FIRE JOE MORGAN

ALCS Game 1. Sox up 2-0 in the ninth. Your graphic reads:

ALCS History:

Game 1 winner has won series 12 of 22 times (55%).

Your announcer, Chip Caray, says:

As you can see, winning Game 1...very important.

Or: the minimum amount of "important" a thing can be and still be considered "important" in any way.

That's all. Just wanted to point that out.

Labels: chip caray, statistics

I just crunched some numbers and data about various things that exist, using a scientific process verified by several mathematicians at top universities, and I came up with some interesting results.

Here are the five most boring things in the world, in order:

5. Slowed-down time-lapse photography of a small puddle of room-temperature water evaporating.
4. Two people you have never met, wearing identical colorless shirts and pants, talking about the dreams they had last night.
3. Debating what "Valuable" means w/r/t "Most Valuable Player."
2. Lying in a sensory deprivation tank and staring straight ahead at a blank wall while you listen to white noise.
1. Ann Coulter

So right away, we're on risky ground with articles like this one from SI.com's Jon Heyman -- it's the third most boring thing in the world, according to science. And beyond that, it's borderline hysterical in its boring and righteous anger:

Once again, VORP has nothing to do with MVP

Zero. There's a number the stat people will understand.

That's the relationship between VORP, the stat that the stat people love, and MVP.

Well, that's just not true.

If you hate the stat, you hate the stat. I'm not sure why you should hate a stat that uses a relatively sophisticated model to calculate not just how good a guy's stats are, but also what position he plays, and essentially evaluates how hard he is to replace (the true measure of "value," to me...oh God...I'm the third-most boring guy in the world right now). But if you hate it, you hate it. Not much I can do but keep posting on this blog.

You cannot, however, say that there is "zero" relationship between VORP and MVP. Because even if you choose to ignore it, it exists. Last year ARod won the MVP, and was 1st in baseball in VORP. Rollins, kind of a crummy pick, was at least top-10 (9th, actually, in the NL, behind several other more deserving candidates). People were generally happy with the choice of Ryan Howard in 2006...and it just so happens that he was 2nd in the NL in VORP, right behind Pujols. Morneau was a terrible choice, much-reviled and controversial...and he was 13th in the AL. I don't really remember anyone complaining about Pujols or ARod in 2005...and they were 2-3 in VORP in all of baseball. Only DLee was above Pujols in the NL, and if he had won, nobody would've been angry.

Keep looking at the list. The MVPs of the league are generally very high VORPulators, year-to-year. So it makes some sense that in order to predict who will win, or who should win, we can look at VORP. Right?

Baseball Prospectus, as of a few days ago, had Alex Rodriguez leading the AL in VORP (which stands for (Value Over Replacement Player) the stat its enthusiasts think is the best stat in the world to determine player value, and also the best to help determine who's the Most Valuable Player.

Maybe not "the best," but, you know, pretty effing good, I think. Better than batting average.

But as you can see, while VORP may tell you something, it shouldn't determine who wins the MVP award. Beyond containing two of the letters in MVP, there appears to be almost no relationship whatsoever here.

But...I just...we...you...I...facts...

I happened [sic] to love A-Rod. He's turned himself into a very good third baseman (he's probably the best defender on the Yankees), he's a three-time MVP (though I don't believe he deserved it the year his Rangers finished last), he's the best all-around player in the game and he's not among the prime list of reasons for the Yankees' demise this year (though, there are plenty of Yankees officials who'd have him on that list).

Yet, A-Rod shouldn't sniff the MVP award this year.

I'm with you on this, for the record. Like every other bored American who is bored at the yearly debate over what boring ways we should boringly parse the boring term "Valuable," when there is no 100% obvious winner, like Barry Bonds the year he steroided .370/.582/.799 with 46 contes for a team that made the playoffs, I take the famous approach espoused by Supreme Court Justice Stewart in reference to pornography, who said, "I can't define exactly what pornography is, but oh lordy, this FMF pictorial has me hard as a diamond." In other words, given a number of players with roughly equal stats, there is a kind of gut-level instinct one uses to cast the tie-breaking vote. That could be: did the guy's team make the playoffs, and was he an important part of the stretch run? Did the guy happen to have a lot of hits in crucial situations? Did other players on his team go down with injuries, making his production even more important to his team? And perhaps most importantly, is this guy a SS or CF or C or something, meaning that his production from that position is even more valuable, given the paucity of high-production players at that position?

(In other words, in addition to whatever kind of gut-checking you want to do, you can look at VORP and WPA and stuff like that.)

For the record, again, ARod's WPA is barely above 0 this year -- 0.28. Look at Mauer's. Or Pedroia's. Or a bunch of other people's. He is not the MVP this year.

If devotees of VORP (I'm already on their bad side after calling them VORPies last year) think their stat is key to determining the MVP, they should think again. It's worth a glance, at best.

It's worth a glance at least. It's a measure of how valuable a player is, compared to other people at his position. What is the downside of looking at it very seriously?

But VORP is supposed to be an all-encompassing stat,

No it's not. Doesn't account for defense, and doesn't account for "clutch" the way WPA does. No one is arguing it is all-encompassing. No one. What people do argue, occasionally, is that if a guy isn't even in the like top 10 for VORP or something, like Justin Morneau that year, maybe he shouldn't be the MVP.

and it led some numbers people to determine that Hanley Ramirez was a viable NL MVP candidate last year. And led many to say that David Wright was the NL MVP in a year in which Wright's Mets choked (Wright himself says no way was he MVP).

1. HRam was, indeed, a viable candidate.

2. What is Wright supposed to say? "I know my team choked harder than any team in the history of sports, but: Me for MVP!"

3. I don't understand why people debate about whether a guy's team has to make the playoffs to win the MVP, and some say "yes" and some say "no," but when a guy's team just barely misses the playoffs at the last possible second, meaning that they were in the race the whole year, and the guy in question hit .352/.432/.602 in September with 6 HR and 9 2B, it's like, "No fucking way that guy is teh MVP!!1!!!!!111!!!"

VORP, like other stats, doesn't come close to telling you everything. It doesn't take into account how a hitter hits in the clutch (oddly enough, some stat people think that's just luck, anyway),

See above. Then see WPA page. Then remember that no one in the world with a brain thinks that the MVP award should be blindly handed out to the guy with the best VORP.

As for "clutch" "just being luck," what we actually think is that it's very hard to be "clutch" year in and year out. (For example, ARod's WPA last year was 6.85. This year it's 0.28. Two excellent offensive years, two wildly different "clutch" results.)

or how many meaningful games he played in (at last count Grady Sizemore was high up on the VORP list, as well). VORP has some value. But like all other stats, it doesn't replace watching the games or following the season.

I have never watched a baseball game, so I can't speak to this. I'm not even sure what it is. What I can tell you is: watch live baseball all you want. I'll be in my grandmother's attic (following a legal dispute over squatter's rights with my mom w/r/t her basement), staring at my computer, looking at a little thing I like to call "data." That's all I care about. Data. Raw data. Baseball is good for one thing only: the production of data. That's what I believe. If I and my friends had it my way, the games wouldn't even be "played," but rather "simulated" by 1000 PCs, and the results would be downloaded directly into my brain through Optical Quanta Resonance (OQR), and instead of "discussing" the games the next day, my friends and I would just await the Retinal Scans and then text each other brief congratulations, depending on whose favorite "team" won, and then we would all go on with our lives, grateful that the annoyance of actual "baseball" had been removed from our lives, allowing us to spend more time writing code for our start-up social network site, which we are I think going to call "Together-ing!"

A-Rod may have the best VORP. But he shouldn't be on anyone's MVP ballot, much less at the top of the ballot.

I now want ARod to win.

Labels: arod, jon heyman, statistics, Together-ing, vorp, VORPies

Friends, we have truly entered a strange era of sports journalism criticism. It's not like the salad days of sports journalism criticism, where all of the sports journalism was straightforward and sincere in its idiocy. Nowadays, it seems to me, the increasing prominence of sports journalism criticism has led to what appears to be ironic sports journalism, which -- again, it appears to me -- seems to be either (a) taking into account or (b) outright like seeking sports journalism criticism, in order to draw attention to itself or get more hits for its specific site, or just maybe to stir some good old fashioned shit. (If these pieces in fact contain what the legal system calls "intent," they might be properly called: sports journalism criticism criticism. This is one of those f(f(f(x))) deals that make Junior giddy.)

With this Pynchonian-style paranoia as my backdrop, I present to you what was called "The Most Ridiculous Article Ever In The History of Everything Ever" by reader Matt. It comes from Jim Armstrong of AOL, and it's called:

Baseball Stats Mania Rates a Zero

Let's go ahead and take it as a given that this turdpile may be tongue in cheek, or at the very least, bait. If it's a parody, it's brilliant. If it's sincere, holy God. And if it's bait, well, I just bit, and it tastes delicious, even though I know the hook is about to pierce me through the lower jaw and drain my lifeforce.

Given the state of the economy and all the political mud slinging going on, I probably should be worried about my country these days. But the truth is, I’ve got more important things on my mind, including the most important thing of all. Baseball.

Me too. Love baseball. Love it. Love everything about it. You and I have a lot in common, here, Jimmy. Let's talk baseball. What do you want to hit first? The Tigers' surprisingly bad start? The Go-Go Royals? The Yankees' injuries? How about Johnny Cueto?! Have you seen that guy pitch? Holey moley! Whatever you want to talk about, man -- it's your article. You pick.

No, not the lab rats who play it or the trust-fund babies who run it. Baseball has been around since they used cowpies for bases. It has survived despite itself for this long, so there’s no reason to think it won’t continue to.

So you're not thinking about the players, or the owners, or even the game itself. Seems like those are fun things to think about when one thinks about baseball -- the players, teams, or games. But okay. I'm all ears. What subject tickles your fancy this fine Spring day?

I’m worried about us, the fans. I’m worried that aliens are trying to attack our brains.

If the article stopped right here, it would be my favorite sports article of all time. Armstrong should have stopped right here, and then, as a publicity stunt, run onto the highway wearing only a Green Hornet mask and diving flippers, waving a toy gun and screaming about the Warren Report. He would be a legend.

At least they might as well be aliens. But for the record, they’re lifeless geeks who wake up every morning in hopes of creating a new baseball statistic.

Oh.

Sigh.

Hang on a second. I was half-asleep asleep on this old busted-up futon in my mom's basement, eating handfuls of sugary cereal out of the box and contemplating buying some vintage Ram-Man action figures off eBay, but now I guess I have to struggle to an upright position and try to address this guy's concerns.

Have you seen some of the quote, unquote stats out there?

My man: when you are talking you say "quote-unquote" to indicate sarcasm. When you are writing you can just put things in quotes. As in: Jim Armstrong is a "journalist." He is also "funny" and "smart" and I "want to hang out with him" because he seems to have a lot of "good" "points."

When I was a kid hustling autographs at Wrigley Field, the game was all about W’s and L’s. Now it’s about WHIP and VORP and OPS and BABIP.

Anyone who writes anything for a living should avoid cliché. I think we can all agree on that. This thought is now officially the #1 cliché about the baseball statistics debate. When I was a kid, people only cared about wins and losses. Now everyone is a nerd who loves weird stats and hates baseball. Please, all of you who have this thought, listen to me. Please. Here we go.

There have always been statistics in baseball. Always. Statistics like WHIP and VORP and OPS are better than the old statistics, because they give you more actual pertinent information. This is not up for debate. If you don't like these stats, don't use them. But don't tell me that they aren't interesting or good.

I just don't get it, man. No one ever said: "When I was a kid, if we were going to cut off your leg we'd give you a shot of whiskey and a rope to bite down on, and we'd just take a dirty hacksaw and just hack away, outside, on the ground. Why do all these nerds keep talking about 'anaesthesia' and 'sterilization?!'"

And let’s not forget the most important acronym of them all: HGH.

Has nothing to do with the argument you are developing. Not a stat. Bad writing.

VORP? WHIP? BABIP? Since when did a Harvard physics degree replace a ticket stub for admission to the left-field bleachers?

Since March of 2003. You didn't hear? You need a math/science/engineering degree from Harvard, Cal Tech, Harvey Mudd, MIT, or University of Mumbai. Or a Philosophy degree from Pittsburgh.

I don’t know about you, but I liked the way things were before some self-absorbed numbers cruncher dreamed up VORP (Value Over Replacement Player, whatever that means.)

It's pretty self-explanatory, but here. Read something. It makes you smarter.

Additionally: pandering to ignoramuses is not a flattering character trait. And being a snooty dick is? Hey! How'd you gain the ability to type, Ken's superego?

And while we’re on the subject, didn’t that guy have something better to do that day?

Here we go.

Like getting some fresh air

It's a-comin'.

instead of spending the entire day

Oh my god. I can feel it. It's so close.

in his boxer shorts

Do it!

in his

Yyyyyyyyyyyy...

mother’s

...yyyyyyyyyyyyyy...

basement?

...yessssss! Whoooooooo!



HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT WAS AWESOME!!!!!

In his mother's basement!!!!!

In his fucking mother's fucking basement!

Holy shit.

Holy shit, you guys.

In his mother's basement!

Boooooooooo-ya!

In his mother's basement.

He fucking nailed it, you guys.

Nailed it. Jesus.

Man. Okay. Just...that was awesome, is all. Awesome.

Let me guess.

Please.

The guy spends every waking moment of every day on his computer. And his only correspondence with the outside world is with fellow self-absorbed numbers crunchers who spend every waking moment of every day in dogged pursuit of the next esoteric pseudostat.

Keith Woolner is his name. He currently works for the Cleveland Indians. I guarantee he has watched more baseball games in the past ten years than you have. Also: they're not "pseudostats." They're just: stats. (They're not even really that esoteric, though I suppose what's straightforward to some might be "esoteric" to someone who never reads anything, or cares to, or has any intellectual curiosity at all.) (When did having zero intellectual curiosity about the world -- and a corresponding sneering contempt for those who have any -- become a positive character trait instead of a flashing warning signal that this person is a stubborn dummy?) (Oh -- right.)

These are the baseball writers of today. Forget Roger Angell and David Halberstam and all those other curmudgeons. They wrote about the romance of the game, the visceral attraction of the game, the simple pleasures of the game. They wrote about the Boys of Summer and the dads who took their sons out to the yard to watch them.

Fantastic writers. Brilliant. I eat 'em up. Most people I know love them.

Today, it’s all about the numbers and the psychos who crunch them.

No it's not. No. Wrong. It is not. Did you read Tom Verducci's piece about Red Sox fans in SI, for their Sportsmen of the Year issue in 2004? Do you read Leigh Montville, or Buzz Bissinger, or Bill Plaschke? Now, I am not personally a fan of some of these people, but they write about the humanistic elements of the game. That kind of writing is out there, if you want it.

They call themselves sabermetricians. I call them seamheads, among other things.

(crying) Shut up. That's mean. Shut up. (runs home)

I’m telling you, we need to stop these people before it’s too late. Before we’re all walking around in a cyberfog talking in acronyms that only Stephen Hawking could understand.

Come on, man. Hawking is such a hacky choice. At least go Roger Penrose, or Andrew Wiles, or Max Tegmark or something.

President Bush, your basic baseball junkie, needs to swing into action in the best interests of the country. He needs to have his Homeland Security Nazis break into these people’s homes and take a Louisville Slugger to their computers.

I don't exactly know how this is offensive, but I'm sure it is. Let's figure it out together. He mentions Nazis, which is generally considered offensive. He mentions them in reference to people serving in the U.S. Government, which is probably not supercool. He is asking the President of the United States to order the government to attack its citizens for talking about baseball statistics, which is interesting. Huh. Can't quite pinpoint it. At least it's a hilarious joke, though.

If not, I may have to resort to drastic measures. I may have to become a soccer fan. Think about it. There are no seamheads trying to take over the soccer world.

Ha ha! Fuck you, dude -- you're too late!

There can’t be because there are no numbers to crunch. Well, a few maybe, but not enough to get all hot and bothered about.

Also, soccer is cool and fun to watch.

Things are simpler in soccer. There’s no WHIP or VORP in soccer, just a few DOAs after the usual fan rowdiness in the stands. In soccer, all the stats are the same. All the goalkeepers have a .001 goals-allowed average and, at the end of the season, everyone ties for the league lead with one goal scored.

Not in baseball.

Right. Which is why we need more statistical analysis.

In the past few days alone, I’ve come across such stats as OPS (One-base Plus Slugging percentage),

Huh?!?!?!?!

GWRBI (Game Winning Runs Batted In),

Da-whaaaaaa?!?!

DIPS (Don’t Ask),

What'd you call me? You're a DIPS!

QERA (Quantified Earned Run Average),

That looks like "queer!" Heh heh heh heh heh!

WHIP (Walks and Hits per Innings Pitched)

Skler-boink?!?!?!?!

and BABIP (Batting Average for Balls In Play).

(slack-jawed; confused; drools)

Let me just get a few things straight. (a) You just found out about OPS? (b) You just heard about GWRBI, a stat that was so mainstream it was briefly on the backs of baseball cards in the late 1980s before people realized it was dumb? (c) You can't succinctly explain DIPS? Here.

Good thing Casey Stengel isn’t around to see this nonsense. All this numbers crunching might have interrupted his nap in the dugout.

And that...would be...bad?

Or Earl Weaver. He would have been so busy thumbing through computer printouts, he wouldn’t have had time to sneak in a half-pack of smokes in the runway.

Napping and smoking. You know -- baseball. What baseball should be. Napping and smoking while you manage a professional baseball team.

GM: Thanks for meeting with us.

Prospective Manager: Thank you for seeing me.

GM: Look. We are one of 30 professional baseball teams in the country. The franchise is worth about $500 million, give or take. We have a brand new stadium, partially financed by the taxpayers of this county. The revenue of our sport last year was roughly $7 billion. You are going to control a roster of 24-40 men, the average salary of whom is north of $3 million. They come from Canada, the U.S., Central America, South America, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and several Caribbean Islands. You have to make sure that they are used correctly, that their egos are in check, that they can withstand the grind of a 162-game schedule, that they don't do stupid extra-curricular shit like go to strip clubs, and you need to be aware of which guys are in trouble with steroids, which guys need carrots and which need sticks, and you'll need to soothe the feathers of the veterans (and rookies) who get sent down, and you have to do all of this while winning at least 90 games.

Prospective Manager: Got it.

GM: So, what will you do during the average game?

Prospective Manager: Nap and smoke.

GM: You're hired.

Prospective Manager: Great.

GM: Now you're fired. I wanted to hire you just so I could fire you.

Prospective Manager: But Casey Stengel napped!

GM: He managed the fucking Yankees from 1949 to 1960. You'd've napped too, if you had those players.

Prospective Manager: And Earl Weaver smoked!

GM: He also used stats. A lot. He famously encouraged his hitters to walk and knew the value of 3-run homers. Get out of my office.

Other than their utter lack of social skills, I’m not sure why all these computer nerds keep dreaming up new stats.

Look. It may be true that I have no friends, no wife, no children, and that I live in a soggy refrigerator crate in my mom's basement. That's no reason to be rude.

I guess my hope is that by dreaming up new stats, I will somehow attract the attention of a nice, introverted, monobrowed nerd girlfriend with bad teeth who will take pity on me and marry me and we can have nerd children who will grow up to be rocket scientists and develop a secret Doomsday Device with which we can rule the world!

In the end, the question is whether their numbers add to the enjoyment of the game. And the answer is no.

Shut up. Seriously, man, shut the fuck up. This is like saying,"I don't like action movies, so no one can ever enjoy action movies because action movies are terrible." If you don't want to use stats, don't use them. I don't care. But for the love of goddamned God, don't tell me that statistical analysis "doesn't add up to enjoyment of the game." You are telling me that my friends and I are incapable of enjoying baseball. I promise you -- I PROMISE you -- I enjoy baseball. I love baseball. This is not a situation where only one kind of person can love baseball. Lots of different people can love baseball for lots of different reasons. In my case, I love baseball every bit as much as you, but -- and here's the difference between you and me -- I also understand it. If you are interested in learning how to understand it, just ask. I can teach you in like 10 minutes. (And I don't even know that much about sabermetrics.)

I’ll tell you what adds to the enjoyment of the game, and I’ll put it in terms these geeks can understand.

(a) Fuck off, again, and (b) hit me...

ABAB (a Beer And a Brat).

Blammo. Nailed the joke. I give up. I will crawl into your cave with you and relearn how to enjoy baseball without using any part of my brain. Just my stomach. And we'll be alcoholics together and high-five a lot and yell "You Suck" at opposing players. Sounds like a good time.

Labels: f(f(f(x))), food acronyms, jim armstrong, liberal use of "food metaphors" label, mother's basement, sabermetrics, statistics

in Cincinnati. On one side: the Dustyites. On the other side: common sense. Articles are being written every day celebrating the folksy wisdom of a man who thinks bases are only good when there's no one standing on them. This is exactly what happened in L.A. when Grady Little was hired -- "He's folksy! He's down-home! He has a drawl!" (one year later) "He kind of stinks!"

If you could fart into a kind of microprocessing funnel, and the funnel poured the fart into a computer, which converted the fart into words, this is what it would look like.

Dusty Baker can literally smell whether a guy has a couple hits in his bat. And if his bones ache while a starter is warming up, that means 6 2/3, 4H, 1R. Welcome to the age of divining rods and augurs, Cincinnati.

The best baseball managing is done by the seat of your pants, using good, old-fashioned, pre-sabermetric logic.

If I live in Cincinnati, I have just purchased a one-way ticket to Canada, draft-fleeing-style.

That's another reason to like Dusty Baker. (Beyond his knowledge of single-malt Scotches and Van Morrison lyrics, which is merely astounding and downright Renaissance.)

"It doesn't matter to me if a guy gets on base if he can't run. If he can't run he's just clogging up the bases. Also, in an unrelated matter, it's a marvelous night for a moondance." (does a shot of Lagavulin 21)

If Baker manages by a book, it's one inside his head, not one written by Bill James.

Unfortunately, the book inside Dusty's head is "Lightning" by Dean R. Koontz. This will not help him.

The other day, the Reds manager decided he wanted Joey Votto and Adam Dunn to swing their bats more. "I don't like called third strikes," Baker said.

Can we get an Amen?

That's the thing about saberguys. We love called third strikes. I know it's controversial and counterintuitive, but we think batters should take more called third strikes. Statistics clearly show that offenses are best when the hitters take called 3rd strikes at least 16 times per game. That's why sabermetricians generally put on the permanent take sign for the first seven innings. Here's an equation to prove why this is good:

See? Called third strikes are awesome.

It always amuses when fans defend heart-of-the-order hitters by pointing to their on-base percentage. Wow, look at all those walks.

Yes. And then look at the corresponding runs that those walks create. And then look at the wins created by those runs! We are watching successful baseball! This is fun!

Five of the top six teams in walks last year were playoff teams.

Unless they're intentional walks, or the big boppers are being pitched around, walks aren't what you want from players hitting third through sixth. You want them up there smart-hacking.

You want these guys to brain-swing. You want them to think-swipe. You don't want your 3-6-hole hitters to engage in torque ignorance. You want them to cognitive-swivel.

As Baker said: "(Votto) needs to swing more. I'd like to see him more aggressive."

Joey Votto has hit .289/.385/.476 in the minors. He's ranked as one of the top infield prospects in baseball by nearly anyone who ranks top prospects. Here's Dusty's idea: let's change his plate approach.

By-the-book managing is for men who aren't confident in their ability to read players and situations. It's for managers who don't know their players' personalities. It's what you do so you can say later, after it backfires: "Don't blame me. I went by the book."

What you are calling "by the book managing" is often completely thoughtless, ignorance-steeped tradition. 2-1 count with a guy on first? Hit and run. Leadoff guy gets on? Bunt him over. That's by-the-book managing, and it's dumb. What people like Bill James, and Rob Neyer, and BP, and Billy Beane advocate is: research, analysis, thought, science. But fuck that. Let's read some tea leaves.

The best thing about Baker is that from all accounts, it's important to him to know his players individually: what jazzes them, what scares them, the situations that best suit their talents and temperaments. Contrary to the notions of the seamheads and stat freaks, players are not numbers.

Don't use jazz as a verb, please. Also: stat freaks and seam heads hate baseball. They are fucking ASIMO robots who make managerial moves through NASA press releases. Eric Wedge makes his moves from home, via on-line chats. Terry Francona has never met anyone on his 25-man roster. Joe Maddon is a 2.4 gigahertz Linksys router. Manny Acta is actually M.A.N. eACTA, the black-ops code-name for the Mechanized Algorithmic Numerical (internet-ready) Actionable Computation Techno-Automaton. When his "contract" runs out with the Nats he is going to be launched into space. We are weaponizing space. Deal with it, China.

"Managing" means exactly what it says: the ability to manage people. How Baker runs a game strategically is far less important than what he is able to pull from his employees, 162 times a summer.

"How he runs a game strategically" and "what the results are of his moves?" are somehow mutually exclusive things.

Anyone with a laptop can locate the Web site baseball- reference.com and sound like an expert. Anyone with a library card can pick up one of James' mind-numbing baseball "abstracts," in which the author makes the game sound like a first cousin to biomechanical engineering.

Which is why it boggles the mind that some people don't. Especially the ones paid millions of dollars to operate one of 30 several-hundred-million-dollar franchises. And for the record, I'm not trying to sound like an expert. I'm trying to sound like a dude with a computer who can look shit up and point out that Adam Dunn is doing just fine, thank you, and if you start making him swing at pitches he doesn't like, you're going to screw up your team.

It ain't that scientific.

It's not purely scientific. But it goddamn is kind of scientific.

The NFL does the same thing, in a different fashion. To convince you that pro football is actually a 17-week MENSA convention, The League whips out its 800-page playbooks and offers up oh-so-serious coaches who work 20 hours a day and act as if their jobs involve brain surgery and a red telephone.

QB: What play are we running, coach?

Coach: (furious) What "play" are we "running?" This ain't science, you jackass! You, Johnson. Just run down the field, and kind of squiggle around. Henderson? I want you to just groove. Bergleson -- let your soul take over. I want you to feel it. Smithson? Put this welding helmet on and close your eyes. Run wherever you feel like you should run. And Thompson? When the ball is snapped, I want a long primal scream. Don't worry about "blocking" or "patterns" or "execution." This game is about emotion, people.

Assistant Coach: Have you noticed that everyone on this team is named "something-son?"

Coach: You're fired. I don't pay you to think. Now. Soul-Ball Gut Check 34 on 3.

Possibly, it's less complex. Block. Tackle. Win.

If you try to win a modern-day NFL game solely by telling your players to "Block and tackle" you will lose 100-0.

Baseball's cerebral side involves numbers. While I believe in baseball-card wisdom - you are who the back of your card says you are - it's just a little piece of the whole. When some of us (OK, me mostly) advocated dealing, say, Votto and Homer Bailey for Oakland pitcher Joe Blanton, the Statboys came out flame-throwing numbers:

Homer Bailey: 21, awesome in the minors. Walks too many guys but gave up 6.55 H/9IP at AAA. Votto: potential stud at 1st for years. Blanton: pretty good 27 year-old pitcher, maybe hitting his stride. Also arb-eligible for the next 3 years, and will get very expensive. Chances that Bailey outpitches him in 2009 for 1/20 the price? Decent. This would be a trade you make at the deadline if you are one starter away from the World Series, not if you're Cincy and you have to basically start from the ground-up. Also, if you want to trade Bailey and Votto, you can do a whole lot better than Joe Blanton, I think.

Blanton's a creation of his spacious home ballpark! Look at his ERA, home and away! Blanton's a flyball pitcher! Check out his ratio of groundballs to flies!

This is fucking fantastic. These are his examples of ridiculous, opaque, arcane stat-geek numbers. Home/Away ERA. GB/FB ratio. If you think that's complicated, you are a simpleton of the highest order.

If you shot back that Blanton has won 42 times in the last three years - and that he went 7-5 at home last year and 7-5 on the road - if you suggested that no number matters but Games Won, you were dismissed as an illiterate.

Not an illiterate. I believe you can read. But maybe an ignoramus? Yes, let's go with ignoramus.

(Actually, maybe Blanton won as many on the road as at home, even with a much higher road ERA, because Oakland's hitters worked under the same conditions as their pitcher. Allow more runs, score more runs. And factually, flyball man Blanton gave up only 16 home runs in 230 innings last year. But never mind.)

First of all, if he actually is worse on the road, it would be a dumb idea to make him pitch 16 times a year in Cincinnati, where the RF fence is 115 feet from the plate. However, Blanton did have a very good year in 2007. He may be entering his prime. His HR rate and BB both dipped last year. Good work using numbers to show that.

Numbers are fun to look at but dangerous to dwell on.

But...didn't...you...just...

Baker understands this. If Dunn walks 30 fewer times this year, he'll drive in 15 more runs. His on-base percentage will dip. Oh, no.

If Dunn walks 30 fewer times, he'll drive in 15 more runs. This is thanks to the scientifically proven formula: RBI = (this is nonsense) (I made it all up).

If Votto takes fewer first-pitch strikes, his run production will improve.

You're right. He should hit more 1st-pitch home runs. Why doesn't anyone besides Dusty Baker and Paul Daugherty think home runs are better than walks?

And so on. Here's a stat: Wins as manager: Dusty Baker, 1,162; Bill James, 0.

This...this is the dumbest thing I have ever read.

Here's a stat: U.S. Presidents: All Americans Besides Paul Daugherty: 43. Paul Daugherty: 0. Suck on that, Paul Daugherty! You've never won the Presidency. What a jerk!

At bats are complicated things. The best result of an AB is a home run. The worst is an out that advances no runners. (Or a triple play, I guess, but you get the idea.) In between are several thousand other possibilities. A walk is a successful AB no matter how you slice it. Patient hitters are good hitters, by and large, who help their teams a great deal more than impatient hitters, and the more a guy is patient, the more he will swing at a good pitch instead of any pitch, which increases the chances he will succeed.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to run a level-5 diagnostic on the M.A.N. eACTA. His verillion modulator is on the fritz.

Labels: bill james, dusty baker, paul daugherty, sabermetrics, statistics

The most vexing and confusing aspect of modern baseball analysis -- and the primary reason we created this site -- is the sniveling distaste for the book Moneyball. As you are all aware, Moneyball is a mathematics textbook designed to prove how dumb baseball is, co-authored by A's General Manager Billy Beane and a computer who hates baseball. The main arguments in the book are: (1) baseball is stupid, (2) hot dogs taste bad, (3) the National Anthem is a piece of shit, and instead of singing it at the beginning of baseball games, the Iron Sheik should sing an Iranian folk song, (4) America sux, and (5) bald eagles should be replaced by some Russian bird you can only find in the most communist parts of the Ural Mountains. (The book takes place in 1974.)

So it comes as no surprise that the retirement of Jeremy Brown -- the slow/kinda-fat catcher whom Beane drafted 35th overall in the 2002 draft, despite the fact that no other team was ever going to draft him, probably -- is a super gleeful, hand-wringing, I-told-you-so snivelfest for people who either didn't read the book or didn't understand it. Or worse: people who read it, understand it, and think it's dumb. Or worser, people who choose to ignore that Brown retired for personal reasons, and not because he was an abject failure. Or worserest, people who just want to stir shit. Like Gary Peterson, of the venerable ignorance factory MSNBC.com.

For the record: Brown was not a failure. He had a .370 OBP in 6 minor league seasons. His career minor league OPS was above .800. He retired for personal reasons which neither he nor the team saw fit to release, but the A's made it clear that he was welcome back if he decided to change his mind. Also for the record: Beane drafted him in the first round not because he thought that Brown was the 35th-best player in the country, but because he, Beane, didn't have the money to sign any of the guys who were highly-rated and has already signed with Scott Boras or Jeff Moorad or something and were going to ask for $370 million signing bonuses before ever playing professional baseball. It was the only way he, Beane, could survive, out there in Oakland -- find guys no one else wanted but who were actually good, and draft them or trade for them and pay them small amounts of money.

Anyway. This article isn't the worst thing in the world. But Moneyball articles make me touchy. So:

If catching prospect Jeremy Brown didn’t exactly walk out of the Oakland Athletics spring training camp last week, it was only because he never showed up in the first place. Brown simply notified his employers he would not be reporting with the other pitchers and catchers. He had his reasons. At 28, he was done.

For personal, non-baseball-talent-related reasons.

You may have missed the announcement. In fact, we’d bet large money on it.

You lose.

Brown may have been a member of baseball’s faceless fringe, but he had a story that set him apart. See, he was the unwitting face of the business model with which A’s general manager Billy Beane confounded the grand old game from 1999-2006.

Maybe you read the book.

I did, yes. Did you?

In “Moneyball,” author Michael Lewis detailed Beane’s counter-intuitive approach to baseball.

It is somehow counter-intuitive to draft people based on their skill levels and abilities instead of their anecdotal physical attributes. I'm not disputing this -- it's true. I'm just restating it, because it's always hard for me to believe.

He did this in part by presenting Brown as a tool to tell the story. A marginal draft pick in his own mind, Brown found himself picked by the A’s in the first round in 2002 because he fit Beane’s statistical profile. A’s scouts were appalled because Brown had neither the physique nor the physical characteristics of the traditional can’t-miss prospect.

Because of the book, Brown gained notoriety he neither sought nor welcomed. Now he has called it quits at the precise point at which Beane’s Moneyball model appears to have run its course.

The Moneyball model has not "run its course." The Moneyball model is: find inefficiencies in the market and exploit them in order to compete with rivals who have more assets at their disposal. Apple competes with Microsoft through state-of-the-art industrial design and exemplary niche marketing. Whole Foods competes with Ralphs and Vons and Safeway by selling organic twig-based $9/box cereals that suckers like me buy because they contain flax seed. This is not a "theory" that "runs a course." This is a theory that people in all businesses have been using for centuries in order to keep up with better-funded competitors.

Now. If you want to make the more sophisticated argument that the specific inefficiencies that Beane was exploiting at the time the book was written by that baseball-hating computer -- namely, that the market had undervalued OBP skills, for example -- are now less inefficient, thanks to the aftermath of the book and the rise of like-minded GMs who shared Beane's personality traits of: being a rational, logical, non-dummy...well, then go ahead. Or just keep doing what you're doing. The latter? Okay.

Beane did it [won a lot] by drafting players who became huge stars, then letting them leave as free agents. He did it by renting veterans who played a season (or two) in Oakland, then left as free agents. He did it by trading players approaching the prime of their careers for prospects. He did it by placing value on players other teams deemed undesirable, but who could take pitches, draw walks and hit home runs.

The model began to break down last season.

The players broke down last season. They had 22 DL stints, for cripe's sake. I'll just quote from MLB.com here:

[C]enter fielder Mark Kotsay, right fielder Milton Bradley, first baseman Dan Johnson, designated hitter Mike Piazza, shortstop Bobby Crosby and third baseman Eric Chavez missed significant chunks of time.

Starting pitchers Rich Harden and Esteban Loaiza combined to make seven starts. Closer Huston Street missed more than two months. Former All-Star Justin Duchscherer was shut down for the year in mid-May, and fellow setup man Kiko Calero was limited to 46 appearances before being shut down late in the summer.

"Moneyball?!" More like "InjuryBall!" Or "MoneyInjury!" (Yes -- let's go with "MoneyInjury.")

The new wave of home-grown stars plateaued or backslid. Prized pitchers disappointed, either by failing to produce or by failing to stay healthy. Last-chance veterans turned out to be duds.

Also: Kotsay, Bradley, Johnson, Piazza, Crosby, Chavez, Street, Harden, Loaiza, Duchscherhsrcechrsecer, and Calero got hurt. This is Moneyball's fault.

Naturally, people are wondering if Brown’s retirement symbolizes the end of the era. And they’re asking:

Can Beane remake the A’s into a playoff contender?

If he can't, no one can.

That’s a tall order based merely on the law of averages. Put it this way: The Yankees aside, no major league team has a streak of postseason appearances exceeding 1. Meanwhile, eight teams have failed to make the playoffs for at least 10 years running.

This has nothing to do with the A's. Also, I love that the Red Sox making the playoffs in four out of 5 years (and winning the World Series twice) doesn't qualify them for this arbitrary cut-off. Which, again, has nothing to do with the A's, or anything.

Doesn’t Beane’s analytic mad genius give him an advantage? Doubtful.

What does Billy Beane have to do to earn the benefit of anyone's doubt?

The book explicitly detailed his methodology, as well as the delight he took in fleecing fellow GMs. Thus, he now must co-exist with GMs who either embrace his model to some extent, and/or who wouldn’t talk trade with him on a bet.

Even if this is true, he can still draft people. He can still let free agents and over-hyped closers leave and get draft choices. And after the book was published, he traded Mark Mulder to the Cards for Haren, Calero, and Daric Barton. So, I think he's going to be fine.

What if money was no object?

Quick review of the subjunctive. I'll wait here.

...

Okay. Let's move on.

Before the 2006 season they gave third baseman Eric Chavez the contract Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, et al, never got — $66 million over six years. Chavez’s numbers have trended downward ever since, as has his health.

Giambi was given $120 million by the Yankees. That is more than $66 million, by $54 million. Miggy got $72 from the Birds, and his numbers and health have trended downward too. Also, I think this bears mentioning: Tejada and Giambi are both juicers. That may not have factored into the decision to let them go -- and for all I know, Chavez is a juicer -- but I don't think you can look back and say that Beane should definitely have kept them and their stink on the team. (And in Giambi's case they couldn't have kept him anyway.)

That same offseason, the A’s outbid the Giants by [sic] for Esteban Loaiza ($21 million, three years), and got 12-9, 4.62 and an embarrassing DUI for their trouble. They waived him last August.

They paid him $5m in '06 and $6m in '07. That ain't bad for 12-9. Not great, but not bad.

Kotsay was extended at market rate by previous ownership in 2005, whereupon his problematic back became a debilitating concern. The A’s will pay $5.3 million of his salary this season even though he’s with Atlanta.

Signing a 28 year-old CF/OF (who's good defensively and hit .314/.370/.459 in 2004) to a 2-year extension is good business. If only Moneyball hadn't ruined his back.

Here's the big finish.

The only certainties are that this season figures to be a competitive wash, and that Jeremy Brown will have nothing to do with it.

Connect those dots as you see fit.

Tried. Turns out those are the only two dots in this dimension that do not create a line.

Labels: computers, gary peterson, jeremy brown, moneyball, statistics

Hey, Bruce? Bruce Miles? It's me, Tom Gerndleman, your editor at the Daily Herald. Listen -- I don't have a lot of time. I need an article about Ryan Theriot, but I have Bulls tickets tonight, and I have to leave in eight minutes. Do me a favor, and just write down every cliché you can think of about sub-par, sort-of fast, white baseball players, and just link them all together so you can file before I head out? Thanks.

...the scrappy Theriot would just as soon tells those statistics to shut up.

Theriot doesn't hate baseball, but the stats-oriented crew probably can't find much love for him.

Theriot is one of those throwback players who'd rather get his uniform dirty than impress the pencil pushers at Baseball Prospectus.

Good start. Now we need something that helps justify why we're writing this article.

The Cubs cite Theriot as a big reason they won the National League Central last year, even though you might be telling a fish story to say his numbers were outstanding.

Great. Now let's show that he's aware of his own limitations.

Even though Theriot may not put all his stock in numbers, he knows what they are and that people are going to analyze them.

"It's getting a lot more numbers oriented, which in some cases is good," he said. "In some cases, it's not. It's easy to get wrapped up in that, too, because it's fact. It's truth. It's right there for you. You can see the numbers. It's easy to explain to somebody.

Nice. Now hit me with something about, you know, the "I" word.

"What's hard to explain, what's hard to show is what you guys see every day: the intangibles. You guys come into the locker room and see how the players interact with each other and interact with others. That's stuff hard to explain to somebody who really doesn't understand."

Perfect. I'm going to assume you made that quote up, because no one in the world -- not even a major league ballplayer -- could be that predictable. But keep going -- this is great. Maybe add something about, you know, how maybe even if he goes 0-4, he still helps his team win by getting his uniform dirty and playing tough D, and how those things don't show up in the stats.

For example, getting one's uniform dirty and saving a run from scoring even though you might have gone 0-for-4 that day?

"You don't put that down in the stats," he said.

...Okay, a little on the head, but fine, it'll do. Now we need an authority figure to weigh in -- something about catching someone's eye with his hard-nosed play.

Lou Piniella had little to go on a year ago, when Theriot caught his eye in spring training. The new Cubs manager liked what he saw and told Theriot to relax, that he had made the team.

Again, you're not changing the clichés at all, really, but I don't care. I'm out the door in T-minus 2 minutes. So let's really cruise, here. Give me a nice thick juicy run of the most trite pablum you can find.

"We always thought the guy was a gamer," Fleita said Saturday. "Mentally tough. He's always been an 'intangibles' guy with great makeup. Those guys, if given an opportunity, usually seize it.

Holy shit, man, that's awesome. "Gamer," "mentally tough," "intangibles," "great makeup," and "seizing the opportunity?" You packed all five into one graph. That's just great work. Give me another one.

"He came to camp last spring with an outfield glove. 'Just put me in, Coach,' and I'll play.' I think that attitude and his character had a lot to do with the success he had. He just wants to be part of the team. He'll drive the bus, if necessary."

This -- this is poetry. "Just put me in, coach?!" Are you kidding me? I haven't seen anyone use that one in years. "Attitude," "character," "part of the team," and "he'd drive the bus?!" This is great. Great stuff. We're almost done. Hit me with his diminutive stature:

Theriot batted .348 in July, but the Cubs say the grind of a long season took its toll. The 5-foot-11, 175-pound Theriot played in 148 regular-season games, by far the most of his professional career.

Great. Now a quote from Theriot about how he knows he's not about numbers.

"I'm not about numbers. I'm not a numbers guy at all. You look through my career, and nothing's ever going to jump out at you. I've been lucky to have coaches and management who don't buy into that stuff.

"There's lots you can say about a guy who hits .300 or .320 for that matter. How many runs did he score, how many hits did he get when it was important?"

Okay. Give lip service to the nerds who think this is all a lot of crap, written about a guy who's projected to have a .237 EqA next year.

The analysts have weighed in on Theriot, with Baseball Prospectus projecting a .330 OBP.

Okay, you went OBP. That's fine. Hurry -- I have to leave in 30 seconds. Wrap it up.

So how does Theriot analyze himself?

"I'm going to play hard," he said. "I'm going to give everything I've got. And I'm not afraid to fail. I think I'll do what it takes to do something great and help the team win. I take pride in my defense. Either you've got to drive them in or you've got to save a run.

...

There's no fucking way he said all that, in that order, is there? Really? Wow. That's...that's genius. This thing is writing itself. Let me just look over that graph one more time.

I'm going to play hard

I'm going to give everything I've got.

I'm not afraid to fail.

I think I'll do what it takes to do something great and help the team win.

I take pride in my defense.

Amazing.

Thanks, buddy. I'm out of here. You earned your paycheck today.

Labels: bruce miles, ryan theriot, scrappy, statistics

I'm going to Buster Olney it up and just link a few stories that I don't have the energy to lay into. Setting a bad precedent? Absolutely. But: easier.

Here's a little ditty entitled "Attitude Can't Just Be a Platitude for Sox," by legendary comic actor Dave van Dyck (The Dave van Dyck Show, Diagnosis: Murder.) The thesis is that what the 2007 Chicago White Sox lacked was not "hitting" or "pitching" or any of those other pesky "tangibles," but rather: a certain je ne sais quoi.

It has been called "swagger" and "a chip on your shoulder," a sort of no-respect, us-against-the-world motivational mentality.

Another thing it has been called is "last in the league in runs scored."

Of course, [Paul] Konerko was around when the White Sox had that intangible benefit of swagger. And he was there when it vanished, perhaps through complacency caused by lack of competition, which led to losing and a lack of confidence.

For those of you keeping your own Intangible Scorecard at home, that was:

Lack of competition ----> Complacency ----> Vanishing of Intangible Benefit of Swagger ----> Losing ----> Lack of Confidence.

Here's another flow chart: Team ERA of 3.61 in 2005 ----> Team ERA of 4.61 in 2006 ----> Team ERA of 4.77 in 2007 ----> Worse Team in 2007 Than in 2005

"The younger guys are hungry, and that adds energy," [Buehrle] said. "And it takes some of the older guys who have been around here to refocus and get that little edge back, knowing that it's more than going out and putting up numbers, that you have to have a purpose on how you're doing it. We have to try to get back to that."

It might be more than going out and putting up numbers. But I would highly recommend: going out and putting up numbers, as like a starting point.

The question is whether swagger comes naturally or takes some team meetings for everyone to believe they should have it.

That's the question? Not: "How do we improve our AL-low .318 team OBP?"

Next up, we have this useless article about how Tom Brady really isn't that good at football, and how Johnny Unitas was better. Take it away, Plaschke.

The first thing you notice about Tom Brady is, well, nothing.

Really? I notice that he is the world's most handsome man. I might also notice his league MVP award, his 3 Super Bowl rings, his 2 Super Bowl MVPs, or the fact that his smoldering eyes and dimpled chin have forced me to take a long hard look at my own sexuality and conclude in like 5 seconds that although I love Mrs. Tremendous with all my heart, I would trade her and our unborn child and everything I own to kiss Tom Brady on the mouth for fifteen seconds, because then I would know what it feels like to melt into perfection.

He doesn't have a nick on his face because today's referees won't allow it.

Also, his offensive line is quite good.

He doesn't have a growl to his voice because today's huddles don't require it.

I just looked at the HTML coding for this sentence, and it reads like this:

{PlaschkeStyle ="nonsense-level: total; meaning: none; point? no; faux-poetry: yes; garbage garbage garbage"}He doesn't have a growl to his voice because today's huddles don't require it.{/Plaschke}

He doesn't have fire in his eyes because today's teams don't need it.

What claptrap. Ugh. You've killed the mood. I don't even want to kiss Brady on the mouth anymore. You ruined it.

Tom Brady is fantastic, but he's formula. He's a champion, but he's a creation. And to anoint him as the best quarterback ever would be to forget that his position was invented, inspired and made famous by those who were neither.

He's a creation who had 50 TD passes this year. He completed 26 of 28 passes in a playoff game. He has led game-winning scoring drives late in the 4th quarter of like 9 Super Bowls. He is 14-2 in the postseason. So, yes, he is a creation...of Football Jesus.

If Brady leads the New England Patriots to a Super Bowl win over the New York Giants next Sunday, everyone will celebrate his four world championships.

They will forget that Otto Graham won seven league championships.

Graham was an incredible athlete and a great winner. But when he played, there were like 12 teams and the average LB was 4'8", 120 and played his college ball at Yale. It's a different game. There are now 32 teams, and the average placekicker can curl 900 lbs. Players sprinkle steroids into their protein shakes, which they pour over bowls of steroids. Free agency, scouting, PhD.-level offensive and defensive coordination schemes, illegal videotaping of other teams' signals...it's a very different game. A harder-to-succeed-in game.

Everyone will marvel at Brady's 15-2 postseason record.

They will forget that Bart Starr was 9-1 in the postseason with a record 104.8 passer rating.

I like that he italicizes 9-1, as if (a) Brady didn't start his postseason career 10-0, and (b) 9-1 is so much more impressive than a theoretical 15-2.

Everyone will wax about how, in two Super Bowls, Brady led his team on late fourth-quarter game-winning field-goal drives.

They will forget that, in one of his four Super Bowl championships, Joe Montana drove his San Francisco team 92 yards for a last-second, game-winning touchdown.

No one will forget that. It's like the most famous thing that has ever happened in football history. Also, Montana needed a TD. Brady did not. Apples and oranges. Or, apples and different-but-equally-delicious apples.

Everyone will applaud Brady for his tough defender's mentality.

They will forget that Slingin' Sammy Baugh actually played defense, picking off 31 passes in his career, which is more than he threw in his last three seasons combined.

Different game, man. You really can't penalize Brady for not playing both ways, a thing that has not happened in decades. And speaking of Brady playing both ways, I would like to kiss him on the mouth.

Yeah, everyone will forget Johnny Unitas.

No, we won't. Swear.

[Unitas] was football's Babe Ruth, and Bart Starr was its Lou Gehrig, and Sammy Baugh was its Ty Cobb, and Joe Montana was its Joe DiMaggio.

Dan Fouts was its George Sisler. Rich Gannon was its Paul Molitor. Rob Johnson was its George Kendrick. Jim Zorn was its Mark Loretta. Al Toon was its Wil Cordero. Marc Edwards was its La Marr Hoyt. Joe DeLamielleure was its Rick Rhoden. And, most obviously of all, Billy Joe DuPree was its Kevin Tapani. That's just a no-brainer.

Tom Brady is football's, well, um, Alex Rodriguez.

...right. He's the best player in the game. Except that Alex Rodriguez, as boneheads like you are fond of pointing out, has never won a championship. So defend this statement, please.

"I hear all these people talking about Tom Brady and I just sort of smirk," said John Unitas Jr., the late quarterback's son. "It's an entirely different game. I'm biased, but what my father did, you can't compare it to anything today."

Tell that to Plaschke. He's devoting an entire column to doing just that.

While Brady is famous for his "decision making," many of those decisions have actually been made for him by his offensive coordinators.

The Patriots' game plan is more homework than instinct, more science than scrabble.

Late in the season finale against the Giants, Brady threw deep to Moss on second down, underthrew him, and Moss dropped the ball. On the next play, 3rd and long, with the Pats losing, their perfect regular season in jeopardy, they ran a play designed to check down to Welker to try to get the first. But Brady, in the 0.8 seconds a QB has to make a decision, saw that the Giants had not rotated safety help over to Moss (perhaps expecting the check-down?), meaning Moss would be single-covered by a CB. So Brady said, calmly, handsomely, to himself: "Fuck this noise," and uncorked a 60-yard pass that dropped into Moss's hands like a day-old helium balloon. Two records fell, the Pats went ahead for good, and all was right with the world.

Please don't say that Tom Brady -- or any modern QB -- doesn't employ "instinct." That's all they have out there, really. Watch how the man preternaturally senses and avoids blind-side pass rushes, and then write Whitman-style poetry about his instinct. Because that's the only logical response to how good his instincts are.

Here's my favorite part:

Brady is playing in an era when the following scenario would never happen:

Playing in overtime for the league championship, having driven his team to his opponent's eight-yard line, a quarterback decides to pass.

That was Unitas, 50 years ago. His Colts were in position to kick a field goal to beat the Giants for the title. Yet he saw a hole in the defense and threw a seven-yard pass to Jim Mutscheller to set up Alan Ameche's one-yard touchdown run.

This is incredibly dumb. Kick the field goal. It's overtime. (Unless NFL rules were different back then and it wasn't sudden-death. Anyone weigh in on this?)

I said I was just going to sample some articles to save time and energy, and now here we are, like two hours later. Oh well. Here's one more, about a man you might have heard of, Eric Walker, who thinks steroids don't really help people that much.

“If power were up, we’d see it in the statistics,” Walker said. “But the boost just isn’t there.” [...]

Apparently, he hasn't noted the extreme end-of-the-bell-curve-probability rise in 50- and 60-HR seasons since the "Steroid Era" began. Smaller parks, maybe. Expansion, maybe. Steroids probably helped, too, though, considering McGwire, Sosa, and a bunch of other Congressionally-invited dudes are on that 50+ list.

Regarding Bonds, for example, they note that, yes, his peak home run rates came at 36 through 39 years old, when most players are in decline. Then again, another slugger three decades before enjoyed almost the same late-30s surge: a fellow named Hank Aaron.

Hank Aaron, HR by age:

32: 44
33: 39
34: 29
35: 44
36: 38
37: 47
38: 34
39: 40
40: 20

That doesn't seem like a huge "surge." (Though he did play in fewer games at 37-40 than in the previous years, so his HR/AB rate was higher.)

“I’m tired of people saying, ‘This is what happened because I see more home runs,’ ” Walker said. “If you disagree with me, deconstruct the argument; tell me where it’s wrong. If you can, more power to you.”

The argument has already been "deconstructed" [sic], at least w/r/t Bonds. It's here, and it's telling. Basically, it sets the odds of a 37 year-old hitting 73 HR at one in 53 million. That season was so many standard deviations from the mean, the author had to like go searching for a chart that would even calculate it.

And before any of you make fun of me for wanting to make out with Tom Brady...I got nothing. Go ahead. I want to make out with Tom Brady. Do your worst.

Labels: barry bonds, bill plaschke, dave van dyck, intangibles, patriots, statistics, tom brady, white sox

Old. But bad.

Does the statistic "RBIs per 100 at-bats" really measure how valuable a hitter is? You have cited that stat in at least two stories comparing Brian Schneider to Paul Lo Duca.

Schneider is a strong defensive catcher, and a below-average hitter. The RBI as a stat is not nearly as telling about a player's ability to be a productive hitter as are on-base percentage, slugging percentage, home runs, extra-base hits and even the vastly overrated batting average stat. I just feel that citing that statistic adds little, and is somewhat insulting to students of the game.
-- James K., no hometown given

Good question, James. And more restrained than we stat-minded basement dwellers usually are. Very well done. Who can argue with such logic?

Oh. Marty Noble can.

I beg to differ, and I guess I'm obligated to explain my use of RBIs per 100 at-bats because yours is one nine [sic] e-mails I've received that have questioned it. To me, it is a fundamental and quite legitimate means of measuring run production.

Obvious thing:

Player A and Player B both have 500 AB. Both have 65 RBI. Player A and Player B are the same, in terms of run production, right? Wrong! You fell into my trap. I am a diabolical genius who totally just outsmarted you so bad.

Because what you don't know is that Player A hits clean-up for the Awesome City Crushers, and the three guys in front of him all have .950 OBPs, so in his 500 AB he had like 1450 guys on base and only drove in 65. He struck out like 400 times, never walked, and generally acted like a sullen dick. He is terrible. The only reason he is hitting clean-up is that his dad owns the team. It's totally unfair.

Player B hit lead-off for the North Suckington Suck-Bears. He was an excellent baseball player who walked all the time and hit like .450 with a .700 OBP, but in his 500 AB, his stupid sucky teammates had only gotten on base 20 times, total, in front of him, and he was so good he drove all of them, and also hit 45 solo bombs. (Why was he batting leadoff, am I right? Maybe it's because his manager saw that the Cubs were hitting Soriano leadoff and followed suit.)

Anyway, here's the undeniably true thing: Player B is better than Player A. Player B will create more runs than Player A 10 seasons out of 10, assuming their seasons were not total flukes.

Now here's something that will blow your mind. Player A is Mickey Mantle. Player B is Dustin Pedroia!!!!!!

(Just kidding. I made them up.)

Computers have contributed to a current glut of statistics that, to a degree, distort the picture. We have so many now that we lose focus on what is most important. The objective of the game is to win, and to win a team must outscore its opponent. Nothing, therefore, is more important than runs -- both producing and preventing them.

Wow. I am being taught a very valuable lesson here. Color me: chagrined. No -- ashamed. In all of my stat-mongering, I forgot that the idea of baseball is to win. I further forgot that in order to win, a team must outscore its opponent. Mary Noble's condescending spoonful of proudly provincial bullshit has jolted my RobotBrain™ back to earthly reality. Thank you, sir. Or, as my people say,

"0101010001001000010000010100111001101011011110010110111101110101."

Runs and RBI totals provide insufficient information because neither tells us how many opportunities a player has had to produce. And in the case of catchers, who are unlikely to play every day, the number of opportunities helps us understand how they produce.

What's amazing is that he acknowledges a problem with RBI here. He even goes so far as to say that the problem is that RBI as a raw stat doesn't work because it ignores RBI as a percentage of RBI opportunities. Then explains his method of using RBI, which does little or nothing to fix the problem. It's like saying, "Throwing money into your toilet is bad, because if you throw money in your toilet, you won't be able to use it to buy food, or furniture. Instead, you should set it on fire, and toss the ashes into the toilet. That way, the toilet won't clog."

Knowing the potential rates of production affords us a better sense of what a player does, particularly if the rates are compared, as they were in the two instances you cited.

RBIs per 100 at-bats measures run production as ERA -- earned runs per nine innings -- measures pitching. It's a quite legitimate means of determining who does what.

Last year, Lo Duca had 487 plate appearances, and Schneider had 477. Pretty damn close. Given this fact, RBI/100 AB is essentially exactly the same thing as just asking "who had more RBI?" (Plus, you should use PA instead of AB, probably, since AB don't count walks.) If the difference were huge -- like 100 or more PA -- it might shed a little more light on the subject. But 10 PA? Two games?

What matters more is -- obviously -- how many guys were on base when they got their PA, and how successful they were driving them in. Schneider had 331 guys on base in his 477 PA. Lo Duca had 307. So Lo Duca drove in the same number of guys, in almost exactly the same number of PA, but there were 24 fewer guys on base for him. Now, 24 isn't a ton, but it's something, and the only thing a rational, non-condescending person could possibly conclude is that Lo Duca was more efficient in terms of driving in runs last year than Schneider was.

Now, this isn't the be-all, end-all of a batter's worth. Clearly, OBP, SLG, and myriad other things should be checked out. But Noble concerns himself solely with RBI, so that's what we're doing, here, on our Saturday, is looking through BP's sortable stats to determine that Lo Duca drove in runs at a higher rate last year than Schneider. (He also had a higher VORP -- 9.2 to 2.4.)

I'm too lazy to do this for the last three years, but it actually doesn't matter. It's the methodology I object to. Sorry -- mis-typed. It's the methodology logic objects to.

That Lo Duca might have had a higher on-base percentage or slugging percentage means less to me than the number of runs he produced. The next time a team wins a game because it produced a higher on-base mark and scored fewer runs than its opponent, please alert me.

This is hard-core boneheaded. The more guys are on base, the more chances they have to score. That can't be hard to grasp. Why fight it?

OBP, OPS, et al, are the ingredients in the recipe for offense. Runs are the meal.

"Food metaphors" label? Today is your lucky day.

Next question for Marty?

C'mon, Marty. Jerry Koosman must be considered for the Hall of Fame, given what we are witnessing today. He must be considered.

-- Ray, Matawan, N.J.

Must he, Ray? Must he really? A .500 pitcher with a 110 ERA+? With a 1.26 WHIP and barely a 2/1 K/BB ratio? Must he be?

I'm not quite sure if you're referring to something specific that I've written about Koosman or just making a general comment. I wish there were a place for Koosman in the Hall. He's a personal favorite. When he was healthy, he was as effective as almost any Hall of Fame pitcher and nastier than most of them. [...]

This bold claim might -- might -- be defensible in 1968, 1969, and 1976. I guess he wasn't healthy in any of the 16 other seasons.

Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax and Morris are popular answers to the question, "Which pitcher would you choose to start a must-win game?" Koosman wouldn't be a bad choice, either.

Homework assignment: name 100 pitchers since 1960 you would rather have start a big game then Jerry Koosman. (Don't really. Or if you do, don't send them to me. Print them out and post them on your wall, and look at them every day and say to yourself, "I am so happy Jerry Koosman is not in the Hall of Fame." And then say to yourself, "No one should ever use 'Who would I want to start a big game?' as a criterion for Hall of Fame induction." And then say to yourself, "I can't believe I spent an hour making this list. I should read more."

At least Noble doesn't actually say Koosman belongs in the HOF. That's something, I guess.

How can Aaron Heilman not be given a real shot as starter? He pitched a one-hitter. At least it'll stop him from wondering. And if it works? Remember, what good is relief if you're down by six or seven runs all the time?
-- Charles F., Brooklyn, N.Y.

That one-hitter didn't make Heilman a lock to produce a 15-victory season as a starter. And making him a starter would affect one game in five. Losing him as a reliever might affect three or four games in 10. Chances are Heilman working as a starter wouldn't prevent being "down by six or seven runs all the time."

Noble's solution: make every pitcher a reliever. That way, they all get to affect the most games.

Abrupt ending to this post......now.

Labels: food metaphors, marty noble, mets, mother's basement, statistics

Take it away, Mr. Excellence:

Memo to 30-year-old stat geeks combing through Jim Rice's numbers: Get out of the house and look at the sky one time. I know personal contact frightens you, but let go of OPS for a moment and try talking to someone who saw Rice play, or better yet, played against him.

An excellent idea. And excellently presented. I should have thought of this. Here I am, a 30 year-old stat geek, living here in my mother's basement, eyes glued to my computer, playing God by determining who should be admitted to the Hall of Fame via Excel spreadsheets. It never occurred to me -- I mean, it literally never even occurred to me -- that I could go watch these games in person. (Truth be told, I actually didn't know they were live events, presented in front of an audience. I assumed -- and who can blame me, given my half-carbon-based, half Intel© Celeron Processor-based brainputer -- that baseball games were avatar simulations run from a Cray Supercomputer somewhere in Langley.

I should definitely talk to someone about what baseball looks like when human men play it. Perhaps I can ask my friend Walter, whose family has had season tickets to Fenway for like 60 years. Or my friend Dave, who essentially lived in Section 41 for the years 1992-1998. Or maybe I can reprogram my frontal lobe algorithm to access stories from my dad, or any one of the hundreds of Sox fans I know, or even from the dark recesses of my own pre-robotic-conversion brain, where live memories of (rough estimate) around six or seven hundred live baseball games I watched, live or on TV, in which Jim Rice played.

That would certainly help me objectively evaluate Jim Rice's candidacy for the Hall, instead of just analyzing the millions of lines of Matrix-style code that I see when I look at a picture of him.

Please stop writing things like this, Dan. Thanks.

Love,

KT

P.S. I just climbed up the 1000-foot ladder leading out of my basement and looked at the sky for the first time. Holy fucking shit! It's huge!

Labels: dan shaughnessy, hall of fame, jim rice, mother's basement, statistics

to Flotsam Media for this delightful post. This is like a holiday present to our staff, and to anyone who reads this blog and even remotely enjoys it.

dak gets angry at me sometimes when I post about things that are fun and good instead of annoying and bad. But this: deserves a hearty round of applause.

Posting may slow from its normal "erratic-slow" pace to a holiday-inspired "glacial-nonexistent" for the next week or so. But we'll be back before the end of the year.

Have a happy holiday season.

Labels: flotsam media, grit, statistics

This is going to be annoying to break down. But I can't ignore an article that says that ERA is three times as important as any other stat for a pitcher.

Forget "poor" Josh Beckett. If anyone got overlooked in American League Cy Young voting, it was the Los Angeles Angels' John Lackey, not the Boston Red Sox's Beckett.

Who has been whining about "poor" Josh Beckett? What are those quotes for? I am the biggest Red Sox fan in the world, and I have absolutely no problem with C.C. Sabathia winning the Cy Young award. It was the right choice.

Sabthia: 241 innings with a 1.141 WHIP, a 209/37 K/BB ratio and a 143 ERA+.
Beckett: 200.2 innings with an identical 1.141 WHIP, a 194/40 K/BB ratio, and a 145 ERA+.

An additional 40 innings with the same, excellent WHIP and a better K/BB ratio = better year. That's pretty uncontroversial.

Now.

Lackey: 224 innings with a higher 1.210 WHIP, a 179/52 K/BB ratio and a 151 ERA+.

So, better adjusted ERA than Sabathia, but fewer innings, and a significantly worse K/BB ratio (and thus higher WHIP).

This article should now pretty much be over.

Sure, if you factor in the regular season and the postseason, Beckett was the best pitcher in the majors in 2007—a combined 24-7 with a 3.00 earned-run average. It's no accident his team won the World Series.







This was a fascinating vote, in large part because only one victory separated the four of them (Beckett had 20, the other three 19).

The victory total is the absolute worst possible way to compare or contrast their levels of success.

I have no problem with Sabathia winning, but Lackey would have gotten my vote if I had been voting. He led the AL with a 3.01 ERA. Carmona was second at 3.06, followed by Sabathia in fifth at 3.21 and Beckett in sixth at 3.27. No stat better tells the story for pitchers than ERA.

No stat better tells the story for pitchers than ERA.

Huh.

Carmona: 3.06 (73 Earned Runs)
Lackey: 3.01 (75 Earned Runs)
Beckett: 3.27 (73 Earned Runs)
Sabathia: 3.21 (86 Earned Runs)

This is not a story. This is simply a coarse measure of runs scored, which can be affected by relief pitchers. How many of these runs were inherited by relievers who had bad days? How many other runs were saved by relief pitchers who had good games? The story of ERA (not even park adjusted, for goodness sake?) is a fairy tale with a morally ambiguous ending. It's a Golden Book in a dentist's office with 6 pages ripped out by a hyperactive kid. It's a Richard Bachman novel. It's a terrible story.

WHIP, on the other hand, for example, measures an individual pitcher's effectiveness per inning. That's better, for a lot of reasons which should be self-evident.***

For the sake of argument, I put together a simple formula to compare the top four Cy Young vote-getters. It ranks them among each other in victories, losses, ERA, innings and strikeouts. Because I think ERA is the most important, I've given it twice the weight. That formula gives Sabathia a slight edge over Lackey and a significant edge over Beckett and Carmona, who would be tied for third.

I have created a similar formula for judging the viability of the Democratic Presidential candidates. It ranks them among each other in health care plans, economic proposals, interest in aliens, and foreign policy. Because I think interest in aliens is the most important, I have given it twice the weight. That formula gives Dennis Kucinich a slight edge over Clinton, and a significant edge over Edwards and Obama.

If you weighed ERA three times as heavily as the other four stats, you would have a tie between Sabathia and Lackey, with Beckett dropping to a clear fourth.

If you weighed interest in aliens three times as heavily as the other stats, you would have a tie with Kucinich and Alf.

Sabathia's edge over the other guys comes down to leading the league innings and strikeouts.

Innings and strikeouts? What kind of stupid ways are those to measure the effectiveness of a pitcher, whose job is to throw as many innings as possible, and whose best possible outcome in any one at bat is a strikeout? Talk to me when you start weighing Skewed Angle of Cap Brim three times as heavily as strikeouts. Then you get Sabathia in a cake walk. Or Number of Shark Teeth on Necklace 3x as highly as Ks, which gives the award -- for the ninth year in a row -- to Turk Wendell.

That achievement may have contributed to the Indians not going to the World Series, as Sabathia and Carmona clearly wore down during the championship series against Boston.

Sorry -- real quick -- thought we weren't supposed to take anything that happened in the postseason into account, here, birdbrain. Remember when you wrote this -- "the Cy Young Award, like the other awards the Baseball Writers Association of America hands out, is about getting your team into the playoffs, not carrying them once they're there" -- like eleven seconds ago?

Beckett looked the freshest of the Cy Young contenders in October—no wonder; he barely threw 200 innings during the regular season, the lowest total.

Quick recap of the insinuations of the last two sentences: Sabathia threw the most innings in the regular seaosn? He does not deserve the Cy Young Award more than John Lackey, because throwing that many innings led to him being worn down in the post-season. Also, Josh Beckett does not deserve the Cy Young Award because he threw the fewest innings in the regular season, leading him to be fresh in the post-season.

Take that, logic!

Labels: awards, c.c. sabathia, cy young award, fausto carmona, john lackey, josh beckett, phil rogers, statistics