Jesusfuckingchrist. Are you just posting to post? I realize I'm not the right person to say that but goddam.

"I expect Detroit to win more than 84-85 games."
"I'd be looking for about 87-89 wins from this team."

Do you just hate the number 86?

Posted by MikeT23 on 3/1/2016 2:40:00 PM (view original):
Jesusfuckingchrist. Are you just posting to post? I realize I'm not the right person to say that but goddam.

"I expect Detroit to win more than 84-85 games."
"I'd be looking for about 87-89 wins from this team."

Do you just hate the number 86?

You need to read all of the posts in the discussion for it to make sense, moron.

Posted by bad_luck on 3/1/2016 2:20:00 PM (view original):
They'd have to be 150 runs better this season. Maybe that happens, but I wouldn't bet on it.

They lose 150 innings from Price but pick up 200 from Zimmermann.

Maybe Verlander is effective again.

Maybe Cabrera stays healthy.

Upton probably replaces Cespedes' production (and more).

So they pick up 10(?) runs with Upton. Maybe 10 more from a full season of Zim instead of 75% of Price. Possibly 20 if Verlander is good for an entire year. Lets give them 20 more if Cabrera is healthy all year. That's 60. Where are the other 90 coming from? Or are my guesses bad?

See thats the thing, people are looking for a bounceback. I'm not. I think the Tigers are on the down side. A lot has to happen for them to get back. Can it? Yes. Will it? I don't sense it.

Posted by MikeT23 on 3/1/2016 2:40:00 PM (view original):
Jesusfuckingchrist. Are you just posting to post? I realize I'm not the right person to say that but goddam.

"I expect Detroit to win more than 84-85 games."
"I'd be looking for about 87-89 wins from this team."

Do you just hate the number 86?

Two divisions were decided by 2 games in 2015 and the AL wildcard was decided by 1.
In 2014 one division was won by 1, one by 2, and again the AL wildcard by 1 game.
In 2013 one division was won by 1, one by 3, and the AL wildcard by 1.

I don't think I need to go further, and I don't think it's new information to you that at least one or two divisions come down to the final week each year. In a division which may see a lot of parity, 84-85 wins can be very, very different from 87-89 wins. And you know it. So what's your point?

Their Pythag has them overperforming by 4-5 wins over the last two seasons. There's no reason to expect a bounce back unless you think fresh faces will do it.

Posted by dahsdebater on 3/1/2016 3:00:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 3/1/2016 2:40:00 PM (view original):
Jesusfuckingchrist. Are you just posting to post? I realize I'm not the right person to say that but goddam.

"I expect Detroit to win more than 84-85 games."
"I'd be looking for about 87-89 wins from this team."

Do you just hate the number 86?

Two divisions were decided by 2 games in 2015 and the AL wildcard was decided by 1.
In 2014 one division was won by 1, one by 2, and again the AL wildcard by 1 game.
In 2013 one division was won by 1, one by 3, and the AL wildcard by 1.

I don't think I need to go further, and I don't think it's new information to you that at least one or two divisions come down to the final week each year. In a division which may see a lot of parity, 84-85 wins can be very, very different from 87-89 wins. And you know it. So what's your point?

I think it's utterly retarded to say, on March 1st, that you expect a team to win more than 85 games then, in your next post, say 87 is certainly possible.

If nothing else, with the information on hand on 3/1/16, 84-89 win predictions are almost identical.

Basically it's drunk guy at the end of the bar talk.

"I think the Tigers will win 86."
"YOU'RE ******* CRAZY!!! THEY'RE DEFINITELY GOING TO WIN 84-85!!! I FULLY EXPECT THEM TO WIN 87-89!!!! 86??!?!? YOU'RE ******* CRAZY!!!! BARKEEP, CUT THAT CRAZY **** OFF!!!! HE'S DRUNK WITH HIS 86 WIN PREDICTION!!!!!"

And, BTW, it's March 1st. Not even sure the Tigers have played a SPRING TRAINING game yet.

Posted by bad_luck on 3/1/2016 1:08:00 PM (view original):
I'm not 100% sold on the Indians, but they don't have to improve their run differential, they just need to catch a little luck. Assuming the Royal don't win 90 games (and no one is projecting that, as far as I can tell), 84 or 85 wins will take the division. Which is what you'd expect the win total to be with Cleveland's RD from last year.

don't think this is true either. I don't have hard numbers on this, but it has always seemed that Pythagorean W/L records break down for teams near the bottom of the league in both scoring and runs allowed. This is especially true in low run-scoring environments. This makes logical sense. In the current climate, everybody's pretty good at preventing runs. So being elite at team run prevention tends to mean you're fairly consistently good at it. The average team is less consistent. This means that the quality of pitching you're facing tends to be higher than the quality of pitching on your own side. To whit: the 2015 Indians had a variance of 9.88 in their run scoring, and 8.43 in their runs allowed. Normalized to the mean values these numbers are 2.38 and 2.12. So there is indeed a substantially higher variance in run scoring. If you assume that performance in non-extreme games is more representative of the true talent level, they're much closer to the .500 team they appear to be.

Put differently:

The Indians had 10 games in 2015 in which they scored in the double digits. They won all 10 by a combined total of 78 runs.
They had 12 games in which they scored 0 runs. They lost those games by a combined total of 35 runs.

If you eliminate those 22 games, the Indians are 2 games under .500 and have a -14 run differential in the other 139 games in which they scored in the single digits. You could, in fact, argue that they were fortunate to be 81-80.

Alright, I messed that up. They actually won by 81 in the games they scored double digits in but lost by 61 in the games they were held scoreless.

So they were actually 9 runs above .500 in the games they scored in the single digits. Which would argue that they in fact finished about where they should have.

EDIT: They should have been almost exactly .500. 10-12 + the remaining run differential gives them a Pythagorean expectation of 80.55 wins.

I don't think it's correct to just eliminate the games from the pythag.

Look, besides all the Pythagorean and 'wins added' bullshit that I usually ignore, on a high level, the other teams in the division - for the most part - got better or will get better if they are in contention.

Got better: Chicago, Minnesota, and the Indians.
Maintained the status quo - Tigers and KC.
Can get better if in contention: All but Detroit

The Tigers have nothing to trade, so what they go into ST with is basically what they will have the rest of the year. So if the competition is better, then Detroit needs an uptick in production. They are an aging roster with injury issues. The guys they brought on are basically replacing production that was there last year.

Hence, I don't see Detroit improving. Therefore they don't make the playoffs. JMO.

How do you figure that Chicago, Minnesota, and Cleveland "got better?" There weren't any impact signings by anybody in the division aside from Zimmermann in Detroit and Gordon in Kansas City, neither of which represents a substantial improvement. I see the AL Central as a division being a little bit weaker than the past 2 seasons as a group. Nobody got a lot better on paper.

Any 86 game winners in there?