MondoLinks: Weekend Recap

MondoLinks: A recap of baseball happenings over this past weekend...and...this week's One Big Idea: Let's finish fisking PECOTA.

Well, that was totally confusing to me. Nabbing 2 games out of 3, with a fair shot at a sweep, should feel more encouraging. But the way it happened, and the dubious level of competence displayed by the opposition, leaves me somewhat sour. Sure, the Angels clobbered the Mets yesterday by a score of 14 to 2, ripping off 17 hits that included 5 home runs. But that level of aberration out of these guy says more to me about the level of suck in Bartolo Colon. Getting a walk-off win via hit-by-pitch on Friday, and extending the Mets into extras on Saturday via a miracle 3-run jack by a 42-year-old mann only to see even more innings of squandered at-bats, well, I remain unimpressed. Especially considering the fact that the Mets are not exactly a juggernaut these days. And this feels important, because the Oakland A's are coming to town and they ARE a juggernaut at the moment.

And in late breaking news from yesterday that you were ALL just dying to learn, the Angels options Dane De La Rosa (freshly back from the DL) and Matt Shoemaker (fresh from the Saturday night loss) down to the Salt Lake Bees, calling up Jose Alvarez and Yoslan Herrera. Yes. You read that right. THE Yoslan Herera!!! Yeah, hurry over to mlb.com and get your Herrera game gear fast!  Oh, oops.

Joe Blanton might have possibly retired yesterday. I suppose this means that he finally admitted to himself that which Mike Scioscia spent all last year refusing to admit. Not even the magic fairie dust of Billy Beane could form a silk purse out of Blanton's right arm. All of baseball waits in the suspense of knowing whether or not this is true.

Stoopid Angels Fan. Thinking Granderson is still available. (Fan was ejected and Granderson offered the option of filing charges.)

Things just keep getting more and more fun with the ongoing Expanded Instant Replay SNAFU. Red Sox manager John Farrell, perhaps more than a little pissed of at the inability of these phantom officials to properly officiate during the Yankees-Red Sox contest Saturday, exploded at the process on Sunday and got himself ejected. Apparently, IR episodes have been assigned a precious seat alongside ball and strikes. Though Shalt Not Argue With The Replay Ruling. Yowza!

Here is something you don't see every day. TWO Cincinnati Reds were thrown out at the plate. On the same play............Scott Boras is scrambling to save face on his Drew/Morales tactical disasters...........Some teams appear to be far more clever than ours. Chris Capuano, who couldn't find a job this offseason and was there for the taking, has become a star bullpen arm in Boston.

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Moreno-Carpino Shame Update

Jim Fregosi still not being honored with a memorial patch.

12 games lost. Only 150 games remaining to save face.

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I want to go back to my Big Idea from two weeks ago, closing that off. (I digressed last Monday due to my pissiness at the ineptitude of Moreno and his management team to properly honor the loss of one of the most important players in our franchise's history, Jim Fregosi.)

So I am fisking PECOTA and the magnitude of import placed on team projections at the start of any season.

Recall that two weeks ago I tallied the results of all winning percentages since baseball went to 162 game schedules. that was over 1300 results since 1962. My point was that, since the actual results tend to bunch around a small number of actual values, and because the margin of error for PECOTA is so broad (+-8), it's actually pretty hard to be wrong. And you don't need PECOTA to be just as accurate. (Therefore, one might ask, of what value is PECOTA at all?)

For your use going forward into the future, here is your very own "Just As Good As PECOTA Predictor Table". Using that same margin of error, if you walk the table (broken into thee parts to account for SBN formatting), you can find some number as your Predicted Number of Wins and see, right next to that value, your odds of being correct.

For example, if you choose to proclaim that "the Angels will win 83 games this season, within the PECOTA margin of error", you will have a nearly 76% chance of being correct (75.9971%, to be exact), based on the winning percentages of all the seasons all teams have played during the regular season since 1962.

It's quick. It's easy. It requires almost zero effort on your part (and only about two hour of Internet/Excel tabulation on my part). It holds no special magic or power. And, historically, it's just as accurate.

May The Force Be With You!