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jad

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Everything posted by jad

  1. Pedro stays in longer than most think he should. He throws a good pitch to Posada who barely makes contact and gets a bloop hit to center. Had Pedro's pitch been a bit worse, and had Posada made decent contact, it would have been a lazy fly-ball to center and Grady Little would have been hailed a genius. As it was, he got fired ...
  2. That's a great song title! (But I think 'color' is not a good example, since I don't think it has an objective existence. Words and distinctions for colors are inconsistent across languages, and don't follow what might be found, say, in a prism or in wave-length measurement -- e.g., even in Old English, blood is 'brown' and gold is 'red'.) Oh well, in the end, I actually do agree with you on the value of statistics (even shaky ones) over the 'eye-test'. I used to believe firmly that you could tell the quality of a musician just by looking at the way they hold the instrument. Well, there is 'some' truth to this; but having been to hundreds of concerts, I have to concede that my certainty about the 'eye-test' test for musicianship is completely false.
  3. We're talking at cross-purposes, since you're objecting to a claim I never made. (By the way, BA was merely an example. We could have said anything: xWAR or # of errors or strike-out rate or WHIP or "percentage of doubles in away night games" ...)
  4. Well yes. But then, that's a very big "if," as there are many on this board (can't recall whether you are one) who argue that BA is NOT at all significant. So I suppose that yes, there is 'data' (as, for example, today the sun came out), but there will be little agreement as to what is significant. Compiling a list of the number of sheep in Boston suburbs, say, is unlikely to be admitted as 'data' regarding the success of the RS even though it is a 'given'.
  5. I don't really have one, I guess; but then again, I'm not the one invoking the term or the existence of what that term refers to. I suppose "things that happen unperceived by humans" might work (i.e., a "given"), but once perceived by humans, all bets are off. (Same response I might give if some religious wacko were to hit me with various defn's of 'God' then answer my objections with: 'So, what's YOUR definition of God?')
  6. Well, we're not going to agree. My point is that something like BA is not raw, since someone has made a determination that it is significant. BASEBALL could perhaps be defined as raw, as long as we agree entirely that that, and only that, is what we're talking about. (I doubt we could agree as to what the 'field' or 'corpus of evidence' would be, though). Oh well, only 5 months or so unttil spring training.
  7. I agree to some extent. But I think I would go further and say that in baseball (as in any area of research) there is no such thing as 'raw data', insofar as you need to define it in order to analyze it and that very definition often skews or determines the results.
  8. I certainly didn't intend to. Your argument about the effectiveness of eye-witness testimony is completely convincing. The question of whether eye-witness testimony is accurate is entirely different. (And I suppose this is close to but not identical to the stats vs. eye-test argument: what we see of a player's performance is pretty much convincing [at least to us]. We are annoyed when that is not reflected in stats.)
  9. It's pointless to argue with a legal professional who refuses to admit into discussion the difference between "best" (meaning most useful in court or in demagoguery) and "accurate." This difference was recognized in ancient times, but the study of rhetoric (essentially training in legal or quasi-legal speech) always focused on 'persuasion', and thus a number of early philosophers rejected the entire field. There seems to me no substantive difference in the various arguments here--only on what the topic of discussion is.
  10. There is of course a huge difference between getting a conviction and getting at the truth. I believe it was Dick Cheney (may have been Rumsfeld, but I don't think so) who unabashedly supported torturing prisoners because it was a very effective method for "getting confessions and thus convictions."
  11. Painful though it may be to say this, I believe that is significantly better than the RS did during the same period.
  12. I love a Yankees and Cardinals free series.
  13. Exactly!
  14. It seems like a small difference, but you mean "incorporate the human element" right? (rather than 'account for' it)?
  15. I get the idea, I just don't know the examples. Anyone in Boston? or obvious examples elsewhere? (I know some in the NBA, just not in MLB. We're talking about veterans who have a chance for a long-term contract taking a one-year deal instead.)
  16. I've heard this argument a couple of times. But it seems wishful thinking. Why would a veteran give up MLB's guaranteed money on a long-term deal for a one-year contract demanding that he 'prove himself'?
  17. I know this should be on another thread, but there is nothing I like better in the MLB than seeing "The Cardinal Way" exposed as fraud. (OK. Back to Cora.)
  18. Damn! They said I wouldn't have to go to the library for this class!
  19. Quote Originally Posted by Bellhorn04 View Post Decimated means destroyed. It's not generally used to refer to a resource that has been utilized to advantage. Sticking with the farm analogy, when farmers harvest their crops they don't usually call that 'decimating' their farm. Semantics, perhaps, but I think we all know what we're talking about here. The farm was destroyed Bell. Regardless of why it was destroyed or regardless of the ring that followed, the farm was destroyed. Actually, somewhat to my surprise and contrary to the way it's almost always used, 'decimate' does not mean 'destroy'. It means to kill one out of ten (10%). So I suppose in that sense, you could very well decimate the farm without doing it a whole lot of harm ... (well, taking 'kill' metaphorically.)
  20. Exactly. All you can do as a manager is take the players you're given and try to put them in a position to win. If they don't perform, that's on them, not you. There aren't many cases of managers doing the reverse: say, like putting Joe Kelly in a position of getting six outs in an extra-inning series-deciding game when you have other relievers watching from the bench.
  21. I'm sure the GM decided that there was no way they could keep a manager whose career BA is higher than the 2019 performance of a guy they just forked out nearly half-a-billion dollars for.
  22. Great time to finally get rid of the guy who is only .500 in World Championships. I understand Dave Roberts might be available. ... And don't the RS need a closer? LA might have one available.
  23. Fire the fans! I mean look, it's been a YEAR since they've had a parade! A whole year! And as for their loyalty, not one fan has showed up to Fenway in the last two weeks! Time to clean house. Get rid of all season-ticket owners and start afresh.
  24. Well now, let me think about that. If my g-f, whom I wanted as a life-partner, were to dump me, I don't think I'd mind coming back as her 'bit on the side'.
  25. And if the RS fans won't 'tolerate' something, exactly what is it they do? Compose brilliantly vitriolic posts on sports boards? Or show up to the games with hateful signs?
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