I don't think it's a willful bias, just his tendency to give the Mets the benefit of the doubt on toss-up calls as opposed to the Phillies. Seems to me he does this mostly as an overcompensation for the mainstream media's labeling of the Mets as chokers. In order to combat this perception, he goes to the other side and fails to give the Phillies their credit for being the better team.

Hey, no shot at Ryan Howard here. I consider this an improvement!

The tenor of the article -- that everything good about the Phillies is because they're playing above their heads, after all they're just an 85, maybe 86 win team, and everything good about the Mets is because they're just really awesome -- is the complete opposite of the penultimate paragraph. Go figure.

...except that the record may show otherwise. The Mets are three games out, and they have two of the biggest bats out--Reyes and Delgado--as well as Ollie and now Putz. Putz' injury is kind of canceled out by Lidge--both pitchers struggled heavily befre being Dl'd. Philly has no other major injuries, and several guys playing well over their heads, as Joe noted--Ibanez, Utley, Ruiz. Only Rollins is playing significantly worse than expected. The Mets really have only one player--Beltran--playing well above expectations (Sheff also, although in limited duty).

Add it all up, and notice that the Mets are only three games out, and I think it's reasonable to say that the Mets are, on paper, the better team.

Fans always want to believe that analysts are biased against their teams, so I tend to not put too much stock in Joe's supposed anti-Philly bias. If Howard were wearing any other uniform, it wouldn't change his numbers at all (actually, if anything, they'd probably be worse overall, since he wouldn't benefit from Citizens Bank Park). I tend to think that it also wouldn't change Joe's analysis of him at all, and the same I believe goes for Utley, Ibanez, Werth, etc.

Look, pretty much every team except maybe the Yankees and Boston has some leeway to make the "nobody respects us" argument. And you might not be wrong. But that's why I don't really put that much faith in media biases. Everybody's biased against everybody. Deal with it. Moving on.

Wait, so Utley had a .410 OBP in 2007 and a .380 OBP in 2008, but .438 is way over his head? I guess I could buy that.

But then how are Wright and Beltran not over their heads too?. Wright in 2007 and 2008 OBP: .416 and .390. In 2009? .446. Those are almost the exact same relative numbers as Utley. Beltran? .353 and .376 in 2007 and 2008. In 2009? He has a .436 OBP. He's getting on base WAY MORE than Utley compared to his baseline.

And yet somehow Utley is the only one playing above his head? I just don't get how that can be the analysis. That's just willfully telling one side of the story. You have to be consciously trying to tell a certain story and then fitting the facts to that story, to come up with Utley playing over his head, but not Wright and Beltran. I simply don't get it.

"...the way in which they acted while doing so."

What exactly does this mean?

When discussing players playing above or below their head, small sample size is always discussed. Utley's extra 60 points is considered "luck". But maybe Utley has just faced a bunch of pitchers that he historically has hit well against.

In this day of ready access to information, couldn't BP put together an application that would measure a players aggregate recent performance against his historical aggregate record for the same pitchers to see if a player has truly adjusted to the competition or is merely performing at their historical rate against a specific group of pitchers? Isn't is more logical to believe either that Utley has learned a new skill or is facing a set of pitchers that he has always hit well against instead of thinking that Utley is just "lucky"?

What was Hamels supposed to say? He was asked point blank by your New York talk show hosts if he thought the Mets choked. "Well, I think they played extremely well down the stretch..." That's like me asking you if I am fat, you saying yes, when I obviously am and then me getting upset that you are acting improperly.

Taking your word you are not biased is too easy. I like your work and you are one of the easiest guys to read on here in terms of content, but the analysis is akin to a mother calling her son beautiful and the neighbor's son ugly. Does she think she is being biased? No. She just holds certain people to a different standard. Just because you are a 10 year cagey vet doesn't mean you aren't subconsiously showing a bias (and a pretty extreme one).

Give me the mea culpa article where you compare Howard to the other 1st basemen in the league and use the same microscope on all of them. That is all that I ask. Keep the methodology constant.

In 2005, Carlos Beltran did NOT singlehandedly push the Astros to the World Series. He was actually busy hitting .266/.330/.414 for a third place Mets team. He was pretty impressive in the '04 playoffs though.

The ridiculous thing about the Phillies', and their supporters', comments that the Mets choked is that it completely diminishes what the Phillies did. Saying the Mets choked implies they were the better team. Further, it becomes about the Mets losing rather than the Phillies winning. Saying the Mets choked, and repeating that mantra, ignores what the Phillies did in both September 2007 and 2008.

It is just unavoidable. The majority of the section based on the Phillies regards the over performance of the players as compared to statistical expectations. Conspicuously, I can't find a single reference to statistical expectations compared to performance in the Mets section. Prior posters have pointed out how warped that approach is.

But I want to point out the rhetoric used as well:
L Hernandez? he is "legitimate"
C Beltran? he is "underappreciated"
D Wright? He is having a "fantastic" season.
G. Sheffield? He's "shut up" his detractors.
Oliver Perez? He “would help”

On the other hand:
Utley? He's "over his head" or "above expectations"
Ibanez? His #s are "ridiculous"
Ruiz? well, you just make a joke.
Bastardo and Happ? they have "no upside."
Feliz? c'mon Joe, what's up with "changed approach?" You mean to say, he is an "established veteran" who can't "sustain" the improvements.

None of these observations as to the Phillies are necessarily wrong. But the conclusion that your analytical starting point, when contrasted with the Mets, is uneven (to be generous) is unavoidable.

Bias does not require that you go to sleep at night wishing ill on the phillies. But the polar opposite approach to analysis just seems intellectually dishonest, and yes, biased.

"He's about a .380 OBP guy. Pretty well established. He's at .438."

In 2005, he became a full-time starter, his OBP was .376 that year. That's been the lowest number of his career. Even last year, when he played 80% of the season with a hip that required surgery, he was at .380. To expect him to be at .380 is to expect a subpar year.

It's easy to admit that you had lowered your expectations based on his rehab from his hip surgery. Or you can ignore the obvious and keep telling us that you're right. Will you write more or with exclamation points if Utley's OBP gets higher?

"Think of player performance as a bell curve—Lidge was far to the left last year, and he's far to the right this year. Same guy, same basic skills, but this is the range of performance that's possible for a reliever of his ilk."

The times I saw Lidge this year he looked to have completely abadoned his fastball - almost afraid to throw it. I saw 10 sliders in a row at times. He's not the same pitcher last year.

I agree that both smart team construction AND statitical variation can lead to both success and failure.

The problem is that when BP is right (esp with repect to the Red Sox, Indians, and A's) the reason is attributed to team smarts.

But when BP is wrong (see White Sox and Phillies) a long and convoluted statistical analysis is on the way.

The regression to the mean argument seems to be inconsistenly applied (see Ibanez vs Beltran and Wright).

Changes in the performance of some players are dismissed as playing over their heads with a regression to the mean ...

"It takes a season, even more, to determine if changes in a statistical profile, or the observable changes in approach that create that profile, are short-term or long-term in nature."

while others such as Rollins recieve a level of scrutiny that assumes a real change in performance level ...

"The other Phillie who's well off his game is Rollins, and as Marc Normandin wrote last week, the problem seems to be in his approach, which has become pull-happy from both sides of the plate and is showing the signs of impatience that he'd left behind in the past few years."

The record of the Mets is not evaluated in terms of the overperformance by Beltran or Wright but the record of the Phillies is dismissed on the basis of overperformance by Ibanez and an unliklely improvement to the mean by Rollins.

This inconsistency is why people view a BIAS in articles such as this.