Magnetic Curses

Okay, that's one thing, but Wuertz doesn't have to have a better spring than 2006 to win a job. That's the silly thing. It would be silly to option him just to keep Miller, unless Miller looks really good. Basically, the only reason he should be optioned is if everybody else is healthy and looks really good. That's the only point where he should be squeezed. And that's the least likely scenario. Miller, Wood and Prior are all wildcards at this point and they each could start on the DL for all we know. I'd love to have Wood + Prior on the opening day roster ready and healthy and to have this be a heck of a hard decision for Lou to make. As a new manager I wonder how Lou will look at Weurtz. Novoa has the sexy thing going for him with his fastball but we all know Weurtz does a better job of getting hitters out. I'm really curious on how Lou is going to look at this. novoa was a favorite of baker (little benitez, wth?), i'm not sure lou will see him in the same way. novoa showed some progress last season, but wuertz was far superior. he needs to work on his BB/K to crawl into the same discussion, imo. lou WILL look at last year's numbers in addition to performance in the spring. but i would be very surprised and disappointed if wuertz is not a key member of the BP in 07. I will be too but we don't know if Weurtz is 100% healthy and if Novoa hasn't added something to his arsenal or adjusted his pitching mechanics. Opps, sorry I don't have numbers for either of those thoughts. :D ouch. was that a shot at me? :wink: seriously, i don't know why we'd assume that novoa has added something to his arsenal. i'd settle for him walking less hitters, but as it stands, wuertz is much better, healthy or not.

okay, i was using hyperbole there. but you get the idea. and i disagree that numbers cannot catch nuance. in fact, the title of the book i quoted pretty much captures the point i'm trying to make. baseball must be looked at in perspective--the perspective of a 162 game season. numbers catch the invisibility of what actually is going on. So a number can tell me that an ump just called a ball when it was a strike? It can tell me the pitchers arm is sore? A hitter has a bad back? The SS slept with 4 hookers the night before and is exhausted and couldn't get to a slow roller up the middle? It's raining and the ball and field are wet? statistics would tell you that situations are static for everyone. bad backs exist for every major league team, umpires call the same strike zones, pitchers get sore arms, hitters who sleep with 4 hookers will tend to do that a lot and either learn to live with it or lose their jobs, and as far as i can tell, it rains in every major league city. that's part of understanding the game, what you're talking about is enjoyment. I disagree. Enjoying the game is the smell of the park and taste of a beer while listening to the PA announcing Wood is on the mound in the 9th. See, you're talking about the percentages and what will probably happen that day. Are you telling me that being in Chicago in April is the same as being in Florida in April? It doesn't rain the same amount in each city. 1. most of the cities where it rains more often have domes. 2. situations will even out. while a hitter has to bat in cold weather in chicago in april, a pitcher also has to pitch there. 3. this is exactly what i'm talking about, a season is 162 games, 1 game isn't even part of a snapshot of a season. So by your theory the teams with the best record play in the WS and the team with the best record wins? i don't see the logic behind your assertion. show me.

Okay, that's one thing, but Wuertz doesn't have to have a better spring than 2006 to win a job. That's the silly thing. It would be silly to option him just to keep Miller, unless Miller looks really good. Basically, the only reason he should be optioned is if everybody else is healthy and looks really good. That's the only point where he should be squeezed. And that's the least likely scenario. Miller, Wood and Prior are all wildcards at this point and they each could start on the DL for all we know. I'd love to have Wood + Prior on the opening day roster ready and healthy and to have this be a heck of a hard decision for Lou to make. As a new manager I wonder how Lou will look at Weurtz. Novoa has the sexy thing going for him with his fastball but we all know Weurtz does a better job of getting hitters out. I'm really curious on how Lou is going to look at this. novoa was a favorite of baker (little benitez, wth?), i'm not sure lou will see him in the same way. novoa showed some progress last season, but wuertz was far superior. he needs to work on his BB/K to crawl into the same discussion, imo. lou WILL look at last year's numbers in addition to performance in the spring. but i would be very surprised and disappointed if wuertz is not a key member of the BP in 07.

UK has a very useful method for weighting OPS toward OBP, i can't remember what the exact weight is, though.

okay, i was using hyperbole there. but you get the idea. and i disagree that numbers cannot catch nuance. in fact, the title of the book i quoted pretty much captures the point i'm trying to make. baseball must be looked at in perspective--the perspective of a 162 game season. numbers catch the invisibility of what actually is going on. So a number can tell me that an ump just called a ball when it was a strike? It can tell me the pitchers arm is sore? A hitter has a bad back? The SS slept with 4 hookers the night before and is exhausted and couldn't get to a slow roller up the middle? It's raining and the ball and field are wet? statistics would tell you that situations are static for everyone. bad backs exist for every major league team, umpires call the same strike zones, pitchers get sore arms, hitters who sleep with 4 hookers will tend to do that a lot and either learn to live with it or lose their jobs, and as far as i can tell, it rains in every major league city. that's part of understanding the game, what you're talking about is enjoyment. I disagree. Enjoying the game is the smell of the park and taste of a beer while listening to the PA announcing Wood is on the mound in the 9th. See, you're talking about the percentages and what will probably happen that day. Are you telling me that being in Chicago in April is the same as being in Florida in April? It doesn't rain the same amount in each city. 1. most of the cities where it rains more often have domes. 2. situations will even out. while a hitter has to bat in cold weather in chicago in april, a pitcher also has to pitch there. 3. this is exactly what i'm talking about, a season is 162 games, 1 game isn't even part of a snapshot of a season.

i think "stat snobbery" is largely imagined. most of the people that i know who understand sabermetrics far better than i do are pretty down to earth people.

okay, i was using hyperbole there. but you get the idea. and i disagree that numbers cannot catch nuance. in fact, the title of the book i quoted pretty much captures the point i'm trying to make. baseball must be looked at in perspective--the perspective of a 162 game season. numbers catch the invisibility of what actually is going on. So a number can tell me that an ump just called a ball when it was a strike? It can tell me the pitchers arm is sore? A hitter has a bad back? The SS slept with 4 hookers the night before and is exhausted and couldn't get to a slow roller up the middle? It's raining and the ball and field are wet? statistics would tell you that situations are static for everyone. bad backs exist for every major league team, particular umpires call the same particular strike zones, pitchers get sore arms, hitters who sleep with 4 hookers will tend to do that a lot and either learn to live with it or lose their jobs, and as far as i can tell, it rains in every major league city. that's part of understanding the game, what you're talking about is enjoyment.

No criticism that I know of at GT. The only worry I have (and this COULD fall on the QB at Tech) is that he disappeared at times during big games when he wasn't thrown to early. I have no idea if he was shut down, or if he was pulling a Randy Moss and taking plays off. as others have born witness, it was reggie ball who disappeared, not johnson.

okay, i was using hyperbole there. but you get the idea. I do now! check the edit to get my full opinion.

okay, i was using hyperbole there. but you get the idea. and i disagree that numbers cannot catch nuance. in fact, the title of the book i quoted pretty much captures the point i'm trying to make. baseball must be looked at in perspective--the perspective of a 162 game season. numbers catch the invisibility of what actually is going on.

That's exactly what they said! They said that Cuban's realistic chances of being approved are very slim. Baseball owners, first and foremost, care about the value of their franchises. They will question his antics, but they will think long and hard before subverting the potential sale of a ballclub for significant profit. Virtually everyone of these owners will, at one point, sell their team. And they will want others owners to approve the sale of their team. Not at all because if the Cubs are truly for sale, finding a buyer won't be difficult. That is why the other owners can be selective. while some owners might not approve of cuban, money is power and he has more of it than most of them. he's no ragamuffin off the streets, he's one of the richest men in america who could probably hold a significant financial grudge against those who do not approve his purchase.

That's exactly what they said! They said that Cuban's realistic chances of being approved are very slim. Baseball owners, first and foremost, care about the value of their franchises. They will question his antics, but they will think long and hard before subverting the potential sale of a ballclub for significant profit. Virtually everyone of these owners will, at one point, sell their team. And they will want others owners to approve the sale of their team. exactly right.

well, i'll help you with the more conventional stats like WHIP, BB/9, and k/9. whip is how many baserunners per inning you allow, just think of it that way. anything around 1 is very good. bb/9 and k/9 are simple enough, walks or k's per 9 innings--or how many walks or k's does a pitcher give up over the full length of a game. important stuff.

I'm gonna disagree in turn. Stats don't threaten anybody's enjoyment of the game. If people don't want to know about them, they don't have to; they can choose not to pay them any mind. Introducing them, however, certainly adds to the enjoyment of many, as it broadens the overall scope of baseball as a whole, thus attracting more people and appealling to a wider spectrum of types of enjoyment. this reminds me of a quote from "The Secret Game of Baseball". "You don't need to look at stats to enjoy baseball, but you need them to understand baseball." for fans who simply want to enjoy the game, stats don't mean much, and i wouldn't begrudge them that. but i don't want those fans to come back from a game and try to debate with me based on what their eyes told them on that particular day. even if said fans want to go to every single game and never miss a single monent of baseball, you can still learn more about the game from statistics. the human tendency, from an observer's perspective, is to make the game more dramatic than it is--to pay attention to the meaningless details as if they're of the utmost importance. if someone makes a baserunning error once, they must do it all the time. if someone scores a runner from third on a bunt one time, it must be effective all of the time, no matter how many times the observer witnesses the opposite.

Welcome to the real world sully! I was pretty young when those guys were playing and Brooks had some defining moments in big games that helped his image along with having better players beside him. it's all perception vs. reality. because brooks made those high profile plays, he was perceived as being the best 3rd baseman of all time when he might not even crack the top 10.

i don't know what the hold-up is on this guy. equal to brooks robinson defensively and far superior offensively. i guess the fact that brooks played with very good players makes him somehow much better than ronnie.

scott skiles will never lead a team deep into the playoffs. he's a perfect college coach, he can coach bad players up, but very good players almost always underperfrom under him. he's a good example of a player killer, and has been running good players out of town since he's been here. we'd be best to fire him and bring in someone with some positive experience in dealing with NBA personalities. good luck in the NCAA's scott, maybe izzo will retire soon.

for a second i thought that dixiecrat zell miller was going to buy the cubs.

this picture is such an accurate metaphor for the usefulness of small-ball since the end of the dead-ball era. Ya, but even this old geezer can bunt better than any Cub could last year. no, the cubs problem with bunting is that they did it too much. i think it was tangotiger that argued that a missed bunt was more valuable than a successful one, at least, with less than 2 strikes.

rothschild cracks me up though. "i can't see any reason why he wouldn't be on schedule" or something like that. that's hilarious. just tell us he's ready to go, don't tell us that he's not unready to go.

there are so many things wrong with this statement that i don't know where to begin, i'm honestly about to blow my top over this. you all know my problem with "putting the ball in play" just to put it in play. putting the ball in play for it's own sake takes pressure off the pitcher to make a good pitch and off the defense to make a difficult play on a hard hit ball. i understand what he's said about waiting for a good pitch, and i'm thinking the media is just not understanding what he's trying to say. i think this because of the last part of that sentence. the cubs were 14 in the NL in strikeouts last season, 14th the year before that, and 9th the year before that. the cubs don't strikeout, which is a symptom of their overall problem: they don't take enough pitches and they always try to put the ball in play. i'd rather the cubs strikeout more if it means they're getting deeper into counts and driving the ball with authority. i think perry is trying to make both sides happy, here. the media and casual fan base doesn't like to hear "we're going to strikeout more", so it becomes, "don't get us wrong, we want to put the ball in play, but we want to wait for the right pitch." the strikeout is more effective than an out in play when the hitter induces a greater number or pitches.

this picture is such an accurate metaphor for the usefulness of small-ball since the end of the dead-ball era.

Vizquel circa 2007 or Vizquel circa 1997? http://www.fangraphs.com/comparison.aspx?playerid=411&playerid2=656&playerid3=&position=SS&page=0&type=full either on would be fine. i was looking at omar's career ba of .276 & ops of .702 though. That would pretty much be a career year for Cesar, not an impossibility but not a probability either. looking at omar's stats, he didnt really come into his own offensively until he was 28 or 29. i'm hopeful izturis can do the same if he can stay healthy. there's no real reason to think that izturis will become anything like vizquel offensively. the only comparison that one could make revolves around defense, that and the fact that vizquel was a bad hitter early in his career and izturis is a bad hitter as well. i don't think that fact that both have been bad hitters in any way makes their careers comparable.

not really. when he throws harder, his fastball straightens out and he gets hit. in 03, he threw his 2-seamer more often than not, which is an 89-93 type-pitch that sinks. when his 2-seamer is working, he can throw his 4-seamer at 95 occasionally so as to keep hitters on notice. when he's not throwing his 2-seamer effectively for strikes, it makes the 4-seamer pointless and hittable. This is true. I guess I was referring more to his 4 seamer than his 2 seamer. But you're right. I also recall a lot of hitters referring to how even though his velocity itself wasn't that crazy, with his delivery, it just seemed a whole lot faster when they were actually at the plate. Anyone remember when they had the camera and mic on Chipper and I forget who else (DeRosa maybe?) in the Braves dugout in Game 2 or so of the 03 NLDS? i remember giles saying something about prior in the dugout. the gist of the conversation was that prior's pitches seem to look slower coming out of his hand but gain velocity as they near home plate.

seriously, from the interviews that i've heard so far, he sounds like the master of cliche. that might just be until he gets a feel for the team, though. ps-bruce, you should be on the score more. mully and hanley at least seem like they're beginning to get it. murph has his moments but seems to forget that he's had guys like steve goldman on his show.