I Was Wrong

I have never been wrong… well, once I thought I was wrong… but I was mistaken. Seriously, while I do get a lot right, I am frequently wrong, and today, I am going to talk about a few things I have been wrong about:

1. Well, I was really wrong about Andy LaRoche. So, there is that.
2. So far, I have been wrong about Miguel Vargas. Progress is not linear, so the jury is still out, but he’s no longer a Dodger so… whatever!
3. I was wrong that the D-Bags and the Rangers would both be under .500. Well, I was right about the Rangers, but very wrong about the D-Bags. I did not think either would be a .500 team, but the D-Bags proved me wrong.
4. I was wrong about Gavin Stone. I thought he was destined to be a reliever. I liked him a lot, but did not envision his as a starter and much less, that he would lead the Dodgers in Innings Pitched. Wow! He is a great #4 and a solid #3.
5. I did not think Miguel Rojas would be hitting closer to .300 than .200 at this time of the season.
6. I thought that if Kershaw played this year, it would be in Texas. I still think he will finish his career there.

By the way, I was right about Gavin Lux and Oneil Cruz not being shortstops. We found out about Lux in Spring Training and about Cruz this week, as they are moving him to CF… and you heard it here first. I do get some things right.

Fangraphs Power Ratings

Fangraphs is not afraid to try new things and think outside of the box. Last week’s Power Rankings looked like this:

This is based upon a new model, which they describe as this:

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance.

To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coinflip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — I’ve taken some editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula.

You can read all about it HERE.

Here’s a couple of other good reads:

MICHAEL KOPECH

EVAN PHILLIPS

NEW MLB.COM POWER RANKINGS

In part, it says:

1. Dodgers (previously: 4)
Season high: 1 | Season low: 6
When we all tell the stories of Shohei Ohtani decades from now, recounting all the incredible things he did, don’t forget this one: The day after he became the first MLB player to ever reach the 40-40 mark in August, he threw his first bullpen session off a mound since having Tommy John surgery. “It went well,” Dave Roberts said, in case you weren’t scared enough already.