to late 20s who are certified superstars things change those are the good free agents aside from a

certain jason hayward experiment that we needn't belabor so okay i think part of what made them especially hateable you know 15 years ago and at Earlier points in their past Was that they kept winning the World Series every year And so when they won in 96, 98, 99, 2000 Made it back in 2001 I think everyone was totally sick of them

Even if somewhat Admiring of them And so maybe they can't be as hated as they were then just because it's almost impossible to do that anymore. Not totally impossible, but as improbable as it was then. It's even more improbable now with the wildcard round and just how competitive everything in baseball has gotten and how it doesn't seem like money helps you quite as much as it once did possibly. So really unlikely that the Yankees or any team are going to have a run like that where they're just winning every year and maybe getting to the playoffs every year does

not make you quite as hateable if you keep getting knocked out of the playoffs. So at least in that way, I guess their most hateable days might be behind them, but I'm sure they will remain extremely hateable. I guess it's worth remembering that whenever you sign a big name player through free agency, you are sort of by definition paying market value. So even if the Yankees payroll is, I don't know, $220 million in a few years, I don't know if that's reasonable. It's probably about reasonable. $70 million in a few years. I don't know if that's reasonable. It's probably about reasonable. Harper is probably going to take, I don't know, 40 to 50 of that. And Machado might be 30 to 40 of that. And then all of a sudden you have two really good players. And then, I don't know,

median level payroll outside of that. Not that you can really look at things by ignoring the two best players in the roster. But in any case, as usual, the most critical players seem to be those in pre-arb or arbitration years. Those are the ones that allow you to go crazy. Those are the ones that some people argue are not treated well enough about the game. But nevertheless, teams are incentivized to make the most of those. It'll be interesting to see whether they do pursue extensions with Judge, with Sanchez, with their other young prospects who are on the rise, because that's not really a tactic that we've seen the Yankees use in the past, partially because they haven't had any young players to extend like that. I guess they extended Brett Gardner, but there just haven't been a whole lot of opportunities for them to do that.

And so maybe they will start looking into that. Although, as we have discussed with Dave, it's harder to do these days, especially if you have a really good young player. They're less willing to sign extensions that are team friendly. But I guess team friendly for the Yankees is a little different from team friendly for the rest of the league. could still sign a young player to an extension that is above market rate for early career extensions, but still, you know, efficient, cost efficient for the Yankees who are able to spend more per win than most teams. Agreed. Moving on. This is also not the full topic, but I just saw this on Baseball Reference, so I thought I would throw it out there. We are now through nearly two months of the baseball season. there have been 87 interleague

games played so far do you have any guesses how many of those games the american league has won 50 well you're one off it's 51 the american league has won 51 of 87 interleague games which uh gives them a current interleague winning percentage of 586 beating out last year's 550 going back in order i'm just going to go starting from 2017 going back in order get ready for numbers 586 beating out last year's 550 going back in order i'm just going to go starting from 2017 going back in order get ready for numbers 586 550 557 543 513 563 520 535 548 591 544 611 540 504 456 so 456 comes all the way back in 2003 even if you count 504 in 2004 is kind of even. Still, this has all the early signs of being another year of American League interleague dominance. The current, I always like to look at OPS split, which I know is annoying to say out loud.

But in any case, so far, American League hitters in interleague play have a 763. OPS and National League hitters are at 714. That is a large split of what is that 49 points, whereas last year, the split was just 12. Last year, the American League was arguably only a little better than the National League and the early signs so far this year is that the American League has somehow gotten better. There's never a real good explanation for this. I don't know off the top of my head how transactions and roster shuffling worked over the winter. And also this early in the year, interleague games are not evenly distributed as they are at the end of the year. I don't know if there are teams who have played more or have not played.

I think I saw the other day that the Dodgers have yet to play an interleague game. So that would make the National League look a little bit worse. But in any case, this is not because the Dodgers haven't played alone, and the National League has to have some self-respect, pick itself up, and play better baseball, because the American League is still kicking ass. Yeah, I had you and Dave on the Ringer podcast maybe late last year to talk about interleague play because it was another season

of AL superiority and we've tried to go through all the reasons why this seems to be happening and so you can go dig that up we won't rehash it all here at least not right now maybe later in the year we will but it's pretty incredible that it is still being sustained because I think one of the theories we had at the time was that the Yankees pulled everyone in the AL up by spending a ton. And so everyone had to spend to keep pace with them. But the Dodgers have been the biggest spenders in baseball for years now. And so in theory, they should be doing the same thing to the NL, but whatever they're doing is not working. So still not equalized. Interesting. Yeah. Confirmed the Dodgers are the one team in baseball that has not yet played an interleague game.

If I'm reading this correctly. Meanwhile, the Marlins have played 12. So, you know, that'll do it. Yes, that'll do part of it. The Marlins are three and nine. The Red Sox, Blue Jays and Yankees are all tied for second place with 11 interleague games played so far. So maybe the distribution is not entirely even. And looking at things let's

see the phillies 0 and 5 the astros 5 and 0 that makes sense one of those seems as good one of those seems bad let's move on to the actual topic at hand which is going to be projections projection episode i bring this up a little bit because just the other day i put up a post that i think you saw that was talking about the meaning of a team's 50 game record on Fangraphs, which was just sort of an update to a post that I ran a few years ago, where the long and short of it is that when the season is roughly this far underway, I think it's tempting and totally understandable to sort of cast aside what the projections might say, because we have a lot of data at this point. We have a lot of data at this point we have a lot of data for hitters for pitchers and for teams and we have uh what did i i think

the the diamondbacks and the rockies currently have the two best records in the national league which is funny and not at all what the projection said and so after a month and a half two months you start to feel pretty good about the results and you feel like things are suggestive of what's going to happen. But when I have looked at the math, I have compared for the last about 12 years, I've compared the significance of early season team record against rest of season team record. And I've compared that to the significance of even the preseason team projections against the rest of season winning percentage. And the projections still are way, way better than the early team records. And I didn't look at it this time around, but when I've checked in the past,

looking at Pythagorean record didn't really matter that much. Didn't make much of a difference. So the gist from all these posts has been and will presumably continue to be to believe in the projections, the team projections. Of course, you want to update your preseason projections. By this point in the year, there's no reason to look at what things said in March. However, there are daily updated team projections you can find. I didn't have historical access to those, but I think it's interesting that even the preseason projections, which miss a lot like this year, for example, the preseason projections would miss that the Giants don't have Madison Bumgarner right now or anything like that. And you can update as you go

along. But the point I wanted to address and the question I wanted to ask is what is how do you what do you think is the role of projections for a fan? Is there a role for projections for a fan? Or what's the level of unsatisfying when you see a post like this, or you have a concept where you want so much to just think about the actual results? And as I write any post that says around the end, just look at the projections, they tell you more. It feels so empty and unsatisfying, but I don't know, are the projections there as sort of a faceless villain in a sense? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, we did get an email right after that post came out from a listener named Nick, who sort of emailed us to plead for some exception to this. He was asking about Pythag record. He

was asking about base runs. Well, what if you use this? What if you use that? Would that be better than preseason projections? And the answers were all basically, no, probably not. But yeah, I think if you're a fan, you shouldn't let the projections interfere with your enjoyment of the season in any way. So if you enjoy baseball the most, when you're completely buying into whatever the standings say at that moment, or maybe you're buying into them if it's good news and you're looking at the projections if the standings are bad news or whatever you have to do to enjoy baseball, I think that's fine, really, as long as you are not working in baseball, as long as you're

not writing about baseball and paid to analyze the sport, as long as you're not working in baseball, as long as you're not writing about baseball and paid to analyze the sport, as long as you're not gambling on it, which you probably shouldn't do anyway, as long as there's nothing really at stake, I think you should just enjoy the season. And if you want to believe that the Rockies are real or the Yankees are totally real or whatever team is exceeding its projections at that time, go for it, I think. Now, I enjoy things more kind of looking at it in that analytical way, which some might consider overly clinical or not emotional enough. And so when I look at the standings, I want to know not just how good a team has been or how many games it's won, but what the underlying stats say, what it's likely to do from that point going forward.

That is how I enjoy a baseball season, just taking all of that stuff into account. But I don't think anyone should be obligated to do that. And so I do understand, I guess, the knee-jerk reaction to, say, a projections post comes out and throws cold water on your team why that might bother you i will say though that even if you're not looking at it yourself don't be the guy who totally buys into everything even if it's not sustainable and is then arguing with other people

about it and saying that the projections are stupid and that's why they play the games or whatever. I mean, that's true. We all want them to play the games. Often the games play out differently than the projections, so they're not infallible by any stretch, but they do tell us something. We know based on history, based on past seasons, that they tell us something as you've documented. So don't be a projection denier i suppose but if you don't want to look at them that is okay with me i wonder sometimes how how detached we are people and i guess our position from the actual fans the actual consumers of the stuff that we do because it's been as we've discussed before it's been some time since either one of us was like a real team fan and i think it's it's helpful that i remain like an

emotionally invested team fan and unfortunately a team that was just eliminated last night in game seven conference finals that was a heartbreaking game but it's it's useful i'm oh my god i woke i woke up with an actual frown. I didn't even, anyway. It's useful to have that active in my person, I think just so I can sort of tap into still, because, you know, fandom is fandom. It doesn't matter what sport you're talking about. And so it's helpful.

And I know that in that particular case, for example, the hockey team that was good, but was eliminated, was overachieving and they were not they were sort of a bubble playoff team they weren't expected to make it i think they were outscored actually during the season so you know kind of like the orioles and then they just beat a good team then they beat another good team then they push the defending champions to the rink and when you have a team like that and this is not an uncommon narrative but you think okay this team is super resilient and you of course you the you think, okay, this team is super resilient. And you, of course you, the numbers are the numbers, but this team is greater

than the sum of its parts, et cetera. And it's, it's an easy thing to, to believe in and buy into. And especially when you have these results that are going against what the numbers say should be the results for so long, it's so hard to convince yourself otherwise. In fact, there's really no reason to convince yourself otherwise. So in that sense, it seems like the numbers almost don't serve a role except to help you feel like an underdog. And of course, the Royals fans can relate to this, Rangers fans, Pirates fans, to a certain extent, certainly Orioles fans, teams that have sort of beaten the projections. I think it's a totally justifiable reaction to say, well, the projections must be missing something because there's zero incentive for those fans to care what the projections have to say. There's zero incentive for them to believe in the projections because

there's not really anything at stake for them. They can be projections deniers. And so what if they are? If their team loses, their team loses. And if their team doesn't, then they get to be that number-defying underdog,, look at the talent, it's not sustainable. And then you're completely buying it and you're buying your playoff tickets and you're mentally imagining World Series Game 7 or whatever. And then the second half swoon comes and you're totally unprepared for it. Then maybe that's more devastating, more depressing than it would be if you kind of kept some perspective as it was happening and we're looking at the numbers and we're saying this is probably not going to keep going. So I don't know, maybe it's better to have been excited and then disappointed than never to have been excited at all. But you could make the case at least that maintaining some sense of what

the likely outcome is going to be helps you because if you continue to defy that projection then even better i mean that's the thing i think being aware of this stuff can make it even more exciting if you keep beating the odds then you're aware of what the odds were and you're aware of how improbable it is and how exciting it is and unexpected it is. And so I don't think looking at the projections necessarily spo way, just kind of in terms of bracing yourself for what is going to come and then maybe being even happier if it doesn't come. But I agree for the most part. If you're a fan, you're just watching the games from day to day and you're enjoying

the way the season is playing out. There is no need necessarily to couch those expectations in what the stats say. So two more points to make one and we've i think we've mentioned this before but i have uh i have 12 years not counting this year i have 12 years of complete team projections that i have the spreadsheet i don't know how many times i have to allude to the fact that i have the spreadsheet but i do and you don't and haha and i've collected these spreadsheets from a variety of sources. Anyway, team projections going back 12 years. The sources have changed. There has not been one consistent source of projections for all that data.

But whatever. Projections are projections are projections. They all work in a similar way. So I don't know. Are you comfortable going over R-squared numbers live on a podcast? We're going to do it. Yeah. Who cares?

It's pretty easy. podcast we're gonna do it yeah who cares it's pretty easy so i have these 12 years and i decided let's i broke up the 12 years into four groups of three years so starting from 2005 covering 2005 to 2007 then 2008 to 2010 then 2011 to 2013 and then 2014 to 2016 so i just did a simple analysis looking at how well team projections correlated to actual team record at the end of the season. Very basic. It's like the first thing you would choose to analyze. So for the earliest group, I found an average R squared value of 0.49. For anyone who does not know how this works, the numbers can range from 0 to 1.

The higher the number, the stronger the relationship. A number of 0.49 doesn't tell you a whole much in isolation, but just compare that number to the following numbers. So the earliest group, 2005 to 2007, R squared of 0.49. Next three years, 0.27, then 0.38, then 0.35. So this is just one very simple way of analyzing the numbers. There's any number of reasons for why these numbers could be what they are. But the takeaway that I get from this and have continued to get from this and that we've talked about getting from this before is that even over these 12 years where we have learned so much more about how baseball works, I think we certainly talk like we do. The projections don't seem to have gotten meaningfully better at

least not on the team level and i didn't have time to put together any analysis of how the projections have done on the player level but i don't think that they've made a whole bunch of progress either we are still so new into even the pitch fx data stuff but especially the stat cast data stuff that we don't i don't think there are any projections that really fold that information in yet. All I know is like Steamer, which is a projection system, does include pitcher fastball velocity as one factor. And that's a newer data point. But the larger point here is that projections don't seem to have gotten much better, which is interesting and leads into the following question, and maybe the ultimate projection question of how good do we actually want our projections to be?

Because very obviously, if our projections were perfect and we could see the future, that would suck. No one would like that. No one would like that at all. Then there would be no reason for them to play the games because they would only confirm what we already know during the offseason. So where is, I guess, your ideal limit?

And how far are we from that limit? And is it even possible to reach that limit? Because sports require unpredictability. Yeah, right. That's the thing. I forget what the exact range is, but I know that I've seen that there is an absolute limit to how accurate projections could be,

even if you could perfectly assess every player's and team's true talent and project everything perfectly, as perfectly as it's possible to project, you would still be wrong by a lot. I forget what it is, like six or seven wins per team on average or something. You would be off just based on randomness alone, which is not something that you can project. And I don't mean just, you know, there can be things that look like luck that aren't actually luck. But in this scenario, we're saying actual luck because we're able to project and assess everything else. And still, there would be a wide range. You'd still have teams that were projected to be playoff teams that were missing the playoffs and vice versa. So given that, and given how far away we are from perfect talent

assessment, I don't think it's a concern. I think it's been discussed on this podcast before, but I don't think, I mean, even if the projections were getting better, I don't think we'd be anywhere near close enough that it would spoil the season just because of the built-in randomness and because of how far away we are from being able to assess those things with perfect accuracy. league and front offices all getting smarter and maybe there's less separation between teams and so maybe the projections would have a harder time in that kind of environment than they would in a more unbalanced baseball so that could have something to do with it and as we discussed not too long ago I think our preseason our team level projections are still sort of working with last gen stats for the most part the stats that we use from day to day, analyzing players and how they're performing in season,

have basically no bearing on the larger level projections, except maybe Steamer taking fastball velocity into account. But none of them is publicly using StatCast or SpinRate or any of the information that we have now. So I wonder if we're not far from making a leap with team level projections too, where we'll start to fold those player level in-season stats into the team level pre-season stuff. And then maybe we will start to see something. Although often I'm sure that extra level of detail can just be deceptive and steer you wrong.

So it's probably not as big a gap as you'd think. But yeah, basically, I don't think we're anywhere close to getting to the point where projections spoil the season. I don't think we ever will get to that point, really. in sort of an ideal area and it's possible that it will remain in this ideal area forever where we know just enough to say that on average the projections know a lot more than we do for any team that is over or under achieving we always know that the projections are better but we always know that the projections are massively i don't want to say flawed because they're as good as it can be but they there are things that they just can't project because humans are humans and humans are not, I don't know, dice. Yeah, and I think it's good that there's some predictability, of course.

I think being able to look at the preseason projections or just look at the rosters or however you assess teams and say this team's probably going to be good, that team's probably going to be good, and often it's as simple as looking at who was good the previous year, and that's not a bad guide to begin with. But if there were no carryover, if everything were a complete black box and any team was just as likely to win as any other team, I think that would be less fun. It would be chaotic. It would be a frenzy. But I think having some consistency and some predictability to be able to say that Mike Trout is going to be great or whatever it is, I think helps us appreciate the randomness that then injects itself. Because if it were all randomness, then that might just be too hectic for me.

But some level of randomness is very good. a sport that you already know exactly what's going to happen beforehand, nor can you watch a sport that is completely random because this sort of touches on that email question that we answered the other day about what makes for a good list. You want a baseball-related explanation for any sort of list because if the answer is just random chaos, well, that's not fun because you always want to believe that if your team won, it's because they were better in some way. Even if the numbers suggest they weren't better, well, they're just more resilient. They had more heart and soul to their team. It's a great clubhouse chemistry, great setting that's arranged by, let's just say, I don't know,

Jeff Bannister as a hypothetical. And so you always want to believe in that. And I guess maybe the best rule for the projections right now that clearly they're an analytical tool that we get to use maybe too often i don't know at least close to all of the time but they are they're great for enhancing debate and they give i keep coming back to the idea of villain not that i think that they're always villainous because of course you can somehow sometimes have a team that's underachieving and the projections can give you some heart but they are a wonderful thing to argue against because you're not arguing against any person you're not hurting any feelings necessarily you're just saying well the numbers are missing something and they can make you maybe more entrenched in your belief in your team maybe the greater a team is overachieving maybe the greater you believe that there is something about that team. And I

would have to imagine that if you are a fan of a team like, I don't know, the Orioles, that you might feel even better than if you're a fan of a team that the numbers say is supposed to be good, because that way it gives it, it just adds to the story, which is really that all we're ever hoping that a team can construct for us in a season. Yeah. All right. Have we reached the end? Yeah, we've probably reached the end. I don't know if there's anything else. We can just bring it up in another episode. There's going to be plenty of these.

Yeah. Well, speaking of that, I'll be heading home on Sunday. You will be out of town through Tuesday, right? So we will figure out what we're going to do next week. We might backload the week. Maybe I'll do something with a guest earlier in the week. I don't know. But when I go away, I'm just sitting in a hotel room. I can still record a podcast. When you go away, you're on a mountain somewhere with a pack on your back and poles in your hand,

and it's hard to podcast. So harder for you to fill in from afar. I've been led to believe that there actually will be cell service around 10,000 feet on this particular mountain. However, I don't know. I can't speak for the winds and I certainly would not be able to do any play index research while I'm away. Yeah. And what is the podcast without impromptu play index research? So

have a nice long weekend, everyone. We will talk to you sometime next week. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners have already pledged their support, including Jimmy Babowski, We will talk to you sometime next week. and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Your reviews and ratings are always appreciated. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. And by the way, the paperback edition of The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team, the book I wrote with Sam Miller, comes out on Tuesday, the 30th. You can preorder it now.

It has a new afterword of 5,000 words or so of new material about the Stompers and some of the players we had on the team. We also fixed a few typos. Not that there were that many, but if you haven't read the book yet, you should pick that up. Even if you have, maybe it's worth revisiting. Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming

via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will talk to you soon. But I'm sad to say I'm on my way Won't be back for many a day My heart is down, my head is turning around. I had to leave a little girl in Kingston town. Three, two, one. Hello and welcome to episode 1006.

Okay. Three, two, one. Just do it your way. Hello and welcome to effectively what? Nope. Wow, it messed up your whole rhythm doing the standard, the traditional countdown. Gotta do it again.