S5Dewey

Right or wrong, it's because when we talk about the umpire's calls we're talking about something that's a part of the game, and when we talk about UZR we're talking about statistics. Call me a little OCD if you must (and you may be right! LOL) but when someone tells me about a statistic I want it to be exact. Not 'close enough' & not subject to someone's interpretation, but exact. That's my problem with WAR - Even Fangraphs says it's not exact. Fangraphs admits that "Given the imperfections of some of the available data and the assumptions made to calculate other components, WAR works best as an approximation. A 6 WAR player might be worth between 5.0 and 7.0 WAR..." That's 17% and that's a margin of error that I'm not willing to hang my hat on. But getting back to the point at hand, I'm not prepared to say that just because umpires do something badly that's subjective we shouldn't blindly accept everything that's done subjectively.

Kimmie and I have a basic difference in beliefs. Hers are based primarily on mathematical data and mine are based primarily on experience. I'm good with that.

I'll still stick with my original thought on the topic. That the defense has to do one Hell of a lot right in order to catch someone stealing.

This post wins the award for "Post of the Day".

Sucky news. Dampens my enthusiasm for this season's success.

There is no subjectivity in WAR. These people are trained observers, so well trained that every one of them sees things exactly the same way. These people who believe that are the same people who don't believe that WAR is subject to a 17% (!) variability. Now you've got me started on THAT again!

With 1B open? Boone should absolutely have walked him. But I do understand the reluctance to put the runner at 3B where a passed ball or wild pitch would have allowed him to score. I would have walked Beni, but that's just me. That's because, as a Red Sox fan, in spite of how well JBJ has been hitting lately I'd rather have Beni up in that situation. I may be a big JBJ fan but I'm not stupid! LOL

All true, especially the part about the short leash. I also think he may be on a short leash for the future depending on how he does in this game. It's nice to have that 9 game lead so we can afford to take a chance on him again.

It would seem that pitchers would do that, but I've also seen times when they were pitched away from the shift, especially against a pull hitter (like JBJ used to be!). When a pull hitter tries to pull an outside pitch he'll usually hit a weak ground ball near 2nd base. Some hitters are now getting smarter and learning how to go with the pitch and hit it to the opposite field. If more hitters would do this the issue of banning shifts would become a moot (NOT MUTE! - that's one of my pet peeves. LOL) point.

I don't think I ever expected to see "Valentine", "genius" and "I miss him" in the same post. Jus' sayin'.

I'll say this for Kimmie.... she's consistent. She doesn't believe players can 'turn it up a notch' in certain situations so she doesn't see the need for a high quality closer. OTOH, I do think players can will themselves to rise to the occasion (occasionally) and therefore I want that lights-out closer. I'm not trying to resurrect any old battles with this post - it's just an observation about how different people see things and what their solutions are to the problems. And give Kimmie props for being consistent.

But there's a better chance of a runner on 2nd scoring on a hit than if that runner is on 1st, and baseball is all about scoring runs. I'm not all about our runners running all willy-nilly out there. There's a time and place for everything, along with a certain risk in trying to steal a base. The Sox are (were) stealing at an 84% rate because they're running smart and situationally. As an aside, when I think about the number of things that can go wrong for each team when a player is trying to steal a base I'm impressed that the percentage of successful steals isn't higher. There's only one thing that can go wrong for the offense. The player doesn't get there before the ball does. OTOH there are a lot of things that can go wrong for the defense. 1) the pitch isn't good enough for the catcher to handle, 2) the catcher mishandles a good pitch - usually on the transfer, 3) the catcher makes an errant throw, 4) the fielder mishandles the throw, 5) the fielder fails to make the tag. Given all of that IMO it's a testament to the abilities of the players that the stolen base percentage isn't higher than it is.

Nostradamus lives!!

...and I bought a Smoltz T-shirt in anticipation of him being great in Boston. As I keep saying, what do I know?

I'm not disputing the fact that sometimes our perception is skewed by actually seeing someone play recently. However, it also can be skewed by a retired player's reputation. There's a lot to the saying, "The older I get the better I was" and IMO it can be paraphrased to "The longer he's been retired the better he was". All I'm saying here is that IMO it's impossible to compare Yaz or Clemente to any current player. We can't do it from memory because some of us haven't even seen Yaz or Clemente, and those who have seen them play may have their opinion skewed one way or the other. We can't even really compare them using stats because the game and the playing conditions have changed. (Astroturf, DH, closers, workout regimens. even video). I'm old enough to have seen Clemente (on tv, infrequently), Yaz, Evans, etc. and I'm left with the opinion that those guys were really good! Then I see Mookie and JBJ make catches in the OF and I have to ask myself if they're better than the players of my youth. I don't have an answer to that question so I content myself with saying that it doesn't matter. I enjoy watching them make their plays and that's all that matters to me.

Last night's win felt like vindication, of sorts. A continuation of 2004. You'll remember that yesterday I made a reference to driving a wooden stake through their hearts. That's because up until 2004 it seemed like every time the Sox had a win against the Yankees in hand during a big game (or not) the Y's would rise up late in the game and snatch it away. It's no longer that way. In fact, it's now the opposite, and it feels GOOOOOOOOOOD!!

You're a mean bastard, do you know that?

Is that what you meant to say - that the threat of a stolen base makes a team more predictable? IMO the THREAT of a stolen base makes a team less predictable than not having that threat.

While I think my disdain for WAR has been pretty well documented here I do think that there are a lot of other advanced metrics that are useful. I'll confess that I'd never heard of BAPIP until Kimmie brought it up and I believe that Exit Velocity is something new this year. I believe those were the two metrics that Cora was thinking about when he kept saying that JBJ was on his way out of that horrendous slump in spite of the fact that JBJ's BA wasn't improving.

That's why he was playing CF even when he was batting

You don't get a high success rate by not running. You get a high success rate by running smart. But you also have to run in order to run smart.

The Sox now have a record of 79-34 (.700) and since the Sox are "only" playing .615 baseball (8-5) against the Yankees, the Y's are the only team that does damage against the Sox. I'll take that "damage", thanks. In fairness, Cash's quote was before this recent 4-game series. I wonder if he'd like to walk that back now.

Scumbag Arod spend his interview time talking about what the Yankees have to do to be more competitive. Always talking about the f***ing Yankees. No credit for the Sox.

Well, I just turned the audio back on and yep, the announcers still suck.

Say what you will about Nunez but the guy is a gamer.