The way MMA is now, it's actually more "nuanced" than boxing is. It's not "bar room brawling" anymore, for a long time actually. The fighters have to be competent in various fighting disciplines, which boxing is one component...

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"I'm not smiling because I thought what you said was humorous. I'm smiling because one day I know you'll be dead..."

in the big multi-/season picture, yeah, you're right. statheads will preach the pythag W/L and the deviation usually isn't too severe. however, where managers make a difference is in the playoffs. you're going to want to roll with a guy who's making good decisions 2/3 times or whatever... and to the extent that you can argue that the big aggregate picture of baseball playoffs = lots of "good" managers dumb decisions, just like "average" managers can ride a team to a world championship, true, but in the case of a winding down playoff series where outs on both sides of the ball are at a premium, having a manager who's proven deft and adroit at making proactive moves to maximize his team's chances of success = meaning a damn thing.

obviously the game of baseball is brilliant because it always manages to level itself out and in the end even the best team in the history of baseball lost something like 40-50 games, and why most "playoff teams" have only won something like 10-20 more games than they lost out of a 162 game season, indeed, the perpetual ebb-n-flow of the game is why we're such fans of it (and why roto fantasy baseball is the don of all fantasy sports.... it just rolls like that) but yeah man, the world series is at 3 games to 2 right now.... this is the kind of situation where i'd say having the best damn manager possible makes all the difference in the world.... and even tho the moves they make aren't some kind of esoteric genius that we cannot possibly understand, akin to how many cocksure brits talk down to us americans about "the beautiful game" --- nonetheless, i think having a cunning manager right now as opposed to a rah rah guy who "gets the most out of his players" is a definite advantage because when the season's down to 1 or 2 games left, every single decision is magnified by such a factor that if your #1 goal is TO WIN CHAMPIONSHIPS BECAUSE THAT IS THE ONLY REASON YOU PLAY PROFESSIONAL SPORTS </bernstein> then if you've set yourself up properly to be in a world series, it'd definitely behoove you to have a guy managing who knows the "feel" of the game better than to go with the book and bring in maness to face jonny gomes, who would have been dusted by the pitcher who got pulled.

c'est la vie.

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Do you think the use of SABRmetrics puts you at an advantage over someone who instead relies on traditional scouting?
Compared to many things the stock market is more simplistic. That is why index funds outperform managed funds.

That doesn't mean it is simple, but it is simple in comparison to many other things that are much harder if not impossible to model.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I am wrong because managers do matter. Matheny is blowing the WS.

You can never figure out baseball. Too hard. I can tell you with 90% certainty who is going to win a football game. With baseball maybe its 51%.

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

If Im using both, then yes.



What?

Nothing about it is simple. It's all incredibly nuanced and intricate. Just because patterns are made and 10% of computers are right, doesnt mean it's simple.


I dont wanna go to much further here because I dont even agree with your original statement

"There is a reason why it is the sport that can rely on computer modeling more than anything else."

All sports can can and do rely on computer modeling.

If this was true you could make millions of dollars a year.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Once again, index funds outpace managed funds. Index funds are simple.

Don't confuse lots of data with complexity. They are two different things. Counting from 1 to 1,000,000,000,000 has a lot of data but is a very simple system.
How can you disagree? What sport uses computer modeling more than baseball?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

No. That's why they have spreads.

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

If you hit 90% of your money line picks you'd be a very rich man.
http://blog.pundittracker.com/

At a 71% success rate, Jaworski is way up. At 90%, you'd be rich very quickly.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I disagree. I dont think the fact that computers are successful means something is simple or that if a human needs to do it, it's more complex.


They all use it.

BRick you kill me. Did you see the article IMMEDIATELY below the one you linked?

With two storied franchises making the 2013 Fall Classic, let’s take a look at which of the 63 experts we tracked this year (from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, CBS, Yahoo, and Fox) pegged the series correctly.

(… Calculating ….)

(… Calculating ….)

Well, how’s this for embarassing: 0 of the 63 so-called experts had both the Red Sox and Cardinals in the World Series.

Perhaps this is not a huge surprise, as Vegas gave each team less than a 10% probability of making the Series. So let’s lower the bar considerably and look at the pundits who picked either the Red Sox OR the Cardinals to make it.

(… Calculating ….)

You guessed it — zero. Not one. We know baseball has been the toughest sport to predict in recent years, but the pundits truly reached a new level of futility this year.

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

Baseball is better here.

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It's pretty strong evidence though. Computers excel at simply parsing more data than humans. They are still quite poor at reasoning and critical thinking.
That isn't an answer.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

What does that have to do with how wrong you were about being able to pick 90% of NFL games. If you still think you can pick 90% of football games then I would like to challenge you to go to the Wagering section and show it. I'm sure the gamblers on the board would be very grateful for the massive amounts of money you would give them.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

It's an exaggeration you $$%%! I don't know off the top of my head what the actual percentages are. I DO know football is much easier to pick than baseball. There's no doubt about that!

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

Baseball has been ahead of the curve on the numbers. That doenst mean it's more reliant. Just that baseball minds might be a little sharper.

I'll take your word for it since I haven't seen all that many MMA events. However, the ones I have watched have inevitably turned into two guys rolling around on the ground in what appears to be acts of simulated man-on-man sex that would not be out of place on Reality Kings' Boy's First Time.

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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

Kozma and Freese hitting a buck fifty are blowing the World Series.

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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 think Billy Dementia is hitting about 94%.

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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

That's the problem. You have people saying baseball is more complex or is for smarter people.

Yet, in game strategy really doesn't matter, and baseball is the sport that can be most easily made into computer algorithms which is a strong indication that the mechanics of the game are simple enough to model.

Oh, but pitchers may need to slightly tweak their throwing motion! Most complex game ever!

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The fact that you fail to understand how complex baseball is is conclusive evidence of its complexity.

_________________
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

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Are you saying that everything that I don't think is complex is actually complex?

Mind blown.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Not saying one sport is more complex than the other, but surely there is a distinction to be made here between a 'strategic' complexity, e.g. bunting or hit and run, vs. 'physical' complexity and/or skills, e.g. tweaking a pitcher's throwing motion? In my elementary understanding of both sports, it seems to me the strategic decisions involved in baseball are numerically inferior to the strategic decisions involved in football, only because the latter has more moving parts and no fixed element (i.e. you can run 100 times if you want, or pass 100 times, but in baseball there will always be the pitch, the hit, and having to navigate four bases.) Numeric is the operative word here since I don't mean to imply that, since football has more strategy, it is thus the more complex sport.

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Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

It makes sense that someone who thinks boxing is more nuanced than MMA would also think baseball is more complex than football. It's just objectively wrong.

There are baseball players far dumber than Hester and Urlacher. Off the top of my head I'll nominate A Rod, Ryan Braun, and the multi millionaire pitcher who had drugs mailed to his home addressed to the attention of his dog or some shit like that.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

If this is the route you are going to take, football is going to look very sad very quick. There are stupid people in all professions.

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Isn't MLB filled with players who started training at academies at the age of 16?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

that's my point frank!

Pretending that baseball is somehow more complex, noble, or nuanced than football or really any other sport is just verbal masturbation to make old timers happy. To use JORRspeak, it's a guy trying to hit a little ball with a big wooden stick past 9 other dopes on a field. That's it.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Nope, you're objectively wrong. There is more complexity within a single matchup between batter and pitcher than in the entire ten minutes of action that make up a football game.

And MMA has limited rules which obviously favors the conclusion coming down to a matter of brute force. Boxing is far more nuanced and more like a game of Roshambo wherein various styles all have strengths and weaknesses, Unlike MMA, when your preferred style is failing, you cannot just take a guy down to the ground and bang his head against a cage or an octagon or whatever the fuck you want to call it.

Finally, to address your worst thought in the post, there is no way Braun is dumber than Hester. In fact, I would submit that there has never been a J-ew in the history of earth that was dumber than Devin Hester.

_________________
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