While I appreciate your drive, why don't you tell me what you disagree with in my rather than trolling?

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I never said or implied that it was. I also never declared myself to be "the most objectionable baseball poster on this board" like IMU did. Also note that it was a Cubs fan (INQUISITOR) who first brought up the White Sox in this thread.

You're continuing to take things out of context.

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I don't know Frank I think a lot of people would sat he's the most objectionable baseball poster here.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

That is a sad state of affairs then. He is not objectionable in any way, shape, or form when it comes to the White Sox. Maybe with some of the other teams he is, but that is not the case with the two teams here in town.

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Inquisitor is terrible.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

This is a much more interesting conversation than Cubs and Sox fans poking at each other (though that is fun on occasion).

It's seems that the success of the Royals may be changing some of the conventional wisdom regarding the value of the walk and the strikeout. One thing we should always be cognizant of is the fact that SABRmetric research and statistical baseball analysis just happened to boom during the greatest era of offensive since the 1930s. Thus, a lot of conclusions of said research are colored by the conditions as they existed at that time. That is to say, the idea that a batter striking out is no different from him grounding out may be true under certain conditions and untrue under others. (There is also the concept that the two outs are equal only after they have already occurred.)

I have to wonder if those people (dan bernstein is a good example) who have reguritated the things they have read on the subject for years will now turn around and start saying that taking pitches and drawing walks is suddenly not as important as putting balls in play and that strikeouts are indeed worse outs than those occurring on batted balls.

The late harness racing writer/race caller/auctioneer (and simply calling him those things doesn't do him justice) Stan Bergstein talked about something he called the "Blue Balloon Theory". And that is that if a horse won the Hambletonian on the first Saturday in August with a blue balloon tied to his tail, the following Monday there would be horses racing at tracks across America with blue balloons tied to their tails. I suspect that a lot of GMs may be trying to build clubs that are similar to the Royals.

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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

This thread has become objectionable.

Id have no issue doing that. Things change. The way games are played changes.

I think Big Purple regurgitated a stat ( along with 21 white castles but I digress) during the WS about the Royals having some huge batting average against pitchers with 95 plus fastballs ala all the Mets guys. So it would seem that making contact against guys like that ( which the trend seems to be that every staff wants guys that can throw that hard all the time) is a hell of a lot more important than working the count and explains the Royals success against them.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

It'd be keen if the halfwits would learn the difference between 'objective' and 'objectionable' for fuck's sake ... maybe get a group rate at a community college course or something.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Reread it again. Pretty sure only one person made that mistake.

To some degree, yes. But most people act like these things are absolute. There is a stridency when bernstein says Ned Yost is an idiot. That viewpoint is based on what bernstein believes to be true- wasting outs is bad, walks are good, taking pitches is good, defense on the corners is insignificant, striking out is no worse than any other out, etc.

You know how much I hate sacrifice bunts. I found them really moronic in a high run scoring environment. I still dislike them, but the risk/reward is much different when scoring is at deadball era levels. When Jake Arrieta walks the leadoff man in the seventh inning of the two-hitter he's pitching, the downside of moving that runner by making an out on purpose is relatively low.

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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

Well, this sort of gets at what I am saying. The job of owners/gms/managers is to win in whatever way a sport measures the "champion." In baseball, and pretty much all professional sports, that is typically determined by a playoff system after seeding is determined by a much longer regular season. In sports like basketball (in which half the league makes the playoffs), as long as you are relatively confident you can make the playoffs, the regular season is not very important, and we've seen coaches like Greg Popovich adapt and not play his studs heavy minutes.

However, that doesn't mean that we as observers can't question the method in which the winner is determined. God didn't come down and tell Moses that "baseball must be determined based on a 7-game series." There are certainly good arguments to be made that the regular season is a "better" indicator of who is a better team. Currently, it doesn't matter because that's not how the winner is determined. And frankly, I wouldn't want it because it would be anticlimactic and boring, even if it did seem to be more "fair" or consistent.

I don't even understand how this could be construed as a pro-Cub argument. The Cubs didn't have the best record in baseball or win the World Series, either one. My argument has nothing to do with the Cubs.

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And how do the Royals set themselves up to see more fastballs? First, by swinging the bat. They try to put the ball in play before they get themselves into bad counts. Second, by having a good running game. A dangerous runner forces the pitcher to throw more fastballs. Also, forcing the pitcher into a slide step tends to get him throwing higher in the zone. We've talked about the mathematical fact that a runner has to steal successfully about 75% of the time for any net gain. But that's from a strictly formulaic standpoint based on the runs that will be produced. There are these intangible factors that don't have anything to do with the actual act of stealing/attempt to steal, but rather are caused by the simple threat of it.

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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

You're not wrong ... I was purposefully being oblique with the faux rant as a token of kindness or something like that.

Just so you're not too concerned, I did enjoy your sentence about it.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Fuck Bernstein. He's a troll.


Things change. Rules change. The dead ball era and the steroid era both exist.

I would say they won about 8 more when it counted.

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2018
#ExtendLafleur
10 More Wins

I don't think he's trolling on this subject. Anyway, I'm just using him as an example. There's conventional wisdom, for example, "clutch doesn't exist". But suddenly someone developed a formula to show that Anthony Rizzo is clutch. (In bernstein's case he embraced it, because Rizzo is a Cub.) I think the conventional wisdom would be to scoff at such a thing. It may or may not be true. I do believe some guys are more clutch than others. I don't think we have a way of measuring it. And I couldn't say if Rizzo is one of them.

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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

The Cubs have decided to make him the sports radio face of the franchise.

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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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2018
#ExtendLafleur
10 More Wins

Oh, he's certainly trolling. If Joe Score caller started embracing Fangraphs, he'd find some article talking about old school stats having value.

All sports change (scoring, rule changes, eras, eligibilty). Why would baseball different?

Probably why they won this series....

POTY

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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!

Cubs are all about regular season and attendance championships

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

Maddon on now with Slappy & Grimace.

Let's see Goff piss off Maddon one last time for 2015...

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"This is Chicago, my friend. Anything can happen."

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Kenny Williams fell for the banana in the tailpipe

I'm a Sox fan and am fine with Maddon winning MOTY. Maddon, Matheny, Collins were all worthy candidates.

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I actually thought Collins would win.

I still think, and have always thought, St Louis execs deserve to win Executive of the Year every year. Their scouting and development is top notch. So I think less of Matheny (and La Russa before him.) The St Louis organization provides them waves of talent. Wainwright gets hurt? Here are three more 3.50 ERA or lower starters - make it work.

Hard to not win.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

The 4th page of this thread is just delightful. Frank insisting he's more objectionable than IMU. Just....

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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

Bernstein is Baseball stupid in many ways. The idea that striking out is no worse than any other out is the worst thought of all. When you have a runner reach base and the following hitter (less than 2 outs) makes an out but moves the runner up a base, now he in scoring position. 1st and 2nd less than 2 outs, and the batter bunts or hits a ground ball to the right side that moves both runners...good. Runner on 3rd and less than 2 outs, a deep fly ball or ground ball in many cases may score the runner. A strikeout is a unproductive out and is not the equal of many outs that can actually contribute to scoring runs.

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Go Cubs!!!!