- All teams are *not* the same, after all
many dozens of stupid things have been done, just in the last decade or so, over the objections of the general manager. Often, it’s because owners consider themselves the public face of their franchises and just can’t handle the criticism that would come with letting popular players leave.
Does this absolve the general manager, completely? No. Among the general manager’s many and sundry chores — and one of the most important — is convincing his boss to avoid terribly stupid decisions
- mikeA’s new favorite player
Bob Bell, Trevor’s paternal grandfather, was Bozo the Clown to Chicago-based WGN-TV’s viewers for years
- mikeA’s new favorite protective device
“We’re going to look like a bunch of clowns out there.”
- I want to see this pitch:
he’s left-handed and he throws a pitch I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, a sidearm curveball that clocks around 50 on the radar gun
Neyer says the pitch needs a nickname. I’d suggest “The Long Con.”
- Duke to make one more rehab start tonight, then Tuesday vs. the Yankees. Any guesses where he ends up? Olney’s guess: Rangers. Sounds about right to me.
- Anyone interested in taking a flyer on JJ Hardy or Bill Hall? OK, any better ideas, then?
All teams are *not* the same, after all: DLD 081309 83
83 thoughts on “All teams are *not* the same, after all: DLD 081309”
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Can you imagine being the barrista?
Duh I
Duh II
The main reason senior oppose any changes whatsoever to Medicare is because Part D was and remains so totally fucked up. That, and the constant drumbeat that we’ll have to “reform” (i.e., euthanize) both Medicare and Social Security in order to have enough money keep buying F-22s and fighting the War on Drugs in Afghanistan.
(Also, reminder to self: never, ever, ever hire Yglesias for any sort of PR/marketing/public awareness campaign.)
Also, a Duh Corollary: there’s also the fact that this dynamic is much like the “Congress is Teh Suxxorz!!1! … but my Representative is awesome!” phenomenon — which itself, I suspect, skews even more pronounced among the elderly.
Sweet Ba’al Almighty. Napoleon is now self-consciously invoking Ostler.
Confirmation bias much?
It’s kind of funny how one of the common criticisms of stat-heads is that we “don’t take psychology into account.”
…wait a minute, you do?
Absolutely. To me, the main lesson of psychology is that people are exceptionally good of finding post hoc explanations, especially ones that fit in with their existing theories, for why things happened as they did, and terrible at understanding randomness.
… that, plus the St**ford Prison Experiment.
You are a BROWN MONKEY! YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME! {begins whacking MB with riding crop}
Well, the criticism would be not taking psychology into account as an important factor in baseball. Stat-heads are probably not often accused of not taking psychology into account on the question of why people like **** write really stupid shit.
To answer LB’s question, to the extent psychology influences real world outcomes, it is taken into effect. To the extent it influences “intangibles” that are so intangible as to have no real world impact, it is not taken into effect.
In other words, if a player learns to stay calm (see, perhaps, Gio) and improves their performance by Y, stat-heads measure Y. If, however, the player is happy but performs the same, or worse, (see, perhaps, Giambi) stat-heads don’t care.
In other words, insofar as there is (both qualitative and quantitative) empirical evidence from psychological experts that bears on the question at hand, statheads will seek to include it.
Empirical evidence, however, is right out for the antistatheads. “Psychology,” in their usage, means “aspects of kneejerk conventional wisdom about gross generalizations of human behavior that confirm my thesis.”
Psychological effects are often embedded within the data, so while they are typically not teased out as an orthogonal factor, they are frequently incorporated directly into the model.
I can’t tell if this is a dig at me or a ****
Nonnono, my dear Sal: MB’s merely answering my question through cartoon, which, if you’ve bean paying attention, is my favorite method of co-mune-E-Kay-shun.
Staheads use the groundbreaking work of Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.
Speaking of confirmation bias, how about Bruce Jenkins (quite possibly the stupidest fucking guy on the planet) saying that the best thing about yesterday’s Giants game was that Lincecum was left in to hit for himself in the bottom of the 8th.
Another case of confirmation bias:
Also, I hate whenever ** has a discussion about Cust. It always seems to bring out the worst of people being, as andeux said, “exceptionally good at finding post hoc explanations, especially ones that fit in with their existing theories, for why things happened as they did, and terrible at understanding randomness.”
Yeah, I like how every time Cust has a slump it means the league has suddenly “figured him out” – as if the book on Cust wasn’t already known five years ago.
How about this:
In a thread full of fail, that still stood out to me.
Sweet Ba’al Almighty II
Has anyone ever seen Napoleon, Vlae Kershner, and Dwight Schrute in the same room together?
Ah, cripes. I was going to make a disparaging Klostermanesque comment about JoePos as well, but VK really mischaracterizes the post with a highly selective paraphrase — and then JoePos gives in to temptation, lets the post go on too long, and cooks his thesis. Joe, batters like those on the Royals don’t walk because … they don’t walk. Period. In good times or bad. And diving for a fly ball is more reliably a sign that the OF took a poor jump/route than it is of the OF’s will-to-power.
Disagree with your last statement. In fact, I don’t think we have any evidence that outfielders who dive are more or less likely to have taken a bad route to the ball. The dive is likely to come into play when the ball is in the outer reaches of their range (as defined for a specific play given their jump/route), which is (probably) independent of their jump/route (or more precisely, we don’t know whether it is either independent, positively correlated, or negatively correlated).
An OF may be more inclined to take the risk of diving if he is trying to make up for a bad jump/route. (If you figure out whether I am serious or kidding let me know. I’m not sure.)
On the other hand, a poor outfielder may be less likely to have the requisite physical coordination to execute a successful dive, and so may not bother.
I think Eric Byrnes’ new nickname should be “The Orthogonal Factor.”
Nicknames are useless once a player’s career is over.
It could be the title of his radio or tv show: The Orthogonal Factor, with Eric Byrnes
“Welcome to The Factor!”
On the other other hand, an outfielder without the requisite physical coordination might be more likely to take good routes, because an unathletic outfielder who takes bad routes will be more likely to lose his job than a faster or more coordinated outfielder who takes bad routes.
(You forgot your ceteris paribus.)
!!!. !!!!!. !!!!!!!!. Now they just need to call Buck up and send Sweeney down and I’m a happy camper.
You’re getting excited about a rehab assignment?
Yes. (I admit to a certain degree of irrational Barton-love)
It’s looking more and more like Buck-love is irrational too…
The long con in action.
Now … am I Seeing What You Did There, or is that a link FAIL?
Sadly, it must be a link fail. It was a comment on Neyer’s piece but I couldn’t get the video to load (which sometimes happens at work). If it isn’t working for you, then it must be a link fail.
See, I agree that mlb.com itself constitutes a long con.
Further proof that Frenchie is just plain stupid.
I endorse this ad hominem attack.
*hangs head in shame*
*rethinks world view*
*shakes it off*
*
moves onfreedomworks undaunted*Anyone see US-Mexico yesterday? Landon Donovan FAIL.
Lack of sequitur/perspective/sense:
Wait, you’re not allowed to make true statements using obvious and standard metaphors if the sentence refers to 9/11? I think I need to re-read the Rudy Rulebook.
The Tairsts hates our
freedomzrobotsmoronic, cheesy sci-fi franchisesHollywood’s moronic habit of greenlighting only projects that springboard off of non-filmic established brands, decrepit/irrelevant/non-synergistic as they may be.nevermoor can feel free to ignore this:
@ Yahoo! Video
Oh, I’m still planning to watch this when it hits netflix.
Have you all paused today to bid a fond farewell to our lovely coliseum grass?
Booooooooo.
(Raiders, not batgirl)
These people are INSANE. They’re also entirely predicated on not merely having at least one parent be a full-time caretaker, but … well … really putting the FULL in full-time.
When I went to China many years ago, one of the things I remember most vividly were all the babies in the crotchless pants. I could not for the life of me figure out how that possibly worked without resulting in some really nasty messes. I’ve housetrained more than a few puppies, and even given their pretty cut-and-dried strategy of crate training and positive treat rewarding, there are umpteen accidents and missed visual/audible cues. I can’t imagine how that might work with a baby. (not that I have ANY experience with infants, so take all of this with a grain of salt)
Well, no more insane than the people who use disposable diapers (landfill + slows potty training).
Cloth diapers, though, there’s the sweet spot between “mess on floor” and “killing the planet”
No, they’re far, far more insane.
Disposables are bad, but they’re “convenient” (not really) and “cheap” (again, not really — penny wise, ppound foolish, not even accounting for the externalities). And they keep the kid from, y’know, peeing on the floor/you.
And there is something to the anti-cloth overall-impact argument that cloth uses a ton of energy and (more so) water — especially if you use a service.
(We use cloth, and try to minimize rinsing and use a spin dryer and line-drying.)
The worst, really, are G-diapers, which purport to offer the best of both, but really offer the worst. Brilliant marketing idea, though.
Meh, I have a hard time with a definition of insanity that involves all of humanity except western civilizations in the past few decades.
Do you have kids?
We use disposables. We priced out cloth diapers; a service is too expensive. Since we don’t have our own washer and dryer, the money saved by doing cloth makes the time/hassle of prewash/going to the laundry room/etc. not worth it. We’re fortunate that our kid doesn’t mind peepee diapers, so we only have to change him before bed and whenever he poops.
I’m also not convinced that disposables slow potty training anymore than cloth.
No, but I have parents. They used a service (which is somewhat more expensive than disposables, pre-externality-adjustment)
The argument for the latter point is that disposables absorb moisture without feeling wet, which makes peeing in them much less uncomfortable (see, e.g., your kid), which removes the connection between peeing and feeling uncomfortable.
re: your last point.
Ok, I’ll buy that.
The ancients didn’t have baseball blogs or vaccines either. Stark raving mad, they were.
And what they did have included slavery, disenfranchisement of women, genital mutilation, capital and corporal punishment, etc etc
the good old days musta sucked ass
“elimination communication” is the childcare equivalent of Yglesias’ “let’s eliminate some traffic rules to see what happens!”
Weaker analogy than your birther one
Christ, what analogy
Slows potty-training? Didn’t have that effect on my kid. If there are studies that prove disposables slow potty-training, do they take into account the relative busy-ness of most parents who choose disposables, and the fact that the slow potty-training might be due to parents’ and/or babysitters’ inconsistency/timing/laziness/whatever?
I haven’t looked, but I *think* the whole slows-PT thing is entirely theoretical.
FWIW, I also think the disposables-take-less-time/effort thing is also entirely theoretical (at least if one uses a service … which, again, theoretically negates some/all of the enviro advantages of going cloth). And even non-service/wash-’em-yourself isn’t really any less of a PITA than the alternative.
They all have a bunch of friends who they no longer like, and want to have the available excuse of “my hands are full right now.”
TWSS
He’s baaaaaack
also
1. That is one long-ass post.
2. I bet the comments that follow will fall more into the category of re-hashing his “absence” than the actual substance of the long-ass post.
I want him on FK, real bad.
Seriously. I’m surprised it didn’t happen.
TWSS
See, e.g., this:
I really wanted to jump at it, but I’ll hold off.
Wow, that is a long post…
And not his best work. He clearly needs the freedom of FK to thrive (FK recruiting team, GO!)
Adrian Beltre: injured testicle.
It was only a matter of time.
Jack Hannahan: “See? The cupped boys may need a lot of adjustment, but at least they’re safe.”
Boston (appears to be an A’s fan from the sig, but is actually a Sox fan if you click the name)
RIP, Lester William Polsfuss.