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.