A Random Walk Down Peachtree Street
So as great as the Braves looked in March, April and May, and as bad as they looked in June and the first part of July, and as great as they have looked since the All Star break, some fans are acting a little whipsawed. (If you’re like me, (a) you have no idea what a whipsaw is; (b) the picture of a whipsaw above doesn’t help much; and (c) I feel really sorry for you.)
And here is the graph, coming into tonight’s game, which shows the Braves’ lead as this season has progressed along with cumulative wins.
So this looks like a serrated-track roller coaster, right? Or does it? One of the most famous results in financial economics argues that the change in price of a stock represents only the unanticipated news that comes in, and since things that are unanticipated have no tendency to be good news or bad news, stock prices will follow a random walk. (The title of this section is an homage to Burton Malkiel’s book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which presented this insight, and its implications, to a general audience.)
People often reject the notion that stock prices follow a random walk, because they can eyeball a chart and see patterns. Patterns are incompatible with random walks. Unfortunately, humans also see patterns in actual random walks created by construction, so we know that humans are easily fooled.
In fact, lots and lots of things that don’t look like random walks are in fact indistinguishable from them. The test we use, the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) Test, is not a particularly powerful test, but it is at least not subject to the human frailty of seeing patterns where there are none. When we run the ADF on the Games Ahead series above, we find that it is about equally consistent with a random walk and with a series with an underlying pattern.
The lesson? Calm down! A bad couple of weeks doesn’t mean you’re a bad team, and a good couple of weeks doesn’t mean you’re great. Things fluctuate! Enjoy the remaining season and let AA worry about trades.
The Game
Martin Perez to the rescue! Reylo came up with a sore knee while warming up, and Perez was pressed into an emergency start. A few more emergency starts like this and he’ll be in the Hall of Fame. He gave up no hits through 6 innings on 59 pitches.
The Nationals started Miles Mikolas. Mikolas is unquestionably a workhorse, but he is also no longer very good. He came into tonight with a 5.65 ERA. By comparison, no active Brave has an ERA that bad… not even Jorge Mateo. Solo homers from Ronald Acuña Jr., Matt Olson and Dominic Smith got us 3, and a Drake Baldwin single put a fourth on the board. Mikolas was replaced by rookie Ryan Cornelio, who I think recorded the monster hit “Righty’s Paradise.” He sports a 5.59 ERA, just to keep the pitching on an even plateau. In his 2/3 of an inning of work, he watched his “shortstop,” C.J. Abrams boot one and then walked three guys to bring in another run. They then decided to bring a guy with a low ERA, Eddie Yean (which for reasons not entirely clear to me is pronounced ‘Jean.’ Claude couldn’t find a reason either) who started by Gryboing a run on a wild pitch and then gave up a double to Austin Riley completing the Triple Grybo with the stuck landing. But since the runs were all unearned, I’m not sure if it counts. 8-0.
At that point, it was all over except the shouting at my TV. Danny Young came on to spoil the shutout and then give up two more in the 8th. Victor Mederos pitched a clean inning to end it.
Last Minute News
Lane Thomas and Bailey Falter apparently coming this way from KC. I’ll update this space as I learn more. Or learn less (remember the Furcal Rule.) Updated info here.
More Randomness
The Nationals pitching coach, Simon Matthews, is 30 years old, and he looks 20. 5 of the Nats pitchers are 30 or older. He’s a contemporary of all of them, other than maybe old man Mikolas, who’s 37. I wonder if he has trouble commanding respect. It’s as if Grant Holmes or Hunter Stratton were our pitching coach.
Jim Jarvis made another couple of errors today. His 0.740 OPS will definitely play, but he needs to clean up the fielding a bit. The traditionalist in me thinks there might be a place for a Mark Belanger type, but the sabermetrician in me would have a fit.
Don’t imagine we gave up a lot. Thomas is a 2 month rental, and Falter is a quad A depth piece.
Edit: Taking Falter is probably taking on salary to lessen the prospect loss. And someone on X said he’s on regular rest so he could take the spot start tomorrow instead of Ritchie.
2nd edit: Apparently we moved Carter Holton, who I’ve never heard of, and Lucas Braun, who appears to be a pitchability type without good enough stuff for MLB.
We’ll know more once the deal is announced, but Falter looks like a salary dump (he’s owed about 1.2 million the rest of this year). That would minimize what the Braves are giving up.
EDIT—yeah, the Braves gave up essentially nothing.
Why not just have a Falter-Connor Thomas game and see if they can keep the Nats below 15?
Connor Thomas was claimed by the Athletics, although they then released him today.
Will be interesting to see who has to go off the roster to make room. Kim also has to come off rehab tomorrow or be DFA’ed.
With the roster crunch, and now with Thomas platooning with Yaz in left, it appears that Dubon becomes the everyday shortstop with Jimmy baseball going back to Gwinnett mainly because he has options. They will still have to DFA or IL another bench player to make room for Thomas (likely Kim, Mateo, or White). My preference would be Kim because White and Mateo have more speed and defensive value. Kim hasn’t hit in Gwinnett either and is a sunk cost.
It could be a perfect time to get out from Sean Murphy’s contract, as lots of teams need catching help, and Joey Bart looks like a pretty good option as a backup catcher. They need to make a choice soon or they will have to DFA Bart if it’s after the deadline when Murphy is ready/rehab assignment is over.
Weiss said that Reylo will go on the IL, so either Falter or Ritchie will start tomorrow.
I like the Thomas acquisition. He’s mashed against LHP in his career to the tune of a 133 wRC+, though he’s definitely benefited from a decent BABIP against lefties (.332) and has hit just 29 of his 86 homers against them. It’s been much more of a contact-oriented, singles-driven approach. Still, he could be a really good platoon partner for Yaz in LF.
I do hope the Braves keep White around, though. Thomas is no slouch in terms of speed (92nd percentile sprint speed), but Eli is way speedier, and has been a much better defender for his career than Thomas. He could be useful as a pinch runner or pinch hitter late in games.
Bowman reports Lane Thomas will report to Atlanta on Tuesday. Bailey Falter will report to Gwinnett on Tuesday (meaning Ritchie will start for Atlanta tomorrow).
Bowman also says Kim has been reinstated. No corresponding move announced yet, but I suspect Jarvis will be optioned with Dubon becoming the everyday shortstop again.
Is this at least the third speedy fringe-roster outfielder with the first name Lane we’ve had in the last decade or so? Or is it just the same guy who keeps coming back? I liked one of them. Not Lane Kiffin.
Haha. I forgot about Lane Adams.
This is the type of smart AA acquisition I was expecting and exactly what we needed—a plus RHB to platoon with yaz. We could still make use of a RH designated hitter. We could still do a Mize/Torres package which would be unbelievable. We do not need to go for broke on a shortstop.
Least surprising news of the day: Skubal to the Dodgers, per Mark Feinsand. What is there to say that hasn’t been said already?
That has to be more because they don’t want to face him in the post-season they due to any pressing need. But sheesh, they are the very definition of gluttony.
I’m not sure Thomas is that much different from White. Even AA says Thomas is “another option” to White. I’ll bet Mateo goes out if nothing else happens. Mateo and Jarvis for Thomas and Kim.
I sure hope there’s a big pitcher coming. Maybe Soriano is the guy, as opposed to Skubel or Castillo. I’m still in the Ray/Ramos camp. We haven’t heard anything from the Giants or Angels yet.
I would assume the roster moves will be position for position: Thomas for White and Kim for Mateo. And then Murphy for Bart. Of course, a couple of trades can answer all of these questions pretty quickly. The reason these are difficult is because the players that are being replaced aren’t bad players. So maybe they fetch a little something in trade.
At what point is Martin Perez pitching his way out of the rotation and not having to continue to pitch his way into the rotation? He’s 17 starts in, six no hit innings yesterday, and he has a 2.2 bWAR. He takes the ball every 5-6th day. We paid $20M per year to get this from Morton, and 2.2 bWAR pitchers on the trade market fetch a pretty penny. He’s also probably providing some Veteran Presents.
I’d probably be willing to give him a 3-4 inning start against a non-Brewers/Dodgers lineup in the postseason too.
Thanks, JonathanF. Appreciate learning what a whipsaw looks like. I already knew what a whipsaw feels like; in fact, I had just been recalling the Braves 1982 season during last night’s game. I imagine an “ups and downs” chart of that season would be a wild ride. Thirteen game winning streak to open the season, losing 19 of 21 in August, streaky (up and down) throughout the rest of August and September.
I was thinking about 1982 because last night’s game was reminiscent of August 19 of that year. We were at the game that night. It’s famous as the Pascual Perez I-285 adventure game. Phil Niekro learned about a half hour before the game that he’d be starting on short rest. He pitched well and the Braves won. That victory ended the losing 19 of 21 stretch and began a streak of winning 13 of 15 to retake the division lead.
Anyway, a reminder that you’re never as good as your best stretches or as bad as your worst is always welcome. People have psychological reasons for finding patterns and resisting random explanations, but the randomness is a large part of the fun of baseball. Results are not foreordained–anything can happen!
Which brings us to the Dodgers’ trade for Skubal. I see commenters on other sites suggest the Braves may as well give up–no need to trade for a starter since the Dodgers will win the World Series no matter what. Nonsense. Of course they are the favorite, but their odds of winning it all are still substantially below 50%. You know, Lane Thomas might just hit a game winning grand slam off Skubal in the NLCS to send the Braves to the World Series.
Thanks. I have evolved ever so slightly as a baseball fan. The All Star game and all of its trappings is now a complete irrelevance to me. I last got caught up in Deadline Acquisition Hype with Mark Teixiera, noting the far more momentous (ex-post) acquisition spree of Soler, Pederson and Rosario, was met with a collective yawn by the fans of a team treading water. It is unfashionable to say in early August: “I like my team and I’m willing to go into the playoffs with them as constituted if need be,” but that’s my stand. Lane Thomas’ superiority over Eli White as a right-handed outfielder is demonstrable, but not overwhelming. And Bailey Falter’s superiority to, say, AJ Smith-Shawver or even Elieser Hernández is speculative to say the least. AA thinks he has improved the team, but I think they were capable of beating the Dodgers last week as well.
Im surprised how little the Dodgers gave up to get Skubal. Three prospects who were in their top 20 but none was in the top 100 for MLP pipeline. The second best prospect was a 27 year old pitcher who just got called up this year. How a 27 year old pitcher can be one of your top 10 prospects is a puzzle to me, and it reminds me of how Yankees prospects were always overrated due to a kind of halo effect.
Are you really telling me the Tigers had to pounce on that deal when there were 2 days left to go?
I agree. Braves, Rays, and Brewers could have easily matched that offer. But we chose not to because it would cost us more money with no guarantee of a ROI, and it kinda highlights how sports, inherently, are kinda rigged. None of the teams really care about winning. They care about profitability and asset appreciation. The Dodgers are a problem because they can do both: they can win and focus on probability and asset appreciation. So a salary cap would basically be the other owners saying, “We can’t be profitable and have our assets appreciate if you guys win it all the time simply because you can, so you’re gonna have to let other teams win as well.” And is that really a sport, then? It’s rigged; the Dodgers should win every year.
Surely the only halo effects are with the Angels, Padres and Cardinals. (And in the NFL, the Saints and Cardinals. In basketball, just the Suns.)
Another thing is the Tigers have the third best run differential in the AL and they’re 2.5 games out of the wild card. That’s a really strong chance at the playoffs that you threw away because you could get a package of prospects. The chances any of those 3 are key players for future Tiger teams is very low. They could’ve drafted someone better with the comp pick they would get for Skubal in any case. Just a crazy decision all around
Keith Law thinks the top 2 prospects were #s 26 and 41 in baseball. From reading other analysis around, I’m not confident the MLB Pipeline list is held in very high regard. The 27 year old pitcher has only been pitching since 2022.
The haul wasn’t fantastic but it was pretty good.
OK, I was wrong about the Lanes – only three players with that first name have ever played MLB & one was a pitcher. However, Lane Adams did have three different stints in the Braves organization. He was signed as a FA in December 2016, played in Atlanta in part of 2017 and early 2018 before being “granted free agency” (according to BRef, which has “released” as a different action) in late April, signed with the Cubs but didn’t play in the majors before being released by them in June. The Braves then re-signed him in July and he played some in late 2018 before being granted free agency in November. He signed with the Phillies but didn’t play in the majors in 2019 before they released him in July, only for the Braves to sign him a third time in August but not bring him to the majors before granting him free agency in November. He signed with the Twins for 2020 but didn’t play in the majors or minors (may have sat out bc of covid) and played for two Mexican League teams in 2021. If I counted correctly, he played for 27 teams between 2009 and 2019. In his 154 MLB PA, he OPS+’d 108 and seemed to be a better-than-average defensive LF and RF and worse than average in CF, so he seems like the kind of player who could’ve lucked into a longer MLB career as a 4th or 5th OF on a bad team if he had been in the right place at the right time.
Jonathan, I suppose I could just reread my copy of A Random Walk, but it’s easier to ask you: If the change in price of a stock represents only the unanticipated news that comes in, and stock prices on average have increased significantly over time, then why doesn’t that imply that unanticipated news is on average more positive than negative? Or is it that the millions of unanticipated things are on average very slightly positive but any that one could almost randomly be positive or negative in an amount that in the short term overwhelms the long-term trend?
The short answer is that there’s a built-in expected growth equal to the return on risk-free assets. The aggregate market portfolio needs to return the risk-free rate plus a (somewhat controversially estimated) risk adder. If it doesn’t, you’re better off investing in bonds. This creates a natural requirement of expected increase. The random-walk component is after subtracting that off.
Jim Jarvis always reminds me of Slim Starvis, who had a brief cup of coffee with the pale hose in the 70’s but couldn’t hit his weight, which you can guess was under 150
With a 4.5 war so far, CJ Abram’s is going to draw a lot of trade attention and will likely get a huge prospect haul for the Nats, if they decide to sell. After watching this series, I definitely wouldn’t want to see him at shortstop for Atlanta (not that we want him) or any other team. As bad as he looks at shortstop, I think he would be great at designated hitter and that’s about it. He is tied for the league lead in errors with Trea Turner and has-5 drs. No thanks to him at short.
I always wonder about turning fast but error-prone SSs into CFs. Or maybe you could use him as part of a reverse defensive platoon depending on whether you’re ahead or behind – start him as DH but if you fall behind, have him replace your good-field-no-hit SS in the field and have a decent hitter (worse than Abrams but much better than your SS) take over as DH. Or the other way, start him at SS and move him to DH if you get a lead.
I also think a lot of Abrams’s value this year has come from doubling his HR% from its usual 3% to 6%, and I wonder how sustainable that is. Still, his being only 25 suggests that it’s a little more likely that any improvement is sustainable than it would be if he were 31.
You lose the DH if the player moves to a fielding position so this idea, while imaginative, is unlikely to catch on
I know people are focused on the deadline, but we played a good game this afternoon and we’re now 2.5 games back of the Dodgers for the second bye, and 3 games behind the Brewers for best in the league.
Agree 100%. This should be our real goal — missing having to mix it up in a super-short series would be huge. The Brewers did drop their (Misiorowski [!]) game today chez Angels, and if the Peacock/NBC announcers are to be believed, they have to fly back tonight to MKE for a four-game set with the Pirates, starting tomorrow; then someone else; then back to Left Coast for Padres then Dodgers. Here’s our chance (… ?)
Falter? I hardly know’er.
Lol
Recapped.