I am absolutely shocked that a notorious P&S basher is critical of their interview with JM and that an anti-metrics guy uses it as an excuse to trot out his tired, antiquated views. Yawnnnn!

I am absolutely shocked that a notorious P&S basher is critical of their interview with JM and that an anti-metrics guy uses it as an excuse to trot out his tired, antiquated views. Yawnnnn!

I think there's something to the third time through the line up phenomenon other than a self-fulfilling prophecy dynamic. Pitcher fatigue in combination with a batter's familiarity with the pitcher, give the batter a relative advantage.

Sure, your starter might not be as effective in the fifth inning as he was in the first, but is he really going to be worse than the guy coming out of the pen?

I am absolutely shocked that a notorious P&S basher is critical of their interview with JM and that an anti-metrics guy uses it as an excuse to trot out his tired, antiquated views. Yawnnnn!

I’m sure there’s a few Cy Young award winners are indeed baseball idiots whose ideas should be ignored. But Jack isn’t one of them. There’s still a weird Hub Arkush “where’d you play your college ball?” appeal to authority going on.

I'd always been pro-sabermetrics, but to passionately defend them now is to embrace the unwatchable state of the game today. It doesn't work when everyone does it.

Sure. But it would be like every racehorse never being allowed to work beyond 3 furlongs and then when they all failed going a mile to use the "statistics" to support the idea that horses can't run a mile effectively.

The data shows velocity + overuse = Injury. "Baseball" has decided to underuse starters(big money) and overuse the bullpen(small money).

He was also right on the one kneed catchers and the over dramatization of framing. Launch angle has been exposed.

McDowell was right a few times and made food for thought on others.

The reliance on analytics has ruined the game. But I would go further than that. There's a generation of know-it-all fans like Parkins and the guy who took a shot at me above who are just as arrogant and hidebound as the scouts that SABRmetrics has replaced.

The Royals played in two WS and won one very recently doing the exact opposite of what conventional wisdom demands.

I don't know this for fact, but I would have to assume that when the quants came up with the third time through the lineup theory, they looked at data from before the point when pulling the starter the third time through became a common practice. Stated another way, I'll bet if you look at data from the 80's you'll see a drop off in effectiveness the third time through the lineup.

I imagine the arrogance of two guys who work in radio thinking they understand more about how the game is played than a Cy Young winner. It's sort of like a bunch of guys on a message board thinking they understand more about doing a radio show than Laurence Holmes.

Seriously, McDowell makes a lot of good points that the fan who has been immersed in statistics/analytics and thinks he is the equal of a big league GM because he has won his fantasy league three years in a row just doesn't want to acknowledge.

For example, Parkins obviously believes that the pitchers today are "better" and capable of striking out more batters than Jack McDowell. He doesn't seem to grasp that modern batters strike themselves out. In McDowell's era no batter wanted to strike out. Today's batters don't care about that. If you sent Parkins himself out to pitch a big league inning and made him stay out there until he recorded three outs, it's almost a certainty that at least one of those outs would be a strikeout. Of course there would be multiple hits and runs scored between the outs, but I guess he could say he was great because he struck some goof out.

Parkins also doesn't seem to understand that if you take a bunch of pitchers and train them to understand that they are supposed to be weaker the third time through the order, most of them will be. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like when they first started with the pitch counts. The first generation of pitchers that was raised with pitch counts started looking toward the dugout when they got near 100. They expected that they were finished.

But I do think there are actual scientific causes for the inability of pitchers to go deep into games and their propensity for injury. And it isn't because they throw harder or are "better." I suspect that the problem is specialization. The arms never get a chance to heal. Warren Spahn pitched his high school baseball season then put down his glove and played football and basketball for the rest of the year and didn't throw a baseball for months. Today's top pitchers NEVER let down. They throw 12 months a year.

The difference in where they measure is true and it does have an effect but to say they are throwing at the same velocity is silly. These guys are trained for pure velocity and many more rely upon that now than back in his day.

Thanks Vito for the link. I'll listen to it later.

As for P/S knowing more than a Cy Young Award winner. I can assure you, they wouldn't know more than a guy who played Single A. Anyone who's actually played the game on any professional level will know 1000x more than some writer/radio person. Doesn't need to be a Cy Young winner.

Ya this sabermetrics has ruined baseball. I'm talking from attracting new fans. It's like some foreign language they're speaking, WAR, BWAR, etc.... I don't mind if they kept it to themselves but these sabermetric guys have some insecure need to tell everyone how smart they are and if you're not on board they think of you as a ignorant fan.