NateGrey
01-29-2010, 01:39 PM
http://multimedia.heraldinteractive.com/images/20100129/beb463_Theo_01292010.jpg
With the opening of spring training less than three weeks away it would appear the retooling of the Red Sox [team stats] is complete, at least for now. So what has general manager Theo Epstein wrought?
Beats me, which is unimportant. Beats the Yankees? I don’t think so.
If an array of new fielding metrics you need a Ph.D. to understand are to be believed, the Red Sox will have to travel with two planes this year. The first for the players, the second for their Gold Gloves.
According to Epstein, the Red Sox will be competitive through the use of kung fu baseball, the art of winning without scoring. They will be so flawless in the field that opponents will simply forfeit, their inability to penetrate the Steel Curtain Defense so frustrating that the other side simply resigns. Sort of like playing Bobby Fischer in chess.
While teams created by Ruben Amaro Jr. of the Phillies or Brian Cashman of the Yankees cling hopelessly to National League and American League pennants and a misplaced faith in the old order represented by stats like batting average, fielding average and RBI, teams of the new millennium like the Red Sox believe those are insignificant relics of a bygone era, the buggy whips of baseball.
They have been replaced by faith in OBP, OPS, UZR (I thought those were the initials of a former Russian state only to learn it means Ultimate Zone Rating), DRS (defensive runs saved) and PMR (probabilistic model of range). Based on crunching numbers into these new formulas, one expert in baseball metrics, John Dewan, has written that the addition of Adrian Beltre, Marco Scutaro and Mike Cameron in the field will add nine more victories to the Sox’ bottom line. Lo and behold, we just won the pennant! Who knew?
A year ago, the Sox won 95 games despite apparently stumbling around in the field like a half-drunken softball team in a Wednesday night league. Somehow they miraculously finished only eight games behind the Yankees without being able to catch a cold standing naked in the Alaskan wilderness. Fortunately, those Sox have been replaced by guys whose gloves are more valuable than Michael Jackson’s.
Together, Cameron, Scutaro and Beltre hit eight home runs more than Jason Bay but, as we now know, home runs are meaningless. Fortunately Sox fans, so are RBI because Bay had 119, which was 49 more than Cameron, 59 more than Scutaro and please don’t ask how many more than Beltre (all right, 75 if you must know but compare his DVD to Bay’s CD and divide by BVD and see what you get - a pennant, of course).
Some might argue that pitching in Fenway Park [map] is not exactly like pitching in Yosemite Park, but Sox’ management has discovered that despite mistaken evidence to the contrary, scoring runs is no longer essential to winning games. Interesting concept.
Throw the ball, catch it and trade a walk for a homer and just like that you’ve got nine more wins and a pennant. Or so they want you to believe over on Yawkey Way.
Owner John Henry recently reminded his paying customers that the Sox won 95 games a year ago. Only problem is the Yankees won 103 and the World Series, to which John Henry would reply, “Yeah, but what’s their ATM?”
Moneyball, which became defined as the love of sabermetrics over old-school stats like HR and RBI, has led Billy Beane, the godfather of this con job, to build an economic Oakland A’s team that hasn’t won a pennant in 20 years or a World Series in 21, but did manage to have a best-selling book written about the concept. The A’s did win division titles in 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2006, but what they have actually won during the Moneyball era is nothing. No sequel is planned.
Now it seems the Sox have headed down the same road of quantum baseball over your grandad’s version, which was mistakenly centered on foolishness like hitting and scoring runs.
This has gone so far that Dewan has come up with a new type of struck ball. While he factors ground balls, fly balls and line drives in his fielding metrics, he also has created “fliners.”
If mastery of fliners beats the Yankees, I’m all for it, but my lying eyes have told me it takes live arms and live bats. Gloves only beat the Yankees when Jason Varitek [stats] is stuffing one up the nose of Alex Rodriguez.
As the days dwindle toward the start of another spring of hope, let’s pray that’s no longer the case, because if all this talk of OBP, OPS, UZR, DRS and PMR was really only about ATM that’s going to end up BAD for US.
> http://bostonherald.com/sports/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1229098&format=comments#CommentsArea
With the opening of spring training less than three weeks away it would appear the retooling of the Red Sox [team stats] is complete, at least for now. So what has general manager Theo Epstein wrought?
Beats me, which is unimportant. Beats the Yankees? I don’t think so.
If an array of new fielding metrics you need a Ph.D. to understand are to be believed, the Red Sox will have to travel with two planes this year. The first for the players, the second for their Gold Gloves.
According to Epstein, the Red Sox will be competitive through the use of kung fu baseball, the art of winning without scoring. They will be so flawless in the field that opponents will simply forfeit, their inability to penetrate the Steel Curtain Defense so frustrating that the other side simply resigns. Sort of like playing Bobby Fischer in chess.
While teams created by Ruben Amaro Jr. of the Phillies or Brian Cashman of the Yankees cling hopelessly to National League and American League pennants and a misplaced faith in the old order represented by stats like batting average, fielding average and RBI, teams of the new millennium like the Red Sox believe those are insignificant relics of a bygone era, the buggy whips of baseball.
They have been replaced by faith in OBP, OPS, UZR (I thought those were the initials of a former Russian state only to learn it means Ultimate Zone Rating), DRS (defensive runs saved) and PMR (probabilistic model of range). Based on crunching numbers into these new formulas, one expert in baseball metrics, John Dewan, has written that the addition of Adrian Beltre, Marco Scutaro and Mike Cameron in the field will add nine more victories to the Sox’ bottom line. Lo and behold, we just won the pennant! Who knew?
A year ago, the Sox won 95 games despite apparently stumbling around in the field like a half-drunken softball team in a Wednesday night league. Somehow they miraculously finished only eight games behind the Yankees without being able to catch a cold standing naked in the Alaskan wilderness. Fortunately, those Sox have been replaced by guys whose gloves are more valuable than Michael Jackson’s.
Together, Cameron, Scutaro and Beltre hit eight home runs more than Jason Bay but, as we now know, home runs are meaningless. Fortunately Sox fans, so are RBI because Bay had 119, which was 49 more than Cameron, 59 more than Scutaro and please don’t ask how many more than Beltre (all right, 75 if you must know but compare his DVD to Bay’s CD and divide by BVD and see what you get - a pennant, of course).
Some might argue that pitching in Fenway Park [map] is not exactly like pitching in Yosemite Park, but Sox’ management has discovered that despite mistaken evidence to the contrary, scoring runs is no longer essential to winning games. Interesting concept.
Throw the ball, catch it and trade a walk for a homer and just like that you’ve got nine more wins and a pennant. Or so they want you to believe over on Yawkey Way.
Owner John Henry recently reminded his paying customers that the Sox won 95 games a year ago. Only problem is the Yankees won 103 and the World Series, to which John Henry would reply, “Yeah, but what’s their ATM?”
Moneyball, which became defined as the love of sabermetrics over old-school stats like HR and RBI, has led Billy Beane, the godfather of this con job, to build an economic Oakland A’s team that hasn’t won a pennant in 20 years or a World Series in 21, but did manage to have a best-selling book written about the concept. The A’s did win division titles in 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2006, but what they have actually won during the Moneyball era is nothing. No sequel is planned.
Now it seems the Sox have headed down the same road of quantum baseball over your grandad’s version, which was mistakenly centered on foolishness like hitting and scoring runs.
This has gone so far that Dewan has come up with a new type of struck ball. While he factors ground balls, fly balls and line drives in his fielding metrics, he also has created “fliners.”
If mastery of fliners beats the Yankees, I’m all for it, but my lying eyes have told me it takes live arms and live bats. Gloves only beat the Yankees when Jason Varitek [stats] is stuffing one up the nose of Alex Rodriguez.
As the days dwindle toward the start of another spring of hope, let’s pray that’s no longer the case, because if all this talk of OBP, OPS, UZR, DRS and PMR was really only about ATM that’s going to end up BAD for US.
> http://bostonherald.com/sports/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1229098&format=comments#CommentsArea