"Post-dicting" the 2008 Mets
by James Kannengieser on Feb 5, 2009 12:00 AM EST
Email
PrintBased on a suggestion from Sky at Beyond the Boxscore, I set out to “post-dict” the Mets 2008 season using WAR (“wins above replacement”). This exercise entails plugging the Mets statistics from ’08 into the BtB “easy-to-use” WAR spreadsheet. It’s a way to see how much the Mets talent level correlates to their W-L record. Also, we can find out just how accurate these WAR calculations are. It's decently complicated stuff, both for the casual fan and the aspiring sabermetricians among us. Baseline for National League replacement-level wins is 48.5. Add WAR to that and we’ll have our predicted actual win total.
2008 WAR
It took some time, but I filled out the spreadsheet. Every inning pitched and plate appearance by a Mets player is accounted for, including Andy Phillips’s 5 PA’s and Matt Wise’s 7 IP. For those interested, I used wOBA for hitting (because it includes stolen bases), UZR/150 for fielding, Fangraphs FIP for pitchers, and Baseball Prospectus baserunning stats. I gave Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, and Luis Castillo a .25 WAR bump for baserunning. Believe it or not, Castillo The Gimp was a decent baserunner last year. Here are the results, compared to actual win total and Pythagorean wins:
WAR: 87 wins
Actual: 89 wins
Pythagorean: 89 wins
The predicted 87 wins is an average, as the team had a 55% chance of winning at least 86 games. It appears WAR is pretty good talent evaluator. I’d like to see how precise it is for every team in baseball before declaring it the greatest thing since John Olerud, but results like this lend credence to WAR. The 2008 Mets were slightly lucky or luck neutral, as actual win total equals Pythagorean wins and is a bit higher than WAR-predicted wins.
Playing the “What if?” game
What if…
Billy Wagner didn’t get hurt, and we credit him with Luis Ayala’s 18 IP? +0.6 WAR
Aaron Heilman wasn’t the sux0rest, and posted a FIP in line with his 2006-2007 performance (3.60)? +1.6 WAR
Pedro Martinez gave up homers at his career rate (0.75 HR/9) rather than his 2008 rate (1.57 HR/9)? +1.6 WAR
The possibilities for the “what-if” scenarios are endless, but ultimately kind of depressing given how the season played out. My advice to Mets fans, and baseball fans in general: exercise, eat healthy, and believe in WAR.
This FanPost was contributed by a member of the community and was not subject to any vetting or approval process. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions, reasoning skills, or attention to grammar and usage rules held by the editors of this site.
28 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Very nice
We’ll be starting the 2009 WAR spreadsheet soon.
King of the bling come to lay down the evidence//Not George Bush, L-Millz be da president
Baserunning
Doesn’t wOBA already include base running? Or at least SB and CS. Is the base running bump only for other stuff, like taking advancing extra bases?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN'! HOOUA!
I’m gonna’ channel my inner “W” and go with my gut. 95 wins! Mark it down!
dancing in the moonlight, everybody's feeling warm and bright, its such a fine and natural sight, everybody's dancing in the moonlight - King Harvest
by LOUtheMETandNATSfan on Feb 5, 2009 10:22 AM EST up reply actions
I would like to see
This done for the Phillies for last season. I am under the notion that, though a good team, things fell into place for them down the stretch in the opposite way that things fell apart for the Mets in 07. If their win total exceeded their “talent” level, then could you surmise that they got lucky? And that maybe all the alarmists out there are being overly dramatic about the “lack of splashing” this offseason? If, according to the numbers, the Mets had / has a better team on paper with healthy players manning the roster spots, lets start praying to the baseball gods for forgiveness, since 2 yrs in a row, THAT’s why we tumbled.
The Phillies
had a Pythagenport expected wins of 93.1, which basically matches their 92 win season. However, their third-order Pythagenport expected wins were only 86.8 mostly due to the pitching giving up less runs than expected as well as having an lesser strength of schedule. So, if you’re a believer in EQR, EQRA or AEQR, AEQRA, then the Mets should’ve won the division even with the injuries they had to deal with.
Stats and analysis are my occupation
Albeit in a totally different field. But, I believe in all the higher end analysis that goes into saber. And if it supports my gut feelings, having watched the outcome, well, all the better, right?
I have no faith that this team will win 90 games
and I think most fans agree would agree with that. The intangibles really are the same as last year and the lineup is probably deficient. This team doesn’t feel like they are much better. But feelings aren’t calculated so they don’t mean much.
I disagree.
I have faith, as this is a better team than last years.
"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw
We don't know if they're better yet.
the team could be better pitching wise but we could very well see an offense that is putrid. Last year the offense stepped up and the bullpen killed us. This year, we could see the bullpen step up and the offense kill us.
While to be honest I'm a huge numbers nerd
I think I pretty much agree. I think a lot of things went right last year just like a lot of things went wrong. And that even though we addressed the major thing that went wrong leaving everything else equal doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to be better, at least not record wise. We got a lot of unexpected contributions and really, even though it doesn’t seem like it, got pretty lucky with injuries, considering none Santana, Wright, Reyes, and Beltran, missed anywhere near to significant time and got a lot of unexpected contribution that covered some of the poor decisions Omar made in relying so heavily on old & injury prone players like El Duque, Alou, Pedro.
But any and every team has the potential for these problems.
The Phillies could lose Hamels for the season just as easily as the Mets could lose Johan.
"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw
I agree
But my I’m talking about losing players for an entire season, I’m talking about a missed start because of a blister here and there, we had nothing like that from any of our big 4 last season, where as the Phillies lost Rollins, just for example for 20 some games. With the way the rest of our team was basically being held together by spit and glue if we had lost any of the big 4 for an extended period like that, or even like 10 games, I imagine it would have had a huge effect on our standing.
Yes, but
Losing 70% of our Corner OF production hurt just as much as losing one of those 4 guys last year. Full seasons of Church, and a competent LF combo (I tend to think they can be) w/o Endy’s ~300 ABs can significantly help the offense.
But we also got insane production from Tatis and Murphy
from the corner outfield spots that definitely wasn’t expected. Also I would imagine even with Endy’s awful offense his defense was so good that he was still valuable in the corner spots.
Plus that was kind of my point. Obviously no one could have predicted Church’s two concussions but he has an extensive injury history, and BP was projecting him to miss a significant number of games one way or another, him and of course Alou who pulls a hammy when a strong gust of wind blows by shouldn’t have been being relied on so heavily in the first place.
Technically,
Alou would have made it a big 5, the dude OPSs 900+ like it’s his job (which it is) and we predictable lost him. I would also put Wagner as a part of the big 4 to make it 5.5.
But we lost Wagner, Alou, Castillo (for all intents and purposes), and Pedro.
Plus the Church injury, Pagan going down after he replaced Alou, and Delgado’s (in my mind) still injured first half.
"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw
But I'm saying
Alou and Pedro shouldn’t have been being counted on so heavily to begin with, the fact that they were means the team was built in a flawed way. And even with Castillo we knew going into the season he had knee issues, we knew before we offered him the contract, Awful Reyes and Damion Easley shouldn’t have been our contingency plans. Same with Alou who like I said above gets injured by strong gusts of wind. And I agree that Delgado was still injured in the first half but after the 2007 season he had don’t you think they should have had a viable back-up, or something in place? Even now we don’t.
So is your point
the 08 Mets had bad contingency plans? Because I thought that’s been agreed. Their Third Order Pythagenport expected wins said they were still unlucky, standings wise, even with bad backups and a host of injuries…I’m sorry I don’t even know what your point is against projections.
That we got lucky with production from those players
I mean if you went back to the beginning of the 08 season and took the projections, from like Pecota or something, of the players we ended up using and the playing time we got and put the expected run totals and runs allowed into that then I doubt our win total would come out nearly as high.
Basically I mean this tells you whether you were lucky or unlucky based on the production you got, it doesn’t tell you whether you were lucky or unlucky to get that production from players. It doesn’t see that Fernando Tatis’s season was insane and unimaginable and likely can’t be expected to be replicated, it just sees what he did on the field. Even the second order and third order doesn’t look at that.
And I should say that my original point was
If everything else remains equal the the additions to the bullpen should mean that we’re going to win 89+ games, but my point was it’s not likely that everything remains equal considering that Tatis and Murphy likely won’t repeat their production and it’s not likely that Santana, Reyes, Wright and Beltran will all be as injury free as they were last year.
Right and I think your reserved projections are fine
but I think you’re being too conservative. You’re looking at players who will regress and saying everything else will be constant at best. I agree we shouldn’t count on Tatis/Murphy repeating, as well as Delgado, Pelfrey. But a healthy season of Maine instead of Pedro’s 5+ ERA, Wright improving (I really think he will, he was slightly less valuable than in 07,) an improved bullpen not only from two bullpen aces being brought here but sans 5+ERA Heilman (who I don’t think will put up this year,) and, I’m one of the few who believe this, a better Castillo make the team better than last year.
In addition, projection systems take into account regression by players like Tatis, Murphy. The best one can hope from a team is to put together the best projected team together with the resources available, of course flukes will happen, but you can’t properly account for most flukes(Alou injury is not a fluke and can be accounted for,) and right now, the numbers say the Mets are slightly better than the Phillies (.3 WAR.) Could the Mets have done things different;y. would it better if they signed Lowe, shit yeah, but irregardless, the Mets are projected to win the division with regression taken into account, so I feel confident in this team but, just like everything in life, in no way is it close to being a sure thing, Life is pain, anyone that says otherwise is trying to sell you sometime.
on the flip side
there’s no reason to suspect that Reyes, Wright, or Beltran will get hurt. And Santana, despite his surgery, has been healthy his whole career and is no more an injury risk than any other ace out there. Obviously losing any of them would be bad, but the same can be said about any team’s top 3 regulars and top pitcher.
And while I agree that Tatis and Murphy probably won’t repeat their production, it’s similarly likely that we’ll get better production from 2nd base and catcher than last year, since we had under performing players at those spots.
The big wild card, to me, is Delgado. If Delgado repeats his second half performance, we’re in very good shape. If he goes back to 2007/first-half of ‘08 mode, we’re in trouble. That’s why I support signing Dunn – he gives us insurance for a potential let down by Delgado. But I’m hoping that Delgado really was hurt and conveniently got healthy the night Randolph was fired, or he was dogging it and now is motivated again. Either way, I want to believe that he will be productive this year.
Something that I keep reminding myself when I get angry about how this offseason has gone are the post-Willie results last year:
Mets: 55-38
Phillies: 50-39
And the majority of that was accomplished without Billy Wagner. With an adequate bullpen, the Phillies aren’t defending NL East champs (they might have still won the Wild Card and World Series, but the playoffs are a crapshoot as Aaron Heilman and the 82-win Cardinals taught us). I’m not as optimistic about the coming season as I would be if the Mets had signed Lowe and Dunn, but I’m still feeling like they’re going to be a pretty darn good team.
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recommended FanPosts
Recent FanPosts
FanShots
Quick hits of video, photos, quotes, chats, links and lists that you find around the web.
Recommended FanShots
Recent FanShots
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Certain photos copyright © 2012 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
