November 01, 2008

Phil Watch: Ah, C'mon! (Times 8,397)


"Mommy. What's a pythagorean win-loss percentage?"

"Well Robby, it's when a baseball idiot pokes his dipstick into a baseball hoo-hoo and, nine months later, a little baseball moron of an idea pops out."

"What?"

"You heard me, you little..."

Let's play a little catch-up. Phil's been a busy little bee over the last week, if being busy means being a dope. Which it does.

So let's just pick the juiciest nuggets over the last week and do that thing where the BRE tries to get all clever and shit and say things that are more funny/accurate/incisive/breathtakingly inappropriate than what Phil writes.

It's what we do.

Let's start with today's offering (in reverse order):
Modern math: According to the Pythagorean standings, the Angels' Mike Scioscia and Houston's Cecil Cooper were the best managers in the majors this season. They had ratings of +12 and +9 respectively.

Wow. Wow! WOW!! I don't know if I've ever seen something so wrong in an inherently wrong way than this. Well, that's not true. Palin DID say her First Amendment rights were violated by the media yesterday.

Pythagorean standings are NOT manager ratings. Repeat. Not. No. They are a pretty simple mathematical equation that takes runs scored and runs against and plugs them into a formula to determine their win-loss record based solely on that.

In other words, it's merely cute and nobody uses it. Sometimes the disparity is pretty shocking and it's interesting to see such a disparity. It can help an argument in an ancillary of an ancillary sense by demonstrating that a team probably was unbelievably lucky with RISP, they had a great bullpen or their rotation was loaded with Zeuses, Apollos and Joes the Plumber.

Arizona last year was a good example. 18 games over in actual wins and four games under in Pythagorean wins.

But let's take the Angels this year. They were well on their way to being the Arizona of this year w/r/t Pythagorean win-loss. On June 9, they were 39-26 and in first place, four games up on Oakland. Their run differential was...ZERO! Oakland's was +46.

What does that mean? Well, if it was relatively late and the Angels were down, say, four runs, it usually meant Scioscia would go with the Chris Bootchecks, Jason Bulgers and Darren O'Days of the world. Who are they? Exactly. The Angels ended the season at +68 and the A's ended at -44.

So anyway. You take the Pythagorean win-loss, compare it to actual win-loss and come up with a number called 'Luck'. So if the P-WL is say 12 games lower than actual win-loss, then it's determined by this simplistic formula that 12 games were won that the numbers say they probably shouldn't have.

In other-other-other words, IT'S NOT A MANAGER'S RATING!!!!!

Managers cannot see the future, which saying 12 games a year determines a manager's proficiency does! This is where certain statistical models get into trouble. Because dopes can wildly misuse them.

It was debunked ten years ago, completely modified and has been tossed to the ash bin of silly baseball logic.

I can only think Phil is using this for some stupid reason.

The worst were the Toronto combination of John Gibbons and Cito Gaston and Atlanta's Bobby Cox, at -7.

Cripes. Poor Cito Gaston. Phil couldn't even give the guys his properly proper props.

When Gibbons was fired on June 20, the Jays were 35-40 with a +9 run differential.

They finished 86-76 and had a +104 run differential.

That's a 51-36 actual record and a 55-32 Pythagorean W-L for Gaston.

So a +4 luck factor for the team under Gaston and a -11 luck factor for the team under Gibbons.

That doesn't mean that the Jays were better because of the presence of Super Gaston. It had more to do with something resembling a healthy rotation and a bullpen that found its legs as the season went on. Oh, also, Vernon Wells and Alex Rios figured out that getting base hits and not striking out makes you a better baseball player. I don't think it took Cito to tell them that.

The rankings show managers decided only one playoff race—the AL Central. Minnesota's Ron Gardenhire was a -1 compared to Ozzie Guillen's zero, and without the difference the Twins would have avoided a one-game playoff.

BREAKING NEWS: Ron Gardenhire singlehandedly 88 games this year. There were no Minnesota Twins players involved. In fact, every game this year was a mirage created by Bud Selig to fool everyone into thinking that baseball is real.

Really? Is Phil thinking through this shit while he's typing it? Pythagorean W-L means nothing! Just a cute tool, people! And it's not Modern Math. It's math used 15 years before baseball stats were seriously evaluated.

Lou Piniella was a -1 after getting a -2 rating in 2007, his first year with the Cubs. Dusty Baker, the manager Piniella replaced, was a +2 in his first year in Cincinnati.

There you go! Based on an archaic, overly simplistic formula that nobody uses, Dusty Baker was a better manager than Lou Pinella.

It took all season for Phil to find something to justify his Dusty man-love, but he wins. They can go make Phusty babies now.

And then we move on to the impetus of this article: Charlie Manuel is the bestest manager in the bestest way in the bestest history of history.

Why? Well, because the Indians have been bad since he left.

Manuel, who had been Mike Hargrove's hitting coach during Cleveland's heyday a decade ago, replaced Hargrove as manager before 2000. His first two teams won 90 games and 91 games, winning the American League Central in 2001.

But Shapiro sacked him after a 39-47 start in '02. The firing came less than nine months after Shapiro had been promoted to replace John Hart as general manager. He tabbed Joel Skinner, an organization guy, as an interim manager to finish out the season but then turned to the 35-year-old Eric Wedge for 2003.


We're getting to it...

You can't blame Manuel for being just a little amused looking at what has happened to the Indians since they sacked him.

Four of Wedge's six seasons have been losing ones; Manuel, on the other hand, never has had a losing record for a full season. The Pythagorean rankings, which essentially measure a team's victory total with the number suggested by its run production and prevention, have Wedge at -19 for his six-year career; Manuel is at zero for the six full seasons he has managed in Cleveland and Philadelphia.

This should just about cover it:

Cleveland Indians Payroll Since 2000:

2008: $ 78,970,066
2007: $ 61,673,267
2006: $ 56,031,500
2005: $ 41,502,500
2004: $ 34,319,300
2003: $ 48,584,834
2002: $ 78,909,499
2001: $ 93,360,000 (Manuel)
2000: $ 76,500,000 (Manuel)

Any correlation? Me thinks so!

But no. It's because Charlie Manuel is the smartest manager to ever don a fat baseball uniform.

Did Phil watch Manuel's press conferences?

He sounded like this guy:

"I wasn't working on trying to prove nothing," Charlie Manuel said.

More to come.

Phil Watch: Ah, C'mon! (Con't)


I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention this here at Phil Watch, as Phil got his ass handed to him on sports radio all last week over it.

Why?

Well...see for yourself.

The Cubs are on the list of teams for which Jake Peavy will waive his no-trade clause. This doesn't look like a fit, but don't be surprised if Jim Hendry tries to put together a package that would include a swap of first basemen, Derrek Lee and Adrian Gonzalez, who is supposedly untouchable.

Jake Peavy - by himself - being traded to the Cubs 'doesn't look like a fit', but...

The Padres, a team desperately trying to get younger and shed payroll, would trade away a 26 year-old first basemen considered by most to be one of the best in the game for a 'package' headlined by a 33 year-old first basemen in serious offensive decline and is owed $26 million over the next two years and has a no-trade clause.

Oh yeah. And Gonzalez's contract obligation over the next three years:

09:$3M, 10:$4.75M, 11:$5.5M club option (no buyout)

Now...if you're a team trying to rebuild...THERE IS NOBODY YOU WOULD REBUILD AROUND MORE!!!

And Peavy going to be included AS WELL?????!!!!!!

Phil's 'package' would have to include Soto and/or Marmol for Towers to even pick up the phone. Or a farm system dump the likes of which haven't been seen since the Johan Santana trade. Mention the realistic details, Phil. And then check your inbox.

Have I been expecting too much from the Chicago Tribune all this time? Is this my fault somehow?

Phil Rogers. Capturing the essence of a Score caller for three-plus decades.

But

I must give Phil credit where it's deserved. Well...this is mostly due to the fact that Rick Morrissey wrote something so breathtakingly stupid, making Phil's response was positively sane in comparison.

It's the typical shit. The World Series experiences a rain delay and sportswriters compulsively feel the need to prove their mettle by writing reactionary pieces promoting the wholesale destruction of the current model.

It's what they do. It makes them feel important, if only briefly.

Here's Morrissey:

1. Start the season on April 15 and end it on September 15, resulting in a 130 game season.

2. Better yet, start May 1 and end it August 30. The season is way too long.

3. The Steroids Era ruined stats anyway so fuck it.

4. Move the World Series to a neutral, warm-weather site.

5. Like Game 5 this year, one hour and 18 minute games are awesome.

Should BRE start a Rick Watch? WOW!

Phil's response:

1. Keep the season at 162 games.

2. Cut Spring Training by one week.

3. Start the season 10 days earlier.

4. Have teams play three scheduled doubleheaders.

5. Add a 26th player to the roster.

6. World Series played between October 13-21 every year. First round increased to seven games.

I could get behind that.

And if 10,000 people can run 26.2 miles in the New York Marathon on November 2, a few baseball players can play their little game in late October.

See. I think they alternate between who is going to be the raging moron each week over at the Trib.
Phil just volunteers a lot.