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Report: Red Sox have agreement for Wade Miley
ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 12, 2014 6:26:27 GMT -5
To correct a tale Peter Keating got a bit wrong in the ESPN story, after the 2003 season I concocted a narrative about Jason Varitek being an extreme early-bird based on his day-night splits (hugely better at day); it was backed up by finding other data patterns that were predicted by that hypothesis. I was mocked at SoSH. John Henry apparently read it and passed it on to 'Tek, who proceeded in 2004 to have the opposite split (which of course is much better, since there are so many more night games), engendering further mockery. Then Henry hired me, because I'd been right; as Theo put it "he is the first guy to go to bed on the road." Having been made aware of the splits, he'd found a way to deal with them (Theo and Jed felt that having had a kid had contributed motivation-wise). I think it was in '06 that I noticed he'd started the season being hugely better at day again, and I e-mailed and said "tell 'Tek to do whatever he does to play better at night." And the splits turned around dramatically beginning the next game. Now, maybe that was random, but I suspect not. The Varitek story is a good one, but the pattern seems based on a lot more data than with Buchholz. In the 70s I remember Fisk was told he had terrible stats late in games and he stopped sprinting to back up the 1b on ground balls and his late-game hitting improved b/c of lack of fatigue. The Varitek hypothesis was that he was a 1% or 2% behavioral outlier. It needed the extra data. The Buchholz hypothesis is that whenever he gets hurt, when he returns he pitches poorly at first and then improves. That's not a behavioral outlier. I mean, I have a complementary but irrelevant hypothesis that says he eats and breathes and sometimes looks at porn. And in terms of complexity, it falls a bit short of, say, supersymmetric string theory. Note that I'm not claiming that his injuries are anything but random, nor that he has any kind of strict alternating pattern. Simply that if he gets hurt, he can be expected to struggle for a chunk of the next season, and that if he finishes a season strongly, he can be expected to pitch well the next season. Now, it's less certain that he will always get better if he starts a season struggling. It took him a lot longer last year than in 2012 to start pitching well, and the improvement was much less marked. But the bottom line is that since his tough 2008 he has pitched four seasons when he ended the previous season healthy, and put up, per 30 starts, 3.8, 6.0, 4.1, and 8.1 bWAR, for an average of 5.6. He's had two seasons after finishing the previous year hurt, and put up 0.9 and -1.7, for an average of -0.4. The hypothesis that he pitches better when he didn't spend the previous winter rehabbing an injury is obvious, and the observed split in WAR rate has p = .01 (two-sample t-test, single-tailed, pooled variance).
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Post by mgoetze on Dec 12, 2014 6:43:51 GMT -5
I have a complementary but irrelevant hypothesis that says he [...] sometimes looks at porn. Are you sure it's irrelevant? Here in Germany we have a recurring biennial news story about how the manager of the national soccer team has decreed that the players may not have their wives stay at the same hotel, so at least some people seem to believe there is a correlation with athletic performance.
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Post by soxfanatic on Dec 12, 2014 6:52:50 GMT -5
From Cafardo
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Post by mgoetze on Dec 12, 2014 7:16:44 GMT -5
Oregon Norm already quoted that right here on page 12 of this thread.
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Post by JackieWilsonsaid on Dec 12, 2014 8:11:18 GMT -5
I have a complementary but irrelevant hypothesis that says he [...] sometimes looks at porn. Are you sure it's irrelevant? Here in Germany we have a recurring biennial news story about how the manager of the national soccer team has decreed that the players may not have their wives stay at the same hotel, so at least some people seem to believe there is a correlation with athletic performance. That's because there is a direct relationship between wins and happiness. I believe it was Pythagerous who theorized Time away from wives + time with girlfriends = wins This is where the expression a " win win" comes from.
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Post by sibbysisti on Dec 12, 2014 8:30:14 GMT -5
Are you sure it's irrelevant? Here in Germany we have a recurring biennial news story about how the manager of the national soccer team has decreed that the players may not have their wives stay at the same hotel, so at least some people seem to believe there is a correlation with athletic performance. That's because there is a direct relationship between wins and happiness. I believe it was Pythagerous who theorized Time away from wives + time with girlfriends = wins This is where the expression a " win win" comes from. Good one. I don't know how this thread got diverted from Miley, but what is the latest? Has the third player issue been resolved?
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Post by rjp313jr on Dec 12, 2014 8:31:54 GMT -5
Eric was the first I saw to write about baseball patterns this way. I'm sorry, but to me it's nothing like numerology or the Giants. The reasoning goes something like this: Every player has his own reasons as to why he plays the way he does, but we just don't know those reasons, and in fact, the player typically may not know the reasons consciously, either. If you were to interview Clay and study what he has done differently from year to year I think you could reasonably expect to find there is a non-random pattern in his life that explains this apparently non-random pattern of being injured. Rather than push back, let's hope the team reads this forum and tries to correct whatever Clay may be doing so as not to be injured every other year. If I flip a coin six times and it alternates heads and tails, do I have a magical power to make coin flips alternate? Coin flips aren't random. They can be controlled. It doesn't take magical powers to do it. It's physics. In simplified terms... If the same force is applied to the same coin, in the same environment, it's going to flip the same way. You just need to identify those variables.
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Post by thursty on Dec 12, 2014 8:38:11 GMT -5
But the best tool is the question: if this narrative were true, what else would we expect to see? If you see it, you've probably got something real.
Wow. Just Wow. Everybody who has taken even statistics 101 just had a heart attack.
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Post by mattpicard on Dec 12, 2014 9:35:15 GMT -5
Bob Nightengale ?@bnightengale 19s19 seconds ago #Dbacks Wade Miley will officially be a #Redsox by Sat; Rubby De La Rosa, Allen Webster,and prospect to #Dbacks as @jonmorosi reported Wed.
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Post by brianthetaoist on Dec 12, 2014 9:52:25 GMT -5
The Red Sox need an ace to headline their rebuilt rotation, Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe opines. From that same piece, Cafardo talks to an NL scout who believes the Sox got the better of the Wade Miley trade. The scout calls the young left-hander an “unrefined [Jon] Lester right now, but he’s on his way to being a No. 2 [starter]. Not sure what the D’Backs are thinking on this one, except to get more bodies.” Whew, that seems pretty dumb ... what do Wade Miley and Jon Lester have in common besides throwing with the same hand? Does Wade Miley rely on a 94 mph fastball and a power cutter?
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Post by soxfanatic on Dec 12, 2014 10:01:00 GMT -5
The Red Sox need an ace to headline their rebuilt rotation, Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe opines. From that same piece, Cafardo talks to an NL scout who believes the Sox got the better of the Wade Miley trade. The scout calls the young left-hander an “unrefined [Jon] Lester right now, but he’s on his way to being a No. 2 [starter]. Not sure what the D’Backs are thinking on this one, except to get more bodies.” Whew, that seems pretty dumb ... what do Wade Miley and Jon Lester have in common besides throwing with the same hand? Does Wade Miley rely on a 94 mph fastball and a power cutter? Jon Lester's average fastball last year: 91.5 MPH Wade Miley's average fastball last year: 91.3 MPH
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Post by deepjohn on Dec 12, 2014 11:12:00 GMT -5
But the best tool is the question: if this narrative were true, what else would we expect to see? If you see it, you've probably got something real. Wow. Just Wow. Everybody who has taken even statistics 101 just had a heart attack. Eric's saying that if you find two "baseball-type" events with a non-random probability, the likelihood that both are random should go down. This assumes the events are related in a narrative about baseball. Relation through narrative (rather than through reductionism) is certainly not something you'd see in a stats 101 textbook, as you note. But non-reductivism is at the core of much of psychology, biology, and other sciences based on as yet undiscovered causes, and this might include baseballology! Why not? At least, it's great fun to think about.
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Post by ramireja on Dec 12, 2014 12:57:21 GMT -5
The Varitek story is a good one, but the pattern seems based on a lot more data than with Buchholz. In the 70s I remember Fisk was told he had terrible stats late in games and he stopped sprinting to back up the 1b on ground balls and his late-game hitting improved b/c of lack of fatigue. The Varitek hypothesis was that he was a 1% or 2% behavioral outlier. It needed the extra data. The Buchholz hypothesis is that whenever he gets hurt, when he returns he pitches poorly at first and then improves. That's not a behavioral outlier. I mean, I have a complementary but irrelevant hypothesis that says he eats and breathes and sometimes looks at porn. And in terms of complexity, it falls a bit short of, say, supersymmetric string theory. Note that I'm not claiming that his injuries are anything but random, nor that he has any kind of strict alternating pattern. Simply that if he gets hurt, he can be expected to struggle for a chunk of the next season, and that if he finishes a season strongly, he can be expected to pitch well the next season. Now, it's less certain that he will always get better if he starts a season struggling. It took him a lot longer last year than in 2012 to start pitching well, and the improvement was much less marked. But the bottom line is that since his tough 2008 he has pitched four seasons when he ended the previous season healthy, and put up, per 30 starts, 3.8, 6.0, 4.1, and 8.1 bWAR, for an average of 5.6. He's had two seasons after finishing the previous year hurt, and put up 0.9 and -1.7, for an average of -0.4. The hypothesis that he pitches better when he didn't spend the previous winter rehabbing an injury is obvious, and the observed split in WAR rate has p = .01 (two-sample t-test, single-tailed, pooled variance). This is all fine and dandy for the most part, but isn't the real problem with Buchholz that he DOES get hurt frequently, and yes we can't predict when these injuries will occur, but given his past history we should anticipate that the likelihood of an injury (and subsequent struggles) is just as likely as no injury/no struggle at some point this year? There is a bit of a leap in your logic that I'm uncomfortable with....you seem to be using the end of one season as predictor for the next season. Just because he ended last year healthy (or so we think), doesn't mean I'm comfortable projecting him for 5.6 bWAR this season. He hasn't proven himself to be a durable pitcher and until he does, he shouldn't be projected as one.
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,924
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 12, 2014 15:23:33 GMT -5
The Varitek hypothesis was that he was a 1% or 2% behavioral outlier. It needed the extra data. The Buchholz hypothesis is that whenever he gets hurt, when he returns he pitches poorly at first and then improves. That's not a behavioral outlier. I mean, I have a complementary but irrelevant hypothesis that says he eats and breathes and sometimes looks at porn. And in terms of complexity, it falls a bit short of, say, supersymmetric string theory. Note that I'm not claiming that his injuries are anything but random, nor that he has any kind of strict alternating pattern. Simply that if he gets hurt, he can be expected to struggle for a chunk of the next season, and that if he finishes a season strongly, he can be expected to pitch well the next season. Now, it's less certain that he will always get better if he starts a season struggling. It took him a lot longer last year than in 2012 to start pitching well, and the improvement was much less marked. But the bottom line is that since his tough 2008 he has pitched four seasons when he ended the previous season healthy, and put up, per 30 starts, 3.8, 6.0, 4.1, and 8.1 bWAR, for an average of 5.6. He's had two seasons after finishing the previous year hurt, and put up 0.9 and -1.7, for an average of -0.4. The hypothesis that he pitches better when he didn't spend the previous winter rehabbing an injury is obvious, and the observed split in WAR rate has p = .01 (two-sample t-test, single-tailed, pooled variance). This is all fine and dandy for the most part, but isn't the real problem with Buchholz that he DOES get hurt frequently, and yes we can't predict when these injuries will occur, but given his past history we should anticipate that the likelihood of an injury (and subsequent struggles) is just as likely as no injury/no struggle at some point this year? There is a bit of a leap in your logic that I'm uncomfortable with....you seem to be using the end of one season as predictor for the next season. Just because he ended last year healthy (or so we think), doesn't mean I'm comfortable projecting him for 5.6 bWAR this season. He hasn't proven himself to be a durable pitcher and until he does, he shouldn't be projected as one. I agree with all of that. No one has any idea of how much WAR Clay will provide this year. This is just one half of the argument; the other was in another thread. People (including Cafardo in today's Globe) keep lumping Buchholz and Kelly as the two guys who might be traded for an ace, as if they were similar pitchers. And they are not remotely similar. Nor is there any logical justification for dealing Buchholz rather than Kelly. It seems to me that people have to be forgetting how good Buchholz is, when he's healthy. They don't like him any more, because he's let them down, and that seems to be driving his upside from their minds. They're (unconsciously) conforming their thoughts to fit their feeling, rather than the other way around (all basic human psych nature). As the reaction to the Masterson signing demonstrated, if Clay had been pitching for someone else, he'd top everyone's list as a buy-low candidate. Put it this way: if we had Clayton Kershaw signed to a $7.5M AAV plus two option years for $13-13.5M, but he was "always" (actually half the time) maddeningly, frustratingly either hurt, or completely ineffective following an injury, would we be lumping him with Joe Kelly as a guy we might trade to get an ace? I mean, that's so wrong it's funny. (It's only obviously wrong because your reaction is not being warped by having an actual history of witnessing first-hand the years of maddening frustration, and hence don't have the feelings that go with it.) Buchholz is just a year from putting up a half-season which was as good as anything Kershaw has ever thrown, and which wasn't dramatically better than his previous best year. You keep a guy like that, and hope he's healthy. Rationally, that's obvious. So the other half of the argument is about downside risk versus upside benefit. All the downside-risk aversion to Clay, is, I believe, being driven by the fact that people don't like him any more (again, risk versus benefit assessment is not done rationally, it's hugely colored by feelings). It's one of the great truths of MLB that the best way to win a WS (or come close) is to have a whole bunch of guys have surprisingly good years that blow away their projections. Having a guy in your rotation who projects to have somewhere between 0 and 7 WAR is vastly better than having a guy who projects to have somewhere between 0 and 4 (and that's without factoring in any of the argument that Clay seems somewhat likelier to exceed his median projection than Kelly). The downside risk might be worrisome if you had no safety net. But in Clay's case, the Sox have a very attractive alternative (Wright) in place should he uncharacteristically struggle out of the gate and well into May, plus a set of potential alternatives to choose from (the PawSox rotation) should he get hurt mid-year. So the downside risk is minimized. And in the Clay versus Kelly conundrum, no one seems to be factoring in that Kelly has the same downside risk, coming off an 0.4 bWAR per 30 starts season. And I'd argue that, given the weird nature of Kelly's effectiveness and his narrower range between floor and ceiling, making an accurate judgment on whether to pull the plug on him and send him to the pen (swapping Wright into the rotation) would be tougher than doing so for Clay.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Dec 12, 2014 15:49:56 GMT -5
The Red Sox need an ace to headline their rebuilt rotation, Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe opines. From that same piece, Cafardo talks to an NL scout who believes the Sox got the better of the Wade Miley trade. The scout calls the young left-hander an “unrefined [Jon] Lester right now, but he’s on his way to being a No. 2 [starter]. Not sure what the D’Backs are thinking on this one, except to get more bodies.” MLBTR One of the real problems I have with off-the-cuff analysis is that there's no real definition for "ace", and none for #1, #2,..., #5. Was Lester an ace? If so, why? Is it all based on hearsay, on intuition, feelings? I need something I can grab on to. The way these terms often are used is near meaningless to me. To get real about it, in 2012 Jon Lester himself was an "unrefined" Jon Lester. Great point, wish there was a magic number like rWAR above 4.50 or something. For me an Ace is a pitcher you feel can compete and win against other teams Aces. For example, most advance stats don't show Lester as an Ace, but he steps his game up in the big games. Look at his post season numbers, they are flat out dominant. If my team has Lester pitching a must win game against any other starter in the League, I feel confident that Lester can pitch us to a win. I know some poster on here refer to there being only 12 ACES in all of baseball, I disagree. I think the number is much higher and is closer to 24 then 12.
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Post by FenwayFanatic on Dec 12, 2014 17:37:23 GMT -5
Have we found out the final piece yet?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Dec 12, 2014 17:51:24 GMT -5
One of the real problems I have with off-the-cuff analysis is that there's no real definition for "ace", and none for #1, #2,..., #5. Was Lester an ace? If so, why? Is it all based on hearsay, on intuition, feelings? I need something I can grab on to. The way these terms often are used is near meaningless to me. To get real about it, in 2012 Jon Lester himself was an "unrefined" Jon Lester. Great point, wish there was a magic number like rWAR above 4.50 or something. For me an Ace is a pitcher you feel can compete and win against other teams Aces. For example, most advance stats don't show Lester as an Ace, but he steps his game up in the big games. Look at his post season numbers, they are flat out dominant. If my team has Lester pitching a must win game against any other starter in the League, I feel confident that Lester can pitch us to a win. I know some poster on here refer to there being only 12 ACES in all of baseball, I disagree. I think the number is much higher and is closer to 24 then 12. It doesn't matter, you don't get to define the term.
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Post by soxfanatic on Dec 12, 2014 17:57:41 GMT -5
@jonheymancbs: wade miley to red sox is now a done deal
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Post by FenwayFanatic on Dec 12, 2014 17:58:31 GMT -5
Lester also wasn't as automatic as people are making him out to be. He wasn't Pedro. He wasn't even what Beckett was in his prime.
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Post by grandsalami on Dec 12, 2014 18:07:08 GMT -5
@jonheymancbs: wade miley to red sox is now a done deal And the prospect is?
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,924
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 12, 2014 18:25:30 GMT -5
One of the real problems I have with off-the-cuff analysis is that there's no real definition for "ace", and none for #1, #2,..., #5. Was Lester an ace? If so, why? Is it all based on hearsay, on intuition, feelings? I need something I can grab on to. The way these terms often are used is near meaningless to me. To get real about it, in 2012 Jon Lester himself was an "unrefined" Jon Lester. Great point, wish there was a magic number like rWAR above 4.50 or something. For me an Ace is a pitcher you feel can compete and win against other teams Aces. For example, most advance stats don't show Lester as an Ace, but he steps his game up in the big games. Look at his post season numbers, they are flat out dominant. If my team has Lester pitching a must win game against any other starter in the League, I feel confident that Lester can pitch us to a win. I know some poster on here refer to there being only 12 ACES in all of baseball, I disagree. I think the number is much higher and is closer to 24 then 12. Lester doesn't step up his game in the post-season -- he has an arsenal that is unusually effective against elite hitters relative to bad ones. Other #2 starters get their value from shutting down lesser hitters while being not all that tough on the best ones (statistically, you can use #3 and #4 hitters as a proxy for them); Lester is tough on those top hitters for a guy whose overall performance is #2 level. So he is unusually good against elite, i.e, post-season caliber lineups, which have more than two guys who could ht 3 or 4 in an ordinary lineup.
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Post by grandsalami on Dec 12, 2014 18:56:31 GMT -5
So I guess it's not official.
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Post by grandsalami on Dec 12, 2014 18:57:19 GMT -5
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Post by grandsalami on Dec 12, 2014 19:18:56 GMT -5
RT @nickpiecoro Hearing that infielder Raymel Flores could be the third player in the Wade Miley trade.
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Post by vermontsox1 on Dec 12, 2014 19:21:37 GMT -5
RT @nickpiecoro Hearing that infielder Raymel Flores could be the third player in the Wade Miley trade. That's the best possible outcome we could have hoped for.
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