Bob Ryan:

[mcpickl]

I don't think it was a very well-written column, but I think the larger point that too many people blindly rely on WAR has merit and needs to be discussed.  Interestingly enough, Poz had a very relevant little anecdote about WAR today:

 
 
WAR is a stat, and, like all stats, it has flaws.  Too many of the loudest Trout supporters last year didn't seem to understand that, and I think that's what Bob was trying to say, even if he did it a little clumsily.
 
 
Edit:  Poz actually has TWO interesting WAR pieces today (there's a reason he's the best, folks), and this one also touches upon Ryan's point about the replacement player doesn't actually exist:

 

Is that really what happened with last years' MVP debate though?
 
I was on the Trout side so maybe I'm biased, but I don't think many of Trouts' loudest supporters just said Trout has the highest WAR, therefore he wins.
 
I think the most used argument was, there is more to baseball value than what you do at the plate, so shouldn't defense, position value and baserunning count too? Rather than look at solely offensive stats, maybe we can use stats that try to combine all of a players value, like WAR tries to do.
 
WAR may surely have flaws, but at least it tries to place a value on all parts of the game. It's why I'm kinda surprised so many old school guys hate it. You'd think they'd appreciate a stat that places value on the "little things" that batting average, HRs, and RBI don't cover. It must be an issue just because it's new. Most of these guys made fun of OPS when it first starting becoming popular as well.
 
Edit: to the threads point, I love Bob Ryan and think he's still one of the best. But this particular column was garbage.

 

[Orel Miraculous]

Is that really what happened with last years' MVP debate though?
 
I was on the Trout side so maybe I'm biased, but I don't think many of Trouts' loudest supporters just said Trout has the highest WAR, therefore he wins.
 
I think the most used argument was, there is more to baseball value than what you do at the plate, so shouldn't defense, position value and baserunning count too? Rather than look at solely offensive stats, maybe we can use stats that try to combine all of a players value, like WAR tries to do.
 
WAR may surely have flaws, but at least it tries to place a value on all parts of the game. It's why I'm kinda surprised so many old school guys hate it. You'd think they'd appreciate a stat that places value on the "little things" that batting average, HRs, and RBI don't cover. It must be an issue just because it's new. Most of these guys made fun of OPS when it first starting becoming popular as well.

 
Very few Trout supporters just pointed to their respective WARs and said "scoreboard!" just as very few Cabrera supporters just pointed to "RBIzzz!".  But that's exactly how each side portrayed the other.  Just look at the opening post of the thread we had on it in September. The entire discussion was premised on the idea that Trout was the indisputable MVP and that anyone who thought otherwise was an anti-math troll.  And that was only one of such discussions.  Here's another where, again, the opening post sets the presumption that Cabrera had a "significantly worse year" than Trout.  These are absurdly definitive statements, and I honestly don't think they would have been made but for the fact that we now have a stat that attempts to measure the complete contributions of a ballplayer, and that stat happened to favor Trout.  The fact that the stat might be flawed in some ways, or that there were other complex stats (like Oakland A's formula Poz mentioned) that actually favored Cabrea, was hardly considered.

 

[joyofsox]

http://www.fangraphs.com/not/index.php/rbi-what-is-it-good-for/
 
 

According to RBI, Kyle Seager was a better player than Joe Mauer last season. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard since someone try to tell me Dan Fogelberg deserved a Grammy. ...
 
It appears that you don’t even need to “bat” in a runner in order to receive a run batted in. If a player draws a bases-loaded walk, they get credited with an RBI even though the bat never left their shoulder. And what about on a double-play? A hitter gets no RBI for driving in a run after “batting” the ball. This stat is more convoluted than Delta’s boarding policy.
 
Hey sportswriters, get your head out of the rule book and actually WATCH a game.

 

 

[doctormoist]

I thought it was odd because he points out that Trout was the better player, both empirically and statistically, and had a much higher WAR, but then he says that he hates WAR.  Strange way to support the argument that the statistic is meaningless.

 

[lexrageorge]

It seemed to me he wanted to make the point that the MVP award is not simply the "Highest WAR" award.  That's a reasonable position, one that I also agree with, and one that could be logically argued.  He just chose a very strange way to do it, and seemed to wrap it in a "I hate WAR and other stats" blanket just to draw more readership from the pack-a-day set.  It wasn't as bad as Mazz or Borges or Carfardo, but that's not exactly a high bar of quality either. 

 

[the1andonly3003]

I guess WEEI couldn't have gotten Bob Ryan on a very regular basis?
 
http://bostonradiowatch.blogspot.com/2013/03/candy-o-takes-on-morning-role-at-magic.html
 

For now, 1510's lineup will be as follows : A new local early morning show "The Sports Stamp"
with Darwin Zook and Steve Tower will air from 6am to 8am. Comcast
SportsNet New England's columnist Danny Picard will be on with his "I'm Just Sayin'" from 8am-10am. Yahoo Sports Radio's "Calling
All Sports" with Bob Ryan and Marty Tirrell take over the 10am-Noon
slot. Ryan is of course the award-winning longtime sports columnist at
the Boston Globe and ESPN Reporters panelist. Tirrell is a talk show
host based in Des Moines, IA who lived in the local area in early 2000's
and hosted "Celtics Rewind" postgame show on 1510 during the last
season(2001-02) of its coverage. "The Bawstin DieHards" with station's
general manager Anthony Pepe and co-hosts, John Sappochetti and John
Pica will shift to Noon to 2pm. A new afternoon drive show is expected
to launch in early April. The station will also continue to air all 162
Red Sox games in Spanish this season. 1510's Pepe told BRW "...while the
other two stations are figuring out whose dad is
the toughest we will be talking sports, having fun, and really enjoying
doing our own thing".

 

[JimD]

"The Bawstin DieHards"

 
:barf:

 

[Phenom]

I refuse to take NBC Sports Radio seriously until they actually get a website.  
 
And what are "The Bawstin Diehards?"  Is a show really called that?

 

[the1andonly3003]

If WEEI had added Bob Ryan for the final 2 hours to Holley and Ordway, those two hours would have blown F&M out of the water everyday

 

[Vandalman]

I refuse to take NBC Sports Radio seriously until they actually get a website.  
 
And what are "The Bawstin Diehards?"  Is a show really called that?

 
 
Shouldn't that be "The Bawstin Diehahds?"
 
Pretty pathetic either way.

 

[the1andonly3003]

Looks like Bob Ryan is doing 6 hours of radio today....he is on with Holley from 2-6

 

[Scott Cooper]

http://www.amazon.com/Scribe-Life-Sports-Bob-Ryan/dp/1620405067
 
I think it's sad no one is talking about this (unless there is another thread somewhere i'm missing).
 
I can't wait til this comes out!

 

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

I actually got an advanced copy of "Scribe" and I'm planning to read it soon. I've only read a bit of it, but it's pretty great.

 

[Bunt4aTriple]

Awesome.  Just pre-ordered.  Give it to my old man for Christmas, borrow it in February!

 

[pappymojo]

Bob Ryan just made me laugh:

http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2012/01/29/once_beloved_patriots_are_now_loathed/

I am certain that when Bill Belichick writes his memoirs - and his ego will need to be satisfied with one, don’t doubt that - he will identify this particular team as one of his two or three favorites to coach.

Bob Ryan co-wrote "Drive: The Story of My Life" by Larry Bird and "Hondo: Celtic Man in Motion." I wonder if he would say that either of them had big egos.

The simple fact is that I would love to read Bill Belichick's memoirs. I think that he's very smart and that it would be a very interesting read, namely because it would hopefully provide Belichick's recollections of the very story that Boby Ryan's article is about.

 
From the original post that started this thread.  Of course, Bob Ryan wrote a memoir. 

 

[The Talented Allen Ripley]

Nice piece on Ryan in Grantland.

 

A fellow Boston Globe writer named John Powers once noticed that Ryan didn’t include many quotes in his game stories. Quotes were the chief information-dispensing device of other NBA writers.
 
Bob, Powers asked, why aren’t Globe readers hearing from the athletes?
 
Ryan replied, “I’ll tell ’em what they ought to know!”

 

While the Celtics game was ongoing, Ryan used his typewriter to pound out a play-by-play treatment called “running” copy. It read like a collection of in-game tweets. It was printed in the Globe’s first edition, which was shipped to the outer limits of New England. The Globe’s second edition carried the same story. Then Ryan did interviews and wrote a proper story — his gamer — for the third edition, which was read in Boston.
 
One night, John Powers saw Ryan laboring over his first-edition copy, the one headed for the hinterlands. He asked why.
 
Ryan answered, “’Cause in Maine this is how they think I write!”

 

“Hell,” said Larry Bird, “that was 35 years ago. Back in those days, reporters rode on our planes, our buses — they had access to us all the time. Being a rookie, I didn’t have anybody other than my teammates that I knew in Boston.
 
“I remember Bob coming up to me one day and asking if I wanted to have a beer after practice. I said, ‘Sure.’ We were just talking, and then Bob starts describing what we were doing on the court. He knew all our plays. He knew when people came off the bench. I was a rookie, remember. I started thinking, Do all the reporters know everything we’re doing out there?”
 
Bird and Ryan liked each other immediately. Bird admired Ryan’s curiosity, the way he paid attention — he told people he thought Ryan could be a coach. Ryan liked having access to the brain of a basketball genius. It was “as if I were an art student,” Ryan writes in Scribe, “and into the class walked the new professor: Michelangelo.”

 

[ThePrideofShiner]

Just read that story. Man, that was fantastic. A really great insight into what made Ryan tick as a sports writer, plus lots of interesting tidbits about how he worked the beat in regard to relationships with players and coaches. Good stuff.

 

[Conigliaro's Potential]

That story - which was awesome on many levels - would have been worth existing just for these two photos:
 

 

 

[Sprowl]

That story - which was awesome on many levels - would have been worth existing just for these two photos:
 

That is a great picture -- the kids thrilled by journalism as a spectator sport.

I loved reading Ryan's columns on the Celtics decades ago. It was a sad development when he stopped writing the regular column on the team.

 

[ifmanis5]

That column was great except for the obligatory mention of Bill Simmons for basically no other reason than he is the writer's boss.