Poz retrospect on 2010 Mariners
I love Poz's writing, as I'm sure many of you do too, but I have a hard time agreeing with this upon first read. Maybe it's that he had higher expectations for the playoffs than I did.
almost 2 years ago
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I think it's a little rich for people to say they saw this coming.
Overrated, maybe. But did all these people really see 75% of the lineup batting the Mendoza Line? Really? Every position player suffering from decline?
Hard work never killed nobody, but I won't take my chances.
I saw Figgins doing it
…they should send down Huntington & Nutting, because they aren’t ready, either. - royshowell
by Marinerfanjake on Aug 10, 2010 4:00 PM PDT up reply actions
There's a difference between Figgins declining from 2009 (which everyone foresaw)
and Figgins hitting 30 wOBA points below any projection system
I'm saying i saw him hit like he is now
You got to have low expectations on those with high.
…they should send down Huntington & Nutting, because they aren’t ready, either. - royshowell
by Marinerfanjake on Aug 10, 2010 10:00 PM PDT up reply actions
So you predicted him being this terrible is what you're saying?
Or that you’ve seen him be this terrible before?
by Mariner John on Aug 10, 2010 10:50 PM PDT up reply actions
My fanshot or Poz's writing?
Considering people around like both Posnanski and the Mariners, I thought it was relevant to link to it. I anticipated disagreement but not to the point of mocking.
Graham doesn't like the article.
by Eyebrows on Aug 10, 2010 3:25 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions
I would have said 'this is a really stupid post' if I was talking about you
And since it wasn’t, I didn’t. Sorry for the confusion though, my fault.
by Graham MacAree on Aug 10, 2010 3:35 PM PDT up reply actions
Agreed.
I feel as though much of the preseason hype came from the ESPN hype machine. I know the general consensus around here was that the Mariners were around a .500 team and would finish in 2nd or 3rd place in the AL West. It’s ridiculous to cite those advanced stats and claim people were fooled. The only people who were fooled were the ones not looking at the right numbers. LL and USSM were pretty adamant about not getting our hopes up about this season. There were things to look forward to, but it was going to take some luck to win this division.
What nobody predicted was how unlucky this team was going to be. If we got average production from Lopez, Figgins, and 1B, this team would have likely been about .500.
The bit on Jack Wilson is about the only thing that really upsets me, though. People can accuse Jack Zduriencik for re-signing Wilson all they want, but the truth of the matter is that we had no in-house replacement and Zduriencik signed Wilson for a cheaper price than his previous contract. Wilson was a stop-gap move until a better option presented itself.
I think a lot of the hype came from the moves themselves
People saw Jack making a lot of good and reasonable moves. What they didn’t realize is that the team still wasn’t that good. Most mainstream baseball types tend to analyze by “this team won 85 games last year, they made good moves, therefore they should get better.” Which is where most mainstream types failed.
by Fuckmikereilly on Aug 10, 2010 4:33 PM PDT up reply actions
Even if people around here thought that the Mariners would make the playoffs, I think it was because of the shittiness of the division - not the greatness of the team.
When I was telling people before the year that the M’s had a shot this year, I had to serve it with a large grain of salt and say “Now listen, its because the division sucks” because I didn’t want to get railed after the year for finishing 3rd.
Still a disappointing year, but not because we are missing the playoffs so much. That much was always a big possibility.
by Kenneth Arthur on Aug 10, 2010 6:15 PM PDT up reply actions
That wasn't the general consensus around here!
http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2010/4/4/1403836/another-seattle-mariners-poll
http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2010/4/4/1403828/a-seattle-mariners-poll
by Matthew on Aug 10, 2010 9:03 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Rec'd
Seriously, 2% of people here saw this team losing less than 78 games. 9% saw lower than 2nd place. There’s a lot of revisionist history taking place in the M’s blogosphere regarding this Posnanski article, which I think is mostly reasonable. He’s off with the usage of Pythag and probably his discussion of Figgins, but it’s not nearly as terrible as the powers that be will have you believe.
by James Kannengieser on Aug 14, 2010 7:24 AM PDT up reply actions
No, the article is exactly as bad as "the powers that be", which I assume refers to us, will have you believe.
It’s completely rubbish from an analytical perspective.
I would have loved to read a response from Jeff S.
The tone probably would’ve been more respectful and less pedantic, i.e. it wouldn’t have spent time quibbling with “Casey Kotchman, #3 hitter”.
by James Kannengieser on Aug 16, 2010 8:18 AM PDT up reply actions
I don't care enough about it to respond
Who cares what Joe Posnanski thinks about the Mariners?
by Jeff Sullivan on Aug 16, 2010 9:25 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
At least one very prominent blogger, apparently
And a lot of people in this thread. But fair enough.
by James Kannengieser on Aug 16, 2010 9:47 AM PDT up reply actions
I guess I just don't see the point
Mariners fans know what he did wrong, and non-Mariners fans aren’t going to listen to Mariners fans defend their team.
by Jeff Sullivan on Aug 16, 2010 12:36 PM PDT up reply actions
Laziest analysis ever.
Arrogant, too. Posnanski is basically Bill Simmons if he was addicted to baseball reference.
by Manzanillos Cup on Aug 10, 2010 4:06 PM PDT reply actions
What?
Posnanski is great, this was just a rare misfire on his part.
Not a fan, but part of it is me being a contrarian.
The online fan community seems to really dig him. He does OK with his “big picture” analysis, he’s really embraced the stat revolution in the sport (as Geoff Baker has here), and he seems to take a thoughtful stance on issues that other sportswriters just rant about. He’s too long winded and sentimental for my tastes, though.
by Manzanillos Cup on Aug 11, 2010 2:35 PM PDT up reply actions
It is neither lazy nor arrogant
it is very well written, even if it is completely wrong. Bill Simmons lies awake at night and dreams of being 1/1000th of the writer that Posnanski is.
by pdb on Aug 11, 2010 2:34 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
"The Mariners did not have a smart off-season, not at all."
The use of a declarative statement like this seems pretty arrogant to me. The analysis was lazy. It wouldn’t have been hard to at least check the projection systems out there to find out how they graded the M’s. This “we should have known” idea discredits a ton of smart analysis done on the team’s chances.
by Manzanillos Cup on Aug 11, 2010 2:51 PM PDT up reply actions
Posnanski is not, does not pretend to be, nor does he present himself as an analyst though.
He’s a columnist. Huge difference.
I guess the line just seems kinda fuzzy to me.
Analyst or columnist aside, are his conclusions supported by facts?
by Manzanillos Cup on Aug 11, 2010 3:11 PM PDT up reply actions
That's the line, actually
As an analyst, his conclusions would have to be supported by facts and he’d have to show his math, as it were. As a columnist, he is interpreting (and presenting his opinion of) what he sees. Again, those are two very different things.
Why shouldn't ALL writers be forced to show their work?
I mean Poz is basically spewing out bullsh-t with this article, who cares whether he’s a columnist or an analyst?
by vivaelpujols on Aug 12, 2010 3:05 AM PDT up reply actions
Because intent matters
Poz isn’t trying to advance a science, or add to a body of work. He’s trying to start a discussion, and he’s certainly done that.
by pdb on Aug 12, 2010 6:51 AM PDT up reply actions 2 recs
I think we understand that there are no ethical standards being breached.
The intent to start a discussion, and whether every sentence a columnist writes has an implied, preceding “In my opinion,” are irrelevant to me. Backing up your assertions with facts and being thorough on this particular subject isn’t some outrageous expectation. If you can’t do it in the time alloted you, you should be smart enough not to publish. (Or how about just not coming to such strong conclusions in the first place?) This idea that columnists have a Get Out of Jail Free card for bad analysis is disturbing, especially when you think about columnists covering some not-so-trivial subjects.
by Manzanillos Cup on Aug 12, 2010 11:03 AM PDT up reply actions
Again, though, it all comes down to intent
whether every sentence a columnist writes has an implied, preceding "In my opinion," are irrelevant to me
So what you’re saying is, every single thing you read is held to the same evidentiary standard, whether it’s a cereal box, a statistical analysis, or a comic strip? That sounds like less their problem than yours.
I would argue that he was thorough on this subject – I disagree with where he took it, but he was definitely thorough.
People write different things that are tailored for different audiences. Would you look to Geoff Baker for analysis? No. Would you look to him for interesting clubhouse insights? Probably. And Posnanski’s the same – I’m not defending this particular column, because he was off base, but I’m also saying you can’t hold a Joe Posnanski up to the same scrutiny you’d hold a Dave Cameron, because he’s writing for a vastly different audience.
Life is not binary – it’s not a question of if it’s not right it’s wrong. You (and most of us) disagree with Poz on this particular topic, that’s fine. That doesn’t mean he’s “spewing bullshit”, “arrogant”, or “lazy”. It just means you disagree with him.
There is some serious cognitive dissonance going on here.
Poz wrote a revisionist history of Seattle’s offseason. If you really think that his profession, audience, and intent somehow transform that misinterpretation of facts into a valid opinion, then that’s OK, I guess.
by Manzanillos Cup on Aug 12, 2010 3:54 PM PDT up reply actions
There is no such thing as an invalid opinion
There are incorrect facts, and there are incorrect conclusions. Posnanski, in this article, used some actual facts to come up with erroneous conclusions. I have acknowledged that throughout this discussion – I am fully in agreement that the column was not good.
Where I differ with you is with respect to the fact that I do not look to Joe Posnanski for serious, in-depth analysis. If, for example, Dave Cameron or any Fangraphs writer had penned this article, I would have serious problems with it, because they are supposed to be analysts. Posnanski isn’t. That’s my whole point – you seem to be coming at this from a perspective that Posnanski failed at analysis. Of course he did, because he’s not an analyst. Nor does he have anything other than remote, third- or fourth-hand knowledge of the inner workings of the Mariners.
Given all that, should he have written the article? Probably not. But what I’m trying to get across is that what Posnanski does isn’t analysis, and to judge his writing as if he were is doing him a disservice. He’s an excellent writer 99% of the time, and while he swung and missed at this one, I’m certainly not going to condemn him as a writer because of it.
by pdb on Aug 12, 2010 4:05 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
My opinion of Posnanski isn't as high as yours.
And it’s really not him so much as it is sportswriting in general. These days I only read articles when people are talking about them. And honestly, part of the reason why is that columnists often put on analyst hats, which I think is just a waste of everyone’s time. If you’re going to rationally tackle a subject with the intent of coming to strong conclusions like “The Mariners did not have a smart offseason”, then I think that its fair to expect a little more effort from Poz. Arrogant and lazy are harsh words, but I’m talking about the post, not the writer. I know they sound bad when attached to a writer as prolific and (often) self deprecating as he is.
by Manzanillos Cup on Aug 12, 2010 4:56 PM PDT up reply actions
Well, even Poz is entitled to an off day.
Fans are typically idiots.
by The Typical Idiot Fan on Aug 10, 2010 4:26 PM PDT reply actions
This is pretty much the way I feel. He hasn't lost me as a reader with this.
I really don’t agree with him but I get the feeling that he’s open to listening to a rational pundit and is willing to change his mind. I don’t feel that he’s arrogant in the slightest when he writes.
I almost linked this earlier.
I normally like Posnanski quite a bit, but this is just piling on and not even in a particularly interesting way. The central thrust of the piece seems to be that he and other sports writers were essentially talked into liking the Mariners, by each other? How does that make sense?
It’s just weird and lazy.
For whatever it's worth
I didn’t think the article was anything terrific myself, but Joe has a very difficult job, and did the ~best he could with this subject on limited warning.
It’s important to remember that Posnanski is a writer, not an analyst.
I assume the article was written because Wak got fired
and I doubt Poz spent a lot of time preparing it before news broke.
by Jeff Sullivan on Aug 10, 2010 9:48 PM PDT up reply actions
Kind of, yeah, but it sounds like he took it directly from a college communications class
…namely, because I had a comm class where we focused a lot on the idea of Groupthink, and watched 12 Angry Men as an example of it.
I don’t think it took a lot of effort for him to come to the conclusion, and I don’t think it’s an accurate one. Unless he’s only referring to analysts who were so lazy they merely went along with other analysts instead of looking at the data and coming to the conclusion on their own.
My sig is so annoying.
I think it's better than what you'd expect from a non analyst
But it’s till pretty bad and feel a bit like revisionist history
Not that I don't agree with you to an extent, but I feel like we use this excuse for sportswriters too often.
The writers themselves somewhat blur the distinction; so I don’t think you can hold it against people too much when they treat something like analysis that looks a lot like analysis, simply based on the byline.
It mostly comes up when people are discussing He Who Shall Not Be Named, and he’s one of the worst offenders in that regard. Pos, not so much.
Dave at USSM put up a really good rebuttal to Poz's article
Because for the most part, Poz’s article is shitty piece of garbage writing that he obviously didn’t put much thought into.
__________________________________________________________ 1000000 recs
The writing is quite good, actually
it’s the point and the intent that isn’t so bueno.
by pdb on Aug 11, 2010 10:19 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Yeah I enjoyed reading it even if I didn't think the conclusions were very good
by Edgar for Pres on Aug 11, 2010 11:44 AM PDT up reply actions
You are both correct, I shouldn't have bashed the writing, but the content
TO me it’s good writing, lazy content.
My sig is so annoying.
I would say he put a lot of thought into it, given the circumstances
and the standards to which some people around here hold national sportswriters are unreachable.
by Jeff Sullivan on Aug 11, 2010 10:54 AM PDT up reply actions
National sportswriters tend to be unreadable in my opinion.
Not their fault either as they are doing exactly what they should. I just have no interest in getting bad information from the uninformed.
by Sec 108 on Aug 11, 2010 12:33 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Me neither
It’s a nearly impossible job.
by Jeff Sullivan on Aug 11, 2010 3:11 PM PDT up reply actions
Good to know that whenever anyone slams your team on the internet, they are a lazy trolling hack who puts no effort into their writing
by seattlebruin on Aug 11, 2010 4:33 PM PDT up reply actions
That is not what I'm saying at all.
You can bash the team (who wouldn’t bash this team?) but this is absolutely revisionist history, and it’s exactly the kind of article I hate…because it makes all my friends say “see I told you Chone sucked and they should have gotten a bigger bat instead” or whatever.
It’s a cop out, saying “we all should have seen this coming” when we clearly would have been in the .00001% minority if we projected this outcome.
Also, I’m sick as fuck of hearing people say “we shouldn’t have let Branyan go.” Statements like that do not belong in sports writing, because 2 minutes of research would reveal the problems with that assertion.
My sig is so annoying.
Wow, I am obviously more passionate about this than I realized.
Don’t take any of my harshness personally. I haven’t had my coffee yet.
My sig is so annoying.
Give him another chance
This post by him is pretty good where he interviews John Dewan about the plus/minus system. Tango has a little post on his blog about it discussing when to believe your eyes and when to believe the numbers. I liked them both and just wanted to throw them up here somewhere.
by Edgar for Pres on Aug 12, 2010 12:17 AM PDT reply actions
I don't think anyone here needs to be convinced to give Joe Posnanski another chance
we’re all quite aware that he is an outstanding writer
by seattlebruin on Aug 12, 2010 8:10 AM PDT up reply actions
I am convinced of this. I hold good writers to higher standards, honestly.
I’ll absolutely give him more chances, but this article was crap.
My sig is so annoying.
I’m not looking to stir anything up here, as I’m over from Let’s Go Tribe. Respectfully, what exactly about Poz’ article is so lazy and/or arrogant? The first paragraph seems, to an outsider like me at least, as a pretty accurate and devastating summary of the Mariners’ off-season moves (and he didn’t even mention the Eric Byrnes experience). What am I missing about the apparent weakness of his column?
Every move was very defensible and intelligent at the time of the transaction, with the possible exception of the Morrow trade.
But what Poz is saying in his opening paragraph is that everyone should have known things were going to turn out this way. That is clearly false. No one could have seen a team-wide collapse and horrendous luck coming. A catastrophe like this is unpredictable. Poz is acting like it was clear as day that the Mariners were having a terrible off-season, when in fact they had, objectively, a solid off-season. The point is, everyone here expected better production based off of solid, educated analysis, and no one saw this team being this terrible.
M's fan in PA, soon to be LA
by perfectstrat on Aug 12, 2010 8:13 AM PDT up reply actions
I think the article was pretty poor, but to say that no one saw this outcome as being a possibility is inaccurate.
This team had a ton of collapse potential and anyone that wasn’t acknowledging that from the start of the season wasn’t being honest.
by Aaron Campeau on Aug 12, 2010 11:28 AM PDT up reply actions
Collapse potential, certainly
But the manner in which is happened is… odd.
by Graham MacAree on Aug 12, 2010 1:59 PM PDT up reply actions
In some regards, but pretty much every worst-case scenario came true as well.
If the unexpected things hadn’t happened, this would still be a very bad team and things would be functionally quite similar.
by Aaron Campeau on Aug 12, 2010 2:20 PM PDT up reply actions
Not so
This team has excellent run prevention and if we just look at the projections for hitting we’re an adequate offensive team.
If the unexpected hadn’t happened, we’d be above .500
by Graham MacAree on Aug 12, 2010 3:40 PM PDT up reply actions
What things that have happened were expected?
The unexpected things are what has made it a bad team.
by Mariner John on Aug 12, 2010 5:27 PM PDT up reply actions
Not necessarily expected so much as things that were reasonable outcomes at the outset.
by Aaron Campeau on Aug 12, 2010 5:34 PM PDT up reply actions
Everyone but Ichiro and maybe Gutz falling off a cliff was a reasonable outcome from the outset?
Hard work never killed nobody, but I won't take my chances.
Yeah, pretty much.
This offense was fuck-tastically bad from the get go. Figgins is unexpected, sure, but is anyone else being terrible really all that surprising? I mean I don’t think anyone expected everyone to be this bad, but individually yeah, these are all reasonable outcomes.
by Aaron Campeau on Aug 13, 2010 1:01 AM PDT up reply actions
I am genuinely suprised at how awful Bradley has been, and even Lopez.
The rest of the guys not so surprising.
I expected slightly better from Kotchman and even Rob Johnson
And did not expect Byrnes to be QUITE so bad (you know he had an OPS+ of 12?). I thought Moore could actually maybe hit a little bit.
All of those guys had career worst years, aside from Moore who stills falls into the “kind of a prospect” category.
My sig is so annoying.
Now I want to check splits and see what that looks like
Some of these guys like Byrnes and Kotchman should probably only be platooned at this point. 1B and LF pre-season were heavily discussed in the blogs as platoon opportunities based on the players the M’s took to spring training. I’m feeling like people are forgetting this.
Having one player hit a 10% projection is normal
Having seven is a little weird.
by Graham MacAree on Aug 13, 2010 6:12 PM PDT up reply actions 3 recs
This sentence encapsulates the entire argument of why Poz's article was terrible.
My sig is so annoying.
It would be interesting to go through all the teams next year and try to rate them based on "collapse potential"
I wonder where this team would have fallen on that sort of a list.
by Edgar for Pres on Aug 12, 2010 7:18 PM PDT up reply actions
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