Always liked Rick's upside, but never thought it'd be quite this high. Good on him.
Still, his rookie season hip toss of Youks remains his most impressive feat.
Still, his rookie season hip toss of Youks remains his most impressive feat.
Son of a....Forced to eat Skyline Chili? I believe it was George King who left Pedro off his MVP ballot.
Right. I was saying that the graphic his brother posted included stupid statistics. Porcello bested Verlander in FIP and ERA+, not that those are golden stats but they are more impressive than winning in innings by four or starts by one and, especially, starts by one and innings by only four. When you look at the numbers two things are noticeably different: Verlander's K's and 22-4.Well 65 Ks is nothing to sneeze at and if you look at the run support differential i think their records look a lot closer. At the very least he shouldn't have been completely left off two ballots. Which is kinda the point since it would have won it for him.
You can make numbers say anything you want them to say. Jayson Stark, on why he would choose Verlander:Right. I was saying that the graphic his brother posted included stupid statistics. Porcello bested Verlander in FIP and ERA+, not that those are golden stats but they are more impressive than winning in innings by four or starts by one and, especially, starts by one and innings by only four. When you look at the numbers two things are noticeably different: Verlander's K's and 22-4.
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18016906/your-guide-mlb-awards-weekVerlander led all AL pitchers in WHIP, strikeouts, quality starts, double-figure strikeout games and wins above replacement. He finished second (by minuscule margins) in ERA, opponent average and opponent OPS. And what a finish he had, leading the league in second-half ERA (1.98), strikeouts (134 in 110 1/3 IP) and opponent average (.180). He also was the only pitcher to finish in the top three in the AL in ERA, WHIP and strikeout ratio.
Could you please change it to the contents of Miss Upton's tweet?Thread title updated...
I'm torn between chastising you for your cavalier disregard for the greatest half of this commonwealth and ranting about how terrible the Republican's sports section has become.Who is Christopher Smith and what is the Springfield Republican? They have their own paper out there? Why is that guy voting for postseason awards?
I'm sure Trump will make the Republican's sport section great again.I'm torn between chastising you for your cavalier disregard for the greatest half of this commonwealth and ranting about how terrible the Republican's sports section has become.
It's glorious...Kate Upton is currently going ballistic on Twitter. Kind of funny.
I thought she did a good job tempering her anger with humor. It was certainly a much better case of "WAG using the word fuck" then, errr, than we get around here.It's glorious...
I would assume so. They were teammates for a long time. I bet he's happy for him.We haven't heard from verlander yet, have we? I assume he'll be gracious, as porcello probably would have been.
Plus he's already got one on the shelf. Probably eases the blow significantlySometimes I just want to go full-on troll. "Porcello had many more wins. Case closed."
We haven't heard from verlander yet, have we? I assume he'll be gracious, as porcello probably would have been.
Everything about this whole story is fantastic. We need a tweet from Verlander's mom next.Awesome
Sometimes I just want to go full-on troll. "Porcello had many more wins. Case closed."
We haven't heard from verlander yet, have we? I assume he'll be gracious, as porcello probably would have been.
I've lived down here 16 years. Have no idea who this Fred Goodall guy is either.@JustinVerlander
Just want to say thank you to all the @officialBBWAA who voted for me.
8:46 PM - 16 Nov 2016
Also cool was Chris Archer's tweet about the TB writers!
@ChrisArcher22
Take it for what it's worth, I've been in Tampa for 4 years and I couldn't tell you what Fred Goodall looks like or who he is.
7:40 PM - 16 Nov 2016
468468 Retweets
742742 likes
Here's a picture:I've lived down here 16 years. Have no idea who this Fred Goodall guy is either.
He got right facing crocodile 1st place votes then Justin...It's glorious...
I think this somewhat misses the point.Someone should tell Kate (and Verduci) that the baseball season has two halfs. If you only want to count the second half, then Kevin Gausman should get the Cy Young.
A blow from his significant probably eases things....Plus he's already got one on the shelf. Probably eases the blow significantly
And I wonder how many of them realized they were voting for a defensive adjustment. I love the concept of WAR, and I appreciate the efforts to make it better all the time. And I know the Baseball Reference people do not claim that it is the perfect statistic or that anyone should base their entire award ballot on it. But WAR does have real sway in the baseball commuinity. And in this case, I think it was pretty misleading.
I think the answer to your first bolded bit is in your second one. The trouble with "the weighting I feel comfortable arguing for" is that this will inevitably tend to become "the weighting that produces the answer I am comfortable arguing for". This is the problem sabermetrics was born to solve. Good stats should surprise us. They should tell us when Teddy Higuera was actually a better pitcher than Roger Clemens (which he wasn't, of course, as Fangraphs' superior version of pitcher WAR makes exquisitely clear). They should make us look again at what we thought we knew, and at least occasionally force us to admit that we didn't actually know it.I don't know why anyone would look at a single roll-up stat when deciding on these awards anyway. We have easily accessible traditional stats, advanced stats, and splits of every kind. Look at those, give them the weighting you feel comfortable arguing for, and place your vote. Relying on a single number is just laziness from the people who are entrusted with the responsibility to vote.
Yeah, WAR is a starting point, not an answer in and of itself. I think Savin is mostly correct in that the biggest danger with WAR is that it's easy to overestimate its value and lean on it too heavily. In this case, a lot of Tigers fans seem to be leaning too heavily on Baseball-Reference WAR while not digging deeply enough to see why a gap exists between Verlander and Porcello there (as Joe Pos's article does a nice job of teasing out). And so you get a lot of vitriol on twitter and facebook and message boards with people being outraged that their guy didn't win without realizing that the basis for their outrage is a house of cards.WAR and stats in general do point out some glaring errors when it comes to award voting - and Roger Clemens finishing second in CYA voting to Bob Welch when their b-ref WARs were 10.6 and 3.0 is obviously one of those. But sometimes the numbers are pretty close, as they were in this year's AL CYA race, and it's
reasonable for voters to give data and events the "weighting (they) feel comfortable arguing for," as you say.
Of course, there is ample evidence here to believe that the miserable first season wasn't solely his fault.Good for Rick. A great comeback from a miserable first season in Boston, and his quiet excellence was an important foundation piece that made the division title run possible.
Cherington's redemption
Students of the game.Verlander would have been an OK choice but that graphic.....honestly,,,,,,,,led in starts by one, in WHIP by .01, in innings by four....who the fuck cares?
How has Ted Williams not come up yet?I think this somewhat misses the point.
Those writers left him COMPLETELY off the ballot. You can argue the merits of him finishing 1st or 2nd, but he likely should have been on ballot. Secondly, if they didn't think he was even deserving of being on the ballot do you think they really did a deep dive into his 1st and 2nd half splits?
Even the "proper" weighting, though, as per above, would require knowledge of the context the player was inserted in to to understand what the proper weights should be.I think the answer to your first bolded bit is in your second one. The trouble with "the weighting I feel comfortable arguing for" is that this will inevitably tend to become "the weighting that produces the answer I am comfortable arguing for". This is the problem sabermetrics was born to solve. Good stats should surprise us. They should tell us when Teddy Higuera was actually a better pitcher than Roger Clemens (which he wasn't, of course, as Fangraphs' superior version of pitcher WAR makes exquisitely clear). They should make us look again at what we thought we knew, and at least occasionally force us to admit that we didn't actually know it.
We all know by now how imperfect a tool WAR is for this job. But we don't often acknowledge how imperfect the alternatives to WAR also inevitably are. The problem with WAR isn't that it's useless, it's that it's so useful that it's too easy to overestimate its usefulness and treat its answers as definitive when they're not.
As per above, it's imaginable, but the equation would have to involve endogenous weights that floated dynamically with the stats of each and every other player on the team to include all interaction effects--many of which there is reason to believe we haven't fully identified yet--and even how their performance affects usage to assess the team as a whole of all the interaction effects, and even perhaps all the players on the teams faced based on schedule.Do you believe there's a true, calculable player value that can be expressed in a single number and we just haven't discovered it yet? Or is value always going to have a subjective component to it? If it's the latter, then these awards exist to facilitate that discussion. Sure, they're supposed to honor the player who wins, but it's really something for fans and writers to talk about when there's nothing else going on. Giving it to the guy that the WAR machine says is best is a lot less fun.
I'm not sure you meant to announce that you don't understand how WAR is calculated, but unless I am grossly mistaken, I think that's what just happened here.Well output depends on the input, and there is a lot of data that is imprecise or nonexistent or not really incorporated into the measurements. (For example, between Verlander and Porcello, we really don't know who benefited more from pitch framing, or their team's defense, or the parks they pitched in, or the lineups they faced, etc). Also, something like WAR takes everything out of context, and it seems reasonable to consider context to some degree (and that degree is reasonable to debate). The notion that when it comes to award voting a bases empty double by a player on a last place team in a 10-0 game is equivalent to a bases clearing double by a player in a 3-3 game in the middle of a pennant race seems wrong to me.
WAR and stats in general do point out some glaring errors when it comes to award voting - and Roger Clemens finishing second in CYA voting to Bob Welch when their b-ref WARs were 10.6 and 3.0 is obviously one of those. But sometimes the numbers are pretty close, as they were in this year's AL CYA race, and it's
reasonable for voters to give data and events the "weighting (they) feel comfortable arguing for," as you say.
I'm pretty sure Rev is focusing on this paragraph.I'm sure others understand it better, but the problem is that even if a calculation of WAR tries to take all those factors into account, the variables I mentioned aren't precisely measured. Hasn't B-Ref re-calculated some numbers over the years as they got more data? And isn't it plausible there will be additional data to compare these pitchers as the years go by? And if I'm wrong about the context aspect I'm surprised.
There's a lot in here that suggests you don't really understand how WAR is calculated. You can see a comparison of all the different WAR metrics here, which breaks them down by all the various input data:Well output depends on the input, and there is a lot of data that is imprecise or nonexistent or not really incorporated into the measurements. (For example, between Verlander and Porcello, we really don't know who benefited more from pitch framing, or their team's defense, or the parks they pitched in, or the lineups they faced, etc). Also, something like WAR takes everything out of context, and it seems reasonable to consider context to some degree (and that degree is reasonable to debate). The notion that when it comes to award voting a bases empty double by a player on a last place team in a 10-0 game is equivalent to a bases clearing double by a player in a 3-3 game in the middle of a pennant race seems wrong to me.