Frag

A metric he jokingly named "Tango", which weight goals more heavily and shots/missed shots/blocked shots less heavily.

This is why people should check a model's mean squared prediction error (by cross validation) or an in-sample/out-of-sample correlation before jumping to conclusions. It's easy to look at a correlation close to 1 and assume that it's a perfect fit, especially when one ignores the assumptions behind each statistical test (eg. normality, independence of variables, homogeneity of residuals, etc.).

Oh good. I thought my praying mantis picture was accurate for a second!

What happened to Grant?

It took a while, but searching multiple sites found me most of the salary information I need (from 1988 onwards). So, after accounting for standardized percent change in team salary, the new "GM rankings" look as follows: Top 10: 1. John Schuerholz (117.0 dWAR) 2. Pat Gillick (84.0) 3. Billy Beane (61.7) 4. Frank Cashen (58.6) 5. Dan Duquette (48.8) 6. Brian Cashman (39.1) 7. John Hart (38.8) 8. John Mozeliak (36.9) 9. Bill Stoneman (34.9) 10. Ron Schueler (29.5) ... 14. Andrew Friedman (19.0) Bottom 10: 1. Bill Bavasi (-50.4 dWAR) (Seriously, how did this man have a job for so long?) 2. Chuck LaMar (-40.7) 3. Allan Baird (-37.7) 4. Woody Woodward (-36.7) 5. Andy MacPhail (-35.5) 6. Joseph Klein (-35.4) 7. Harding Peterson (-33.6) 8. Cam Bonifay (-33.0) 9. Randy Smith (-28.7) 10. Kevin Towers (-24.5) ... 17. Ruben Amaro Jr. (-21.2)

What's a good site that contains total team salaries since 1980? The best I could find goes back to 1988. As for age effects, I adjusted for that and did find changes to the rankings (I also changed the adjustments for marginalization of wins). Top 5 in terms of team performance under certain GMs since 1980: 1. John Schuerholz(115.0 dWAR) 2. Pat Gillick (91.2) 3. Billy Beane (61.9) 4. Frank Cashen (58.6) 5. Brian Cashman (53.2) It's harder to tease out how much of an influence GMs on either very rich or very poor teams have on win% differential than on teams in the middle. Bottom 5: 1. Bill Bavasi (-47.7 dWAR) 2. Chuck LaMar (-44.4) 3. Andy MacPhail (-37.6) 4. Allan Baird (-37.4) 5. Woody Woodward (-37.2) The salary information can really help me look into its actual effect of salary differential (relative to league changes, of course) to change in win%.

I adjusted for the 1981/1994 seasons by giving them less weight relative to the other seasons. As for your other critiques, I understand what you mean about the difficulties of measuring GM competence (or skill). A lot of factors outside their control can influence their decision-making, such as ownership, team state, etc. I think it's possible to factor in these things, but very difficult to do. As a matter of fact, I came across this by accident. My intention was for something else entirely, but did this analysis just for the heck of it and was interested in what I found. Possibly the best way to determine whether this is a measure of GM competence is by determining how reliable this measure is. Still a lot of work needs to be done on this metric. Thanks for the critique, btw!

So, I've been analyzing team performance between successive seasons (eg. dWin% = Win% of season 2 - Win% of season 1) and been checking on how much of an impact general managers have on this. When doing a linear regression analysis between win% of the 2nd season and win% of the first season, the effect was, of course, significant (p<0.05). However, after accounting for GM of the team, while still significant, the predictive value of the model actually improved. So, I thought that maybe I should check the WAR differential (dWAR; yes, just as creative as dCorsi) between seasons among each of the GMs since 1980 and add up the results to see how GMs have done. I adjusted for marginalization of win%, since it's harder to improve from 85 wins to 90 wins than it is to improve from 75 wins to 80 wins. Here are the top 10 GMs since 1980 according to this measure: 1. John Schuerholz*(111.3 total dWAR) 2. Brian Cashman (89.3 dWAR) 3. Pat Gillick (83.9 dWAR) 4. Theo Epstein (51.7 dWAR) 5. Billy Beane (49.4 dWAR) 6. Frank Cashen (42.2 dWAR) 7. Walt Jocketty (41.5 dWAR) 8. Dan Duquette (40.4 dWAR) 9. Ned Colletti (38.2 dWAR) (Yeah, this surprised me, too) 10. Bill Stoneman (36.2 dWAR) Plus: 18. Andrew Friedman (18.0 dWAR) Worst 10: 1. Chuck LaMar (-39.5 dWAR) 2. Andy MacPhail (-39.0 dWAR) 3. Cam Bonifay (-38.6 dWAR) 4. Woody Woodward (-37.8 dWAR) 5. Bill Bavasi (-37.7 dWAR) 6. Harding Peterson (-32.5 dWAR) (Doesn't include his early years, so it may not be representative of his full career) 7. Joseph Klein (-32.2 dWAR) 8. Allan Baird (-31.4 dWAR) 9. Syd Thrift (-31.0 dWAR) 10. Randy Smith (-30.6 dWAR) Just because I felt like adding them: 11. Mark Shapiro (-30.3 dWAR) 12. Jim Bowden (-26.5 dWAR) Main caveats with this analysis: 1) Doesn't account for ownership/salary, which can influence a GM's decision (Hi Florida/Miami Marlins!). 2) Doesn't account for draft picks made by GMs. This can, especially, influence the dWAR of GMs with shorter than average career lengths. 3) Survivorship bias weeds out the bad GMs, which can cause issues with studies like this one. I'm hoping to work on this some more, since I find it pretty interesting.

I'm loving these deals so far!

Likely opens up a spot for Sanchez.

Because... f*** him!

Continue...

Haydn? Nah!

You're probably the unluckiest team in the league right now, while Not Wilko's Team is one of the luckiest. Speaking of luck, holy hell my team is split: 4th in F/D categories; last in goaltending categories. f*** you Mike Smith!

Vs. My team: Pacioretty - Carter - Giroux MacArthur - Stepan - Atkinson Wilson - Plekanec - Jurco Foligno - Couturier - Perreault IR/NA: Etem Carlson - Maatta Lindholm - Hamonic Hickey IR/NA: Martinez - Hamhuis Goaltending: Dubnyk, s***, s***

Week 7 Power Ranking: 1 Little Wingels (0.937433354) 2 We Stand On Guard (0.797507591) 3 The True Red Wings (0.485153048) 4 GoldBull (0.483739866) 5 Stall Tactics (0.376601753) 6 Hanson Bros. (0.325690702) 7 Top Cheese (0.077892448) 8 SHARKS TERRITORY (0.073759951) 9 The Cat's Asses (0.008714825) 10 dirty RASKals (-0.015041299) 11 The Be Sharps (-0.022520735) 12 Dwight Kings (-0.099004893) 13 Not Wilko's Team (-0.106105264) 14 Cooper's C-men (-0.197769685) 15 Abomination (-0.266309606) 16 Welsh Corsi (-0.318876752) 17 BOBROVSKY (-0.34460162) 18 Spittin Teeth (-0.608788196) 19 Thunder Kiss (-0.784786258) 20 The Scrote Squad (-0.802689221)

Dubnyk has been my only good goaltender so far, which isn't saying much. Goaltending is really s***ing on me this year.

Analysis of the trade: Sex is fun!

Hahahahaha!

Hi everybody!

This is most important.

It's been that way for a long time.

Especially if they can sign a good free agent this offseason.

Legendary Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov passed away, too. Wow, what a day

RIP Pat Quinn