djvh@drutx.UUCP (VanHandelDJ) (08/27/85)
>>> Now, why don't we expand this whole discussion so that others >>> can take part, too? After all, no one else has made any >>> contributions to this, and we might as well conduct this by >>> mail, rather than over the net. >>> >> No one else? I for one have posted twice regarding this >> discussion. Did you ignore these just like you ignored David Rubin's >> remarks that didn't agree with yours. > >Perhaps you are as unfamiliar with the net as you appear to be >with baseball. The order of propagation of postings is not uniform >over this net. As a result, I did not see your postings until just >now (and I saw multiple copies, from different routes). Perhaps >you could gain from following the same advice that I gave to >Rubin, which is to realize that there are things you might not >know. Perhaps not. I am not as familiar with it as I am with baseball, which is probably why someone like you cannot follow my (and David Rubin's) reasoning. We don't believe stats are everything (as you seem to think), but they are obviously better than nothing. >>Statistics may not be used to PROVE a point in baseball, but they >>sure as hell are better than anything else we can use. > >Better than expert opinion? Fine! Next time you get sick, you can >use statistics yourself, and I'll go to a doctor. Where do you think expert opinion comes from? If you were a dcotor, you would probably use untested medicine just because you think (for no apparent reason) that it should work. You say you don't believe in stats; would you try a medicine that caused cancer in half the test group it was tried on? >Rubin feels that statistics explain. You say this; he never did - I never did. >> Who's to say this is subjective. Any good manager will base >> his decision on the results obtained by past performance. > >Of course it's subjective. Different managers have different >opinions of a player. This is based upon knowledge that they have >that we cannot possibly obtain, such as "This batter has trouble >with curveballs over the outside part of the plate from left-handers, >and I think I know how to correct that." > But how do they KNOW these things - at least part of it, many times a large part of it - is from past performance stats. >>So they have better stats. They are still stats, which >>shows the value of using the right statistics for the game. > >Of course the "right" statistics are valuable. But which are right? >And my point is that they have so much more info than we do (exactly >where the ball was hit, what the count was, etc.) that, if you >really believe in stats the way Rubin does, you MUST concede that >the pros have access to better stats, and therefore make better >decisions. So then we agree. The right stats ARE valuable. And the best available stats to the regular fan are OB Pct and Slugging Pct. If you have not finally agreed with this, then you never will no matter how good the reasoning is. >> It's possible that David Rubin does know more. The people that >> vote for these awards aren't God; do you honestly feel that the best players >> get to the all-star game each year? You seem to accept the "Authority's" >> decisions as law. > >There is no way on God's green earth that David Rubin knows more >about baseball than the majority of the baseball professionals. Of >course they aren't God; I never said they were. I said they know >more than we do, just as we know more about our respective fields >than they do. The bottom line is: if David Rubin knows so much about >running a team, lets see him do it and win a series! Ha! What a >laugh!!! Since there is no way to support this either way, we should drop this part of the discussion/argument. >> David Rubin repeatedly stated that no statistic is independent >> of other players, only that some stats have less correlation to what the >> other players do. After years of studying stats, it is obvious to me that >> slugging pct. and on-base pct. are by far the most useful for discussion >> of offensive contribution. These are not perfect, but are the best we have. > >Right, but there are much better ones, based on better info. Once again, we agree. >>> Since you love to compute, why not analyze how often runs >>> are scored with only walks, versus how often runs are scored with >>> only hits? Or how often runs are scored with no hits at all, versus >>> how often runs are scored without walks? This is baseball, not the >>> on-base derby. >>> >>You don't make any sense here. Are you saying that a player >>cannot do both? Of course a hit is better than a walk. But, if two >>players each get 600 plate appearances, #1 gets 130 hits and 100 walks, >>#2 gets 180 hits and 20 walks, who would you say contributed more? >>Player #1 has a BA of .260 while Player #2 has a BA of .310. So >>Player #2 is clearly better, right? Assuming power figures are equal, >>I would say Player #1 was more valuable, as he reached base 30 more >>times in the same 600 plate appearances. > >But if you find that runs correlate with hits more than with walks, >then the second player could easily prove more valuable. Runs are >what counts, not on-base average itself. I'll admit a hit is more valuable than a walk, but I will not agree that batting avg is more indicative of offensive contribution than OB Pct. Dave Van Handel drutx!djvh