You certainly could be, if you could check your biases at the door. You don't seem to be able to do that, however. That is a damn shame.

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We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.- Eric Hoffer

Bingo.

That has been my take around here for awhile.

It is a shame.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

As I said, modeling shows the effects to be minimal. It simply makes sense to get the best hitters the most at-bats. Nobody does that. Not Joe Maddon. Not Robin Ventura. No one.




At times they may be. If the object were to score the most runs, Ventura would certainly not be bunting as much as he does. He's not an idiot. He's looking at the situation. When you have one hit in the seventh, it's probably silly to think you're suddenly going to explode, especially when your team is challenged offensively to begin with.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

"Now batting 8th for the Chicago Cubs, the pitcher..."

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

This guy gets it.

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Not a mult.

After line-up rolls around the 3rd/4th/5th time in the NL it's common to use pinch hitters...

JORR is more accurate than some want to give him credit for.

The current WS victors are being helmed by a guy that numbers guys (like Theo) openly mocked as a baseball idiot. Mike Scoscia was a baseball genius & is still coasting on a title from 14 years ago, as is Girardi from 7 years ago. Joe Torre was regarded as being no better than another mute manager like Ventura...until the talent on the field did the job five times. Terry Francona was a genius when he had steroidal guys in the lineups. Other guys like Ozzie was given credit for a performance (Ozzieball) that didn't exist, or they had little to do with (Jack McKeon).

LaRussa was/is an obnoxious drunk who managed arguably the worst performances by a WS manager on two occasions. Bruce Bochy is another current genius, yet can't win two years in a row?!?

I'm not saying they don't matter at all, but managers' value IS wildly overrated in my book.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Robin Ventura is and has been an awful

I completely agree with this.
I also completely agree that Ventura is a horrible manager.
I agree with the others that Maddon is a good manager.

Maddon managing the 2016 changes very little. Maddon cannot make starters 3-5 last 6 innings. He can't make that pedestrian lineup hit. He can't make the bullpen better. He can do a few things to make sure they don't give away outs or overuse the Maddon. I still see the White Sox finishing up somewhere around .500. Joe Maddon as manager doesn't improve that record. The roster just isn't that good.

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For reference, Maddon's non-pitcher bunting (pitchers in the NL are in the "always bunt" category because of how awful they are as hitters, but the run expectency charts don't account for that just yet, so sue me, but I'm disregarding them) in 2015 was a net -4.12 expected runs when accounting for errors and scoring, and his non-pitcher bunt attempts thus far in 2016 represent a net -.38 runs.

Maddon bunts too much as well, which most assuredly can be chalked up to how much more intelligent he thinks he is than everyone else.

That being said, Maddon's bunting is, at worst, survivable when viewing the context in which the play is employed. Robin bunts with Adam Eaton, Joe Maddon bunts with the likes of Jonathan Herrera and pitchers. And even yet, Maddon bunts too much, as the bottom line.

Maddon's bunting costs his team half-wins in the aggregate, which can be lost amongst the lineup and whatnot. Robin's bunting costs games, and he still bats a .288 OBP player second, because batting order totally isn't a statistically significant factor in winning games.

This is all theoretical. You're talking about "expected runs" as if they're something concrete. And this is my problem with the way the game is viewed today. It's really similar to the pitcher's wins argument. When you take such a view of the game, you're looking at it from a perspective of huge samples, rather than what is happening in the game today, a singular situation that is completely unrelated to any other game that will be played during that season.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I'm not a statistician, but I am a gambler and I have a basic understanding of statistics, odds, probabilities, chances. I've spent hours banging my head against a wall trying to explain to guys who go to the racetrack every single day why I am betting against a horse I think has the best chance to win a particular race.

But these situations in a baseball game aren't like a simple roll of the dice where the chance of rolling a seven is always 16.67%. There are all kinds of variables.

Reagrdless, if you actually believe in managing by the numbers, you're making a case that the manager is even less important than I think he is. Just let the computer spit out what to do in a given situation and have Anthony Rizzo read it to the team.

I had to laugh when Darkside referenced Maddon positioning his fielders with the bases loaded as if he were John McGraw in 1912. Just this weekend we had a controversy over the Dodgers laser-marking the field. Those shifts are being put on by a computer. No manager is setting that up out of his head.

Finally, with regard to the White Sox and bunting, it goes way deeper than Robin Ventura. I don't have the actual numbers, but I would guess that Guillen bunted even more than Ventura (and with teams that had better hitters and more power than Ventura has ever worked with) and Guillen is considered a "good" manager. The truth is if the Sox scratch out that run yesterday and then bunt to set up the winning run in the ninth or tenth, some people are crediting Ventura for his "managing".

And if you know White Sox history, you know there is a fascination with the bunt and the steal that goes way, way back. Many Sox fans have a disdain for the home run as being "not White Sox baseball". They'll derisively use terms like "station-to-station" and "clogging the bases". This is a team and a fanbase that still fantasizes about Nellie and Little Looie running all over the place.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I wish they had the ballpark for that.

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Good managers win games.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

But Good GM's give average managers and even below average managers the pieces to WIN.

I think I am on JORR side on this one though not to the extreme..... a good manager uses the pieces to get the maximum from what the GM gave him. A good manager also helps deflect the heat when his players stumble. Ozzie was good at turning the focus from the players to him when the team was struggling. Maddon has the pieces and he does use them.

The real Sox problem IS and has been Kenny.

Back when the Sox had Rob Mackowiak and NO ONE else to play CF the fans were ripping Ozzie for playing him in CF... that really fell on KW who gave him no other alternatives.

Now the same thing is happening to Robin... Rollins and Austin Jackson are bench guys at best ,,,but Hahn/KW really didn't give many other alternatives.... the bullpen again falls on Hahn/KW... the lack of a lefty bat ditto..the lack of 4th and 5th starters isn't Robin's fault or even Coop's (I am not a Coop guy but he only has what they give him).... there is an old saying "The fish Stinks from the head" and the head is and has been Kenny... until he goes the Sox will be stuck in this sign old guys Win Now mode that has failed year after year...(

I could be cute and GD like and make a few trolly comments but I won't.... FIRE KW and free Hahn to do his job and in a few years the Sox will be back.

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Bunting in that situation yesterday was awful. You just cant afford to give away outs like that. Especially in a tight game like that.

what, exactly, is Rick Hahn in charge of?

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Well, you know how I feel about bunting, especially with a man on second. But you're chasing a run in a game in which you have two hits (1 by J.B. Schuck!) and a successful bunt keeps you out of the double play and the guy on third can score on a fly or a wild pitch/pass ball.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Still cant bunt. Cabrera is still one of the better options to hit and its possible he hits a fly ball and gets the runners or one of them over anyway.

I know you saw Harvey's sigh of relief after that out.

have to agree with rpb, i was watching and cringed when he was about to bunt

plus even though they still managed to fuck it up, now you have 1st base open so you have to assume you aren't going to see many good pitches..

Accepting credit when moves work out. Deflecting blame onto Kenny when a move sucks

Personally, I agree as well, but I'm just saying a bunt there wasn't some kind of outre concept. There have been other bunts this season in far worse spots.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

true, but i think a lot of it had to do with the fact it was Cabrera, one of your better hitters
if Austin Jackson was bunting i wouldn't have much issue with it since he's going to make an out anyways

Yeah, I would say if you're bunting with your 3-hole hitter, you need a new 3-hole hitter.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

OK. So it only sometimes IS the wrong way

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Tommy Kahnle contributed -.856 Win Percentage Added last week when he was brought in to stop the bleeding against the Royals in the ninth. Tonight, Robin brings in that same pitcher in a 2-run game in the 7th, where he proceeded to give up 2 runs across 4 hits and a walk.

What else does this dolt have to do before people actually start blaming him for the team's sucktitude?

I was hoping for an article about that performance. Is that -.856 the most blame ever given to a single player in a game?

According to Baseball-Reference, it is the 88th-worst single appearance by a reliever appearing in just one inning from 1980 until now. Not really sure about the validity of those numbers, because BR's play index finder freaks out when searching for a single game.

Off day today, the freefall continues, and you just got swept by a division rival who was behind you in the standings going into the series. Today is the day to dire Robin.

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