How Big a Mountain Is It?
Q. Where did the consensus come from, that the Mariners need to add "twentyish" wins this winter? Add 20 wins ... to do what?
A. In this excellent article, see comment #3, which references this very fine article.
James invented Win Shares for precisely this type of roster-sketch, and the brilliant Tom Tango improved WS with his WAR concept. In the article above, a local blog offers its interpretation of where WAR points the Mariners into 2010.
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Q. SSI doesn't participate in the local blog-mention moratorium?
A. In the world of chess, the etiquette states that if you parlay another player's annotations into a derived annotation, it's an honor for the first annotator.
If Vladimir Kramnik publishes a move-by-move annotation of a Kasparov-Karpov game, all players will read the annotation with great interest. But if Vishy Anand then publishes a second annotation -- excerpting Kramnik's tactical analysis, and either endorsing or "refining" Kramnik's findings in his own calculations -- then the second annotation is usually considered more valuable. The synergy advances the quality of the material.
We take the knowledge and we kick the can down the road.
I like these two articles. That's why I'm offering my take on them. :- )
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You might visualize a couple of recommendations handed in to the desk of Marmalade-Skies GM jemanji -- the below is what I would do with these recommendations.
Next time around, we can change sides -- Dr. D could publish an analysis on, say, Tim Lincecum or Brandon Morrow or Doug Fister or Dustin Ackley or Adam Dunn, and GM Churchill could write up what he'd do with the file folder. ;- )
But supposing this information came across my desk, here's what my review would look like.
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Q. Is the original article too pessimistic?
A. There's not a thing wrong with planning for Brandon Morrow and Ian Snell to be below-average pitchers all year long, as this article does.
There is a value in being very conservative in the accounting P&L's.
We do need to realize that it's a very human prejudice in being more, or less, conservative. For a political analyst to say "I expect President Obama to gain 5% more of the Latin vote over the next two years", he is in the realm of opinion.
The value of not counting your chickens is that you challenge yourself to work harder. The danger? ... if that leads to silly decisions -- "Barack Obama needs to throw a Hail Mary pass to win this election!" -- then counting few chickens, it can become harmful.
If you're figuring Brandon Morrow as a +1.0 win pitcher -- league average would be +2.0 -- if a string of estimates like that that means you decide not to try to win the division in 2010, then you've got a problem.
If it just means you're going to try to go get more talent, then no problem.
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Q. How about the Seattle blog-o-sphere?
A. In U.S. politics, he guys who get paid huge dollars for plus/minus opinions, are the ones whose opinions have tracked as extremely prophetic, in the past.
In the baseball realm, Ron Shandler has won dozens of rotisserie trophies against the best competition around. This is based on the fact that his projections are neither conservative nor liberal, but accurate.
Pessimism and optimism are hard to get a grip on. If GM jemanji assessed a particular file as unusually cynical or hopeful, his question would be, "How has this dude done in his roto leagues? Or in his scouting signings? Or in his predictions on the last six video-game titles?"
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Q. And how does GM jemanji adjust this inflation-weighting?
A. Essentially no opinion. For the purpose of this discussion. GM jemanji doesn't have any prediction track records at all to look at.
Now, Taro, Cool Papa Bell, Mikey Jay, Justynius, Inside Pitch, I've got hard data that say they tend to call *players* more often than average.
This one, no data, really.
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The article's main point is that the Mariners have work to do -- that they shouldn't underestimate what it would take to compete with the Angels. No arguments there, amigo.