http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2015/11/ ... rojections

James has written before that pitcher projections are likely to be much less accurate than hitter projections. He writes in this year's book:

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

He really didn't need much more than to compare the 1990 seasons of Bob Welch (Cy Young winner) and Dave Stewart (who was the unquestioned ace of that A's staff). Smoke took on the Ace of the other team, had generally better numbers and was far, far more the feared pitcher. IIRC, Welch had the far better W/L record, but he often got his shit knocked all around (or out in Oakland ) the park.

But now 25 years & many more examples/stats had to show him the error of his long held ways? It's further confirmation that in part he won't allow himself to trust his own (or seasoned scouts') eyes. No thanks.

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

I'm sorry I sucked at pitcher projections over the past 2-3 decades. This year I promise to be better. Buy my book!

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

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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!

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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

dude came up with Win Shares like 15 years ago which was similar in concept to WAR. he probably knew this concept in the 1970s.

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

The sign of a truly learned man is the ability to remain open to new information and not be afraid to back off of a previous hypothesis.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Is he going to validate this hypothesis?

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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 think a truly learned man doesn't hold onto a false hypothesis for three decades.

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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

The sign of a truly learned man is to get people to pay for information that is completely inapplicable to any productive pursuit in their lives.

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

That's why you're my guy.

The Gamescore of this shout out is about a 4.

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Welch was drunk so that counts for something.

A scared and fraudulent man does.

What a piece of shit.

Bill James is an intelligent guy, a talented writer, a tireless researcher, but he isn't a scientist. And he isn't really objective. In fact, if you're familiar with his work, he doesn't even pretend to be.

Just look at his crusade against Dick Allen. According to all of the statistics and metrics developed by James himself, Allen shines as bright as almost anyone. But Bill James just doesn't like him. So he's come up with this idea that "Dick Allen did more to keep his teams from winning than anyone else who ever played major league baseball.” That isn't science. It's vendetta.

Here's the type of "scientific method" Bill James often uses. He'll develop some aggregating statistic to establish a player value. He'll run the numbers of various players through his formula. He's very happy for awhile. But then he'll find out that the formula tells us that Rusty Staub was as good or nearly as good as Joe DiMaggio. Now, Bill knows that Rusty Staub wasn't as good as Joe DiMaggio. Just as anyone who ever paid more than the slightest bit of attention to baseball knows it. So instead of accepting what the formula is telling him, he changes the formula. His defenders would say he's improving the formula. But the improvements are arbitrary. He doesn't change the formula when it tells him Darrell Porter was a better player than Tony Perez. Darrell Porter was one of his beloved Kansas City Royals, by the way. To me, saying Porter was better than Perez is crazier than saying Staub was as good as DiMaggio. Regardless, it isn't science.

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Ecclesiastes 5:8

rusty staub would get a $200M contract today.

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

And there isn't enough money to pay DiMaggio.

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Ecclesiastes 5:8

why'd he have to turn out to be such an asshole? why is that always the case? can anyone truly great at anything ever not be an asshole?

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

I became a Sox fan in 1969. In '71 they were fucking dreadful. But not as bad as the Seantors. I remember thinking that the White Sox were pretty awful, so just how bad must the Senators be? They were managed by Ted Williams. My dad said that like it was some big deal. It didn’t mean anything to me. He was just some old guy on a baseball card I didn’t particularly want. He was on the Senators and he looked like he hadn’t taken a dump for at least a few weeks. I had no clue he was the best hitter in the history of the game. The only card I considered less valuable was the one with Del Unser on it. Although I probably only had two or three of them, looking back it seems as if every time I opened a pack of cards it had a Del Unser in it. Those were the cards my sister eventually ended up with.

In the late 60s/early 70s, my father brought home a package of Topps baseball cards for me several times each week. But soon enough my sister, who is about two years younger than I am, was looking for him to bring her some too. My mom told him he better give her some cards. So my dad, figuring a three year old wouldn’t know the difference, started giving her all the really horrible cards. Hello, Del Unser! That worked for a while until she caught on. Probably due to me running my big mouth and rubbing her face in her Tom Dukes and Tim Cullen cards. She must have cried to my mom who, noting the unfairness of it all, ordered the old man to straighten it out. My father simply couldn’t fathom that a four or five year old girl would be seriously interested in baseball. And I certainly didn’t want to share the cards after two seasons of having them all to myself. So my dad cooked up a plan. The Montreal Expos would be my sister's team and she would get all the Expos cards. When I objected, like the greedy bastard I was, he told me not to worry, the Expos were terrible, there's nobody on the team whose card you want. Actually, they were slightly better than the Senators. But they played in the National League and the old man had his loyalties. And so my sister fell in love with Rusty Staub. He genuinely was a damn good player and I jealously lusted after his card which I was now barred from having. That is, until he got traded to the Mets the next season.

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Ecclesiastes 5:8

Don't be blaspheming Le Grande Orange...

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nobody looked better in stirrups.

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

No truer example than the idea of trickle down economics.

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

I'm a proud owner of The Baseball Books '91, '92, '93. In one of those three books there is a huge article on Dick Allen where Bill James (and a co-author) profess their love for him. Not sure what you're saying...

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Bill James is just like JORR. they say all kinds of crazy shit just to get people's attention. that doesn't mean they believe their shit to be true.

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

SHOTS FIRED

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It's pretty widely known that James vehemently dislikes Allen, Jim Rice and Rogers Hornsby. Here's James from The Politics of Glory:

"It has become fashionable to say that Dick Allen was a victim of the racism of his time, and for this reason it is politically incorrect for me even to mention any of this old business. Bob Carroll, in making Dick Allen’s Hall of Fame case, wrote that “Rugged individualism is more admired at a distance than up close and personal.” Rugged individualism? How about alcoholism, irresponsibility, and vindictiveness? How about paranoia and pettiness? They’re all easier to admire from a distance . . .

Dick Allen was a victim of the racism of his time; that part is absolutely true. The Phillies were callous to send him to Little Rock in 1963 with no support network, and the press often treated Allen differently than they would have treated a white player who did the same things. That’s all true.

It doesn’t have anything to do with the issue. Willie Mays was a victim of the same racism. Jackie Robinson was. Roy Campanella was, Curt Flood was, Bob Gibson was, Hank Aaron was, Ernie Banks was, Monte Irvin was, Lou Brock was, Minnie Minoso was, and Roberto Clemente was. Those are all very different personalities, and they all dealt with racism in different ways. The best of them used the racism of the outside world to bond the team together, us against them, those bad guys out there. Allen directed his anger at the targets nearest him, and by doing so used racism as an explosive to blow his own teams apart.

Dick Allen was at war with the world. It is painful to be at war with the world, and I feel for him. It is not his fault, entirely, that he was at war with the world.

But that’s not the issue. Allen was a jerk; that’s not the issue, either. There are lots of jerks in the Hall of Fame, white and black. There are irresponsible people in the Hall of fame, and there are alcoholics in the Hall of Fame. That’s not the issue.

When the White Sox were trying to trade Dick Allen in 1974, somebody asked Joe Burke of the Royals whether he was interested. “I wouldn’t pay the waiver price for him,” Burke replied. “I wouldn’t pay a dollar for him. I wouldn’t take him if you paid me $10,000.” That’s the issue. Did he have value? Did he help his teams win?

He did more to keep his teams from winning than anybody else who ever played major league baseball. And if that’s a Hall of Famer, I’m a lug nut."

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Ecclesiastes 5:8

Dick Allen is the reason I once smoked Marlboros.

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I never saw the guy play, but his numbers were terrific. must have had a ton of "nagging injuries" or hangovers or something.

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

He swung a bat that resembled a telephone pole.

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I'm not always right, but I'm rarely wrong.

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Ecclesiastes 5:8