2024 DETROIT TIGERS REGULAR SEASON THREAD

[Shelton]

18 minutes ago, casimir said:

I’ll be no fun.

They aren’t in a tie.  The Twins hold the tiebreaker.  Therefore, the Twins are ahead of the Tigers by tiebreaker.  If the season were to end, that’s the things would shake out.

There’s still 9 games at hand.  This race hasn’t been linear and may not be linear going forward.  Keep that in mind.  As long as at the end of the season the playoff invite goes to the Tigers, it won’t matter if they lose a game or two in Baltimore.

And when they do clinch, let’s all gather in @Jim Cowan‘s yard and party like rock stars.  I’ll bring some Moosehead.

But they don’t decide the playoffs after 153 games, so the tiebreaker isn’t active yet. The fact is they are tied. The tiebreaker is just another way of settling a tie after 162 games, as an alternative to playing a single head to head game 163 (which, as we know, is not necessarily going to lead to a better result).

 

Before the tiebreaker, you weren’t happy with the tie either.
 

If only the tigers had won one of those earlier games against the twins. They would be 2 games up and they would hold the tiebreaker. 
 

Anyway, we aren’t behind by one, or .5, or whatever. We are tied. If we win one more game than the twins, we will win the spot. Because we are currently tied. 

[gehringer_2]

34 minutes ago, Shelton said:

It doesn’t happen all the time. It happens some of the time. For instance, some percentage of the time. Almost like a probability. 

If a team was in every way a static entity, then you would just look at the season win-loss record and who was left to play (and their records) and the probability you'd get would be the best available predictor. I assume FG and ESPN do something like that. But we know a team is not a static entity. The personnel is always in flux, and the players themselves go through arcs of injury and health, some of which never even become public. Some young players are in a real process of getting better over the course of a year, maybe an older one irreversibly starts to break down. So the art of handicapping in large part turns on how far back do you want to go to get the 'best' estimate of a team's likely winning rate over the next X games. The further back you go, the stronger the statistical 'power' in the estimate, but the more your assumption that you are looking at the 'same' team all across the sample may be breaking down. If you take the whole season, since their records are exactly equal the best estimate would be the Twins and Tigers will win the same number of games of the next 9 so Minny end up winning by the tie-breaker (ignoring the difference in the quality of the opposition just for the sake of outlining the argument). If you look from the ASB, the Tigers would be slightly favored. If you look at the last 30, the Tigers would be clearly favored.

Pay your money and take your choice!  (if you like to gamble that is.......)

🤷‍♀️

Edited September 20 by gehringer_2

[Shelton]

9 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

If a team was in every way a static entity, then you would just look at the season win-loss record and who was left to play (and their records) and the probability you'd get would be the best available predictor. I assume FG and ESPN do something like that. But we know a team is not a static entity. The personnel is always in flux, and the players themselves go through arcs of injury and health, some of which never even become public. Some young players are in a real process of getting better over the course of a year, maybe an older one irreversibly starts to break down. So the art of handicapping in large part turns on how far back do you want to go to get the 'best' estimate of a team's likely winning rate over the next X games. The further back you go, the stronger the statistical 'power' in the estimate, but the more your assumption that you are looking at the 'same' team all across the sample may be breaking down. If you take the whole season, since their records are exactly equal the best estimate would be the Twins and Tigers will win the same number of games of the next 9 so Minny end up winning by the tie-breaker (ignoring the difference in the quality of the opposition just for the sake of outlining the argument). If you look from the ASB, the Tigers would be slightly favored. If you look at the last 30, the Tigers would be clearly favored.

Pay your money and take your choice!  (if you like to gamble that is.......)

🤷‍♀️

Agreed

[Shelton]

Nah, just kidding. I didn’t actually parse all of that. 
 

I think what you are saying is that it’s hard to predict how each game will go, which no one disputes. 
 

Use whatever method you want to determine your own sense of what is likely to happen and to what degree. I prefer the baseball reference method that looks at the past 100 games and adds a regression factor. I don’t much like the FanGraphs method that is based on zips+steamer. The coin flip method is fairly clean and not bad, especially when it comes to this caliber of team. FG’s “season to date” stats is similar to the bref method I think. 

[IdahoBert]

6 hours ago, lordstanley said:

Yeah, ESPN’s Cy Young Predictor has Clase over Skubal but I can’t see that happening.  
 

https://www.espn.com/mlb/features/cyyoung

A reliever over a starter who’s leading in wins strikeouts and ERA? 

[IdahoBert]

I am more interested in the fact that on a rest day my team backed into a tie for the wildcard that is not really a tie, than the lesser fact of Ohtani hitting three home runs with six hits and 10 RBIs and stealing his 50th base. I have different priorities.

 

[lordstanley]

I’m pretty sure there is a way the Tigers can win a tiebreaker over Minnesota. If it’s a 3-way tie with Seattle. Tigers dominated the season series over Seattle. Tigers would win the head to head to head I believe. So if the Twins and Tigers both go 5-4 and Seattle goes 7-2, Tigers I think would get in. 

Edited September 20 by lordstanley

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, Shelton said:

It doesn’t happen all the time. It happens some of the time. For instance, some percentage of the time. Almost like a probability. 

There is some team getting hot or cold somewhere right now!

[VegasTiger]

8 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

There is some team getting hot or cold somewhere right now!

Probably.

[Tiger337]

I do look at these probabilities before the season starts, so I can see which teams are likely to do well over the course of the long season.  Half way through the season, I will look at them to see who should buy or sell.  I just can't myself to care about them over a short period.  At this point, if your team is alive they are alive.  Probabilities are always in my head somewhere, but when I watch the game tomorrow I am not  going to care whether Fangraphs thinks the Tigers have a 40% probability or a 60% probability.  They were less than 10% just a few games ago.  

On the other hand, I think I get why it might be fun to watch them go from 10% to 100%.  

Edited September 20 by Tiger337

[Sports_Freak]

1 hour ago, Shelton said:

But they don’t decide the playoffs after 153 games, so the tiebreaker isn’t active yet. The fact is they are tied. The tiebreaker is just another way of settling a tie after 162 games, as an alternative to playing a single head to head game 163 (which, as we know, is not necessarily going to lead to a better result).

 

Before the tiebreaker, you weren’t happy with the tie either.
 

If only the tigers had won one of those earlier games against the twins. They would be 2 games up and they would hold the tiebreaker. 
 

Anyway, we aren’t behind by one, or .5, or whatever. We are tied. If we win one more game than the twins, we will win the spot. Because we are currently tied. 

Yes, tied at this point in the season. But looking at the remaining schedules, I really like the Tigers odds. It's good the Twins are in Boston while we're in Baltimore. Come back to Detroit to face Tampa and the WSox while the Twins are at home against the Marlins and Orioles. The Tigers are surging and the Twins are sinking. 

[TigerNation]

2 hours ago, monkeytargets39 said:

Yeah they could do that….as long as he’s good to go for game 1 of the wildcard round.  Hopefully we don’t need him to pitch in that last Sox game

Best choice is to have him available for the last game if it's a must win and if you're lucky you can save him for the wildcard round.

[gehringer_2]

2 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

Yes, tied at this point in the season. But looking at the remaining schedules, I really like the Tigers odds. It's good the Twins are in Boston while we're in Baltimore. Come back to Detroit to face Tampa and the WSox while the Twins are at home against the Marlins and Orioles. The Tigers are surging and the Twins are sinking. 

I'm not very confident the starting pitching holds up. The downside risks include Montero missing a decreasing number of bats, and Mize's unreliability. I was almost more optimistic about BP days than Casey's starts. OTOH, Olson could get back on track and lock down a couple games.

[Sports_Freak]

2 hours ago, TigerNation said:

We have an off day before and after the series with Baltimore. So we can bump Skubal to the first Rays game and he can pitch two more or normal rest.

I hope Skubal gets an extra start but I'm not if the Tigers would give him extra rest or not. 

[gehringer_2]

BRef certainly like the Tigers more - looks like once they process today's game they may rate Tigers ahead of Minny.

[Edman85]

2 hours ago, Shelton said:

Nah, just kidding. I didn’t actually parse all of that. 
 

I think what you are saying is that it’s hard to predict how each game will go, which no one disputes. 
 

Use whatever method you want to determine your own sense of what is likely to happen and to what degree. I prefer the baseball reference method that looks at the past 100 games and adds a regression factor. I don’t much like the FanGraphs method that is based on zips+steamer. The coin flip method is fairly clean and not bad, especially when it comes to this caliber of team. FG’s “season to date” stats is similar to the bref method I think. 

What's wrong with the method that uses projection systems? FYI, in case you didn't bake this in, the projection systems do update over the course of the year. I'm assuming it's some kind of regression being done to bake in current season performance with preseason expectation (which likely has some kind of certainty baked in to tell it how much to factor in this year's performance)

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

Probabilities are always in my head somewhere, but when I watch the game tomorrow I am not  going to care whether Fangraphs thinks the Tigers have a 40% probability or a 60% probability.  They were less than 10% just a few games ago.  

It's something that gives you a sanity check for what you are thinking in your fan brain.

Quote

On the other hand, I think I get why it might be fun to watch them go from 10% to 100%.  

and this. In the end, everyone gets in or not after 162, but there is something special about watching the odds improve after your team is left for dead for good reason.

Edited September 20 by gehringer_2

[gehringer_2]

17 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

What's wrong with the method that uses projection systems? FYI, in case you didn't bake this in, the projection systems do update over the course of the year. I'm assuming it's some kind of regression being done to bake in current season performance with preseason expectation (which likely has some kind of certainty baked in to tell it how much to factor in this year's performance)

I think I get what BRef does with SRS, which appears to be a rolling average purely based on a team's last 100 game outcomes. If fangraphs is using a zips based system does that mean they are rebuilding each team's performance from their individual player projections?

EDIT: one possible source of error in the rolling 100 game model is the step discontinuity in team composition at the deadline. 

Edited September 20 by gehringer_2

[Graterol]

27 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

What's wrong with the method that uses projection systems? FYI, in case you didn't bake this in, the projection systems do update over the course of the year. I'm assuming it's some kind of regression being done to bake in current season performance with preseason expectation (which likely has some kind of certainty baked in to tell it how much to factor in this year's performance)

Serious question— are the playoff odds (such as fangraphs)  based bottoms up on expected lineup/pitching matchups with real time individual player forecasts?

[Graterol]

Just now, Graterol said:

Serious question— are the playoff odds (such as fangraphs)  based bottoms up on expected lineup/pitching matchups with real time individual player forecasts?

Edit: looks like gehringer asked the exact same question at same time.

[casimir]

9 hours ago, Shelton said:

But they don’t decide the playoffs after 153 games, so the tiebreaker isn’t active yet. The fact is they are tied. The tiebreaker is just another way of settling a tie after 162 games, as an alternative to playing a single head to head game 163 (which, as we know, is not necessarily going to lead to a better result).

 

Before the tiebreaker, you weren’t happy with the tie either.
 

If only the tigers had won one of those earlier games against the twins. They would be 2 games up and they would hold the tiebreaker. 
 

Anyway, we aren’t behind by one, or .5, or whatever. We are tied. If we win one more game than the twins, we will win the spot. Because we are currently tied. 

The tiebreaker dictates that the Tigers are still behind the Twins right now.  Essentially, there is no tie.

[Edman85]

8 hours ago, Graterol said:

Serious question— are the playoff odds (such as fangraphs)  based bottoms up on expected lineup/pitching matchups with real time individual player forecasts?

They are based on playing time projections, but to my knowledge they do not make an attempt to figure out opposing platoon splits. They may bake those into playing time projections though? Like if the Tigers were projected to face 10 straight lefties, I think their system would weight Andy Ibanez a bit more than Jace Jung, or at least it should.

What I like about projection system based systems is it does factor in who is playing. Odds change (slightly) at the trade deadline. Odds change when a star player gets hurt. They are my go to.

[gehringer_2]

9 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

BRef certainly like the Tigers more - looks like once they process today's game they may rate Tigers ahead of Minny.

and indeed they do. 55/50

[Shelton]

9 hours ago, Edman85 said:

What's wrong with the method that uses projection systems? FYI, in case you didn't bake this in, the projection systems do update over the course of the year. I'm assuming it's some kind of regression being done to bake in current season performance with preseason expectation (which likely has some kind of certainty baked in to tell it how much to factor in this year's performance)

Just a gut feeling, Eddie. I could try to rationalize why I think it’s worse. To be fair, the other methods are also projecting team quality, just with different inputs.
 

When FG season-to-date method and bref SRS method both spit out similar odds, but the FG default based on zips/steamer is a big outlier, it makes me think there is something baked into the FG projection that is more slow to adjust. 
 

I do find it interesting that all the scribes just default to the FG odds and ignore the bref odds. But I also dislike FG in general these days for a number of reasons, so I’m likely allowing my bias to creep in. 
 

 

[Shelton]

2 hours ago, casimir said:

The tiebreaker dictates that the Tigers are still behind the Twins right now.  Essentially, there is no tie.

The tiebreaker dictates no such thing because there is no need for a tie to broken at this time. You are projecting a tie nine from games from now to order the teams. No need to do that. 
 

Essentially and factually, there is a tie. It’s right there in black and white.