Prince's defense

Somewhat lost in the shuffle in all the talk about Prince Fielder's fantastic offensive season this year is that, amazingly enough, despite being known as one of the worst defensive first basemen in the game, UZR actually has him as about an average defender this year, around -1.1 runs. UZR is highly susceptible to small sample size fluctuations, and it's possible that this is one of those, as it's significantly better than any other number he's posted (usually around -8 to -10), but it's also possible that getting in better shape has improved his defensive ability. Prince is already one of the best players in the game, but if he can become an average defender, he'll be even more valuable, and maybe shake the "future DH" label, and be seen as more of a well-rounded player than just an all-or-nothing slugger.

Buehrle sets retrosheet record for 9x3s

As you've all heard by now, Mark Buehrle pitched a perfect game today. Perhaps even more significant is that it was the third "9x3" of his career. A 9x3 is a game where the pitcher only faces 27 opposing batters, even if some of them reach base; the ones who do reach base are erased by double plays, caught stealings, etc.

I've often wondered what to call such a game; I asked my dad for a suggestion, and after his initial suggestion of a 3x3 animal style, we settled on 9x3, as in facing all 9 batters in the lineup exactly 3 times, and nothing more.

Baseball-reference recently made a list of this, and apparently as of 2007, it had only been done 35 times since 1957, exclusive of perfect games. Buehrle, at that time, was the only pitcher with two games on that list; Koufax had one plus his perfect game, so they were tied for the retrosheet lead with 2. Buehrle, of course, as I mention above, has now taken the lead.

A 9x3, even of the non-perfect variety, is quite an accomplishment, as evidenced by its rarity, but you never actually hear about it. I suspect this is because there's no snappy name for it, so I suggest from now on, we all agree to use the phrase "9x3" as casually as we say "no-hitter" or "perfect game". Okay? Okay.

The Mets trade Ryan Church to Atlanta for Jeff Francoeur.

I'm speechless.  This is like the front office equivalent of Luis Castillo dropping the pop up against the Yankees, except far worse, because the consequences extend beyond one game.  The #1 rule for any GM this season had to be "DON'T trade for Francoeur"...and here we are.  The only possible explanation I can see for this is that Omar Minaya realized he'll never be the Orson Welles of GMs, and so decided to be the Ed Wood.

Economists wouldn't have a problem with this idea...

I'm currently standing in line in Madison Square Park to get food from Shake Shack.  Shake Shack is a small walk-up restaurant in New York that serves excellent burgers and shakes.  It's extremely popular and, consequently, the lines for it often resemble those for the finer E-ticket rides at Disneyland.

This gave me a thought.  Many fast food chains, most notably Ben and Jerry's, will often have promotional days where they give away free product.  These days are, of course, accompanied by extremely long lines, because TANSTAAFL.  Many economics blogs have run commentaries on this phenomenon (I believe Freakonomics did; I'll try to add a link later).  I wonder if Shake Shack would be willing to run their own equivalent of this promotion: have a day where they charge $20-$30 for a burger, so you don't have to wait in line.

Like I said in the subject, economists would like the idea.  I suspect no one else would, though.

Return to blogging with a quick post, and maybe a longer one later

Hi, I haven't posted here in a while; I've been meaning to on several occasions, but I haven't had time to lately. Anyway, though, I have a long post about various things, including UZR and other fielding metrics, but first, speaking of UZR, I wanted to point out something exciting, that I've been thinking will happen for a while but finally has.

Check it out:



Ryan Braun officially has a positive UZR on the season for (I believe) the first time in his career.

It's a small sample, for sure, like UZR usually is, but personally I think it could last, and expect Braun, when all is said and done, to end up reliably a few runs above average in the outfield.

Braun's gettin' on base

Now, having just emphasized the small sample size present in the last post, I'm going to disregard my own advice and look at some of Braun's numbers so far this year. In particular, I wanted to analyze the comment I made earlier that Braun has been drawing walks at a solid pace. I made this graph of his AVG, OBP, and SLG so far this year:



As you can see, even when his AVG and SLG were swooning, Braun's OBP has consistently stayed very solid. It got as low as .304 on April 11th, but ever since April 13th it's been higher than .340, which suggests that even when he hasn't been hitting, Braun has been good enough at drawing walks to keep getting on base. Again, it's a very small sample size, so there's no way to tell if this will keep up, but it's very encouraging, as patience has always been the weakest part of Ryan Braun's game.

Very Quick Point About Sample Size

So, it's a cliché at this time of year to say that we shouldn't read too much into a batter's performance because it's such a small sample size, but I thought I'd use an example to illustrate that point. Going into the series in Philadelphia, Ryan Braun's slash line was sitting at .222/.340/.356, not completely terrible, but certainly not what we expect from him. However, coming out of Philly, after just three games, Braun has raised his line to the Pujolsian .327/.448/.600. Even after just the first game, where he went 5-for-5 with two homers, he had raised his line to an awesome .300/.397/.540. BTW, note how Braun's ISO discipline (OBP-AVG, basically a measure of patience at the plate and skill at drawing walks) has been pretty consistently great. Braun has actually been drawing walks this year, and if he keeps that up, he can go from being great at the plate to being an absolutely dominant player.

So the next time you read something about small sample size, keep this in mind. We're still at the point in the year where 5 at-bats can turn a guy from suck into awesome.

Happy Brewers Day! (For another hour and 15 minutes Milwaukee time)

Would've posted this earlier if I'd realized it, but I just came to the conclusion that April 19, in addition to being Patriot's Day, should be considered Brewers Day, as it's 4/19 (i.e. Molitor/Yount).  Perhaps there should be a celebration on August 28th, as well.  If you really like holidays, go ahead and throw in July 1st (or July 23rd).

Fun facts about Gary Sheffield #500

-Gary Sheffield, as has been noted elsewhere, is the first to join the 500 HR club with a pinch hit home run.

-Sheffield is the second to hit his 500th homer off of the first team he ever played for; the first to do this was Jimmie Foxx, on September 24, 1940. Sheffield and Foxx are the only members of the club to hit their 500th homers off of a team that they played for at any point in their careers.

-Sheffield has played for more teams than any other member of the 500 club, with 8 (Brewers, Padres, Marlins, Dodgers, Braves, Yankees, Tigers, Mets). Prior to his joining, Frank Robinson and Eddie Murray were both tied for the most clubs, with 5 (Reds, Orioles, Dodgers, Angels, Indians for Robinson, and Orioles, Dodgers, Mets, Indians, Angels for Murray).

Brewers fans represent

So, I was at tonight's game, and I'm still trying to gather all of my thoughts about it (in particular, how I should feel about seeing Gary Sheffield's 500th HR in person, and how I should feel about seeing an exciting ballgame that my team loses). In an attempt to get something down, I'll start out with a quick note about how there was a surprisingly large number of Brewers fans at the game tonight. I saw the Brewers play the Mets at about the same time last year (on April 12th), and there were not nearly as many Brewers fans at that game as there were at this one.

There were Brewers fans in my section, actually, a few rows behind me, which was a new experience for me. It was pretty awesome, because in the top of the 6th, before Braun hit his home run, the Milwaukee fans in my section started arguing with some of the Mets fans over usual baseball stuff ("Wisconsin sucks!"), and then Braun hit his shot to give the Brewers the lead. That, of course, shut up the Mets fans, and I ran up to high five the other Brewers fans. That was the high point of the game for me.

Hyperbole? Nah.

From the Citi Field opening day program:

"There was no lack of shattering news events in the year 1969. There was the Jets Super Bowl III victory, the Woodstock Festival and Concert, Lyndon Johnson leaving office and the ascendancy of Richard Nixon to the Presidency, the implementation of the first artificial heart and Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon.

But for sheer drama and surprise, nothing could match what happened on October 16, the date the expansion New York Mets sent shock waves through the baseball world by defeating the Baltimore Orioles for the World Series Championship."

Man walked on the fucking moon...but that's got nothin' on the Mets winning a World Series.

First impression

Everyone wants their pic w/ # 42

My view for tonight

Yo dawg

I herd you like scoreboards so I put a scoreboard on your scoreboard so you can score while you board

Song choices

They were playing instrumental calliope versions of some songs.  First was "Talkin' Baseball", an obvious and excellent choice.  Then..."Pinball Wizard".  Why?  I don't know.

Live blogging the Citi Field opener

So, I'm off to Citi Field for the home opener, and I figured I might as well try live-blogging it.  I'll get some pre-game pictures and commentary up for sure; how much I post during the game depends on how big of a douchebag I feel like on a phone during a baseball game.

Why I'm still feeling alright about the Brewers' season

Yeah, long time without a post; I have some things I've been meaning to throw up (including a predictions post--it's still valid a week in, right? :-P), but I thought I'd get this out of the way now. The team has had a rough first week; 2-4, including a couple of brutal losses to the Cubs and some terrible Suppan starts. That said, I think this team has a lot going for it, and I'll lay out some reasons why:

1. Most of the games have been fairly close. The Cubs games, in particular, were all fairly close and exciting, and even the one today (Sunday) was closer than it seemed; if Reed Johnson hadn't made an incredible play, it would've been a one-run game, rather than a three-run game. And on Saturday, if Soriano had been (properly) called out on the double-play, the Brewers could've won that. It really was some tough luck losses, and the Brewers could've won or even swept the series.

2. Other than Suppan, the starting pitching has been solid. Starting pitching was our big question mark coming in, and so far it's been pretty good. Gallardo was amazing, Looper put in a solid effort, and Parra and Bush basically kept up what they gave us last year. Unfortunately, Suppan also kept up what he gave us last year. That said, maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, but if he has another start or two like the last one, I really feel like there'll be some accountability this year, $40 million contract or no. I wouldn't be surprised if we see him taken out of the rotation. The bullpen hasn't been too bad so far; nothing great, but not terrible, and should get better once Hoffman's back.

3. The hitters have been getting on base. We haven't been scoring runs like we should, but that's mainly been a fairly of clutch hitting more than anything else. They've seemed to do a good job of working the count, and guys have been getting on base at a nice clip. If you keep getting guys on base like that, you're going to start knocking them in and scoring runs. Also worth keeping in mind is that we've held our own even though Hardy has been slumping, Kendall is doing even worse than usual, and we've faced a string of good starting pitching: seriously, Dempster is the worst starter we've faced so far, and we've still averaged over 4 runs a game.

So, it's a rough start to the season, but all things considered, I think it was more rough luck than anything else, and as the season starts rolling along, I fully expect this team to perform well and contend for the wild card.

I don't like this

So apparently Suppan is going to be the Opening Day pitcher.

Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, the order you put your rotation in doesn't really make that difference, but this just doesn't make sense to me. The number one starter typically makes the most starts, so why not put your best pitcher there? The argument about Gallardo not having enough experience just doesn't fly with me, especially if your replacement is Suppan, our worst pitcher.

The decision itself probably won't have terrible repercussions, but the thought process worries me.

Corey Hart hit a home run today...

...and it was good.

Spring Training!

So, as I mentioned in the last post, I'm in Arizona, and I've been going to spring training games. I've been to three so far, in three different stadiums, two of which involve the Brewers. There are plenty of blow-by-blow accounts of the games themselves on the net elsewhere, so I'll focus on talking about the parks themselves, and maybe a thing or two about the atmosphere, or little things that other write ups miss.

Sunday: Rockies at Dodgers



So, I started out with a Dodgers game, mainly because Manny was in the lineup and I wanted to make sure I saw him play while I'm here. I showed up just in time to see him groundout in his only at-bat; unfortunately, later in the game he injured his hamstring, and apparently is going to miss another week, which means that was my only chance to see him here. Oh well, at least I got to see him in the field:



In the 4th inning, right before the play where he injured himself, he let a flyball drop right in front of himself; my dad thought seeing that was worth the price of admission.

This is the Dodgers first year training in Arizona, and they have a brand new stadium, which is quite nice, as you can see in the pic above. Perhaps the best part about spring training games is that you can walk up to the ticket window as the game is starting and get good seats for cheap, and although this stadium is the most expensive of the Cactus League stadiums, this was still the case; we got this view with $20 last minute seats (and they only charged a dollar for my eight-year-old brother, which is nice):



It may have been because the game was a blowout from the beginning, but this crowd definitely lived up to the Dodger fan stereotype; they were almost all gone by the 9th inning, and didn't seem quite as engaged as the crowds at the other two games I went to.

Also, I found out that, unlike the spring training games I went to when I was 12, you can't get players to sign autographs during the game :-(. That was a little upsetting.

Monday: Cubs at Brewers



This game was amazing. It wasn't just that it was gratifying to see the Brewers smackdown the Cubs (but it was, even if the game doesn't matter), and it wasn't just that it was exciting to see Corey Hart tearing it up (yes, spring stats don't mean anything, but it looks like he's ready to bounce back from his September). Beyond all of that, it was great to have a little bit of Milwaukee in the Valley. I haven't been to Milwaukee in over 11 years, so it was amazing to have a brat (with stadium sauce!), watch the sausage race, and sing "Roll Out the Barrel". I hope to finally come back to Milwaukee and see a game at Miller Park this summer, but until then, this was the next best thing.

The Cubs have a large fanbase in the Valley, for a variety of reasons: first of all, due to Chicago being a huge city and WGN, the Cubs have a huge fanbase in general; second of all, there are a ton of former Chicagoans in Arizona; and third of all, the Cubs have been training there for almost 60 years, since 1951. As such, I was expecting the number of Cubs fans at this game to completely overwhelm the number of Brewers fans, but it actually seemed to be split about 50/50, which was a pleasant surprise (and only made the game feel more like a bit of Milwaukee in the desert).

Our seats were even better at this game, good enough to give us a good view of how Prince gets a triple:



The Crew pretty much just dominated the Cubs, and as I indicated above, Corey Hart had a big day, going 3-for-4 with a double and a homer. The only thing more he could've done is draw a walk (because every time Corey Hart draws a walk, an angel gets its wings). The Cubs did threaten in the 8th, scoring 4 runs off of Sam Narron to narrow the deficit to 2, but even this ended happily, as in the bottom of the 8th, Lorenzo Cain doubled and Alcides Escobar knocked him in for another insurance run, thereby reassuring us that the 2011 Brewers know how to get the job done.

After the game, I was able to get autographs from Joe Crawford, Brad Fischer, and Lorenzo Cain, so I know who I'm rooting for to inherit the CF spot from Cameron...



Tuesday: Brewers at Giants



In spite of the Brewers losing this one, and having the worst seats I've had yet, it still had its redeeming qualities, not the least of which that the Brewers lead for most of it. It was at Scottsdale Stadium, which is significantly closer to me than the other two parks (half hour drive as opposed to an hour drive), so I was able to get there earlier, and got signatures from Ken Macha and Mat Gamel before the game.

I was under the impression that Scottsdale Stadium was an old stadium from the 50s, but the current structure was actually built in 1992 on the site of the old stadium, which was opened in 1956 for the Orioles spring training, and later hosted the Red Sox, Cubs, A's, and now Giants. Opening in 1992 does still make it the oldest of the parks I've been to so far, though, and it did feel older because it had an enclosed concourse, unlike the other two parks. Still, it was overall a nice park, and looked nice with trees behind the outfield fence:



As Maryvale had the Brewers' signature brats, Scottsdale Stadium serves the Giants' signature garlic fries. I'd heard some people saying the garlic fries aren't very good, but I love garlic, potatoes, and grease, so I came away satisfied.

Like I said before, the Brewers lead for most of this; Corey Hart stayed hot, smoking two doubles, one of which scored two runs. Brad Nelson had an RBI single, and even Mike Lamb of all people blasted a two-run shot. What's more, amazingly, Jeff Suppan even had a terrific outing, facing the minimum through 4, and ending the 5th with a strikeout. True to form, that last strikeout was his only of the game, and he relied on the defense the whole way, but still; if Soup can keep that up, not walking guys and getting them to hit on the ground, he can be an adequate 5th starter. Now if we can just keep him out of big games...

Unfortunately, there was a black mark on this game, and his name is Villanueva.



I don't believe in getting worked up over spring training games, but this is worrisome. Villy is someone we really need to stay solid, and he hasn't looked good in spring. He looked terrible out there today, and Macha is worried about him, too.

That said, there was one bright spot about Villanueva's outing. In the bottom of the 8th inning, immediately after he gave up the two-out inside-the-park homer that tied the game, Alcides Escobar made a tremendous play to end the inning. A ball was smoked hard to his right, really near Gamel's range, and he slid on his knees to get it, picking it on a hop near the edge of the grass, then sprung up and fired a rocket to first to nail the runner with plenty of time to spare. This was a ball that would've gone through the field for a hit with most shortstops, and Escobar not only stopped it, he got the guy out and didn't even make it a close play at first. We've all heard a lot about his ridiculous fielding prowess, and he lived up to his reputation in this game.


Escobar and Gamel—the future

So that's my wrap-up of halway through my spring training experience. So far I've had a fantastic time. I was going to go to the Giants-Cubs game tomorrow when Randy Johnson was scheduled to start, but now that he's been scratched, I've been thinking about taking the day off. The Brewers' last home game while I'm here is on Thursday, and I definitely want to go to that; Maryvale was such an awesome experience I'm fired up for doing it again. I'm also thinking about checking out a Mariners game; I'd like to see what Russell the Muscle is up to.

A Brewers logo post

So, I'm in Arizona for spring break, and I've been having the time of my life going to Spring Training games. I plan to do a big post on that real soon, but first I'm going to do a quick one here about the Brewers' logo.

The Brewers, of course, once had the best sports logo of all time: the "ball-in-glove" logo, which combined an "m" and a "b" into a shape like a ball and glove



In 1994, however, they stopped using the logo, but brought it back in limited capacity in 2006, wearing it at "Retro Sunday" home games. In 2007, Retro Sunday became Retro Friday, and it remained in 2008. However, in 2009 Retro Fridays will only be the first Friday home game of each month.

Some people feel the old logo/uniforms should be brought back full time, but the players are resistant to this idea, because they feel they want to create their own identity, and not constantly be compared to the '82 team. While I once would've liked to see the old uniforms brought back full time, I am sympathetic to the player thoughts, and the new uniforms have grown on me. As such, I would support going to the new uniforms full-time, but I do have two reservations:

1. The ball in glove logo really is an incredible logo, and shouldn't go to waste.

2. The current main logo for the team, not seen on the uniforms but used in promotional materials and such, is godawful:



Seriously, that's just generic, boring, and ugly.

So, to me, there's an obvious solution here: update the ball in glove logo with the current colors, and use it as the primary team logo. Maybe even put it on the new uniform as a patch. It could be combined with the current wordmark to create something like this (apologies for my terrible photoshop skill):



That's much better than the current logo, and makes great use of the ball-in-glove logo, yet still seems in keeping with the team's current image, rather than calling back to the '82 era. I think this would be a perfect way to combine the team's history while allowing the current players to create their own image.

God is Not Dead

This is a thought that just occurred to me, so I'm going to make this one quick and pretentious; I suspect my reach is exceeding my grasp, but let's give it a try anyway.

A few days ago, Jon Stewart interviewed Jim Cramer and took him to task for his, and CNBC's, failure to see the financial crisis coming; more specifically, for their continued insistence that everything was just fine when in fact, obviously, things weren't. While CNBC clearly completely failed to correctly read the economy, I don't understand why anyone would expect them to, when the investment bankers who actually had billions of dollars riding on the economy couldn't see it coming, either. I mean, seriously; if the chairmen of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, et al, couldn't foresee their future bankruptcy, how could a cable channel with considerably less interest in the banks' continued health see it coming?

The truth is that no one could see it coming, and this is what people find so hard to accept. So much of life is random and unpredictable, and yet we continually insist on trying to put a framework and predictability onto it. And, so, I would say that Nietzsche was wrong when he said, "God is dead." When he said that, he meant that humans are no longer able to believe in some grand cosmic order, or overarching structure, and are doomed to resort to relativism and nihilism (Wikipedia has a good summary). However, to me, it appears the opposite is true. Humans instinctively believe there is an overarching order; when a financial crisis strikes, it seems impossible that it could not have been foreseen, and if anyone didn't predict, it must be due to their ineptitude, not to any inherent unpredictability. People are frightened by the idea of a true chaotic randomness, and continually resist it. Until they accept it, God will never die.

iTunes updated their visualizer

I don't know how long ago they did it, but my roommate and I just noticed. I figured I'd take this opportunity to point out that the absolute best iTunes visualizer song, hands down, is "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin. Try it.

Q: What's the difference between Russian women and American women?

"The women had bet mechanic Sergey Tuganov $4,300 that he wouldn’t be able to follow through with the half-day sex marathon."


























A: If it were American women, there would've been three of them and they would've bet $10,000.

Brew Crew Ball on the Brewers' Offense Rebounding

As always, good stuff from BCB.

It's the same basic idea as what I talked about here, except they actually, y'know, use real numbers and come to an actual conclusion. Long story short, we can expect our five core players (Braun, Fielder, Hardy, Hart, and Weeks) to add 5 wins just by rebounding from a bad offensive year last year.

In other news, the Brewers ended their first Spring Training game against the Oakland A's with a 3-3 tie after ten innings. Worth noting, IMO, is that Corey Hart went 2-2 with a home run and a walk. Yes, it's a tiny sample size and not worth extrapolating anything from, but this team needs Hart to be contributing this season, and it's nice to see he's at least capable of putting up some numbers. Hopefully the trend will continue...

Also, I've been meaning to mention this, but I hope that Macha starting Suppan in the first Spring Training game doesn't mean he wants him to be the Opening Day pitcher. As I indicated before, I don't even like the idea of anyone other than Gallardo being the opening day starter, and I especially don't like the idea of Suppan being the opening day starter. I don't think Suppan will be as bad in '09 as he was in '08, but barring a freak occurrence, he's the worst pitcher in the rotation, and it just doesn't make any sense to give him the most starts.

Not offering arbitration: smart move?

The OC Register, in a piece on the smartest baseball moves of the offseason, praise the D-Backs, Yankees, and Phillies for not offering arbitration to Adam Dunn, Bobby Abreu, and Pat Burrell, taking the point of view that the cheap contracts these sluggers ended up with in a down market justified the move. I disagree with this.

By not offering arbitration, the clubs lost out on draft-pick compensation for these players. However, they also took away the players' options to accept arbitration, which would've resulted in the clubs paying overpriced salaries to Dunn, Abreu, and Burrell. This is why the move is praised, but, the move only saved the clubs money if Dunn, Abreu, and Burrell would've accepted arbitration.

Sure, in hindsight the three of them would've been better off accepting arbitration, but out of 24 players offered arbitration, only two accepted, and they're both little-known relief pitchers (Darren Oliver and David Weathers). Furthermore, several players definitely did hurt themselves by declining arbitration, most notably Jason Varitek. With this in mind, I find it quite likely that players offered arbitration would've declined it, anyway, thereby netting their clubs a pick, and losing them nothing.

Granted, you can't always count on such things, and the GMs moves to not offer arbitration certainly looks better now than it did at the time, but I don't think I'd go so far as to praise the move.

Brewers, Hart, avoid arbitration

"Presumably settled somewhere near the midpoint" of $3.25 million.

I have to say, I figured if Doug Melvin's arbitrationless streak had come to an end this spring, it would've been with Prince, so I guess I'm kind of not surprised at the settlement.

How Hart does next season is one of the questions I'd like to see answered. I don't know what the hell happened to him in September, but it was bizarre. He went from hitting .299/.310/.523 to hitting .173/.192/.245. That's a drop of 100 points in OPS+. Admittedly, this can perhaps be partly explained by a .213 BABIP, but it's still awful. I find it unlikely that Hart suddenly forgot how to play baseball when the calendar turned, but maybe opposing pitchers have figured him out. Hopefully it's just a case of really bad luck, and he comes right back to his former self as the season begins.

Rare triple-post day!

Ryan Braun on steroids: "I would never do it because if I took steroids, I would hit 60 or 70 home runs."

It's kind of a dumb thing to say, but I love that he's being a cocky bastard here, rather than an evasive douchebag, like most players tend to be when the topic of steroids comes up. Really, when it comes to steroids, I pretty much come down on the side of, "Yeah, it's a bad thing, and we should do something about it, but is it really this big of a deal?" With that in mind, I appreciate that rather than tow the party line and act all serious, Braun is having some fun with it.

Of course, if he does hit 60 or 70 home runs in a season someday (it could happen), then this quote might come back to haunt him...

Hey-la, hey-la, my Gagne's back

Minor league deal, no terms as of yet

Gagne gets a lot of shit for being shit, but he wasn't too bad in the second half of last year. He mainly got a bad reputation for having some high-profile meltdowns, and forgettable solid performances. He's an arm, though, and if the price is right, it can't hurt to have some of those lurking around down in AAA and thereabouts.

Macha not likely to name Gallardo Opening Day Starter

I dunno if I like this.

So, I'm not going to start pissing on Macha right away, and so far he's seemed like a pretty solid guy, but here's, really, the first sort of real decision we've heard from him...and I think it's a bad one. I mean, Gallardo is far and away our best pitcher; he's projected to have an ERA around 3.50 next year, and no one else on the staff is projected to go under 4.00. He may be the least experienced, but talent, ultimately, trumps experience, and we should give our best starter the most starts, simple as that. Now, I will grant, that I am not well-versed in the impact of experience on this sort of thing, and the impact of pressure situations on a young pitcher's development, but can the impact really be enough to offset that wide of a talent gap?

Furthermore, is this sort of thing really necessary with Gallardo? Everything we hear about him is that in addition to being a great pitcher, he's Mr. Poise and thrives under pressure. Is he really not up to the task of Opening Day? I'm not sure I buy that.

And I also don't totally buy that being the Number One starter is that much more pressure. I mean, the argument used here is that you'd always be going up against every other team's number one, but that's just not the case; off days and a injuries scramble up pitching rotations pretty damn fast, and the ace matchups don't always happen all that often.

So, in other words, I'm waiting to judge on Macha, but this move displeases me; I feel it's a rather significant cost with no obvious gain.

Looper Deal is Official

One year, $4.75 million

I like it, because depth...is good. Seriously, though, while we don't have superstars, I think the rotation is pretty solid now. It's easy to feel down on the team because we lost Sabathia and Sheets and haven't really replaced them, but I think an important thing to keep in mind is that we wouldn't have needed Sabathia so much last year if the team's offense hadn't completely fallen off the face of the Earth in September. Here's a chart of the runs/game each month that I think illustrates that well:



As you can see, I also added in a line for the Simple Runs Created (SRC) per game, which is the runs we should have scored based on the team OBP, SLG, and at-bats. (It's calculated as OBPxSLGxAB. As an aside, looking at that formula is a useful way to see why OBP is more important than SLG; while an increase in SLG only increases its own variable, an increase in OBP increases both itself and AB, because a team with a higher OBP isn't getting itself out as easily, and so is stepping up to the plate more). While it's already obvious that September was just terrible offensively for the Crew, the SRC/G line emphasizes the fact that, while the team did not score many more runs per game in May than they did in September, this was more a consequence of bad luck; based on how they were hitting, they should've scored something more like 4.6 runs per game, instead of 3.9. However, September was not a case of bad luck; clearly, the team just totally stopped hitting.

There are some explanations for this: Ryan Braun, while he was still in the lineup, was battling a back injury that clearly hampered his effectiveness, and Corey Hart, for some reason, just ceased to exist as offensive force. Also, Gabe Kapler was unable to play because of a shoulder injury; while Gabe wasn't a regular player, I do feel that if he had been available to sub for Hart a few times, that may have helped Hart break out of his slump (but that's just conjecture on my part). Anyway, clearly this was a freak occurrence, and it's unlikely that next year the team will suffer another September slump.

My point, then, is that if the team had continued to score runs at the same rate they had beforehand (4.8 runs/game), they would've scored an additional 31 runs, which is 31 runs that the pitching staff could've allowed. Spread out over 162 games, that's 0.2 runs. So, if the offense can avoid another bizarre teamwide slump, the pitching stuff can have an ERA 0.2 runs worse and still get the same results, which doesn't sound too bad.

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Notes: Just some random stuff I noticed when I was doing up the numbers that I wanted to share:

-September was the only month in which the Crew scored fewer than 100 runs, scoring 94. However, August was the only month in which they allowed fewer than 100 runs, allowing only 72. That's 2.67 runs per game. We all remember how dominant Sabathia and Sheets were, but damn, that's just incredible to see it in cold print like that.

-August was also the Brewers' best run-scoring month, as they scored 151 runs. Again, just to reflect on this, they scored more than twice as many runs as they allowed. However, based on Simple Runs Created, July was actually their best offensive month; they should've scored 150 runs instead of the 138 that they did, and in August they should've scored 145 runs. The better number for July was fueled entirely by a .032 point increase in SLG, as they actually had a slightly lower OBP and 9 fewer at-bats.

Further details on baseball+game theory

Okay, so, I've found that trying to gather the data I want to pull this off is going to take a while, so I'd like to start off by introducing the sort of methodology I have in mind. The way I'm thinking I'd do this right now is to start by creating a basic model where the actions available to the pitcher are to throw each of his different pitches in or out of the zone, so the total number of actions would be twice the number of pitches the pitcher has, and where the actions available to the hitter are to swing or not to swing. This is, admittedly, still a simplified model, but I think it's a good starting point. If this goes well (once I have real data, that is), areas I think I might move onto are: first, further subdividing the actions available to the pitchers into throwing pitches at different parts of the strike zone; and second, giving the hitter actions like, "Swing if the pitch is located at a certain position x amount of time after the pitcher's release"; in other words, to try to incorporate the fact that the hitter can decide whether or not to swing based on where the pitch seems to be heading, but only shortly after it leaves the pitcher's hand. This data is all available from pitch-f/x.

Once this model is set up, utilities have to be found for every possible combination of actions. The great thing about doing this model for baseball is that the utilities are actually very easy to find. They can be simply measured in terms of runs, and each possible outcome after a pitch has a specific run value (this is, essentially, the basis of John Walsh's runs100 system he uses at The Hardball Times). Every pitch will either end up as some sort of hit (a single, double, triple, or home run), some sort of out (groundout, flyout), or a ball or strikeout. (I'm ignoring, for simplicity's sake, things like hit-by-pitch, catcher's interference, etc.) The value of each of these things can be calculated in terms of runs by looking at how each event changes the run scoring expectancy. Here is a table for the values of the various hits, and the out, from Tom Tango's excellent The Book:



Establishing a value for balls and strikes is slightly more difficult, but still doable. Every count has a different run expectancy; not surprisingly, "hitters' counts", with more balls than strikes, increase the run expectancy, while "pitchers' counts" have the opposite effect. The value of a ball or strike can then be measured as the extent to which it changes the run expectancy of the count. John Walsh used this approach in developing runs100, and here are the values he came up with:





Now, it would be more useful to do different payoff matrices for pitches for each count, and that's the sort of thing I plan to do eventually, but for now, I'm going to come up with an average ball/strike value by averaging these numbers. This is technically incorrect, because some counts are rarer than other counts, but I don't have those relatively frequencies offhand, and, again, this post is about focusing on methodology, rather than correct numbers. This is what I came up with:



Now that we have a value for each outcome, the next step is to find the probability of each outcome, given each combination of actions from the pitcher and the hitter. This is where pitch-f/x data would come in. As I haven't waded through that swamp yet, I'm going to make up data for a fictional pitcher, pitcher X, to try to illustrate the principle. Let's say pitcher X has two pitches, a fastball and a curveball, and he can locate both of them either in or out of the zone. Let's look at the possibilities for when the hitter doesn't swing, first, as that is simpler.

If the hitter doesn't swing, clearly, the pitch is either a strike or a ball, and the outcome is dependent on where the pitcher meant to throw the ball, and how accurately he does so. Let's say that the pitcher can locate his fastball in the strike zone 70% of the time, and outside the zone 90% of the time. Let's also say he can locate his curveball in the zone only 50% of the time, and out of the zone 70% of the time. Therefore, if he attempts to throw a fastball in the zone and the batter doesn't swing, it will be a strike 70% of the time, and a ball 30% of the time. The percentages for other possibilities can similarly be found.

Now, if the batter swings, clearly things get more complicated. First of all, we have to take into account that, as explored above, the pitcher only locates his pitches properly some of the time. Next, we have to find the probability the hitter makes contact at all. I'll say that when Pitcher X throws his fastball in the zone, hitters make contact 90% of the time; when he throws it out of the zone, they make contact 40% of the time; and when he throws his curveball in the zone, contact is made 70% of the time; out of the zone, 20%.

Continuing with this ream of made up data, suppose that 70% of the time when batters make contact on any of Pitcher X's pitches, the result is a groundout or flyout. Of the remaining 30%, which are all hits, 50% of them are singles, 22.5% are doubles, 22.5% are home runs, and 5% are triples. This gives us this chart of probabilities:


(click on pictures to see larger)

Now that we have a list of probabilities, we can combine that with the list of values for each outcome to create a payoff matrix. The table looks like this; the value in each cell is the utility (measured in runs) to the hitter; the pitcher's utility is just the same value times (-1).



As you can see, most outcomes are unfavorable to the hitter. This is not surprising, as hitters make an out 60-70% of the times they step to the plate, and an out has a negative run value.

Now that we have a payoff matrix, we want to find the Nash Equilibrium, and therefore find the appropriate frequency with which the pitcher should throw each pitch, and the hitter should swing. Hopefully I'll get that up in a blog post tomorrow.

Combining Baseball and Game Theory

Baseball, at its heart, is a game between pitcher and hitter, and this game is particularly susceptible to game theory analysis. Over the next few weeks, I want to try to start figuring out ways to break down this game theory, and perhaps understand the game better. I'm not entirely sure how this would work, but I have some ideas.

To get the basic idea of how a game theory interpretation of an at-bat would go, let's look at an extremely simplified version of the pitcher-hitter confrontation. Suppose that on any given pitch, the pitcher has two choices: throw a strike, or throw a ball; and the hitter also has two choices: swing, or don't swing. Suppose that if a hitter swings at a strike, they make solid contact and get a hit, and if he swings at a ball, he whiffs. This would create a payoff table looking something like this:



The hitter, unsurprisingly, benefits from swinging at strikes and not swinging at balls, whereas the pitcher benefits by getting the hitter to swing at balls and not swing at strikes.

This is all unsurprising, but when used in a much more detailed model, this could be a tremendous tool for analysis. What I hope to do is, by analyzing pitch-f/x data, come up with accurate utility numbers to plug into payoff matrices for pitchers, and then with these utility numbers, find Nash Equilibria for the pitchers against league-average hitters (or against specific hitters). These Nash Equilibria would give us the frequency at which the pitchers theoretically should throw each of their pitches, which could then be compared to the frequency they actually do throw these pitches.

To give an example of how this could be used, consider this article from Hardball Times, where Josh Kalk looks at pitch sequencing and finds, among other things, that throwing the same pitch twice in a row is often effective. One possible explanation for this is that hitters just don't expect to see the same pitch twice in a row; indeed, under the section on curveballs Kalk says, "The main exception appears to be curveball/curveball, which appears surprisingly good. Hitters must not be expecting a second curveball. Maybe they got in a hole early and then when they laid off the first curveball they were expecting the pitcher to come back with something hard."

However, if pitchers always followed their curveball with another curveball, hitters would never be fooled, because they'd expect the second curveball. Clearly, there is some frequency at which it is best to follow a curveball with another curveball, and a game theory model has the potential to find this frequency.

Hopefully I can wring enough good data out of pitch-f/x to get some real conclusions out of a game theory model.

A-Rod reportedly tested positive for steroid use in 2003

This won't end well.

This is going to be one hell of a story in a memetic sense, because the moment the average fan hears this, they're just going to feel vindicated for hating Alex Rodriguez. As I've pointed out here before, these steroid allegations just become a test of how well a player controls his public relations, and Rodriguez has notably failed at that, becoming one of the most hated players in the game even though he's one of the best.

Really, a better question might be why this took so long. I believe it was around the time the Mitchell Report came out, I remember reading an article that including some commentary from Alex Rodriguez on steroid use, and included the caveat, "Of course I've never used it," etc., and I thought at the time, "Is that really all it takes to ward off suspicion?" Granted, I don't follow the steroid news all that closely, but as far as I can remember, this is the first time I've heard it suggested that A-Rod is a user.

Anyway, the take home point is that this report/allegation/what-have-you is going to stick. The moment people hear about this test, they're going to make up their minds that A-Rod used and that's that and nothing can convince them otherwise. It's not like if, say, Derek Jeter had a positive test turn up, in which case people would suggest it must be a faulty test and demand more evidence.

Bill Gates is crazy

Bill Gates released mosquitoes at the TED conference.

I have to say, I'm very disappointed with this news. If someone as rich and powerful as Bill Gates is going to go batshit insane, there are way cooler ways he could do it. For example, he could call a press conference and say, "President Obama, I understand the need to protect American lives from foreign threats, but this involves putting American lives at risk. In light of this, I'm proud to present you with a new combat brigade of 10,000 troops...made entirely out of butter," and then he'd pull back a curtain to reveal 10,000 soldier sculptures, each uniquely hand-crafted out of Land O'Lakes Sweet Cream.

Or he could build a gigantic airplane hangar, and pay guys to hang out there all day, firing off automatic weapons and practicing karate, and if anyone asks him what it's for, he'd respond, "To kill James Bond." If it was pointed out to him that James Bond is a fictional character, he'd say, "That's not what the Major told me."

Or he could say, "Ladies and gentleman, in the future, we'll purchase more and more consumer goods from vending machines. Ladies and gentleman...the future is now. I present to you the first gerbil vending machine."

Or he could build a complete replica of a small town from the 1950s in the middle of the Nevada desert and hire people to smoke pipes and lead normal lives working in factories and soda fountains, just like the good old days...except none of them would wear any pants.

Anyway, I think I've made my point: if Bill Gates is going to go off the deep end, he should just commit and really do it like only he can. Releasing mosquitoes is weak sauce.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, and Game Theory

Game theory has long been a fascination of mine, and I'm finally getting a chance to take a class on it here at NYU. We recently had a class where we found the mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium for rock, paper, scissors (RPS), and it made me curious about Nash equilibria for other variants of RPS, which are manifold.

First, of course, I'm going to have to explain some these game theory terms that I'm throwing around. The essence of game theory is exploring decision-making when the outcome of your decision is dependent on someone else's decision. When this is in a two-player game, it's often expressed through a payoff matrix, like so:



This is a payoff matrix for RPS. The left column shows the moves for player one, and the top row shows the moves for player two. The payoffs to each player are listed in the cells, with the format [Player 1's payoff, Player 2's payoff], where a 1 represents a win, a -1 represents a loss, and 0 represents a tie.

Now that we have a payoff matrix, we'll want to find an equilibrium. Specifically, we're going to look for a Nash equilibrium. A Nash equilibrium exists where both players are pursuing a strategy such that neither can improve their payoff if the other play continues to pursue the same strategy. It is obvious that there is no "pure strategy" Nash equilibrium for RPS; that is to say, there's no possible equilibrium where each player plays one move all the time. If player 1 always throws scissors and player 2 always throws rock, player 1 can improve his payoff by always throwing paper instead. However, if he does this, then player 2 can improve his payoff by always throwing scissors, and so on.

When a game has no pure strategy Nash equilibrium, we search for a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium. A mixed strategy is a grouping of pure strategies, with a proportion assigned to each for often it should be played. In the case of RPS, there is a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium where each player plays each strategy one-third of the time. This is intuitively unsurprising; each move will win, lose, or tie one-third of the time each.

Another variant of RPS is Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock, which, in an effort to reduce ties, expands upon the original RPS ("RPS Classic", I suppose) by adding in lizard, which eats paper and poisons Spock, but is crushed by rock and decapitated by scissors, and Spock, who vaporizes rock and bends scissors, but is poisoned by lizard and disproved by paper (he is fictional, after all). The payoff matrix for rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock is as follows:



It is somewhat more interesting than the classic RPS chart, and certainly does cut down on the number of ties (the probability of a tie is reduced from 1/3 [3/9] to 1/5 [5/25]). However, the Nash equilibrium is essentially the same as for the original RPS: both players play each strategy 1/5 of the time. It's the same game, just slightly expanded.

However, there is another five move variant of RPS that actually adds an additional strategic wrinkle: Rock, paper, scissors, fire, water. In this variant, the original rules hold, except fire beats everything except water, and water, in turn, loses to everything except fire. The payoff matrix looks like this:



The game is said to come with the stipulation that fire can only be used once in one's life time, but this is silly, as the Nash equilibrium can be shown to be, actually, each player playing fire one-third of the time, water one-third of the time, and rock, paper, and scissors each one-ninth of the time. The reason for this is that it's really become a balanced game between three actions, where the three actions are fire, water, and RPS. Fire beats RPS, which beats water, which beats fire. Each of these actions should be played one-third of the time, but "playing" RPS properly means playing rock, paper, and scissors each one-third of the time, and 1/3*1/3=1/9.

The reason I bring this up, and have made such a long blog post about such a ridiculous topic, is because I find this result to be interesting, and worth thinking about, because it is counterintuitive. While water would seem to be arguably the least valuable move, because it only defeats one other action while the other four defeat at least two actions, it actually should be played three times as often as rock, paper, or scissors, even though those would seem to do more. It is solely because the one action that water beats, fire, is the most powerful that water is so valuable move. I think there is a useful lesson to be had here when considering counterintuitive value and pricing. Unfortunately, I don't think I know that lesson yet.

Perche no?

In New York and Boston, the subway trains run on the right, just like the cars do.

In London, the subway trains run on the left...just like the cars do.

In Rome, however, the cars run on the right and the subway trains run on the left. I feel like that's a perfect metaphor for Italy.

Craigers!

The Counsell signing became official today, as Craig has passed his physical.

In strict tangible terms, I think there's a lot to like about this deal. While Craig Counsell isn't a very good hitter, he has some discipline at the plate, so he's not a complete lost cause (in fact, he had a .355 OBP in 248 ABs last year, which is nothing to sneer at), and he can play plus defense at three infield positions. $1 million for a guy who can field several positions competently and isn't completely lost at the plate is a solid deal, even for a 38-year-old.

If, however, I can move away from actual baseball performance and indulge in a bit of personal history here, I've felt for a while like Craig Counsell has a strange connection to my baseball watching life. I first got into baseball when I was 8-years-old, during the 1997 season. I was living in Milwaukee at the time, so I became a Brewers fan, and the first few games I went to were at old Milwaukee County Stadium. However, that year I found out my family was moving to Arizona. My first reaction was, "What? We can't move to Arizona. They don't have a baseball team!" My dad pointed out to me that, thankfully, Arizona was actually getting a baseball team the very next year, just in time for us. I was still apprehensive about moving, but knowing this did cushion the blow somewhat.

We moved to Arizona in late October. We headed out on October 22nd, and spent a little over a week driving down to Arizona. This, of course, was during the 1997 World Series, and I watched it every night. It was the one constant during the trip; we were sleeping in a different hotel in a different state pretty much every night, but there was always a World Series game to watch. This was the first World Series I ever watched, and it was, of course, between the Cleveland Indians and the Florida Marlins. I was rooting for the Marlins the whole way, not because I cared about Florida, but because I knew they were a young expansion team, and I felt like if they won the World Series, it would prove to me that a young expansion team could win the Series, and then I could hope that the Diamondbacks would win. Of course, that line of thinking doesn't really make any sense, but it's what I thought when there was a walkoff hit to end Game 7, and Craig Counsell rushed home to score the winning run for Florida.

And that line of thinking still doesn't really make any sense, but it was vindicated. Just 4 years later, in 2001, I was ecstatic to see that the Diamondbacks could, and did win the World Series, and of course, who better to be in the middle of it all but Craig Counsell, getting hit by a pitch to extend the inning just long enough for Luis Gonzalez to bring a championship to Arizona.

As I grew older, my baseball love began to ebb, but it came back when the Milwaukee Brewers, my original favorite team, from my original hometown, actually began to win some ballgames. And of course, admittedly serving in a reserve role, but nonetheless involved, with them was Craig Counsell.

So I'm glad they've brought him back; it just seems like it isn't right if he's not playing on the team I'm rooting for.

Follow-up on Michael Lewis piece post

Here's a great video from one of the Ted conferences about choice and horizontal segmentation and so forth.

There're a lot of directions I could go with this one, but for now I want to focus on something he mentions in the middle: that people don't know what they want, or at least can't accurately describe what they want. This, I think, backs up to some extent my assertion that people might misunderstand the utility of something to themselves, and thus break a pricing mechanism.

The thing about this point is it really cuts to the heart of most political debate: just how responsible are people for their actions? Libertarians believe in people having complete authority to make their own decisions; extremely statist liberals (for lack of a better term) believe in government superseding people's authority to make their own decisions. Ideologically, I fall more in line with the former belief, and, to a great extent, most Americans do as well, even the liberals, but reality does occasionally suggest that perhaps people shouldn't be trusted to make their own decisions as much. I suppose that's why it's debated over.

Again, I do hope to expand more on these thoughts, but that's what I have for now.

Let's talk about abortion!

When I started writing this blog, I wanted to try to avoid talking about politics. However, I find that is the sort of thing I'd talk to myself about often, so I decided there's not much point in keeping it away from the blog. While I'll make reference to my beliefs, I'm going to try to keep political posts focused less on beliefs themselves than on how they're perceived in the public sphere, which I think is an accurate description of this post. Besides, no one reads this blog anyway, so I don't really have anyone to offend.

So, abortion. I do consider myself pro-abortion, and I use that term rather than another one for reasons I'll get to. I do believe the government shouldn't step in to tell women they can't have abortions...but I'm not militant about that belief. That is to say (and if someone actually read this, they'd probably be offended), I'm not going to stand up and say, "How dare you take away the right to kill a fetus?!" It's really a judgment call on my part to be pro-abortion, and it's not something I can back up with rigorous documentation or appeal to facts; really, it's mostly a gut feeling. I'm wary about the intrusion of government power, and I feel banning abortion would go too far. Other people might feel it doesn't go too far, and I can respect that. I can't get all offended that someone feels that way.

But my views on abortion go beyond that. Not only can I not get militant about it, I don't even really care about it that much. I am far more interested in economic policy, foreign policy, hell, even gay marriage, than I am in abortion policy, because I feel that on the grand scale of things, it just isn't that important. (Perhaps that's why I feel the government shouldn't bother with it.)

This brings me to why I've decided to reject the labels "pro-choice" and "pro-life". First of all, needless to say both labels are just spin, and I don't like spin. I try to be a no-bullshit type of guy. People who are pro-abortion say they're "pro-choice" because being pro-abortion, well, first of all, just sounds sadistic, but second of all, "pro-choice" just sounds downright American. We should be able to choose for ourselves. And people who are pro-life could call themselves "anti-abortion", but you never want to identify yourself as "anti-" anything; you want to be for something! And what better to be for other than life? I mean, who's anti-life, other than serial killers?

But what I really don't like about the labels "pro-choice" and "pro-life" is that they try to be about more than they really are; they try to expand the issue. Being "pro-choice" means you're in favor of the choice to have (or not have) an abortion, but the implication is that you're in favor of choosing, in general, rather than being barred from making the choice. Well, that's all well and good, but does being in favor of the choice to have an abortion really say anything about how much you want to let people make their own choices? How many people think women should get to choose to have an abortion, but shouldn't get to choose whether they can smoke in a bar or restaurant? How many people believe in choice for abortion, but not for paying into Social Security? I submit there is no correlation between the two; being "pro-abortion" doesn't necessarily mean being "pro-choice".

And the same is true for "pro-life". People who are opposed to abortion regularly explain their opposition in terms of "protecting the sanctity of human life," and believing that "all life is sacred." Well, y'know, I think I'm a pretty "pro-life" guy, in a sense; I believe in respecting other people's lives, and enjoying my own life; I think life is worth living, and believe every day I wake up is a great one. In short, I don't think that being for abortion makes one any less "pro-life". Beliefs about abortion have a connection to beliefs about life, but it does not have to be a defining one; frankly, I think it's a rather tenuous one.

So I think we should abandon the terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life", and stop trying to pretend this whole thing is more than it is. It's really just about one thing, abortion, so let's say it's about abortion. You're either pro-abortion, or anti-abortion. Now, those who would call themselves "pro-choice" may object to the label pro-abortion because it implies being in favor of the act, when many pro-choice activists are opposed to the act, but think government shouldn't ban it. I understand this objection, and I would say "pro-allowing people to have abortions", but, sorry, it's just too damn long :-p. (I don't think the pro-life activists would really have a problem with the designation "anti-abortion".) At any rate, I'm trying to get away from the connotations of these words and just focus on the denotations. If someone says "pro-abortion", we all know what that means. It's not a good PR term, but frankly, I think we should all get away from the PR mentality; hell that's what I meant above, when I criticized "pro-choice" and "pro-life" as spin terms, and that I try to be no-bullshit. To me, no-bullshit pretty much means you're not going to try to sugarcoat what you think just to make it sound better to people. Let's call things what they are, and that's what I'm going to do: from now on, I'm done saying "pro-choice" and "pro-life", and I'm just going to stick to the accurate terms: "pro-abortion" and "anti-abortion".

Wall Street and calculating utility

Great article here by Michael Lewis (of Moneyball fame, as previously referenced on this blog) about the financial collapse.

The thing I find most interesting about it is how the heart of the matter is that assets were overvalued, and what that says about a market. Wall Street firms were selling assets that were ridiculously overvalued, and acting as though they had value. It is easy to try to blame the firms for inflating the value of their assets, except people were willing to buy these assets. It takes both a buyer and a seller to set a price, and buyers were just as irrationally overvaluing assets.

This is, in a sense, almost frightening, because it suggests a way in which the market system is flawed. It is essential to a properly functioning market that buyers and sellers understand the utility of what they're selling or purchasing; indeed, that's how the price is set. Buyers only pay a price that's equal to or lower than what the good (or asset) is worth to them, and sellers only take a price equal to or higher what it's worth to them, and an equilibrium is found.

However, what if buyers and sellers aren't able to know what a good is worth to them? It's not implausible. When we discuss the myriad calculations that must be done to determine a good's value, it is unreasonable to think that everyone performs those calculations; surely people value and undervalue goods.

That, however, is the key: error in valuing goods should be random. What happened in the run-up to the Wall Street crash is that error in valuing goods was systematic, and all in the overvaluing direction. This sort of systematic error subverts the market.

Hopefully I'll be able to clean up this post and expand upon it, but these are my thoughts for now.

Observation vs. Statistics

Nothing very relevant or topical about this, but I had some thoughts about sabermetrics and its critics. A common criticism goes something along the lines of, "You can cite all the numbers you want, but I saw so-and-so play, and you can't tell me they weren't great."

Now, leaving to one side the fact that you can very easily be deceived by what you see, I'm very intrigued by this concept that seeing a player tells you more than their stats do. I think this is a curious concept in a game like baseball, which is much less about what you do on any given day than about how much you do over a long period of time. Case in point: take a player like Chad Moeller. On April 27, 2004, Chad Moeller hit for the cycle. If you saw him on that day, you'd think he's a great player. But Chad Moeller has a lifetime OPS+ of 61. He's terrible. The only way you'd know that is by watching him over a large number of games, and seeing how he tends to do.

And what exactly happens when you watch someone over a large number of games? What exactly do you see that lets you know if they're a good player or not? You certainly don't see them get on base every time they step up to the plate; the odds are overwhelming you see a player make an out more than half the time. You do, however, see them get on base sometimes, drive in runs sometimes, get big hits sometimes, etc. More importantly, you see how often they do this. Even the worst player will hit a home run sometimes, and even the very best player will strikeout sometimes, but what separates the best from the worst is how often they do each thing. So if you rate a player well, you remember seeing them succeed often. Well, what's better? Saying, "Yeah, I saw this guy, he always came up with the big hit," or going back and counting...and seeing just how often the guy came through? I mean, any time you're trying to figure out how often something happens, which is better: trying to remember how often it felt like happening, or going back and counting how many times it actually did happen? Clearly, counting, that is, figuring out what the actual facts are, rather than just what they seemed like, is the way to go.

Of course, even the most vehement saber-critic recognizes this, which is why they still use numbers like batting average and RBI. More often than not the argument is not about whether to use numbers, but about which numbers to use. It is quite clear we need to use numbers, contra any "I saw him play" argument.

This brings to mind another thought which I've had on a few occasions. I feel like even many non-sabermetrically inclined people recognize that batting average and RBI and so forth don't tell you everything, and that's why they're so quick to say, "The stats don't tell you everything; you have to watch them play." They're used to stats that can be very misleading, and so they insist the same about all stats, even though sabermetric stats are designed to avoid the pitfalls of more conventional stats. It's almost like a Catch-22.

Did left-handedness keep Mark Grace out of the Hall of Fame?

Okay, completely out-there thought: Mark Grace appeared on the HoF ballot for the first time this year, and only garnered 4.1% of the vote, knocking himself off the ballot and guaranteeing that he'll never see the hall, unless the Veteran's Committee goes completely insane. His numbers don't really justify entry to the Hall of Fame...that is, at least considering that he was a first-baseman. However, Curt Schilling, in his blog, ran down the Hall of Fame ballot and said of Grace (in addition to him being the only teammate who talked more than Schilling), "Was literally a Gold Glove SS playing first base." Now, just because Curt Schilling referred to Mark Grace as a "Gold Glove SS" doesn't mean that he was one, but stay with me here for this thought experiment. Imagine a shortstop with a .303 average, .383 OBP, and a career 119 OPS+, with a peak OPS+ of 141. That's certainly not a lock for the Hall, but it's at least plausible. Suppose Grace really was athletic enough to play shortstop, but couldn't...because he's left-handed. Now, the easy rebuttal to this is that if he were that athletic, he should've played CF, which would give him extra positional value without requiring right-handedness. My rebuttal to that would be that probably the most important attribute for a centerfielder is speed, which Grace notably lacked, but shortstops can get away with less speed.

Admittedly, this ultimately comes down to a "If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle" argument, but it's something I've thought about a few times and found it interesting. Sometimes there's a lot of randomness involved in baseball.

Big Mac and the HoF

So, Mark McGwire got only 21.9% of the Hall of Fame vote this year, a decline from last year. He doesn't seem to be picking up support, and, frankly, I think that's a shame, for a few reasons:

1. We don't know for sure that he cheated. Granted, this is a fairly ridiculous point to make, because all the circumstantial evidence suggests that he did. However, I'm mentioning it anyway, because it informs my main and final point, which I'm getting to.

2. There are already plenty of cheaters in the Hall of Fame. This, I think, is a more germane point. The Hall of Fame is full of guys who cheated, and has been for a long time. Gaylord Perry is in the Hall even though he through spitballs. Whitey Ford is in the Hall even though he through scuffballs, and Yogi Berra is in the Hall even though he helped Whitey scuff the aforementioned balls. Furthermore, practically everyone who played in the 70s used Greenies (i.e., amphetamines) to keep themselves going. However, this isn't my main point, as you can argue that two wrongs don't make a right, or that steroid use is somehow a different form of cheating (although I think that's a hard point to argue WRT amphetamine use).

3. We don't know who did and didn't use steroids. This, really, is my key point. If the Mitchell Report has told us anything, it's that anyone who played baseball in the 90s could've been a steroid user. I mean, prior to the report coming out, no one thought Roger Clemens used PEDs, and now he's a symbol of the steroid era.

This, I think, is what really sells McGwire's candidacy for me. We keep him out of the Hall for using steroids. Well, Rickey Henderson got voted in today; what if he used steroids? It seems unlikely, and I have absolutely no evidence that he did, and don't even think he did, but it's possible. Or think about guys playing today who are considered locks for the hall, like Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey, Jr., Mariano Rivera, et al. They all played during the height of the Steroid Era; do we really know for sure that none of them used? The notion of it may seem ridiculous, especially for some of them who are known for being "good guys", paragons of sportsmanship, but we don't actually know these people; we just know their images. The saga of Kirby Puckett should be instructive (see here). He was a revered figure, the ultimate good guy, and the next thing you know he's cheating on his mistress and pissing in parking lots.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that sometime in the next 10-20 years, the BBWAA will elect a steroid user to the Hall of Fame and have no idea that they did. It may have happened already. And when that happens, then it becomes apparent that Mark McGwire isn't being kept out because he used, but rather he's being kept out because he got caught. Furthermore, as I alluded to above, McGwire never actually got caught, per se; he's more being punished for a badly choreographed testimony before Congress. In other words, he's really being punished for having bad PR skills.

Furthermore, guys that no one suspects of having used steroids are really getting rewarded for good PR skills. Which would be more surprising, if we found out that Derek Jeter used steroids, or if we found out Alex Rodriguez did? Without a doubt, it would be more surprising to find out that Derek Jeter did, mainly because he's gotten revered by being so good at interacting with the press. Don't get me wrong, he's a great ballplayer, but not as great as the guy playing 40 feet to his right, who's hated, mainly because he comes off as a huge jerk. So we'd be more likely to believe A-Rod as a steroid user, because...he's not as nice as Jeter? That's the wrong way to make decisions, but I think that it ultimately comes down to that too often, and I think Mark McGwire's Hall of Fame candidacy has come down to that: he's not being punished for what he did, but for what he didn't do, and what he didn't do is handle the press effectively.