FergieJ31

W Al Davis: "Just win baby."

What's up with this? Geovany Soto Jee-oh-van-ee Soh-toe It's like buttah

Note: when putting first pitch in play. These numbers don't reflect first pitch strikes. But quite often the first pitch a batter sees from a pitcher is the best one to hit in that AB. I don't mind seeing a power hitter swing at the first pitch once out of 3 AB's or so; I do have a problem seeing the majority of guys in the lineup doing it, especially at the top of the order (*cough* Alphonso *cough*). You have to keep the opposing pitcher guessing. You can't ALWAYS take the first pitch or he'll throw more first pitch strikes. But you certainly don't want a large fraction of your batters swinging at the first pitch either. There's some optimal middle there. For the people out there who are into game theory, I wonder what the optimal ratio is. My guess is about 35% for a power hitter, maybe 30% for everyone else. That is, I think 35% of the time a power hitter should have a green light on the first pitch.

No one is talking about "trying" to win. The logic follows that if the cubs miss the playoffs then the philosophy of the team will change (for the better) and we will create a better team resulting in make the playoffs more often. I guess I should have chosen better words. I knew what Derwood's provocative original point was, and while I didn't think it was that outraegous (unlike some other posters) I disagreed with the conclusion that by contending the Cubs are somehow doing long-term harm to themselves. I called for the Cubs to be a .500 team at the beginning of the year, like many other NSBBers, but the only real surprise was how bad the rest of the division would be. Personally I'm relishing the possibility of a playoff berth, not denigrating it because of what might or might not happen to Hendry at the end of the year. Of the four assumptions you laid out, a few of them are very dicey. Hendry fired because the Cubs miss the playoffs even though they were in the division race til September? Extremely unlikely. If the Cubs had lost 90+ games again, well that's another story - so in a sense the "damage" of winning is already done (unless the Cubs absolutely tank the rest of the year). Plus, the wildcard in all of this -- on whether Hendry is retained or not -- is clearly the Cubs' ownership situation.

Yeah that Malarchuk injury was absolutely gruesome. The story I heard was that at least one spectator suffered a heart attack and three of his teammates vomited while still on the ice. back to Juan E - I read the article from the Stl paper. Really cool to see he kept his sense of humor, busting Aaron Miles chops for striking out in that AB. He seems like a great teammate.

Only a fool would want the current philosophy of the front office to be validated and perpetuated, resulting in indefinite mediocrity. Like I said, Derwood makes some big assumptions, which there has been some good debate about, but I don't understand how people are so blind to what he is saying in general to respond with one liners like that. Scenario A) We make the playoffs this year and continue with making the playoffs about once every 4 years. Scenario B) We miss the playoffs this year, but begin making the playoffs once every other year. That is essentially what Derwood is saying. If you would prefer Scenario A, then you aren't a true cubs fan. This is really a false dichotomy though isn't it? How on earth can you even begin to make Scenario B a plausible alternative to trying to win this year?

anyone who knows anything considers him the greatest DH of all time Agreed on greatest DH of all time. The definition of underrated is a little fuzzy in this thread; I'm going by the "not exactly a household name but he should be given his numbers" def. If he played 18 seasons in the Bronx instead of Coffeetown it'd be another story.

That ranks up there with the Theisman MNF leg break replay. I haven't seen this yet either and I hope I never do. There are a handful of replays that I don't care to see again - Theisman is one, the Beltran - Cameron collision is another.

Not sure if he's been mentioned already: Edgar Martinez All he did was pound out 933 OPS, 147 OPS+ for 18 years

I would have called for an unintentional intentional walk, even though pitching around Prince carries some risk. Demp might throw a WP or accidentally groove one, but IMO it's slightly less risky than intentionally loading the bases. And there's a very reasonable chance that Fielder swings at a bad pitch and ends the game. btw, that Prince Fielder vs. Artist Formerly Known As Prince graphic was hilarious :lol:

The white umpires are the control group? Where do you see that? They state their control variables very clearly on page 7. The numbers in the Table 3 Panels are not to be interpreted the way I think you're suggesting when you say: "So in the first cell, a black umpire is likely to call a ball thrown by a white pitcher a strike 0.13% less often than a white umpire". The numbers in these cells are the beta coefficients (regression slopes) of equation (1), the linear model they estimated. Note that every single beta was statistically insignificant except one, and even that one is barely significant at the 5% level. Now at a 5% level of significance they should expect 1 in 20 of their measured parameters to show up as significant by pure chance. They estimated over a couple of dozen linear models, so it's not surprising they'd get one hit, especially by cherry-picking their data.

Exactly. The general public doesn't necessarily understand the purpose of a discussion paper. On the surface it looks like a legit and rigorous study. Also please note: they have a VERY(*) tenuous claim of significance on cherry-picked data. Why were the games w/white umpires omitted in Table 3? (*) t-stat of their main result is 2.0, which barely makes it significant at the 5% level, not the 1% level.

Yes I've sent them comments. I guarantee I'm not the only one calling foul on these guys. I have a few problems with the paper: There is a voluminous body of research on racial bias, a less emotionally charged word than discrimination, which these authors use in the title. There is no overt claim in the paper that the effect they study is the result of willful conduct, so why did they put racial discrimination front and center? And yes, Table 3 is where statistical significance of their main argument is examined. But if you read the paper, time and time again they try to support their argument with utterly insignificant statistics, e.g. the 11 games I mentioned in my previous post. And re Table 3 my question is, where are the results for White umpires?! Why did they only cite t-stats for less than 10% of the cases, the games called by Black and Hispanic umpires? They admit to leaving out White umpires without justification or any attempt to explain why. It's not hard to guess: their tenuous claim to significance probably evaporated quickly when they added the 90% of the games called by white umpires. And they say this: No, your results are either significant or they're not. You are not allowed to say things like "suggestive patterns emerge" and other weasel words in an academically honest paper. Who said it was published? It would have been much more impressive had it been peer-reviewed and submitted for publication before calling up MSNBC (note the publication date and the date MSNBC reported the story), rather than throwing it out there with a "COMMENTS WELCOME" slapped at the top. Another ridiculous quote: "The results suggest that standard measures of salary discrimination that adjust for measured productivity may be flawed, and we derive the magnitude of the bias generally and apply it to several examples." Really?? The results purport to prove MLB umpires employ racial discrimination in their ball/strike calls. Isn't a stretch to extrapolate "wage discrimination" metrics from pro athletes making $500k/yr and up to standard cases?

Here's the paper: http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Hamermesh/Baseball4Authors.pdf One word: LOL ( I guess that's three ) This paper is a joke. For instance, not once does he even mention a standard error for any of his point estimates, let alone calculate one. We have gems like this: So he looked at about 11 games with a black starting pitcher and a black home plate umpire. 11 games. And he cites a percent based on that. If you flip a coin 11 times, the expected number of heads is 5.5+/- 1.65, making the one-standard deviation error bar a whopping 15.1 percent. Seriously, this guy should give back his PhD. Utterly irresponsible.

Not only did Pujols touch Barrett, he appeared to kind of yank him by the right shoulder when he first ran up to the ump. Camera angles can be deceiving though, but that's how it appeared, especially because the ump didn't turn to face Pujols until his shoulder was yanked in his direction.

Can't we tip our hat to the guy and move on?

W

THANK YOU We've been in severe need of an overachieving Freel type for years. I don't care if he's purple with pink polka dots. My sentiment exactly; I like the way the kid plays. Remember that win against the Mets a few weeks ago, where Theriot caught a break on a close play at first and it turned out to be a crucial call in the game? After the game, someone asked him about the play and added that replays showed he was out. Theriot just calmly asserted "no I was safe" [not "I thought I was safe"], then he hesitated and added "But if I was out then it just makes up for another play where I was safe and the ump called me out." Gotta love that karma reference; something a die-hard fan might say.

W

Dusty, is that you?

Who's the other one, Truffle?

No, the rule doesn't protect the team with a runner on first w/less than two outs. Letting a short pop fly ball drop and gunning out the (presumably faster) lead runner, bahua's first scenario, happens a few times every year. I'll have to think about the other two scenarios, bahua, but I think you're right on all three.

They aren't a top 4 NL team by any stretch, but they could still very easily make the playoffs. Pythagoras says we are. Is there any evidence that pythagorean WL is a predictive stat? I'm not being argumentative here; I really want to know if there is any study that shows actual WL reverts to pyth WL instead of the other way around (or, possibly, no reversion in either direction). I've always looked at pyth record as nothing more than a summary of runs for/against, not a prediction of future winning pct - but maybe I'm wrong.

Yeah baby! Good eye Cliff, we never doubted ya

fixed well played, i had to think about that for a sec :lol: