2006-07 MLB Offseason Thread

[snuffbox 0]

Ron Santo STILL not in the Hall.

[vivalaultra 0]

I feel like that was an excellent response.

 

Did anyone get the 2007 B-Pro? Haven't gotten around to getting it yet but will have to once I finish the books I have sitting in the queue.

 

Mine shipped yesterday so I should have it by Friday. If anyone wants me to do little write-ups on certain players, just shoot me a line.

 

Could you do little write-ups on:

 

Roy Oswalt

Jason Jennings

Woody Williams

Wandy Rodriguez

Chris Sampson

 

Craig Biggio

Chris Burke

Lance Berkman

Carlos Lee

Morgan Ensberg

Luke Scott

Adam Everett

Brad Ausmus

 

Fernando Nieve

Dave Borkowski

Trever Miller

Dan Wheeler

Chad Qualls

Brad Lidge

 

Mike Lamb

Orlando Palmiero

Mark Loretta

Richard Hidalgo

Humberto Quintero

 

Oh...and also Reed Johnson. I'm considering picking him up on my fantasy team.

 

And my late opinion to the stats v. human element quandry: I'm far from a stathead, but I've found that even my limited knowledge of somewhat upper tier statistics have done nothing but enhanced my enjoyment of the game. However, I also believe that an overreliance on statistical analysis which leads to breaking down the game to a pure science detracts from the fun of everything. It's the same as with anything. When I was young and I read books and listened to music, I enjoyed it on one level, but now that I have a decent knowledge of the process of writing and musicmaking, I'm able to enjoy these things on multiple levels; it enriches the whole process. Contrariwise, I think I would like the game less if every time Chris Burke stepped up to bat in the 7th inning with runners on 2nd and 3rd down a run with two outs, I stopped to compute his VORP, WARP, groundball to flyball ratio, ISOp, OPS+, and other assorted stats. There's something to be said for the human element and drama of the game as well. After all, the game is played by humans who are capable of overcoming their statistics, and that, to me is what the game is made up of. But for a so-called sportswriter to be so dismissive and derisive of modern stats is just shoddy journalism.

 

And besides, I don't need to know everything about stats, there's several people here who can always shoot down my optimistic decries with concepts represented by acronyms that sound like left-wing political organizations.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

And my late opinion to the stats v. human element quandry: I'm far from a stathead, but I've found that even my limited knowledge of somewhat upper tier statistics have done nothing but enhanced my enjoyment of the game. However, I also believe that an overreliance on statistical analysis which leads to breaking down the game to a pure science detracts from the fun of everything. It's the same as with anything. When I was young and I read books and listened to music, I enjoyed it on one level, but now that I have a decent knowledge of the process of writing and musicmaking, I'm able to enjoy these things on multiple levels; it enriches the whole process. Contrariwise, I think I would like the game less if every time Chris Burke stepped up to bat in the 7th inning with runners on 2nd and 3rd down a run with two outs, I stopped to compute his VORP, WARP, groundball to flyball ratio, ISOp, OPS+, and other assorted stats. There's something to be said for the human element and drama of the game as well. After all, the game is played by humans who are capable of overcoming their statistics, and that, to me is what the game is made up of. But for a so-called sportswriter to be so dismissive and derisive of modern stats is just shoddy journalism.

 

I do think that, while stats are useful, people can be over obsessive about them. There's some things in a player that can't be quantified with any stat. For example, Bill Hall is probably one of the best players on the Brewers right now, especially because of his versatility. I don't think there's a "versatility" stat, though.

[devo 0]

Anybody else having problems with MLB.tv? I'm trying to watch the Mets/Tigers game and it's switching between not loading and giving me different error messages.

[Fuzzy Dunlop 0]

Yeah, I'm getting that too.

[devo 0]

Never mind, it's working now. Oliver Perez has already given up two runs, yeesh.

[Fuzzy Dunlop 0]

Still not working for me.

[Fuzzy Dunlop 0]

And now it's back and the first thing I see is a Neifi Perez strikeout.

[geniusMoment 0]

Mark Cuban is about to make a $625 million offer to buy the cubs:

 

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2007...id-for-cubs.php

[Fuzzy Dunlop 0]

Fire Joe Morgan had a great response to the Murray Chass story.

 

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

 

This Is Why This Site Exists

I would guess that something like ninety percent of people still consume all of their sportswriting in the form of newspapers. (I mean, factor in old people and casual fans, right?) They wake up in the morning, pour themselves some orange juice, sit down and read drivel like this willfully uninformed screed from cantakerous, crotchety Murray Chass.

 

As Season Approaches, Some Topics Should Be Off Limits

 

Things I don’t want to read or hear about anymore:

 

Let's cut to the juicy part.

 

Statistics mongers promoting VORP and other new-age baseball statistics.

 

"New age" is touchy-feely. New age is spiritual. New age is intangible. VORP, Mr. Chass, is not new age. It may be relatively new, but it is not new age. It is the opposite of new age. It is an attempt to quantify, to measure, to analyze. You know, a more scientific approach to knowledge. Science -- that thing that humans do to find out more about the world around them. Not new age -- a fake thing that involves pan flutes and rubbing crystals on your body.

 

I receive a daily e-mail message from Baseball Prospectus, an electronic publication filled with articles and information about statistics, mostly statistics that only stats mongers can love.

 

You can feel the sneer curling on his face as he writes "electronic publication" with a quill pen in Olde English, then rolls up the parchment and sends it on its three-day horseback journey to his publisher, Lord Sulzberger, Jr.

 

He's kidding about the e-mail of course. He doesn't have an "e-mail address." E-mail is for new age wack jobs.

 

To me, VORP epitomized the new-age nonsense.

 

Sir. Sir. You're still using "new age" incorrectly. Excuse me, sir?

 

(Murray Chass ignores me and continues brushing his teeth with a small rubber fish.)

 

For the longest time, I had no idea what VORP meant and didn’t care enough to go to any great lengths to find out.

 

That's cool. You're just a baseball writer for the fucking New York fucking Times. Thanks for caring about your fucking job so much you won't type "define:vorp" into Google, hit return, and then read the literally two sentences that result. I just did it ten times in the last three seconds. You're right, though: I guess those are "great lengths" for a 479-year-old member of the tribe of living undead.

 

I asked some colleagues whose work I respect, and they didn’t know what it meant either.

 

Those colleagues:

 

Tim McCarver

Branch Rickey

Abner Doubleday

Alexander Joy Cartwright

Scoop Jackson

Herodotus

John Kruk

 

Finally, not long ago, I came across VORP spelled out. It stands for value over replacement player. How thrilling. How absurd. Value over replacement player. Don’t ask what it means. I don’t know.

 

If you read this paragraph again, you'll find that it doesn't really contain an argument in any sense of the word. Since when are baseball statistics supposed to be "thrilling"? How thrilling is ERA, a thing you presmuably think is fine? And you still don't know what VORP means, even after writing about it in a professional column in a professional newspaper, professionally?

 

I suppose that if stats mongers want to sit at their computers and play with these things all day long, that’s their prerogative.

 

In their parents' basements, not getting a date for prom, wearing nerd glasses and playing the violin. Even at age 9,354, Murray gets a thrill out of nailing these dorks. Good luck getting laid, dorks! Gotcha!

 

But their attempt to introduce these new-age statistics into the game threatens to undermine most fans’ enjoyment of baseball and the human factor therein.

 

Murray Chass: New age new age new age new age the end. My column's done!

 

Nurse: Very good, Murray! We're going out into the garden now for some fresh air. The garden. Won't that be fun?

 

Saying that VORP undermines "enjoyment" and the "human factor" is like creationists saying that evolution takes away the "wonder" and "mystery" of the universe. It doesn't. It makes it awesomer.

 

People play baseball. Numbers don’t.

 

I actually believe that goofy, anthropomorphic numbers with arms and legs and silly oversize white gloves play all of the games we know of in what we call professional baseball. Call me crazy, but that is what I believe.

 

Murray Chass: proof that there is still a reason we behave like true dickheads on this site.

[geniusMoment 0]

Jesus Christ, are those stat magazines always so fucking condescending and holier than thou? Quill Pens? They're just as bad as the people they criticize. If reading that is supposed to make me want to find the writer and beat him with my baseball bat then mission accomplished.

[The Man in Blak 0]

That's par for the course for Fire Joe Morgan, but I wouldn't necessarily expect that from other sabermetric sites, like the Hardball Times, for example. BPro is decent, if unspectacular, in this regard (Silver's response to Chass was commendable), but they've had some very visible slipups in the past, including Joe Sheehan calling everybody in sports journalism "economically-illterate dumbasses" or something to that effect.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

Jesus Christ, are those stat magazines always so fucking condescending and holier than thou? Quill Pens? They're just as bad as the people they criticize. If reading that is supposed to make me want to find the writer and beat him with my baseball bat then mission accomplished.

 

Fire Joe Morgan is a blog that makes fun of bad sports journalism. That sort of writing is to be expected with them and it's for entertainment purposes only.

[strummer 0]

FJM makes fun of bad sports journalism. They do not make fun of "clueless" fans. They simply point out when writers and analysts say incredibly stupid things about baseball. I don't see how that makes them "dicks".

 

FJM rules

[Brett Favre 0]

It would be better if they point out why they are wrong instead of acting immature.

[KingPK 0]

They freely admit that they are assholes. They do point out why the people they mock are idiots, but they do it in a highly sarcastic, jackass manner. And that is why they rule. A fair amount of "mainstream" sports journalism has taken a nosedive in quality over the last few years, so it's nice that there's places that point it out. Cold Hard Football Facts is in the same vein with it's Pigskin Detention articles.

Edited March 1, 2007 by KingPK