dpb@philabs.UUCP (Paul Benjamin) (08/25/85)
>> 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. >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. >As long as stats show which type of player will help the team >win, who cares WHY (analysis of stats makes the WHY obvious). I do. This is the crux of the argument. I feel that stats correlate, but do not explain. Rubin feels that statistics explain. > 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." >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. > 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!!! > 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. >> 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. >Whitey Herzog has been the only manager who has consistently won >with speed in his lineup. Power is far more valuable, and if you want it >proven, look at the top scoring teams each year. Also look at the top >(Slugging Pct + OB Pct) teams each year. You will see that the same teams >are at the top of each list. Baltimore (late 60's and early 70's) won near >100 games annually, but rarely did they have a .300 hitter. They did it >with power and the ability to draw walks. They had a few decent pitchers >as well. But they won precious few series. In particular, they lost to the Pirates in 79, when the Pirates came back from 3-1 games to win, thus embarrassing Weaver considerably. That Pirate team, by the way, was criticized by John Stearns during the season for being stupidly aggressive on the basepaths. That aggressiveness, however, helped them to come back to win. Maybe Tanner wasn't so stupid? Perhaps the statistical criticism of base-stealing misses an important point? Maybe the professional baseball manager knows something we don't?? Maybe it is wise to admit that one may have limitations???