Another One-Run Victory: Angels 1, Pythag 0

whether the above, having a single offensive player as good as Vlad Guerrero, or having a little more money to spend (not ALL that much, really), they’re better at winning baseball games than we are, and have been for quite some time now.

Yes, I’m an Angels fan and no, I’m not here to be rude or act like an ass. I just wanted to say I think you’ve summed it up pretty well up there.

Sure, luck is a factor. Luck is always a factor, in pretty much anything – not just Angels or other baseball/football/whatever games. That alone makes it impossible for the Angels success to be solely based on luck.

I was impressed with the way the A’s started the season. I didn’t expect them to compete for so long (not saying they’re done competing, by the way). I was commenting to somebody at the game today that I couldn’t understand Beane trading his quality pitchers when he was still pretty much in contention for division. In any event, I didn’t feel like the division was ours yet.

Good luck to you guys. I’m sure the A’s will give the Halos a lot of tough competition; now and in years to come.

and, the more they defy Pythagoras, the more I hate them.

I did like seeing Lackey give up 6 earned runs in 5 innings. Not that the A’s could do that against him, but it’s the little things, now, that make me smile.

Can an Angel draw a right triangle such that a2 + b2 = c^3 ?

I love Unicorn Power but it’s time to let him go. Bring up one of the 2nd basemen of the future and see what they can do. We all kind of knew this was a wait until next year year, even though I haven’t given up hope. I think our hitters will be fine after a full year under their belt. I think R Sweeney and CGON will have huge 2009’s and Barton and Buck will bounce back. Don’t give up hope! Go A’s!

it sums it up well: losing big and winning the tight ones

i dont think run differential is a fair way to evaluate how good the angels are because they play a more unique style that isnt really geared for blowing teams out with regularity. we sacrifice outs and shorten innings for the sake of 1 run. scoscia emphasizes putting the ball in play to advance runners into scoring position more than plate discipline, working walks and slugging them in. Both have proven to work, theyre just different approaches.

its definitely not a perfect way to win and its certainly not a sabrmetric way of doing it, but thats what makes it hard to look at the team through a metric scope. They treat the game differently because of the bullpen. while teams like oakland and boston can tack on a lot of runs to blow it open by walking or hitting for more power, we might just need 1 more run to feel comfortable closing it out and if all we need is 1, then small ball is safer.

on paper, the oakland/boston way is definitely a safer and more predictable way of doing things, but i think to judge all teams’ effectiveness on whether or not they mirror those teams philosophically is wrong. Anyone who watches the team on a regular basis would hardly call them “lucky”.

so the pythagorean analogy may or may not work—beats me.

what i do know is… the angels must have some sort of faucet where the runs come out of. and while up here in oakland we’re going through a drought and we treat runs as rain—we-get-what-we-get and hope the other team gets less. hence some days there’s a downpour and some there’s nothing but dust out there in the base paths. but like good orange-countiers, the angels just turn on the faucet and get more runs whenever they want them. yes i guess that’s called manufacturing runs. the difference being, that’s their main game, actually turning the faucet on instead of waiting for it to rain. it’s a different attitude. like the difference between saying “let’s see if you make something happen” and “make something happen.” and if you’re wondering who i’m imagining saying that, it’s definitely geren and sciscoshcya (sp?).

as for mark. i want him, i need him, i got to have him. i’m basically addicted like he’s a drug. after all, ellis’s D is a good trip.

Bootcheck and Moseley are not even on the Angels roster. They were both gone mostly after their first month of the season. Mosely did start and win the game 4-3 in Oakland on July 13 with 5.1 IP as Joe Saunders was excused from the game. Moseley has pitched more as a starter rather than a reliever. Bootcheck last pitched June 8 in Oakland where he gave up the walk-off homerun in the ninth inning that was the death of him.

The Angels starting rotation is blessed with two 2008 All-Star pitchers, Joe Saunders and Ervin Santana, and two former All-Star pitchers, John Lackey and Jon Garland, who typically pitch deep into games which rarely requires anything like a true Long Reliever. One the few occasions when one of our starters is forced out of the game early, O’Day, Oliver, and Shields are usually good to very good in relief, but Mike Scioscia manages his bullpen well and only allows a relief pitcher to go one or two innings at the most. The only weak link in our bullpen at the moment is Justin Speier, and even he has shown some marked improvement of late.

I’m an Angels fan, but most of all I’m a baseball fan and I appreciate good analysis and good writing. And your post had both.

Although I’m an Angels fan, I do have a deep appreciation of other teams’ strengths and one of Oaklands strengths is their organization. I’m envious of your ability to field a good team with your limited payroll flexibility and your team’s ability to valuate talent. One of my greatest fears as an Angels fan is when the A’s move into their new ballpark and/or generate cash, coupled with their deep farm system, are going to be a major force to be dealt with.

Thanks for letting me comment. I look forward to many years of great competition between our two clubs.

Don’t we have excellent deep pitching, pretty solid short relief, and average long relief? Maybe we just need to do the “play for 1 run” part since we can no longer take walks and wait for the 3-run bomb…

Even if we assume that the Angels are successfully beating the Pythagorean slightly (and I realize that is by no means demonstrated), it doesn’t follow that it’s a strategy other teams should pursue.

The best reason to pursue such a strategy is not that it’s the best way to win, but rather that it’s a potentially cost-efficient way to win. Just as it can be cost-efficient for the A’s to buy OBP if everyone else is buying AVG and SLG, so it can be cost-efficient for the Angels to buy cheap Pythag-busting players when all the other teams are pricing players based on how much they help the Pythag.

In other words, it’s a “moneyball” strategy. That’s how it was represented in Jeff Angus’s famous Scioscia interview, and I think that’s still the logic. It doesn’t mean this new thing that the Angels have (allegedly) discovered is the new best way to win baseball, any more than OBP is. And also like OBP, as soon as everyone starts buying it, the advantage disappears.

Apart from the question of looking for opportunities in market inefficiencies, the better strategy is to simply make your team better, not to make it beat its Pythagorean record.

then the exact opposite is true of the A’s, and maybe thats why we are behind on our Pythag. standings. We blow out teams when we win, and when we lose closer, it’s usually not by as much.

The old image about “babies being delivered by the stork” came about in the “Middle Ages” because people repeatedly observed the building of nests on roofs by storks and the family of said buildings soon adding another child. (I keep trying to write the German “Storch” throughout here….then I correct it). According to the Economist, it turns out there was a statistical basis for the belief.

In a similar vein, it may be that the “Pythagorean” approach to W-L prediction is statistically valid, yet the actual “biology” (see above biological example) is not taking all things into account, it should take into account. For me, in my opinion, I think there is a lot of theories that need to be created to account for periods of winning streaks, losing streaks, contagion in hitting (first time in Angle History yesterday that the Angels used the Pythagorem Theorem have had three players in a lineup with four hits…what does this mean??) or the contagious “inability to hit” (see A’s, Oakland, 2008). IMO, ultimately, it is not the aggregate of individual performances that predict W-L records, but the timing of those individual highs and lows versus other player highs and lows, that create favorable W-L records. What does yesterday’s Angel lineup have in common/not have in common with the lineup that lost a no-hit performance to the Dodgers??

Look at the theories of weather, and how long it took for the “El Niño ” effect to be understood, and the El Niño /La Niña influence on California rainfall. Before 1980, you had plenty of forecast models, but no mention of mid-Pacific equatorial water temperatures.

“Why are the Angels winning more than their “Expected Won/Loss” record, computed daily by the ghost of Pythagoras and then transmitted through K-Rod’s hands whenever he exalts skyward?”

I love well-constructed writing, and that sentence was great. Nice to start reading an otherwise depressing post with a chuckle.

“I don’t believe it is luck and I don’t believe that the predictive models are especially flawed. I believe the Angels are constructed to confound the model.”

So, what you’re suggesting is that the Angels are using some kind of “Dr. Evil-inspired” model that trumps “Moneyball.”

and other than that everything has been talked about at length. It was good to read the comments from the Halos supporters and the fact that everyone was civil through out.

very well said, Nico.

I’m sure luck has something to do with our wins… but moreover, it’s just timely hitting and, as you said, playing for one run. One run is all it takes to win a game, and a lot of the time, that’s exactly what we’re playing to get.

I enjoyed the part about us being built to “confound the model”, and I have to agree. Though our run differential is all screwed up and the Pythag VORP-ies want us dead, we just know how to win; plain and simple.

I will say… I am disappointed that this year hasn’t held to the tradition of recent years, where you guys battle us to the end. I don’t say that in a pompous way – i’m very serious. You have a good team, A’s fans. While they may not have it this year, they will in years to come (assuming Beane holds on to some of those young guys)