SABR Blows

TAKE MY BLOG....PLEASE!!!

2004-11-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

If anybody wants to take this blog over, please e-mail me at DBrennan3333@yahoo.com.

Obviously, I'm not getting many hits and the ones I do get don't inspire any thought or passion by my readers. Moreover, I'm thoroughly bored and numb to all baseball and baseball talk.

There's no point in me doing this, so if you find sabermetricians and the pompous retards at Baseball Prospectus worth ridiculing, you have a bit of a headstart with this blog. I do like Bill James, though. He's off limits to criticism.

Thanks to all the people who read the columns. Sorry I couldn't do it regularly or sustain my energy about the whole thing.

-David Brennan

BOSTON'S DANGEROUS FEELING OF ENTITLEMENT

2004-10-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

The Yankees, no doubt about it, are the more talented of the two baseball teams. Future Hall of Famers fill your vision wherever you look: ARod, Jeter, Mussina, Sheffield, Torre....virtually the entire starting club. These Yankees have won more games than the Red Sox, this despite career-worst seasons from most all of their starters.

And yet there seems to be a sense that the Red Sox are somehow mystically entitled to win this ALCS. Why? We sure know the Red Sox aren't more talented, we know that they don't have better luck, so why this dangerous sense of entitlement?

You want more evidence that Boston's the favorite? The internet's top gambling site, World Sports Exchange, has the series listed like this:

BOSTON: -150
NEW YORK: +130

These odds are pretty heavy odds by baseball standards.

Meanwhile, of the 9 ESPN prognisticators who predicted a Red Sox/Yankee ALCS 7 of them predicted the Red Sox would win.

Even the Yankee fans show little optimism, at least judging by websites such as "Replacement Level Yankees Weblog." They've all but conceded defeat, hoping not for victory, but just for an "exciting series."

The evidence is overwhelming, so let there be no doubt of this....the Red Sox are heavy favorites.

Hey, I picked Boston over Houston at the start of the season, so I'm thrilled for their success....but they've yet to accomplish anything that last season's team didn't accomplish. When they won the Division Series, these guys acted as if they'd won the World Series. The Yankees sure didn't act like a bunch of school girls when they beat Minnesota, they expected to beat them, leaving the celebrations for when larger goals are accomplished.

I remember here in Detroit, in the mid 1990's, the Red Wings kept on getting deep in the playoffs only to be snuffed out season after season. Finally, in 1997, captain Steve Yzerman told the club that there would be no celebrations, no champagne, until it's being drunk from the Stanley Cup. After clinching the first three rounds of the playoffs, the Red Wings behaved like Canadians - they shook their opponents hands, congratulated them, and then it was on to the next. None of this monkeys-swinging-on-trees bullshit for winning the first fucking round.

Anyway, I mean, I want Boston to win and all, but Johnny Damon's "I'm stupid!" cries and this sort of nonsense aren't going to get them one fucking run, and let's not pretend that it will.

I hope that the team will quickly realize the severe difficulty of the task which lies ahead, and behave accordingly.

Good luck, men.

Anyway, who gives a shit.

THE TRUE STAR OF 'MONEYBALL'

2004-07-14T06:04:00.000-07:00

Some think the star of Michael Lewis's book Moneyball is Bill James. Some say that the star is little Chad Bradford, others say the star is actually an idea. Most, of course, say that the hero is Billy Beane.

C'mon, fellas, the answer lies in the common thread throughout all those options. The star of Moneyball is Michael Lewis's genius.

Even though it's been well over a year since Moneyball was published, guys in the American Sabermetric Society (A.S.S.) still get more excited by the book than the Queer Eye guys with front row tickets to a Cher concert. Moneyball is to A.S.S. what Tupac Shakur is to Gangsta' Rap - the embodiment of all the attitudes that the subculture longs to copy. Moneyball is funny, contrarian, and seemingly iconoclastic. If you're some lusterless paper-pusher at some lame company, the best way to feel like a maverick is to log on and start copying Michael Lewis's wildly entertaining book.

Browsing through the writings of the colossal sabermetric sorority, it's overwhelming how vicious these people are about such a trivial system like the MLB. A.S.S. members regularly spew caustic insults like "Idiot," "Lucky," "Dumb," "Sucks" to owners, scouts, and GMs, many of whom are undoubtedly fine people doing fine work.

An old axiom claims "Water seeks it's own level." So if MLB is so full of idiots, why don't the members of A.S.S. simply seek a system more conducive to their superior intellect? (There's no shame in it, dudes. I can't watch more than 30 seconds of baseball without changing the channel.)

At Baseball Prospectus, the headquarters of A.S.S., they hold the game in such casual disdain that they refer to MLB teams as "product." Ummmm, fellas? If you recall Econ 101 from high school you'll note that the entertainment that MLB sells makes it a service business, not a product business, okay? Does your barber sell you a product? (Not counting the Rogaine, Rany.)

But A.S.S. always falls back on the Oakland A's. The A's are proof of the legitimacy of everything that A.S.S. says!

Let me boldly state this quantitative fact: The difference between the A's and the Pirates/Brewers/Expos/Tigers throughout Beane's tenure is these five players: Hudson, Zito, Mulder, Giambi, Tejada. None of these five players were drafted by Beane. They were drafted either by the previous administration or by a scouting department which Beane had no control over until 2002.

I'll be honest with you: I'm afraid that Beane's low standards might be spreading throughout the sports world. In the past, you could always ask people in sports what their goal is and you'd invariably get the same four words: "To win a championship." Beane found that goal a bit too much for his talents and so he comprimised a bit. Instead of actually winning it all, Beane just wants to have the best record in MLB's smallest division. Indeed, by that standard, Beane has been successful 3 of his 6 season in Oakland. The playoff's? Well, the Oakland A's are happy saying that all that fancy-shmancy "World Championship" stuff is just luck. (In other words, the A's are baseball's version of the Phoenix Suns or the Seattle Seahawks - they squeak into the playoffs most years but nobody takes them very seriously.) Hey, that's Beane's perogative, and that's cool. But the member's of A.S.S. are spreading Beane's low standards throughout the sports worlds and you might soon hear your team's players and GM's saying, "We don't care that we got bounced in the first round. After all, the playoffs are just luck."

Alright, so the A's are a solid, boring playoff-fller. Why does A.S.S. still get in such a furor over the book 16 months after it was first released?

Why? Because Michael Lewis is so fucking good he could make Trent Lott look more rebellious than Che Guevera. If Michael Lewis were a chef, he could serve you your own shit and make it taste like a Big Mac. If Michael Lewis were a musician, he could play Vivaldi's Four Seasons by tapping his belly and he'd have the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra begging him to be their showcase.

Read Michael Lewis's masterpiece Trail Fever and, like me, you'll find yourself brought nearly to tears when Pat Buchanan is defeated in his bid to be President. Lewis's book Next: The Future Just Happened will have you fuming at the SEC for investigating a 15 year-old kid who manipulated the markets. Michael Lewis couldn't just sell air conditioners to Eskimos, he could convince the Eskimos to give him their parkas which he would then sell to a Nicaraguan in July.

Alright, so Michael Lewis can turn water into wine (proverbially). But why would he turn Beane into a genius?

Here's a long explanation why:

About a year after the infamous high school shooting in Colorado, Time magazine released the findings of a full investigation and they wrote of how many cops at the scene - safe behind their bulletproof vests and their blockades - fired round after round at the school long after the two assailants had committed suicide. Why? Why fire a gun if you're completely safe and there's no enemy?

Because the cops had been waiting for years to act like tough guys and they were gonna be damned before they let this chance pass them by!!! It was finally here, their ticket to being dark and disturbed. The cops were at the scene, seeing all those victims, and they knew that if they just pulled the trigger they'd forever be able to act morose and dramatic when the girls at the bar ask them if they've ever shot anyone.

GIRL: "Have you ever had to kill anybody before?"
COP [He slowly looks away]: "I...I don't wanna talk about it."

Anyway, Michael Lewis invested as much energy into Billy Beane as the cops invested into their sadistic fantasies and so, basically, he was a prisoner to his original idea. He had to make Beane look glorious.

This sort of bias created holes in the book. For instance, Michael Lewis sings the hackneyed There's-No-Such-Thing-As-A-Clutch-Hitter anthem....and he then proceeds to tell us that Billy Beane was a clutch hitter. (Well, the reverse, actually. Lewis says that when there was no pressure at Tiger Stadium Beane easily hit numerous homers into the upper deck. You're conusing the kids, man, which is it already?) Another contradiction comes when Lewis writes that Beane doesn't watch any A's games....and then he then writes a detailed account of Beane watching an A's game. Accidentally, Lewis then proceeds to expose Beane as, basically, a total phony. Watching that game, Beane is livid as the A's make costly errors (if I recall correctly, he throws a chair or something). And then after the game Beane shrugs and says that winning that game had no special value. Well, did Beane go apeshit or was he cool and collected?

Baseball is a non-linear system. This is so overwhelmingly, plain-as-day, no-bones-about-it obvious that it's degrading to the human species that the A.S.S. output has grown as loud and as filthy as it has.

1) Clutch hitters exist.

2) The playoffs are not luck.

3) Players will react poorly when habitually treated like stocks.

4) Pitch Counts do not prevent injuries (and probably cause injuries by creating fear and tension in the player's mind and body).

But A.S.S. members are so deeply entrenched in their stupid, nihilistic philosophies that they cannot rise above the grid and see the human players and the liquid system as they are.

Well, I mean....just so long as Dave Dombrowski and Joe Dumars don't sink to that level, it's all good.

Anyway, who gives a shit.

SABERMETRICIANS ASK GOVERNMENT TO BAN PITCHING 'FOR THE CHILDREN'

2004-07-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO - Taking a cue from the Ralph Nader's philosophy that the best way to avoid workplace injury is to avoid work altogether, the popular website Baseball Prospectus recently declared that the only way to prevent pitchers from getting injured is to ban Major League Baseball from allowing pitchers.

Baseball Prospectus's Will Carroll says, "From Kerry Wood to Mark Prior, from Josh Beckett to A.J. Burnett, the evidence is overwhelming that throwing a ball is hazardous to the health of the pitchers and should be made illegal. Somehow MLB has been able to avoid government regulators, but the time has come to put a stop to this reckless disregard for safety."

Baseball Prospectus and the Sabermetric community at large have long been critical of managers and teams which don't implement strict pitch counts. First they said that pitch counts of 120 were too dangerous, than they amended that to 110, and finally they delcared that even throwing 90 pitches was simply too hazardous to one's health. Will Carroll continues, "We saw the trajectory our philosophies were on and we wanted to bypass years of flip-flopping and instead cut right to the chase: pitching is dangerous and should be outlawed. Congress MUST act immediately, for the sake of the pitchers and even more importantly....we must do it for the children."

Asked about the injuries sustained by position players and whether the dangers in their job also constitutes an illegally dangerous work environment, Prospectus didn't back down. "Look, Sammy Sosa got injured from a sneeze, alright? A sneeze. Pitchers certainly are in the most danger, but it's clear that the whole institution of Major League Baseball is simply too dangerous - players colliding in the outfield, breaking ankles on the basepaths, urinating on their hands....it's an outrage that we haven't yet put a stop to this dangerous, dare I say deadly, sport. Just the same as we've outlawed sweatshops and fire hazards, so too do we need to outlaw Major League Baseball's greedy white men from recklessly disregarding human safety for their own financial gain."

Carroll continues, "As the first step on the long road to outlawing baseball, we at Baseball Prospectus have joined forces with Ralph Nader and we've filed a grievance with the Occupational Safety Hazards Administration against the MLB. Also, since so many pitchers are African-American and Latino, MLB's negligence qualifies as a Hate Crime."

When asked how the ball will be delivered to hitters after the government makes pitching illegal, Carroll gets incredulous. "Let me answer that question with a question.....when was the last time you saw a T-Ball pitcher get injured on the job?"

Additional Reporting by Carl Bernstein

World Series 2004 Prediction

2004-04-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

One time I met a guy who was a more or less mediocre pro basketball player. I didn't really know much about him other than he'd played on three Championship teams. I tried to pick his brain for gossipy tidbits about my favorite Pistons or Michael Jordan, and he gave me a few decent stories, but mostly he was bored with repeating the same shit he'd said before.

I asked him again, "How many years did you play in the league?"

"About eight." He paused, reluctant to reveal himself with this last bit. He kind of felt me out and then, said "I'm a three time World Champion." He was scared that he'd regret telling me that.

"Congratulations," I said.

His face beamed "Thanks, thank you!" He shook my hand and then loosened up.

I don't know. I just remember how indifferent he was about everything we chatted about but when it came to being a champion, he was just so proud of that. He was like the dunce kid who worked so hard and got an "A" in one class and was just so proud of his moment in the sun. I don't fucking know.

Anyway, I sensed that again this season. Ivan Rodriguez and Ugueth Urbina, I read several interviews with the pair of them and you could almost sense their absolute confusion on what was happening to them on the free agent market. "A pay...cut? But...but I'm a World Champion! It's baseball's highest honor....how in the world can this be happening?" They'd been told their whole careers that the paragon of baseball was to win the World Series. Now they'd climbed the mountain and then the guys who they helped up shoved them back down. I suspect - this is just a hunch - that the two of them (and probably many others) will never view baseball the same again. Their goal now will just be to have an 850 OPS and then fuck the rest. Like ARod says, the team is just a uniform. Just play for your own stats, your own paycheck, and, if the playoffs come, it's just luck. A cute little bowtie on the baseball season, not to be taken much more seriously than Spring Training. Nobody cares. You get a little bonus and a shiny ring, but the idea of being a champion - a champion, ya know? - is dead.

Anyway.

Well, ya know. The Yankees? Well, I mean, it ain't gonna happen. The spirit ain't the same, the ideal ain't the same.

Boston over Houston in the 2004 World Series.

Well guys, Billy Beane and Michael Lewis and JP Ricciardi and Baseball Prospectus and Paul DePodesta and all the other sabermetricians with mediocre teams that are touted as awesome and the management that sends you packing after the season....they might not give a shit about what you achieved, but I do. It might not be worth much, but if you win the World Series, you're my heroes.

Congratulations in advance.

Anyway, who gives a shit.

THE SIXTH REVOLUTION (Part 1)

2004-03-31T22:10:00.000-08:00

It was a shitty revolution, anyway.

In an April 2003 column, Rob Neyer said that pro baseball has seen four major revolutions, and that the fifth major revolution was just beginning.

The first major revolutions, according to Neyer's casual hypothesis, have been:
1) The merging of the AL and NL
2) The end of the deadball era via Babe Ruth
3) Racial Integragtion
4) Free Agency
5) Sabermetrics

From Bill James getting interviewed on primetime talk shows, to teams nobody ever associates with sabermetrics bragging about sabermetricians on their payroll, to 2 of baseball's 3 largest teams having professed sabermetrician GM's, it's obvious that Neyer's 5th Revolution has taken over.

But let's be practical here, the fifth one has been the weakest revolution of the bunch.

I mean, I just saw an interview with Theo Epstein and I'm positive that I could romp the guy on an IQ test and I didn't even graduate high school. Paul DePodesta? This guy's more insecure about his identity than Michael Jackson in the middle of a race riot. Clarify this one for me Paul....were you, as you claimed, a well-known jock on the Harvard campus or were you, as the records claim, a third-stringer on the JV team? Tell the truth now....

Michael Lewis is spinning more lies than the National Enquirer's printing plant and Voros McCracken's "ground-breaking" study of pitchers held less water than topsand in the Sahara.

But what about the A's?!?! They did something that's never been done before!!!....Wait, scratch that. Since the start of the Divisional Playoffs in 1995 The Yankees, Braves, and Indians not only reached the playoffs in four straight years, they won their divisions in 9, 6, and 5 years respectively.

In the playoffs, the A's have looked more helpless than Richard Simmons trying to satisfy Mae West. Those guys are like Billy Beane trying to hit a fastball.

The Blue Jays? Well, due to the play of Cy Young winners and MVP candidates inherited from the previous regime, their new sabermetrics-loving front office has been able to accomplish....nothing. (But don't sweat it J.P. and Keith, you guys could go 0-162 and Prospectus would still have trouble wiping saliva from their deyboards as they heaped yet more praise upon you.)

Alright, I admit that the Red Sox will get to the World Series in 2004, but that's got nothing to do with sabermetrics and everything to do with something that you don't understand.

And what of Baseball Prospectus? Here's a way to buy your daughter that $300 midriff she got caught trying to shoplift: write down every prediction Prospectus makes and bet on the opposite to happen. I made a small fortune from Mark Buerhle's 9-0 run last season after the boys at Prospectus had just assured its readers that Buehle's previous success was just a product of luck. Prospectus's predictions are so routinely awful that they're forced to actually brag about forecasting a good season for first-ballot Hall of Famer Frank Thomas in 2003. That one took vision, fellas. Been to a Prospectus fan gathering? You'll get a sense of what a Hitler Youth Rally was like. (For the record, I'd have pulled out previous issues of Prospectus to more thoroughly document their idiocy, but I unfortunately used them all to wipe my ass.)

Rob Neyer? Well, Neyer has "made" many "awful predictions" over the "years," but I "think" that I "can" "sum up" Neyer's "sense of" the MLB "with" this "prediction" made before the "2001" season: "I've got the Rangers (85-67) edging the Mariners (84-68) for second place." Rob Neyer's forecast for the 2001 AL West."

The only card the sabermetric community is left holding is the "Moneyball" card. The Moneyball card means that, to preserve their phony status as rebels and innovators, the sabermetric community won't hesitate for a second to lie ("OBP is three times as valuable as slugging!"), call people names (I've been called 'racist' and 'homophobic' approximately 200 times by people that I've never met), and belittle World Champions as lucky (Billy Beane: "The playoffs are fucking luck.")

That's cool. Because while the Oakland A's are having a team of Cornell grads figure out whether having a relief pitcher enter a 5-2 ballgame is good or bad, they're going to be missing out on baseball's sixth revolution. Though it will most assuredly be almost entirely beneath the radar of sports "journalists" and though it will be too complex for the nitwits at Baseball Primer, rest assured that it will have a bigger effect on the game than any of the previous revolutions.

It's already begun....

TO BE CONTINUED ON MAY 1st!!!

Anyway, who gives a shit.

(BASE)STEALING BACK THE TRUTH

2004-03-14T22:28:00.000-08:00

Sabermetric methodology usually approaches problems by studying processes as opposed to studying the sum results of those processes. Ultimately, this method of study results in the perspective and proportion of the study being disjointed and inaccurate. Studying processes allows the hypothesist to tailor his study to suit his agenda (which, in the sabermetric community, is usually bent on telling the powers-that-be how stupid they are).

For instance, in Baseball Prospectus’s summary of their philosophy on stolen bases, they tried to show that stolen bases are overrated. To do this, they listed the 20 teams that had stolen the most bases in the last decade and where those team’s offenses ranked within the league....the study’s results were thoroughly inconclusive. They then showed the great offenses and where they ranked in stolen bases....again, the study’s results were very inconclusive. As a general rule, inconclusive results indicate a poorly-done study.

The Baseball Prospectus study did prove one thing....that teams that steal lots of bases cover both ends of the spectrum - a great offense like the 2001 Mariners lead baseball in stolen bases, but so did a bad offense like the 2002 Marlins. The average league rank in runs scored for the teams that stole lots of bases was right along the median. But therein lies the problem....the forementioned inconclusiveness of the study.

That was just a sabermetric-spouting website that frowned on stolen bases....what do the sabermetric teams? think of them?

League Rank of Stolen Bases (There is the little caveat that this lists teams by successful stolen base attempts, not total stolen base attempts.)

Oakland
2001: 13th out of 14
2002: 14th out of 14
2003: 13th out of 14

Toronto
2002: 10th out of 14
2003: 13th out of 14

Boston
2003: 9th out of 14

I think we can all agree that the sabermetric ballclubs, like their ideological counterparts on the internet, think that most often the risk involved in trying to steal a base outweighs the reward.

We now know that teams that steal lots of bases have, on the whole, average offenses. The question now is, whether stealing bases somehow causes an offense to score more runs than it otherwise would have. So the Baseball Prospectus study should not have been asking “Do teams that steal lots of bases score lots of runs compared to the rest of the league?” No, the study should have instead asked, “Do teams that try to steal lots of bases score more runs than they would have scored if they did not try to steal lots of bases?”

The answer to the latter question is a the same thing that I always hear during one of my conquests of the opposite sex....”Yes, oh God, YES!!!”

I have to admit, this little study of mine is a little bit boring and hard to explain, but if you bear with me I think that you’ll come to the same conclusion (in fact, you won’t be able to come to any other conclusion). The conclusion is that teams that attempt lots of stolen bases - whether those attempts are successful or not - usually score more runs than they would have otherwise scored.

The three teams that led the MLB in stolen bases in each of the past thirty seasons (1974-2003) have offenses that break down like this:

56 of the 90 teams scored more runs than they otherwise would've scored
25 of the 90 teams scored fewer runs than they otherwise would've scored
9 of the 90 teams scored the same number of runs than they would've otherwise scored

Now those are the 90 teams that lead baseball in successful stolen bases....what about the 90 that led the league in unsuccessful stolen bases? (Note: There is much overlapping between the two groups.)

45 of the 90 teams scored more runs than they otherwise would've scored
28 of the 90 teams scored fewer runs than they otherwise would've scored
17 of the 90 teams scored the same number of runs than they otherwise would've scored

The reasons that those teams out-perfom their raw numbers are too numerous to cite or to quantify. Here are some of the theories that I have explaining why aggressive teams do so well:
---Fast runners force errors on defenses
---Fast runners foster into the team the value of a base. (I believe that base-stealing teams take pride in always scoring from second on singles and getting to third base on a single.)
---Psychologically, players are more focused on the game when each base seems to matter

The method for determining which teams out-performed, under-performed, or matched what they otherwise would have scored was this: For the three team-SB leaders of each season between 1974 and 2003, I compared their MLB rank of Runs Scored to their MLB rank of OPS. (For the record, the teams that out-performed expectations out-performed them to a much larger degree than the teams that under-performed expectations under-performed.)

Anyway, who gives a shit.

DITCH THE DAMN POSTSEASON!!!

2004-03-09T09:07:00.000-08:00

NOTE: This letter, slightly modified, was originally written to the host of the website Replacement Level Yankees Weblog and then posted in January. (In my subjective opinion, the site is way better than 'replacement level.' But pretentious self-deprecation is all the rage, ya know?)

You know how sabermetricians always claim that the postseason is just a matter of luck? No? Well here's a sample:

"But the truth is that winning the World Series isn't about being the best, it's about being the luckiest."
--Rob Neyer ESPN column, 4-2-2003

"'Four postseason series is like two weeks in the regular season, and anybody can go through a rough couple of weeks.' In other words, Dierker thinks the Astros were unlucky. And I happen to agree with him."
--Rob Neyer ESPN column, 7-8-2003

"All [baseball fans] care about was how you fared in the post-season crap shoot."
--Michael Lewis, New York Times Magazine, 3-30-2003

"My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is fucking luck."

-Billy Beane, Moneyball, pp. 275

Nobody ever said that it's ALL luck. Nobody.
--Rob Neyer via e-mail, 7-22-03

That last quote was for irony. Anyhow, as a casual Yankees fan I'd noticed a certain magic about the Yankees team that was, of course, unquantifiable but impossible to miss for anybody that has even the slightest intuition of the celestial. But then I start going to all of these websites that dismiss the postseason as if it were some appendage for retards, like putting a shiny cover on a DVD or something, useless and dismissable. I recalled many declarations that the postseason was all luck, in addition to the easy-to-find quotes printed above, and I was bothered by it.

Bothered by these snobs because I believe that there is such a thing as the heart of a champion. I believe that Jason Kidd, while statistically inferior, is a better point guard than Stephon Marbury. Lots of these beliefs that I really hadn't even doubted were, I realized, being spasmically mocked in the sabermetric community. Maybe I haven't the time and creativity to totally defend my beliefs, but I'd certainly do something.

So, I thought, if the postseason is all luck, than the odds of one team winning a given series would be 50%, right? Well, the odds of, for example, flipping a coin and having it land on heads X times in a row is .5^X. The odds of a 40% three-point shooter making three consecutive is (.4)(.4)(.4).

Well, between 1998 and 2001 those Yankee teams won 11 straight postseason series. If the sabermetric guys are right, and the postseason is all luck, then the odds of the Yankees achieving that would be .5^11. That's one in 2,048. Once every 2,048 years should the Yankees feat be duplicated. Well, I mean, maybe I'm easy to please but those odds seem too ridiculous to be true. So, by my standards, this proves that the postseason isn't luck. (Another way of looking at it is that the odds of a three-peat occuring are 1/512. So if you think that a three-peat will now occur twice a millienium, then you agree with Neyer, Baseball Prospectus, et al.)

The sabermetric guys sure as hell ain't gonna debunk their claims from within. These guys defend their status quo with a mindless dedication that'd be too conformist for Oceania.

Luck is literally impossible to prove or disprove. The best that you can do to find out if something is luck is to see if the event occurs at regular intervals. But even if a feat is repeated regularly, it still doesn't prove or disprove luck....it just indicates probability, not certainty. Obviously, luck does exist, but, personally, I think that calling somebody's accomplishment luck is a damning insult, and it should be done with the same discretion as calling a Canadian luberjack's wife ugly.

Like saying that one-run games are all luck. Well, that's dead wrong in every sense, but let's just say, hypothetically, that every team every year is exactly .500 in one-run games. So if Steve Trachsel outpitched Pedro Martinez in a 1-0 pitcher's duel, statistically that win would be luck....but that doesn't mean that the contest itself was luck, ya know? Another way of looking at it is this: Suppose that Muhammad Ali and Joe Lewis faught each other 20 times, and the series was a draw at 10 victories apiece, alright? There is an even distribution of outcomes, and that points to luck....but that doesn't mean that the individual matches were luck, ya know?

Moreover, why would they want to believe that the objective of baseball - winning a championship - is based on chance? I mean, if that were true and they'd figured out this great secret, then why not just get out from following baseball and pick a hobby more based upon reason, ya know? It just seems like they hate their own sport, so get another, that's all.

A couple of notes:
(1) Winning 11 straight postseason series is not analogous to winning 11 straight games in the regular season!!! There are over two thousand games in every baseball season, okay? On the other hand, there is never more than one team able to win 11 straight postseason rounds.
(2) Anybody who wants to make the case that the Yankees got those postseason wins because MLB was fixing them? I'll give you a head start on a possible motive:

"Within the executive offices of ESPN and FOX, there was expected exultation over the trade of Rodriguez to the Yankees."

-'Sports on TV' column in USA Today, 2-18-04 [The point being that, secretly, the MLB loves the Yankee's dominance. It creates free publicity and, contrary to popular opinion, does not drive out the fans in the 'smaller markets.']

Anyway, who gives a shit.

A HARVARD GRAD IS RUNNING A BASEBALL TEAM.....HIS PARENTS MUST BE VERY PROUD

2004-03-08T01:52:00.000-08:00

Paul DePodesta began his speech to the Thought Leaders Forum with, “The baseball world was rich for reform.” Here’s why:

There was such transparent stupidity throughout the baseball industry, that organizations routinely made multi-million dollar decisions based on uncorroborated claims that scouts would make. Worse, there was no way of even telling which scouts had credibility, as no system of accountability had been implemented. DePodesta seems to be asking, “How could an organization know which scouts were good if they weren’t even monitoring their track record?”

Indeed, employee reviews are a huge part of every business....but why not in baseball?

So that was the first inefficiency - employee review policies. The second major inefficiency was poor information management. The evolution of baseball stats was a discombobulated and jumbled operation. Amazingly, there hadn't been much effort to create a unifying statistical assessment of players' ability to create or prevent runs. This naturally resulted in an equally discombobulated and jumbled salary structure.

Indeed, information management is a major focus of every business....but why not in baseball?

Well, why not in baseball? The answer, I believe, is that baseball is full of idiots. If you read ‘Moneyball,‘ then you know that I’m not alone. In his speech, Paul DePodesta also seems to agree with my ‘Idiot Theory,‘ but he makes it a point to backtrack and blame the system. (DePodesta quotes Jim Pinkerton when he assigns blame to the tendencies of systems themselves: “Systems of any kind tend to degrade over time....and reflexive self-perpetuation becomes the only goal.”)

Okay, so the system of baseball had not been maintained properly. The people in management were too stupid to maintain and improve it. I’ll stipulate the point. So the question remains....why?

Because baseball is a blue-collar leisure business, and blue collar guys aren’t that bright, that’s why.

Baseball fans usually delight at hearing stories of Babe Ruth’s trouble-making childhood on the streets of Baltimore, or Cal Ripken’s tobacco-spitten father driving the big family across the country to find work, or big, burly Mickey Mantle reduced to tears when coal-mining Mutt shames him into regaining some pride. It seems to legitimize the sport as a source of refuge for the less-fortunate in society. (By “less fortunate” I mean in terms of upbringing, money, and, most of all, intelligence.)

By and large, these were the types of men known to run the industry. But blue-collar sort of men, as a whole, haven’t got the temperament to do exhaustive statistical studies, nor do they tend to possess the patience to dig through “System’s Analysis” books.

The motive for the blue-collar men to stay in baseball was obvious - so that they could stay out of the coal mines. On the other side, what the hell was the motive for a brilliant, upper-class man to enter baseball?

In 1950, I’d bet anything that it was considered unbecoming for a bright young Harvard grad to have his greatest aspiration be to run a baseball club, to exploit all these blue collar guys’ intellectual incapabilities. That just was not what Harvard grads were supposed to do. They started businesses, they cured diseases, they invented things to make our lives better, right? Oh, sure, in his twilight years he might get involved in baseball, but it was more a happy accident than a goal. (This is a theory, okay?)

I haven’t done any sort of research, but I’d bet money that in 1950, 1960 there were very few Ivy League grads in baseball. Today, they’re all over the place.

It’s like, shouldn’t Harvard grads be doing something more substantive with their supposedly great minds? Baseball’s fun and all, but it has no real value to the world....it’s fluff. Should society’s greatest minds be dedicating themselves to fluff?

Every day I drive past homeless people. Almost every day I meet somebody who’s sticking their kid full of medication instead of raising them. Every election I hear stories of corpses and dogs casting ballots.

Am I saying that they should be ashamed of what they‘re doing? No, I’m not. But I am saying that it’s morally wrong for us, as a society, to suck up to brilliant men who will leave the world no better than it was when they entered. They're underachievers, not heroes.

I believe - to the point of fanaticism - that freedom is the most important morality of all. Freedom is more important than safety, more important than health, more important than life.

So when I say that America’s smartest men should, as a whole, dedicate themselves to things more substantive than baseball, I don’t mean that I want the government to stick its fat snout in and make some new law or anything like that. I mean, I don’t think that marijuana or hookers are at all a good thing, but I’ll be damned before I say that some jerkoff politician should have men with guns rob you of the freedom to use them.

This is strictly a moral judgment I’m talking about, okay?

I think that, as a society, we should be leary of having athletes in Washington and Harvard Grads in the Dodger’s front office. If it happens naturally, that’s fine. But let’s not celebrate these Paul DePodesta’s and Theo Epstein’s and Keith Law’s and the hundreds of other Ivy Leaguers no doubt infiltrating baseball’s front offices.

They're living the good life, and they're doing something fun, great. But, I mean, maybe it's just another example of my Catholic upbringing rearing it's head but I think that it is patently immoral to hold these guys up as heroes. I just think that it is absolutely wrong, but I see it being done all the time. All the time.

Anyway, who gives a shit.

CONTROLLING YOUR EMOTIONS IS IMPOSSIBLE

2004-03-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

Note: Much in this column is from this site.

Note #2: This column has been re-written so that it's coherent. (3-6-04)

Freddy Garcia was stinking up the joint. His performance was so pathetic he might have even been hoping that 2,500 people would be killed so that his approval ratings would skyrocket. It was May 22 of 2003 and his ERA was higher than Snoop Dogg in Amsterdam (Ba-Zing!). He was getting rocked more than an adulterer in Arabia (Double Ba-Zing!).

Why was this happening? Why was this man, eighteen months removed from an ERA crown, getting hit so hard? Well, if you're Paul DePodesta, statistical outliers have no cause. They just happen. All the hitters that go on tears after their children are born.....FLUKE!!! Ichiro Suzuki's .449 AVG. with RISP in 2001.....FLUKE!!! DePodesta and Michael Lewis being spotted together at a San Francisco courthouse....TRUE!!! (I Keed, I Keed.)

Now, during this awful slump of Freddy Garcia's, he's being given the usual advice about how to break out of it. The advisors all told him he needed to "control his emotions." Some so-called experts were even saying that Freddy Garcia's opponents were "feeding" off of his temper.

As he would soon learn, his trying to "control his emotions" was the very source of his failure. It was as if Woody Allen were being told that his movies would be hits again if he'd just have more talking in them.

So what's struggling, polarized Freddy to do? Simple. Quit pretending to be a machine and be a man. He is a man, not the the Architect. Quit trying to control how he feels, and instead just control what he actually does. This is how his line looked the first 10 starts of the season, when he was trying to "control his emotions":

ERA: 5.90
IP: 58

Then Garcia was was quoted saying this: "I have to be more emotional. (Unemotional) is not Freddy. Maybe it's someone else, but it's not me. If people don't like it, there's nothing I can do about it. It's all about winning."

And this is how he pitched for his next ten starts:

ERA: 3.64
IP: 69.3

Here's a little way to make watching baseball less boring: Next time you're watching a ballgame and the pitcher begins to struggle, observe the catcher going out towards the mound. The catcher will invariably make this motion with his hands where his palms face the ground and he keeps raising and lowering his hands. Looks kind of like he's doing push-ups. He's telling the pitcher, "Calm down....Relax...."

It's bullshit.

I mean, if us men could control our emotions, we'd just give ourselves orgasms 24 hours a day, ya know? If we could just relax when somebody makes some motion with their hands, we'd never be upset, ya know?

Every pitcher has to put up with this bullshit all the time. "Relax."

Relax my ass. Randy Johnson, Jack Morris, do they look relaxed? Hell no. If you're pitching in the World Series with the tying run on third base....should you be relaxed? I mean, aren't you supposed to be nervous sometimes?

In all probability, telling a pitcher to relax just compounds the problem because he then is failing at two things: 1) His pitching and 2) His efforts to control his emotions. Twice the trouble.

The comedian Chris Rock has this bit where he goes (and I'm paraphrasing here): Everybody says "There's NO reason to EVER hit a woman." Hey, there's a reason to hit EVERYBODY. Just don't do it, alright? There's a reason to throw an old man down a flight of stairs....just don't DO IT.

Chris Rock talking about men wanting to cheat (paraphrasing again):
Every man WANTS to cheat....can't cheat.
Every man's DYING to cheat....can't cheat.
Every man can't WAIT to cheat....can't cheat.

And this is the same thing. Men of the world, you can't control your emotions. You can only control your thoughts and your actions, okay?

Anyway, who gives a shit.

THE FEMINIZATION OF PRO SPORTS

2004-03-02T17:35:00.000-08:00

Well, that title is a bit of a misnomer, as watching a bunch of other men do something is inherently feminine, but let's just say that the pro sports arena is growing even more feminine, and at a seemingly exponential rate.

"How's that, David?"

Glad you asked.

SausageGate
Most of you remember that dreadful night last summer when the evil Randall Simon poked a woman dressed in a huge sausage outfit with a baseball bat. Ha Ha, the kind of slightly-cruel prank most guys took part in every day during school and, God willing, as grown ups, too. Everybody has their laughs and then moves on, just like when I was at a Phillies game in 2002 and a guy in a huge Sponge Bob outfit fell down and literally could not get back up. (It was hilarious. Here's this pair of legs sticking out of this huge block, kicking helplessly. The crowd felt guilty, but, honestly, it rivaled Seinfeld circa 1993 for comedic potency.)

So Randall Simon's prank is no big deal, right? Well, if you're an honest man, it's no big deal. But this is the faggish world of pro sports we're talking about. "One of the most outrageous things I've ever seen inside a ballpark or outside a ballpark! It SICKENED me to see it!" This was what Brewers vice-president Rick Schlessinger said, before he joyfully drove right past homeless people, drug addicted prostitutes, and other inner-city horrors on his way home. There was no comment on whether he was sickened by the attendance at Miller Park.

"Well," you're probably saying, "that's just one statement by some idiot phony. That doesn't mean anything."

Ah, but you're wrong.

The idiot in the Brewers front office was just the start. (And don't you go thinking that the redundancy of saying 'Idiot in the Brewers front office' escaped me.) For the next two days, this funny, innocent prank was the lead-in on Sportscenter, Baseball Tonight, and, undoubtedly, on the Pittsburgh and Miwaukee news networks. Phony after phony was interviewed on ESPN, outraged - outraged, I tell you!!! - that Randall Simon had done this to the poor, innocent woman. The "victim" herself was interviewed, and, in so many words, she told her supposed protectors to get a life, but that didn't slow the phonies down. They were going to "protect" her, whether she wanted it or not. The Milwaukee Police Department, (heroes all!) they couldn't catch Jeffrey Dahmer, but they could handcuff, jail, and investigate Randall Simon. (How could I survive without you guys?)

Sadistic Crowd Controllers
A few years ago the Tigers were playing in Oakland, and I was watching the game on TV, which was being announced by Josh Lewin and Kirk Gibson. So it's a beautiful Saturday afternoon and baseball's being played and all is right with the world. At the ballgame, this cute young couple ditches their box seats to go and sit in the top-row of the upper deck, just to have some privacy, as young couples tend to want it. Throughout the game, the announcers playfully kept joking about this sweet young couple, while they did all sorts of tender things. He massaged her neck, they kissed playfully, they cuddled, he pointed to the field and explained the game to her. It was all very sweet.

After, I don't know, a half-hour, some dimwitted bureaucrat from the A's goes up and demands to see their ticket stubs. The young guy was so cool, his body languaged was like, "Gimme a break, pal, we're just trying to enjoy ourselves." But the worthless bureaucrat, undoubtedly incapable of loving a woman without chemical assistance, he needed to boss young people around in order to feel good about himself.

Ultimately, the young couple just shrugged and went back to their original seats. Now, I expected "Man's Man" Kirk Gibson to stick up for the young couple, but, of all people, Josh Lewin said just the right thing. He goes, "That's right, you two! Stop enjoying a ballgame on a beautiful Saturday afternoon!"

Students Rushing the Court
Basketball, to me, is so pure. When the refs keep their snouts out of the game, when the fans are going nuts for their team, when the teams are really trying. It's, to me, the greatest a sport can be unless you're a participant.

Now, though, they're trying to regulate and legislate college basketball fans. The ESPN show 'Pardon the Interruption' recently had the two hosts each decrying the evils of college kids running onto the court in celebration of a victory. Michael Wilbon cited one game where some kid broke his pinky or something and so now Wilbon thinks that any students that celebrate on the court should be arrested. "How many kids have to be hurt before we put a stop to this!?!?" he yelled in a show of fake-concern. Wilbon, I don't know how many kids have to get hurt before the costs outweigh the benefits, but I do know that it's a helluva lot more than just one. By Wilbon's rational, cars should be illegal, because 50,000 people die - not get injured, but get killed - in auto accidents each year. In fact, we should outlaw sports altogether. After all, athletes break bones, sprain ankles, bloody their noses, etc. all the time.

Actually, Wilbon, nobody needs your fat, ugly ass to protect them.

Edward Koch once said that if you can only do things where there's no risk, than you can't do anything at all. Though that is so self-evident that it shouldn't need to be spoken, apparently people need to be reminded.

PLEASE JUST LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE!!! THEY'RE HAVING FUN THE WAY COLLEGE KIDS HAVE BEEN HAVING FUN FOR 50 YEARS....JUST LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE YOU FUCKING LOSERS!!!

Reasons
Now whatever the reason that this fake sympathy has suddenly boomed is another issue. But for right now I'm not worried about their motives, I'm just worried about their Senate Hearings, their ESPN "Special Reports" their cops jailing innocent men.

In short, I'm worried about them taking more of my freedom.

Having said all that, here are a few of the reasons that this feminization is taking over:

1) So that the Powers That Be look more benevolent and loving to the Little Guy (I'm the Little Guy and I'd rather piss on Bud Selig than have his pretentious benevolence.)

2) Because it jacks up TV ratings and gets non-fans to tune in.

3) Because everybody is terrified of being called any one of the following names:
--Insensitive
--Intolerant
--Hateful
--Racist
--Sexist
--Homophobic
--Unpatriotic
--Treasonous

The thoughf of being called any of those names strikes terror into even the hardest of hearts. "Don't like that new $500 tax for 'Homeland Security?'.....You're Unpatriotic."

"No, I'm sorry! You're right! Take more of my money, take more of my freedom - just don't call me that name!"

"Don't think that black people need affirmative action.....You're Racist."

"No, I'm sorry! You're right! Take my spot at the University, take my money for reparations - just don't call me that name!!!"

Anyway, who gives a shit.

MICHAEL LEWIS'S WAR ON LOGIC

2004-02-29T15:44:00.000-08:00

"I've got the Rangers (85-67) edging the Mariners (84-68) for second place." Rob Neyer's forecast for the 2001 AL West

Michael Lewis managed to do something with his hands besides stroke Billy Beane to satisfaction, and the results of that are in the newest 'Sports Illustrated,' the March 1, 2004 edition.

First off, this jagoff is so wildly self-important he makes Norma Desmond look pious. He honestly believes that he chronicled a revolution. Ummmm, you didn't, pal. You convinced some of us that you had a teeny-bopper crush on Beane, and you wrote a bunch of lies, but that's about it.

The SI artilcle begins, "A religious war is taking place in baseball." Hey, relax, chief, you're talking about statisticians following ballplayers. I think the term "religious war" might be overstating things, alright?

Lewis quickly threatens anybody who dissents from any of his views by accusing them of being in "The Club." Those who dare to cheer for teams that actually advance beyond the first round of the playoffs are Creationists. (Postseason failure is good!!!) Now, I don't think that there actually are any Creationists anymore, but these guys have identities that are dependant on manufacturing enemies.

He wastes little time in getting his first fact wrong, in just the 3rd paragraph of his article he says, "I published a book, Moneyball...." Old Timer? You didn't publish jack shit. You wrote it, but W.W. Norton Co. published it, alright?

Apparently, J.P. Ricciardi is actually a spy in the Yankee organization, because Lewis quotes Ricciardi saying that Steinbrenner overreacted to an error (Steinbrenner has undoubtedly seen tens-of-thousands of errors over the past 30 years) by an outfielder and then telling them to "buy" Raul Modesi. If this is true, and the Yanks wanted to buy Mondesi....then how come Toronto paid virtually his entire salary when he was traded?

Anyway, I think it's ridiculous that Steinbrenner thinks he knows about baseball. Where does he get the nerve?

So Beane is an ace at assembling his roster, eh? Didn't you guys find it amazing that somebody managed to write an entire book about the A's without mentioning Hudson, Zito, or Mulder?

The Oakland A's numbers independent of their starting pitching.

Offense's OPS ranking (Average rank is 7th out of 14)
2001: 5th out of 14
2002: 8th out of 14
2003: 9th out of 14

Bullpen's OPS Allowed rankings (Average rank is 5th out of 14)
2001: 3rd out of 14
2002: 7th out of 14
2003: 5th out of 14

(And don't forget that Giambi and Tejada were the major reason for the A's offense not being downright awful, and they were both drafted before Beane got there.) Now those two categories - offense and the bullpen - are accountable for about 2/3 of a ballclub, (50% for offense, 16% for the bullpen). That leaves only starting pitching as a factor, and, of course, the A's starting pitching has indeed been the factor that has seperated themselves from the group.

Starting Pitching OPS Allowed rankings (Average rank is 1st out of 14)
2001: 1st out of 14
2002: 2nd out of 14
2003: 1st out of 14

Now, can we just stipulate that the A's pitching staff has been the primary source of their winning? Does this not satisfy that point? Thank you.

Okay....the reason the A's pitching staff has been good is because of their vaunted Big Three - Hudson, Zito, and Mulder. Now, Beane has always been worthy of respect because all three of these guys were drafted under his watch, so he deserves the credit for their success, right? Wrong.

Here is the real reason Oakland assistant GM and object of Michael Lewis' wet dreams Paul DePodesta's speech was removed from the web:
"It wasn't until 2002 that we....went after our scouting system."

In other words, those grizzled Jack Palance's were the guys to credit for the drafting of the Big Three, not Beane. (I'll go ahead and say that I think that, with all the scouting services available nowadays, nobody really deserves credit for an individual draft.)

So, the Oakand offense and bullpen have both been mediocre, and the one part of the team that's exceptional, the pitching, is somebody else's achievement.

Anyway, who gives a shit.