This Has My Attention: New Questions

That may be true for wins, ERA and RBI, but it’s not true for home runs (individual and team) or stolen bases. And you of all managers should know the salary cap does nothing to enforce parity, or we would all be flipping coins.

Many things can be true at once:

There can be skilled managers who outperform others.
There can be player performance modifiers (the cards).
There can be manager performance modifiers.
There can be realism modifiers.
There can be stats modifiers.

Everyone shouts conspiracy theory! nonsense because it’s a quick dismissive comeback when they’re too lazy to have a real discussion (not directed at Max, or anyone else for that matter). I’m not saying this a conspiracy of any kind, not in any way, shape or form.

What I’m saying is that I’m paying money to play a game for entertainment. I’ve played this game under one name for over 20 years. I think I’m entitled to fully know the rules of the game which I’m paying for, because it does not currently appear to be the same game I started playing in my thirties.

TLDR: Analysis of data from roughly 1000 leagues does not support idea that differences between pythag. expectations and actual wins indicate a bias against long-time managers.

I pulled data for about 1000 leagues. I defined long-time managers a few different ways, but I'll talk about one simple method I used. I defined a long-time manager as one with a member number less than 8 digits. For those long-time managers with at least 10 seasons in the data, I calculated the average pythag. error. (difference between expected and actual). If we define lucky managers as those with average errors of -1 or less (pythag exp. - actual < -1) and unlucky managers as those with average errors of +1 or more, I count 26 lucky long-time managers and 24 unlucky long-time managers (and yes, J-PAV is among them). There were 61 long-time managers that were neither lucky or unlucky.

This doesn't prove anything with regard to whether SOM has its thumb on the scales, but it does satisfy me that pythagorean expectations are not the proof that this is occurring.

By the way, the data I pulled indicates that a more accurate (minimizes square error) formula would use 1.73 as the exponents instead of 2.

My concern is that the game is closer to flipping coins than we might like to think.

Great stuff barrmorris! Empirical data is just so much FUN!

Re the ideal exponents: you may already be aware but if not, Pythagenpat is the gold standard https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/g ... t&stat=136

TLDR: Analysis of data from roughly 1000 leagues does not support idea that differences between pythag. expectations and actual wins indicate a bias against long-time managers.

I appreciate the effort. I have no reason not to take you at your word here, but I’m also cautious about results only one person can see.

I would argue that there does not have to be a bias against “long-time managers”. In other words, I wouldn’t make this personal. The effect could simply be that in any individual league, the teams with a more positive run diff bleed victories over to negative run diff teams. I still contend manager experience levels are involved with this somehow.

This would only indirectly affect long-time managers, because in many instances, long-time managers will have better net positive records and would often be outperforming in an individual league. In other words, since I have underperforming teams too, when I look at those teams the pythag is largely +/- 3 wins (or close).

So despite you validating my “unluckiness”, I don’t feel like HAL is out to get me. I think he’s out to grow his membership.

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/expanded/463015

I can continue to keep posting circumstantial evidence, but I must warn, you’ll get tired of looking at them before I run out of examples to post. This is my next team about to finish.

Everyone is more or less +/- 3. Danodano bled -5 while Axelrod picked up a +5 with a small negative diff in the East. In my division, note how the two positive teams bled 12 games over to the two negative run diff teams.

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luckyman is in the house??

Here’s one where Bballexec bled 7 and I bled 5.

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/expanded/462784

Here’s one where Bballexec bled 7 and I bled 5.

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/expanded/462784

Yet in the same league the team with the most wins and best run differential is only a -1. Why isn't he "bleeding wins"?
Central Owner W L PCT GB vs.Div out.Div XI 1run Exp.W/L Diff
Balco Bombers * damienpassalacqua1 94 68 .580 - 45-27 49-41 7-5 21-20 95-67 +141

And the bottom feeder is at -8. Not sure how that is helping to underhandedly "grow the membership".

Central Owner W L PCT GB vs.Div out.Div XI 1run Exp.W/L Diff
Massac County Mafia brandon_p 69 93 .426 25 31-41 38-52 6-12 22-27 77-85 -41

Underhandedly.

I’ve only said this, what, 100 times now? Nothing is “underhanded”, conspiratorial, dishonest or “out to get me.”

There will be no smoking gun because there are no perfect correlations. I have no idea why. It’s as ridiculous as saying that if Bonds hit 73 homers in real life why did he only hit 56 on my Strat team? Why didn’t he hit 73?? Where’s the realism?

I posted what, how many leagues now where there’s clearly a distinguishable pattern of wins being traded off? I never said or implied there’s perfect formulaic correlation or causation. But it didn’t hold for brandon so I guess the entire observation is flawed then.

Great argument. I’m convinced now.