jad

No idea. But from how they were talking, I just assumed it was an alternate crew for the RS.

Oh well. I guess it could be worse. The WS could have scored 2 or 3 in the first inning. The dog could have peed on the carpet.

Damn, the Dodgers are 16-7. Wouldn't it be great to be a big market team? And get to see generational players like Mookie Betts play every day?

After this, I'm off to yard the weed.

Well, we were curious what a Bloom RS team would look like ... I just didn't think we'd reach Bobby Valentine levels so quickly.

Yeah, the old 'humid air is heavier than clear air' myth.

If they did, even under the best case, wouldn't they still be barely a .500 team?

Just a quick search: the only study I found in my cursory search was one over the past twenty years or so, and it found that roughly 55% of dh were sweeps, 45% splits. Need help from a mathematician here, but it seems to me, if you took any 2 games at random, you have 50% chance of winning the first, and 50% the second. So each team has a 25% chance of sweeping. I.e., the chances of a 'sweep' by either team are 50%. Looks to me that in the 'real world', there are more sweeps than would be expected mathematically; thus historically, it's a better bet that the dh will be a sweep than that it will be split. (This will be true regardless of a team's record--obviously for a team with a dismal record, the chances of a sweep by that team will be very low. For the RS tonight, somewhere around 20%). It's quite possible I'm wrong here as it has been over a half-century since i flunked statistics.

Absolutely! In weather and in life. Don't sit on your ass today thinking tomorrow everything will clear up! As for winning double-headers, do you know the statistics on this? (A fairly easy problem: is a team's record in double-headers significantly different from that team's record in general. I suspect it is not, even though we all believe it is.)

Latest weather has it clearing late (by game time), so they'll likely play, no?

Ha ha! How is this 'nothing against Cora'? Dear Alex--nothing personal now, you've done great. But you're fired. Always--for JH

I don't understand the difference between 'stats' and 'results'.

I guess that he was just following the rule: Never make the first or last out of the inning at third.

Has Cordero ever played 1B before?

Remind me the case against robo-umps?

Yup. Get rid of everyone. That will be 7 or 8 more reasons not to watch them.

Yeah, but you're ignoring all those years he spent in the lab, studying microbiology and epidemiology.

That plate appearance by Dalbec has to be among the worst ABs of the season.

Right! (I knew in the end we basically agree.)

OK. So your response "100% irrelevant" refers not to the invocation of wins in the statement that 'wins are irrelevant' ? rather what is irrelevant is "the statement that wins are relevant"? This is a nuanced distinction that may not be within my mental abilities to unpack. In any case, my point is that you've already baked in 'wins' as a primary factor in computing a player's value (isn't that what the W stands for?). "Wins" (real or imagined) is what it's all about. What I'm saying (on the matter of retaining players or letting them go) is that for an owner (and for a lot of fans), wins is NOT what it's all about. (Take an example from a team I despise: the Lakers in 2021-22. Ownership hardly gives a crap about LeBron's WAR [if basketball has such a thing]; nor do they care what Westbrook's shooting percentage is. The 'value' of these players is that they pack the Staples Center each and every night. Fans may pretend to care about ownership finances, but they only care about that as it is reflected in team success. Owners likely care about a number of other things, including the popularity of their team and how much income individual players can be imagined to contribute to that.)

You don't. That's my point.

I know. But I find the whole enterprise a snipe hunt. The purpose of WAR (as I understand it) is to provide a way of translating a player's performance into potential 'wins' by a team. You could use any statistic on that basis (e.g., do the teams with the highest BA win the most games? Is there a correlation between team ERA and w/l. You're looking for a stat that has the highest correlation with actual team performance). By the difficulty of doing that is shown perfectly by the claim above that real "win/losses" are irrelevant. No they're not. They are fundamental. (They don't have to be, of course: it would be perfectly legitimate to use stats to determine something else of equal importance: "how does a player salary or performance translate into greater revenue from ticket sales and gear sales?" In this case, yes, wins/losses are irrelevant.)

Ha ha! In what field do scholars or experts promote transparency? You will never hire me as a consultant if I can do no more than a 10-year-old can do or understand. Nor will you have any reason to fire me if my theories are entirely self-validating and any evidence against me is ruled out of court. (note in this very thread that wins/losses are defined as 'irrelevant'.)

Yes. Wins and losses. The team that has more wins is better than the team that has fewer of them. The boxer that wins the fight is better than the one that loses. The team that wins the WS is better than the team they beat.

Shaw on first. Vazquez at home. Brasier on the mound. (I guess that answers the question.)