THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I think as GM it’s fair to ask the segment of fans that read his blog where they think the team is headed and what they think he should do.

Obviously, the blogosphere doesn’t include all fans. But it does include the fans who care deeply enough to take time out of their day, usually everyday, to write and read about their favorite teams. They’re the people who buy jerseys, keep watching games when it’s 17-2 in the 5th inning, and feel the most betrayed when management pulls the rug out from under them.

I think DePodesta gets points here for sending out a test balloon before waving the white flag. If he had sold off his team for spare parts and prospects without asking, he runs the risk of some fans and bloggers saying he waved the white flag too early, the team was still in contention, etc. Now he knows his fans are ready to wave said flag too, and he can go out and do his job with perceived support behind him.

In this instance, it was 87% to 7% for buy/sell.  It’s not even close.  I would have preferred he’d have asked the question a month ago.  Then, we’d see something very interesting.  I’d like to see how delusional fans are when they’ve got a 5.0% chance of making the playoffs and not a 0.5% chance.

And if you read the comments, it’s also not even close how the fans are thinking.

I’ll give him props for reaching out, and starting the poll.  But, the next poll better have more bite to it, and not one where the results will have an 80% advantage to one side, and where we could have predicted such a lopsided result.

Right. I sincerely doubt he expected all the fans to lump onto the “buy” side. But I think he did get an appropriate feel for how many fans have lost hope for 2008.

If we had projected these poll results before they came out, what would you have guessed? 60%? 75? 90? None of those numbers would’ve surprised me. But the difference between 60% of the fans thinking they should be sellers and 87% is huge. That’s the difference between 13% of your fan base thinking you’re going in the wrong direction and 40%. Now he has a number he can pinpoint, and he can make a more appropriate projection for the costs related to negative fan reaction to giving up on 2008.

Not knowing the Padres fan base, I would have hoped to see a 93%, 7%, 0% split if there were no delusional fans.  As it is, for every 100 fans of my expectation, there was 8 delusional fans who wanted to become buyers.

I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation. Regardless of how bad the team is, they’re still single-digit games out with slightly less than half a season to play. Sure, it would take a miracle for them to leapfrog 4 teams, but none of those teams are particularly good.

Even if the teams in front of the Padres were good, when you’re less than 10 games out before the All Star Break, there’s no way 100% of a team’s own fans would ever think the season is over and it’s time to sell off spare parts. Even 87% seems like a high number to believe that.

MGL, I’ve been reading his blog since he started it, and when I read that entry I didn’t take the ‘we could have been 7 games out’ comment as a DePo delusion (we are close) but as a rationale for why it has been so frustrating that they’ve been awful - had they been decent, they’d be in pretty good shape now. I could be wrong.

Asking the same question at an earlier time likely would have been pretty muddled since the Padres were much further behind than they are now. When you’re 12-15 games back, it’s kind of silly to be asking your fans whether you should buy or sell, but at 8 games it’s more of a reasonable question.

By MGL, you mean Tango?

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Right now, they are below 1%.  I think Depo could have asked the question when they were above 5%.

As of June 14, they were 6.5 out, and in 3rd place:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/games/standings.cgi?date=2008-06-14

BP thinks they had a 2.3% chance of making the playoffs and CoolStandings was at 6.3%.

That’s when to ask the question (especially with a mini win streak going) and see what the fans think…

Asking it right now doesn’t add much other than reaffirmations. 

Like I said, I’ll give him a pass here.  But, I’d expect to see a future poll where the results are 60/40, not 90/10.

Wow, normally I’m so good at telling who is writing what, but I screwed up on this one. :(

June 14th might have been a better time, but at that time DePo was using the blog to recap the draft and didn’t seem to focused on the major league club.

I don’t really disagree with anything Tango’s been saying here, but I just think the evidence that DePo may be sharing some of the delusion to be razor thin.

I wasn’t suggesting he was delusional.  I was asking if he was, or if he thought his readers were.  The answer is that he thought his readers may have been delusional, and he got a confirmation, in spades, that he’s got very smart readers who are mostly not delusional.

Not delusional at all.

It’s a long, long shot, but not as long a shot as the Rockies were entering the 2nd week of September last year.

I’m a Rockies fan, and not at all emotional about this “time to wave the white flag thing.” I was angry that they didn’t do it at the trade deadline last year.  But this year?  I see no harm in waiting it out, at least until the end of July, and probably until the end of August.  As for the Padres:  the way the NL West is looking, it’s not at all inconceivable that they could pick up 3 games or so by the end of July.  If that doesn’t happen, then it’s sell-off time.

But no harm in waiting.  If Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin brought that pathetic haul from the Cubs, what exactly are you going to get for Randy Wolf anyway?

Rockies last year:
http://www.coolstandings.com/baseball_team.asp?id=COL&sn=2007

On Sep 17, they were still at 2.2%.

Your better point however is that on Jun 8, they were below 1%.

The Astros, in 2005, was below 1% as late as Jul 2:
http://www.coolstandings.com/baseball_team.asp?id=HOU&sn=2005

But if it takes a team to be way below 1% to be a seller, you’ll have only two or three teams each year being sellers.

Good point, Tango.  I forgot how bad it was in Rockiesland early last year.

But still:  every seller needs a motivated buyer, and what exactly do the Padres have to sell?  Maddux, Wolf, probably not Trevor Hoffman (I think the assumption is that he was going to retire a Padre), Giles? Jody Gerut?

Individually, none is going to bring a king’s ransom.  (Maybe Greene would bring a bit more, but I don’t see any MLB-ready SS in their org) In fact, given the Harden deal, I can’t see any reason why you wouldn’t hold out a bit. Some of the fence sitters may decide they’re buyers this year, increasing competition and thereby increasing the price DePo can extract.  I just don’t see any downside to sitting tight right now.

I think you’re being a bit unfair here, Tango.  He asked if the fans thought the Padres ought to buy, sell or stand pat.  You don’t need to be delusional to think they ought to stand pat and what’s the point of only offering two out of the three possibilities even if one of them is stupid?

Personally I think Paul had a resonably good estimate of how the responses would fall. The point of this poll is most likely not the answer you get but the gesture of “reaching out to your fans” and in that way “softening the blow” of a disapointing season where it is allmost time to wave the white flag.

Also, while the actual poll numbers are pretty uninteresting (at least to me) the discussion in the comments have been pretty good.

It seems (to me) that there actually are some pretty strong arguments for standing pat, not because there is much chance for this season but because it is likely very hard to get much value for what they have to sell. Long term it might be a better choice to pick up some compensation draft picks in the offseason.

Richard: exactly what did I say that is unfair?  Please quote me…

Depodesta posts a followup:
http://itmightbedangerous.blogspot.com/2008/07/verdict-is-in.html

The good part is that he is trying to be open.  The bad part is that his post seems very biased.  Not that I expected it to be impartial, but I read the thing, and all I want to do is either verify everything he says for cherry-picking, or blast him for making small sample size statements.

How can you talk about Petco and pitcher ERAs and not talk about park factors?  How can you decide to remove two starts from one pitcher, and not do the same for everyone else?

If Paul can stay away from being a salesman, I think we’ll benefit greatly here.  But, when we have to start sifting through his statements, to discard obvious cherry-picking, and parsing them for what they really mean?…

His post on the free agent compensation is excellent, but when he talks about players, just skip on right through.  I don’t need the blog-equivalent of talk radio.

"Is Paul DePodesta delusional, or did he think his readers might be?”

I was just saying those aren’t the only realistic possibilities and it was “unfair” to suggest they were.

KLSnow touched on it and it’s true, this is a blog for PADRES fans, not the sabermetric community.  Ultimately with the DePodesta name in there you will attract members from the saber community, but we need to be realistic about the venue.

Complaining about his analysis of player’s and poll’s is like going into a Disney movie and complaining there isn’t enough gritty realism.  DePo is employed by the Padres and has rules and regulations he must abide by when discussing players. This blog, just like a Disney movie, has great content and we just need to sift through the “doing his job” parts to get to it. I have no complaints, we’ve never really seen anything like this before and are lucky the Pads are open enough to it.

The poll is reflective of the readers of his blog as well I believe, because I bet if that same poll was posted on padres.com, there would be a higher percentage in the “buy”.  Call it delusional or whatever, but fans are fans and while I obviously can’t say for certain, I don’t know how in touch you are with the common fan, Tango.  I mean, you are the gosh darn writer of “The Book” and have made some of the best breakthroughs in baseball research.  You are exposed mainly to the top tier of baseball fan/thinker and as such perhaps you forget that the majority of baseball fans still just don’t understand the game as well as they could.

Maybe I’m wrong about your perceptions of baseball fans (or have a flawed one myself), just giving my $0.02

Richard: ok, then what other possibilities would you have offered?

I haven’t followed his blog, but how often do the posters bring up Bonds?

I’m sure, like a good MLB employee, he’ll just “no comment”.

Re: Bonds

I’ve been a regular reader and I don’t think Bonds has ever come up

...and we just need to sift through the “doing his job” parts to get to it.

I’m suggesting that it’s completely unnecessary for him to do the “doing his job” part of his posts.  They are stuff you hear from talk radio interviews where the GM and manager are forced to sit to the crappy interview questions and have to give out some b.s. forced answer. 

But, when Depodesta himself is offering such salesmanship paragraphs, completely unnecessarily since they are so debunkable, why bother?

You are suggesting that we should be happy he gives such good posts (which he does), but why does he have to also include the salesmanship stuff with no prodding whatsoever?

Is there a single one of his readers that can appreciate it when he says:

In fact, the last time Greg was traded at the deadline to a contender, which was in 2006, he went 6-3 with a 3.30 ERA over 74 innings down the stretch. Previous to the trade he had posted a 4.69 ERA. He’s Greg Maddux, he’s a winner, and every team that he’s on is better because he is there.

Based on the posts on his blog, his readers are far too smart to like this passage.  It would be “doing his job” if he was asked.  It’s salesmanship if he offers it unprodded.

And isn’t that kind of salesmanship exactly why the Padres allow him to maintain a blog and talk about players in the first place?

I think you’re looking at it exactly wrong. He’s the Assistant GM of the Padres. If he didn’t make some effort to hype his players and promote the team, why on Earth would the Padres let him write it at all?

If anything, we should be glad he’s giving us some excellent insight and analysis to go along with his salesmanship. The salesmanship is his job, as an employee of a for-profit business.

KL: I had never considered that Depodesta would intentionally give us drivel to placate his superiors, all in an effort to otherwise talk to us like intelligent and starving fans.  That the little b.s. he offers is all part of his obfuscation program so that his superiors can’t see the signal by the extra noise he offers.

To that end: well done!

You make a great point (and I react the same way to that Maddux quotr), but I do think we don’t fully know the entire audience that does read his blog. Based on comments, you are write, but that is just the sample size of readers that are passionate enough to post comments. There were about 60 people that posted comments in his post and 1,000+ votes in his poll.  Even amidst the sample size of people who comment, there were a fair share of naive commenters.

I agree with every point you make, but it is all contingent on the idea that the vast majority of his readers think a certain way, which is an assumption we really can’t make. 

DePodesta is playing it safe here and I don’t blame him for being a bit of a salesmen at times. He works for the Padres and needs to spin the team as positively as possible. That’s just part of the job. And while almost anyone that is sabermetrically aware will cast aside comments like you highlighted, I think there is a sizeable portion (impossible to calculate, but I’d guess maybe 20%-30%) of his readers that will buy into a comment like that. Ultimately he does have to be a salesman to a degree in this format, because as it gets bigger it reaches more and more Pads fan, and at the end of the day the Padres are a product that is being sold to fans.

I too wish things could be a bit more frank, but we just need to accept the limits of what he can and cannot say and just consider ourselves lucky we have it at all.  He has a live BP chat at PETCO prior to the game tomorrow and I would expect that to be more of a forum for what you are talking about

KL, he isn’t the Assistant GM, he is a special assistant to baseball operations, although perhaps that’s just semantics

Cool guys, I think we’re all good now.

Derek Carty echoes some of what I said, and even adds an additional layer:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/trade-strategy-propaganda-and-paul-depodestas-recent-example/

And it seems like the propaganda worked. Rnady Wolf was traded to the Astros for a pitcher who is not only younger, but could even be better than Wolf. Looks like Wade is the idiot GM.