And yet you can't actually explain the difference between a good manager and a bad one. Derp. Erp.

_________________
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

JORR and Chus are okay, I guess.

_________________
Sex isn't dirty, sex isn't a crime. It's a loving act between two or more consenting adults.

-Hank Kingsley

You may want to rethink that position.

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

I kind of have.

A few times.

_________________
"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Would you trade Robin for Joe, straight up?

If your answer is yes, please explain why.

EDIT: if your answer is no, please explain why.

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

It doesn't make any difference. Maddon can't make the Sox score. The Cubs would be killing it with Ventura or Renteria.

Juice's point about the bunting is well taken, but Scioscia bunts like crazy and he's a "good" manager.

_________________
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

So you wouldn't trade Robin for Joe?

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

Perhaps that manager has the players for the and Robin does not?

_________________
"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Would Ventura have more wins than Maddon managing the Cubs?
No.

Ventura can't build a line up. Ventura is a poor manager of pitching staffs. Starting pitching and bullpens.

Would the Cubs still be good with Ventura? Probably. Would they be ahead of the Pirates by 7 games. No chance.

It's not a serious question, but if it were, and I had the actual power, I wouldn't bother filling out the paperwork. That's how much difference I think it makes. But I would fire Ventura right now, not because the shitty play has anything to do with him, but because you can't fire the players. That's just the way it's done.

_________________
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

And you know that how exactly?

_________________
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

If it makes so little difference, then why do you even bother to comment on either one?

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

Jorr... your baseball thoughts suck.

_________________
"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Because there are conversations about them and I'm a baseball fan. I have nothing particularly against Maddon and no particular love for Ventura. They're just guys that sit in the dugout and watch players play baseball. They happen to both be managing in the city where I live.

I know you're horribly jealous because you probably will never enjoy a World Series, but everything isn't always about the Cubs and Sox.

_________________
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

Not really. You don't have a clue though.

_________________
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 fact that you have to include this statement in your answer is just dumb.

Reason was asking you legitimate questions in a discussion and you resort to the jealousy angle.

It is old and lame.

You are better than that

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

I'm not sure what "build a lineup" means. Also, what is the basis for Ventura being a poor manager of a pitching staff? Besides Baseball Genius Darkside has already explained that Ventura doesn't manage a pitching staff and Cooper does.

_________________
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 really not better than that.

But I will say, that "jealous" crap isn't something that originated with Sox fans. If the jealous Cub fans stop saying that stupid shit about fans of a team that has been better than the Cubs nearly every year of our lives, I'll never say it again.

_________________
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

If you wouldn't prefer Maddon over Ventura your opinion is worthless.

_________________
"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Rollins (.288 OBP!) in the 2 hole because...who knows.

Poor feel on when to pull a starting pitcher.

Religious adherence to lefty-left, righty-righty when using his bullpen.

Constantly giving away outs in the AL (!!!) with frequent bunting.

No, your opinion is worthless because you don't know shit.

_________________
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 jorr. You're the most knowledgeable baseball poster here. No one is right unless they agree with you.

So you go on thinking managing the game means nothing. Hire bozo to coach and your team and see how it goes.

With the clowns that have coached the Sox over the last 30 years I'm not shocked you fool yourself into this king managing doesn't matter.

_________________
"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

This guy gets it.

_________________

Cubs fans say stupid shit about the Sox.

Sox fans say stupid shit about the Cubs.

It (including jealousy) goes both ways.

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

I'm jealous of nothing. You're the one who seems to always make it about Cub vs. Sock.

2005 didn't seem to help you out at all. I only hope if my team happens to win a WS in my lifetime, I will be able to enjoy it for what it is instead of obsessing over what is going on across town. Your team won a WS in your lifetime and you seem more interested in what's going on north of you. What a sad baseball existence in which you must live. You have my sympathies.

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

This is typical of the modern fan who is absolutely full of shit. You do know that every model suggests that the order of the hitters has minimal effect on overall run production. If a manager were really sharp he would simply order the hitters by OPS so the best guys got the most at-bats.

And the modern fan is obsessed with overall run production which is why he ignores the situation in which a bunt occurs. I agree that many of Ventura's bunts are ill-advised, but the object isn't to score the most runs over the course of a season. It's to win each individual ballgame. Take today, for example, I wouldn't have had Cabrera bunt, but the other side of that is they had two fucking hits all day.

The other stuff is just claptrap. I have no idea what Ventura or Maddon feels about a pitcher.

_________________
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

Certainly one of them.

_________________
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 don't consider lineup construction black and white. Not saying building one descending by OPS is the "right" way.

But using one of your worst players at making outs where he'll receive more at-bats than better hitters is the wrong way.

Then, wouldn't that be batting order having an effect on overall run production? If sentence "A" is true in the absolute, then "B" is purely asinine, as A already dictates that B is meaningless. I struggle to recall the degree to which order has an effect, but I seem to remember BP in their 2005 book centering on 1-3 "wins" (WAR-type--or at the time, VORP--wins) over a season.



You're treating the two ("score the most runs over the course of a season" and "win each individual ballgame") as mutually exclusive. People want the most runs to be scored over the course of a season because, throughout history, the teams scoring the most tend to win more games, and you score more runs by not giving away outs all over the place. Playing for one run, in a vacuum, can work, and the run expectancy matrices bear that out (2nd and 3rd with 1 out, say, has a better chance to score one run than 1st and 2nd, 0 outs). However, routinely playing for the "short run" will result in your team scoring fewer runs, and winning fewer games.

Betting for the hard way can make your night, but over time it will ruin your life, and Robin puts his chips in a precarious position all too often.



Yes, exactly...why arbitrarily reduce the number of remaining chances you have to get a hit, so that two guys who combined make outs at a higher rate than Melky Cabrera can hit with two runners in scoring position? There are indeed times when playing for one run is feasible, as per the numbers, but it isn't with a guy with a near-team-high .340 OBP at the plate.

It's not only that Robin eschews the edicts of statistical analysis, especially with regards to bunting, its that his usage of the "old school" tactics are dumb even by "old school" standards. He took the bat out of the hands of one of his better hitters. I have a hard time seeing even the most ardent anti-numbers manager approving of that.