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I don’t know abount Libby as a reliever. I know a lot of folks just want to believe, but I don’t know. I mean, here he came on in the 7th and had one job. Don’t let the go ahead run score. I know he’s had good outings. He’ll be min wage for two more years and I guess middle relief doesn’t have to be lights out, so maybe its a role he could settle into for a couple seasons to see if he eventually develops like we’ve been hoping. I just feel like we will be in for the same frustration we have had with him, always waiting for consistency, geting our hopes up and then having those hopes dashed yet again.
This has to be the worst Cardinal team in my lifetime. Was the last place 1990 team this futile? It’s hard to say, as I was 7 and don’t recall it.
There was a bit of talent on the 1990 team but Whitey was at the end of his run and they had just become very stale. It was about that time that the brewery decided to go cheap so Torre didn’t have much to work with during his tenue here either.
CIF, you might like it as a storyteller of the game. WPA records the impact of each play and applies toward the most probable game outcome for each team.
It credits the players plus or minus by each play, and it’s accumulative for the game (and season).
It’s pretty much the ups and downs during the game and who had win impact of pluses or minuses.
There was a bit of talent on the 1990 team but Whitey was at the end of his run and they had just become very stale. It was about that time that the brewery decided to go cheap so Torre didn’t have much to work with during his tenue here either.
Talent, end of a run and staleness sounds a lot like this year’s squad. It’s sort of like a reverse 2022…the magic was just completely gone and in the end, it was hard to care that it was. I didn’t follow much at all after the first few weeks, and I don’t feel like I missed a lot. The squad out there now is probably the least inspiring Cardinal team I can remember. Let’s hope 2024 brings more energy with a new staff and an improvement from some key pieces (Goldy and Arenado being more normal, Walker, Gorman and Winn becoming key pieces for the next run).
1990 was the season immediately after Gussie Busch died and others took over. It was the beginning of those last sad years of A-B ownership when they had little interest in baseball. I think Whitey was gone and TLR yet to arrive, IIRC.
I think Whitey was gone and TLR yet to arrive, IIRC.
Correct. Whitey stepped down during the 1990 season. Red Schoendienst finished out the year then Torre managed from 1991-95 with little support. He then goes to the Yankees and becomes a HOF manager. 1996 was when TLR got here.
What is this ever-changing “win probability” nonsense? What purpose does it serve and how in the world could anybody calculate such a number?
CIF, it is ever-changing as you said because it is live win probability. It’s like what you see with live sports betting, i.e., the odds are always changing. It’s calculated via modeling and simulation — lots of number crunching. It’s based on thousands of simulations of models of the two teams in a given situation, e.g., what percentage of the time will some team beat the Cards given that team is up 2 on the Cards going into the bottom of the 9th? It would be a high percentage. Now suppose Manny Motter hits a 2-run HR in the 9th, then the M&S program runs thousands of more simulations and the probability of a win is now significantly different.
The biggest application I can think of is it has opened a big avenue in live sports betting. It’s also simply an interest item for some. And it’s also another source for stats which might or might not be important. jj mentioned WPA. Some try to tie that to measuring player clutchness, i.e., is a player good at doing things which often move his team from a low win probability position to a high one? That is as opposed to a player who does good things at times where it rarely improves the probability of winning, e.g., HR when team is already up or down by a large margin.
A question on WPA. Taking a game that ended 2-0 as an example – if in one game a 2-0 final was from a guy hitting a two-run homer in the second inning.
Another game a guy hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning. Does the guy that hit the eighth inning homer get a higher WPA value than the guy that his the second inning homer?
If so, then as far as evaluating a player I would take WPA with several extra shakes from the salt dispenser. In other words it is one stat to look at, but not real important in evaluating overall player value. And if so, my thought is WPA fluctuates for a player quite a lot from year to year.
Win Probability: Thanks for all your help guys. I was an English major so I think I’ll just stick with the box score and leave all the mathematics to those who are titillated by that sort of stuff.
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