JD Drew

[User Name]

The facts prove otherwise. Your opinion isn't fact. In the final analysis during his tenure when totaling up his body of work the stats prove he was a mediocrity for the Boston Red Sox.

 

I think you've got it wrong.

 

You're blatantly ignoring any and all statistical data brought up and smearing the discussion with "what you think" and "what others before him did".

 

If you can't take an objective look at the stats and counter what they say (Note: Unlike opinion, statistics are objective and factual) there is no use discussing the matter further.

 

As Dojji said, it's easier to continue with flawed rationale than to look at things objectively apparently.

[Elktonnick]

I think you've got it wrong.

 

You're blatantly ignoring any and all statistical data brought up and smearing the discussion with "what you think" and "what others before him did".

 

If you can't take an objective look at the stats and counter what they say (Note: Unlike opinion, statistics are objective and factual) there is no use discussing the matter further.

 

As Dojji said, it's easier to continue with flawed rationale than to look at things objectively apparently.

 

No you are interpreting stats subjectively. Look I am talking about Rfer who played for the Red Sox over the past fifyy years ---Mediocre. Similar ballplayesr historical performance age 30 35: below average. Attitude: Lousy. Tony Larussa et al ;doesn't play up to talent classic definition of mediocrity. Spin it any way you want but for the past two years he downright sucked. Yes 2007 - 2009 was above average but only one year an all star. June of 2008 great. Highs and lows sum total mediocre. One thing the stats don't show when he got his hits. Was it crunch time or garbage time? I say the latter.

[User Name]

No you are interpreting stats subjectively. Look I am talking about Rfer who played for the Red Sox over the past fifyy years ---Mediocre. Similar ballplayesr historical performance age 30 35: below average. Attitude: Lousy. Tony Larussa et al ;doesn't play up to talent classic definition of mediocrity. Spin it any way you want but for the past two years he downright sucked. Yes 2007 - 2009 was above average but only one year an all star. June of 2008 great. Highs and lows sum total mediocre. One thing the stats don't show when he got his hits. Was it crunch time or garbage time? I say the latter.

 

You're the only one talking about "Sox RFers from the past fifty years". That's not the way you measure a guy's production against his peers, neither is being an All-Star.

 

Also, we are talking about his aggregate statistics as a Red Sox encompassing all five years of his contract, in which he posted an .824 OPS (Average RF having an .OPS around the .770's) making his production decidedly above average, if you summarize the length of the contract.

 

TLR's comments are not gospel, and they are not pertinent to the discussion. Stats, on the other hand, are pertinent. Attitude does not matter, not wanting to play hurt does not matter, production matters.

 

If you want to prove your point, then prove statistically how a 114 OPS+ (Meaning he was 14% better than your average player) and nearly 50 point advantage in OPS over the average RF from 2007-2011 prove he was anything but an above average player.

 

Not elite, not great, but above average.

[Elktonnick]

You're the only one talking about "Sox RFers from the past fifty years". That's not the way you measure a guy's production against his peers, neither is being an All-Star.

 

Also, we are talking about his aggregate statistics as a Red Sox encompassing all five years of his contract, in which he posted an .824 OPS (Average RF having an .OPS around the .770's) making his production decidedly above average, if you summarize the length of the contract.

 

TLR's comments are not gospel, and they are not pertinent to the discussion. Stats, on the other hand, are pertinent. Attitude does not matter, not wanting to play hurt does not matter, production matters.

 

If you want to prove your point, then prove statistically how a 114 OPS+ (Meaning he was 14% better than your average player) and nearly 50 point advantage in OPS over the average RF from 2007-2011 prove he was anything but an above average player.

 

Not elite, not great, but above average.

 

Those are totally misleading stats and comparisons. Performance is based on context and depend on variaables that affect the results. To illustrate if a ball players plays only against weak opponents it is obvious that his results would be better. I admit that is a generalization but it illustrates the point. The point is that stats are not absolutes, not all 250 hitters are the same.

Attitude is important and highly relevent . In the end I'd prefer to have LaRussa on my side. Drew will go down in Red Sox history as a mediocrity because he wanted to be. Most RSN agrees with my point of view Drew is best forgotten. A could have been but a never was because he didn't give a s*** enough to ever study the pitches the Dvid Price to strike him out even though he would play the Rays more than 19 times over the next three years.

Defend him if you must! In doing so, however, you a putting in more effort than he ever would. I find that to be the most ironic twist of all in this highly enjoyable intellectual diversion.

[User Name]

Those are totally misleading stats and comparisons. Performance is based on context and depend on variaables that affect the results. To illustrate if a ball players plays only against weak opponents it is obvious that his results would be better. I admit that is a generalization but it illustrates the point. The point is that stats are not absolutes, not all 250 hitters are the same.

Attitude is important and highly relevent . In the end I'd prefer to have LaRussa on my side. Drew will go down in Red Sox history as a mediocrity because he wanted to be. Most RSN agrees with my point of view Drew is best forgotten. A could have been but a never was because he didn't give a s*** enough to ever study the pitches the Dvid Price to strike him out even though he would play the Rays more than 19 times over the next three years.

Defend him if you must! In doing so, however, you a putting in more effort than he ever would. I find that to be the most ironic twist of all in this highly enjoyable intellectual diversion.

 

I don't care about Drew personally. But i do like to defend the facts.

 

The fact is, that he produced above average numbers, on average, throughout the length of his contract.

 

All of these subjective additions and conjecture don't matter to me.

 

If you can't argue against the numbers, then we can just leave this discussion right here.

[jung]

I just don't know if people are not looking past his lack of toughness and don't look as the actual statistical data. I will be the first guy to agree that he missed to many games and seemed to let the smallest injury sideline him. But you just can't look at the guys numbers and say that he was not above average for his peer group while he was on the field.

 

If you want to contend that his lack of toughness and the number of games missed makes for an overall impression of having less of an impact as a player than he could have had then I completely agree. But at some point you also have to look at the absolute numbers because that is how you value his absence. Maybe looking at RBI's tells you something about how much his absence hurt his total contribution to the Sox effort because just about the only way you can rationalize his RBI totals against his other numbers is to say that he was just not on the field enough. But many of the combined statistical values are designed to form a judgement about the value of the player in a given game on a given day. Looking at those, it is hard to argue that he was just average or below average.

[Elktonnick]

I don't care about Drew personally. But i do like to defend the facts.

 

The fact is, that he produced above average numbers, on average, throughout the length of his contract.

 

All of these subjective additions and conjecture don't matter to me.

 

If you can't argue against the numbers, then we can just leave this discussion right here.

 

That is false he did not produce above average numbers on average throught the length of his contract. take this year for example. If you don't agree with my calling him a mediocirity so be it but that doesn't change the fact the that's the way he will remembered

[jung]

The thing to remember about a good many of the stats used today is that they really are not trying to define a value like "best Sox RF of all time" or "best RF ever". They are trying to value a specific Right Fielder and his potential to contribute to your team's effort on a given day in a given game against those of his peers.

 

In other words, if healthy would you prefer to have Drew in your right field today or some other right fielder of those currently playing. What Tony Conigliaro could do for you does not matter because he is not available to play for you or anybody you might compete against. The stats say that if Drew was healthy on a given day you would prefer to have Drew in your Right Field than more than 50% of his Right Field peers.

 

Now if you were a GM you might say to yourself " Geez if we can just find a way to keep this guy on the field, we would be getting more production out of our Right Fielder than more than half the teams in baseball" or you might say, "the drop off on my team is to great if I cannot keep this guy in the lineup so while I would love to have him, I can't afford to have him because he misses to many games and I can't afford the drop off for the number of times I have to play his replacement".

[User Name]

That is false he did not produce above average numbers on average throught the length of his contract. take this year for example. If you don't agree with my calling him a mediocirity so be it but that doesn't change the fact the that's the way he will remembered

 

I don't mean this as an insult, but i don't think you understand, in this context, what "average" means.

 

Also, jung is spot-on on everything he has said.

[Elktonnick]

I don't mean this as an insult, but i don't think you understand, in this context, what "average" means.

 

Also, jung is spot-on on everything he has said.

 

Oh but I do. I don't you understand what they mean at all. I could give the texts concerning variance etc on statistical analysis and the difference between medium mode and mean when discussing averages. But what's the point. You all seem to think that all 250 hitters are alike.

 

While I don't have a graduate degree in statistics I have taken enough graduate level courses in statistics to understand the difference. The point is this discussion is futile because I won't accept your narrow view of performance and you say attitude or the opinion of experts such as LaRussa on Drews level of committement are unimportant.

 

In summation Drew was a fraud. He defrauded ownership and the fans because he never gave it his best. What you who defend him fail to understand was, he is a mediocrity not because of what he did on the field but for what he didn't do and could have. To be vulgar he couldn't hold Jensen's, Congliaro or Even's jock strap. When it is all written he was the most average of all regular right fielders to play for the Boston Red Sox since before you were born. I assume of course that you never saw Jackie Jensen play. Drew couldn't even be bothered to study Price's strikeout. Appalling and indefensible!

[Dojji]

You are a fraud. You've already had it demonstrated to you exactly why these points are erroneous. come back with new material or don't come back.

[jacksonianmarch]

You are a fraud. You've already had it demonstrated to you exactly why these points are erroneous. come back with new material or don't come back.

 

pot-kettle-black, lol

[Elktonnick]

You are a fraud. You've already had it demonstrated to you exactly why these points are erroneous. come back with new material or don't come back.

 

That was a clever retort ! I' find it amusing how quickly some resort to personal ad hominium attacks. Usually it means they know they've lost the intellectual argument. BTW I will come back as often as I like. I guess Tony laRussa is a fraud also:D

[jung]

Geez, this discussion has taken an odd turn. I had thought I would just leave the discussion because it seemed to be hitting a stone wall. Then I decided to take a shot at a different tack. Elk I really don't think anybody is saying that Larussa is a fraud. I don't think anybody is arguing that Drew would not have been a more significant contributor to the Red Sox had he played in more games, had he been less inclined to sit for what we would tend to think are niggling injuries, if he had a stronger work ethic ala' the Larussa comment or Remy's etc. However Drew's "attitude" and his work ethic are things that sit one layer underneath the things that a GM is first going to look at and it really should not sit any higher than at least one layer below the things we should look at when looking at these ballplayers.

 

First the GM is going to look at Drew's stats and he is also going to look at the number of games Drew averages per season and Drew's cost and if they meet his expectations there is not much more that he is going to care about. I used his toughness or lack of toughness in my previous post as an example of how a GM might process that information. However i do think you, Elk, tend to roll those elements of argument for or against signing a player into his stats and they stand aside from his stats and simply provide some context. It is precisely because Drew's stats rank him favorably against his current day RF peers for games that the players in question are healthy enough to play in that a GM might look for context and decide to pursue or not pursue Drew as a player for his team.

 

Now I do think you are taking Larussa's comments even farther than he would take them. If Drew were giving Larussa what he wanted then Larussa might not have that much angst about what Drew was not giving him. Larussa is simply saying that for the cost, Drew did not give him enough and Larussa is then giving us his insight into why he thinks Drew did not give him enough, why Drew did not meet HIS expectations. While we are on the topic of Larussa and Drew, the Cards were the first MLB team that Drew played for so it is no wonder that Larussa ultimately expressed disappointment in Drew's work ethic and drive and how Drew was developing as a pro ballplayer. However by the time Drew was under consideration by the Sox he had already established a pretty remarkable record for playing a rather unremarkable % of the available games in any given season. In fact he did better in Boston than he did elsewhere.

 

As far as studying pitchers goes, Mickey Mantle did not believe in studying pitchers. He did not believe in studying pitchers he did well against or pitchers he did poorly against. Mickey Mantle believed in his hand to eye coordination, the quickness in his wrists and in his innate power. He believed that you went up to the plate, you saw the pitch and you swung at it as hard as you could. Anybody would have been happy to have had Mickey Mantle playing in his outfield regardless of the fact that he did not study the game in the sense that Ted Williams studied it. While he played in immense pain due to leg injuries that occurred during the course of play, the fact remains that he took terrible care of himself and there is no telling how much of his immense talent he frittered away in a bath of booze and late night binges, things clearly as damaging to our thoughts about the underlying elements that sit underneath his stats as the things that underlie Drew's stats. Mickey Mantle was still a great ballplayer that any GM would have dearly loved to have when compared to the other outfielders of his day. The point being that at the first order of business it is whether or not you get the job done, whether or not you meet your employer's expectations for the $ he is paying you when compared to other options available to him at the time. If you don't then GM's will ask themselves if you will get enough of the job done to justify your cost or will ask themselves if they can work with you so that you do get enough of the job done but they are not necessarily going to concern themselves about whether or not you are a fraud or had poor work ethic or lacked toughness or any of those things that we like to discuss here.

 

As for Remy's comment, how is Remy to Drew different from Mantle to Williams. Remy is telling us that he would have studied pitchers that he did poorly against and Drew is simply saying that he does not. Whatever Remy thinks about that it is still an element of Drew's makeup that simply provides some context.

 

And while we are on the topic of being a fraud, Drew is not a fraud either. JD Drew has never behaved any differently than he behaved as a Red Sox. His behavior here is entirely in line with his behavior throughout his career. He was known to be soft before Theo and the Red Sox FO decided to bring him here offering him the contract THEY offered him. How is that Drew's fault and how is Drew a fraud for performing like and acting exactly as he has for the bulk of his career? His career numbers look very much like you would expect for an aging player. His power numbers go up marginally as he ages and his batting average suffers marginally as he slows and is less able to leg out hits. No s*** Sherlock.

 

You want a year that he played fewer games than 2011?....2005....72 games. He was 35 years old in 2011 for one thing, on a team that we eventually discovered had turned into a 3 ring circus. Who the hell knows how much that had an impact on Drew's 2011 season. However I would neither vilify him worse nor excuse him more than the bulk of the players on the 2011 Sox. But if you look at his stats for every other year including the number of games played, there is little to distinguish them from his earlier years. The Sox FO brought him here and paid the money and whether we like it or not, he basically performed for that period just as you would have expected if in 2007 you were using his past performance to determine if you should sign him and estimate his performance for the years 2007 -2011.

 

I can tell who would be a fraud. If Theo claimed that he was disappointed or surprised by Drew's performance it is Theo that would be the fraud but I would bet that if you asked him, he would say that Drew performed to HIS expectations. What the hell else is Theo going to say?

[Elktonnick]

Geez, this discussion has taken an odd turn. I had thought I would just leave the discussion because it seemed to be hitting a stone wall. Then I decided to take a shot at a different tack. Elk I really don't think anybody is saying that Larussa is a fraud. I don't think anybody is arguing that Drew would not have been a more significant contributor to the Red Sox had he played in more games, had he been less inclined to sit for what we would tend to think are niggling injuries, if he had a stronger work ethic ala' the Larussa comment or Remy's etc. However Drew's "attitude" and his work ethic are things that sit one layer underneath the things that a GM is first going to look at and it really should not sit any higher than at least one layer below the things we should look at when looking at these ballplayers.

 

First the GM is going to look at Drew's stats and he is also going to look at the number of games Drew averages per season and Drew's cost and if they meet his expectations there is not much more that he is going to care about. I used his toughness or lack of toughness in my previous post as an example of how a GM might process that information. However i do think you, Elk, tend to roll those elements of argument for or against signing a player into his stats and they stand aside from his stats and simply provide some context. It is precisely because Drew's stats rank him favorably against his current day RF peers for games that the players in question are healthy enough to play in that a GM might look for context and decide to pursue or not pursue Drew as a player for his team.

 

Now I do think you are taking Larussa's comments even farther than he would take them. If Drew were giving Larussa what he wanted then Larussa might not have that much angst about what Drew was not giving him. Larussa is simply saying that for the cost, Drew did not give him enough and Larussa is then giving us his insight into why he thinks Drew did not give him enough, why Drew did not meet HIS expectations. While we are on the topic of Larussa and Drew, the Cards were the first MLB team that Drew played for so it is no wonder that Larussa ultimately expressed disappointment in Drew's work ethic and drive and how Drew was developing as a pro ballplayer. However by the time Drew was under consideration by the Sox he had already established a pretty remarkable record for playing a rather unremarkable % of the available games in any given season. In fact he did better in Boston than he did elsewhere.

 

As far as studying pitchers goes, Mickey Mantle did not believe in studying pitchers. He did not believe in studying pitchers he did well against or pitchers he did poorly against. Mickey Mantle believed in his hand to eye coordination, the quickness in his wrists and in his innate power. He believed that you went up to the plate, you saw the pitch and you swung at it as hard as you could. Anybody would have been happy to have had Mickey Mantle playing in his outfield regardless of the fact that he did not study the game in the sense that Ted Williams studied it. While he played in immense pain due to leg injuries that occurred during the course of play, the fact remains that he took terrible care of himself and there is no telling how much of his immense talent he frittered away in a bath of booze and late night binges, things clearly as damaging to our thoughts about the underlying elements that sit underneath his stats as the things that underlie Drew's stats. Mickey Mantle was still a great ballplayer that any GM would have dearly loved to have when compared to the other outfielders of his day. The point being that at the first order of business it is whether or not you get the job done, whether or not you meet your employer's expectations for the $ he is paying you when compared to other options available to him at the time. If you don't then GM's will ask themselves if you will get enough of the job done to justify your cost or will ask themselves if they can work with you so that you do get enough of the job done but they are not necessarily going to concern themselves about whether or not you are a fraud or had poor work ethic or lacked toughness or any of those things that we like to discuss here.

 

As for Remy's comment, how is Remy to Drew different from Mantle to Williams. Remy is telling us that he would have studied pitchers that he did poorly against and Drew is simply saying that he does not. Whatever Remy thinks about that it is still an element of Drew's makeup that simply provides some context.

 

And while we are on the topic of being a fraud, Drew is not a fraud either. JD Drew has never behaved any differently than he behaved as a Red Sox. His behavior here is entirely in line with his behavior throughout his career. He was known to be soft before Theo and the Red Sox FO decided to bring him here offering him the contract THEY offered him. How is that Drew's fault and how is Drew a fraud for performing like and acting exactly as he has for the bulk of his career? His career numbers look very much like you would expect for an aging player. His power numbers go up marginally as he ages and his batting average suffers marginally as he slows and is less able to leg out hits. No s*** Sherlock.

 

You want a year that he played fewer games than 2011?....2005....72 games. He was 35 years old in 2011 for one thing, on a team that we eventually discovered had turned into a 3 ring circus. Who the hell knows how much that had an impact on Drew's 2011 season. However I would neither vilify him worse nor excuse him more than the bulk of the players on the 2011 Sox. But if you look at his stats for every other year including the number of games played, there is little to distinguish them from his earlier years. The Sox FO brought him here and paid the money and whether we like it or not, he basically performed for that period just as you would have expected if in 2007 you were using his past performance to determine if you should sign him and estimate his performance for the years 2007 -2011.

 

I can tell who would be a fraud. If Theo claimed that he was disappointed or surprised by Drew's performance it is Theo that would be the fraud but I would bet that if you asked him, he would say that Drew performed to HIS expectations. What the hell else is Theo going to say?

 

That is a fair, reasoned and rational defense of JD Drew. I enjoyed reading it. While it is not the position I would take, it was an excellent piece of writing and analysis, nevertheless. Sincerely.

 

At some point I would like to amplify the discussion as to the role attitude and temperment play in player evaluation as well a more detailed analysis of the proper interpretation of statistics rather than the face validity given the raw data. But, that will be for another time when the climate is right perhaps after the Red Sox have chosen their management team

[User Name]

The point of statistics is eliminating subjectivity from player analysis. Personal opinion on a player is usually driven by emotion or relies on the incomplete data brought by what the analyst's eyes see.

[a700hitter]

There was no video on demand in clubhouses for players to study in Mantles day, so I don't know how he was going to study pitchers. If there had been video in the locker room, maybe he would have taken a peek while icing his legs.

[jung]

There was no video in the locker rooms but there was video available. He could have studied pitchers if he wanted to. He did not put much faith in scouting reports either. They just did not matter to him. He was as far removed from the Ted Williams school of hitting as you could get. Mantle was certainly not as disciplined a hitter as Williams was by a long shot as he did not quadrant off the strike zone and look for a pitch in the way that Williams did. That said he was not the least disciplined hitter in the Yankee lineup of the times. Berra probably gets that award for least disciplined, successful hitter the Yankees had.

[a700hitter]

There was no video in the locker rooms but there was video available. He could have studied pitchers if he wanted to.

Where was it available?

[jung]

There was film if you wanted to look at it. There was very little of it but it was there. The point being that Wiliams looked at everything, scouting reports any film that was out there, anything. Mantle hardly looked at anything. In the later stages of Mantle's career there would have been the very beginnings of some video that you could look at as well as Mantle did last long enough to make it into the television era. It was almost harder to come by than film but his career did last long enough to make it to the very beginnings of video.

[a700hitter]

There was film if you wanted to look at it. There was very little of it but it was there. The point being that Wiliams looked at everything' date=' scouting reports any film that was out there, anything. Mantle hardly looked at anything. In the later stages of Mantle's career there would have been the very beginnings of some video that you could look at as well as Mantle did last long enough to make it into the television era. It was almost harder to come by than film but his career did last long enough to make it to the very beginnings of video.[/quote']It really wasn't readily available.

[dominicanredsox]

i will not miss jd drew

[Elktonnick]

The point of statistics is eliminating subjectivity from player analysis. Personal opinion on a player is usually driven by emotion or relies on the incomplete data brought by what the analyst's eyes see.

 

That is not accurate. In the compilation of any data there are wide number of variables that effect the data.. The idea that statistics by themself present an absolute truth is simply not true. For example, during the steroid era weren't power numbers higher? So Bond's home run total and Ruth's home run total are not comparable without interpretation of the variables that effected how and when the data was obtained. This why statisticians talk of margin of error, variance validity and reliability factors when presenting any statistical analysis in psychology, economics or politics etc.

[mvp 78]

And statistics are up to as much subjectivity as the eyeball test. Personal bias affects everything.

[User Name]

That is not accurate. In the compilation of any data there are wide number of variables that effect the data.. The idea that statistics by themself present an absolute truth is simply not true. For example' date=' during the steroid era weren't power numbers higher? So Bond's home run total and Ruth's home run total are not comparable without interpretation of the variables that effected how and when the data was obtained. This why statisticians talk of margin of error, variance validity and reliability factors when presenting any statistical analysis in psychology, economics or politics etc.[/quote']

 

I didn't say they presented an absolute truth. I said they presented data objectively, which they do. How people interpret them is the only subjective part about it.

 

I don't get your point at all, since most statistics have built in mechanisms to account for variance, etc. which you mention yourself. Look at OPS+ (since baseball is what we're talking about, and you bring up politics) it's adjusted for league output and stadium variables, that's why Babe Ruth has a higher career OPS+ than Bonds.

 

I don't mean to come off as a jerk here, but i don't think you know how many of these statistics work. Maybe you should take the time to analyze them.

[User Name]

And statistics are up to as much subjectivity as the eyeball test. Personal bias affects everything.

 

That's when it comes to interpretation. Not the statistic itself.

[mvp 78]

That's when it comes to interpretation. Not the statistic itself.

 

Seeing that there are numerous different calculations for WAR, I'll disagree. You don't think there is subjectivity in how the calculation was created?

[User Name]

Seeing that there are numerous different calculations for WAR' date=' I'll disagree. You don't think there is subjectivity in how the calculation was created?[/quote']

 

That's not the point. And there are exactly three ways to calculate WAR.

 

The thing is that they're different methods of trying to calculate something that's not meant to be quantifiable like "Value". Because the number of methods to define "value" is almost infinite, there's going to be a specific set of variables that will be chosen in order to calculate, but always with the same end result in mind.

 

I would tell you it was absolutely subjective if the actual purpose of the formula wasn't to remove as much variability as possible when assigning a value number to a player, but there are so many ways to do that, that of course there are going to be different proponents of different ways to assign "value".

 

Again, in this case, it's a matter of what's trying to be calculated not being a readily calculable factor, instead of an exercise of subjectivity by the calculators, because the subjectivity is inherent to the factor being studied.

 

OPS, OPS+, and wOBA are statistics that never elicit this kind of ideas, because of the nature of what they're trying to measure.

[Elktonnick]

I didn't say they presented an absolute truth. I said they presented data objectively, which they do. How people interpret them is the only subjective part about it.

 

I don't get your point at all, since most statistics have built in mechanisms to account for variance, etc. which you mention yourself. Look at OPS+ (since baseball is what we're talking about, and you bring up politics) it's adjusted for league output and stadium variables, that's why Babe Ruth has a higher career OPS+ than Bonds.

 

I don't mean to come off as a jerk here, but i don't think you know how many of these statistics work. Maybe you should take the time to analyze them.

 

You do come off as a jerk. Sorry for being so blunt! I've read James's book and am quite familar with statistics in general and their interpretation since I use and interprete them daily professionally. I just have become less enamored with his (James's) work than I was several years ago when I first posted defending his thesis on another board.

 

Not to be provocative, but the subjectivity begins when one makes the decision as what to measure or which variables to factor in as important.

 

I was making a larger point that all data is subject to interpretation. And the various variance formulae are attempts to objectify and assign quantative values to assist in that interpretation. What you refer to as objective perhaps is a misnomer when actually quantative may be a better description. (The whole question of objective truth and statistics is larger question for someother board )l In the end it is a subjective analysis which quantative data can assist. That was my original point which you may finally understand. Otherwise Carmine would manage the team.

 

Let me make another provocative analogy to illustrate this point. The Red Sox 2011 season has been described as disasterous. Why ? They didn't win the title when many expected them to. Okay that's one interpretation. Yet, they won 90 games. Compared to the thirty other teams they had an "above average" season. Yet in the American League East they finished third or mediocre. Which was it, disasterous, above average, or mediocre. All are objectively true. There is data supporting each interpretation. Which, one accepts depends on one's perspective. I don't demean someone or another poster because they choose one of the three options. I may disagree but not demean.

 

I choos to describe Drew as mediocre based on the data I consider important.

[Bellhorn04]

I choos to describe Drew as mediocre based on the data I consider important.

 

Which specific data are you you referring to as the ones you consider important?