Well you are backing up your arguments, that’s a start. Now if you can do it without the rolleyes and the attitude, you will be like a normal person!
Anyways, Bill James wrote an article a few years back about getting ortiz and why he liked him that I am trying to find without success, I’ll keep looking. Basically it had to do with the fact that everyone assumed fenway was a great place for right handed hitters, but his numbers showed that it was actually great for lefties and that it would work well for a hitter like ortiz. I’ll try to dig it up.
You’re being dense, right? Of course you have that opportunity. You take the games Varitek played, count up the wins and divide by games played. Then you take the games Varitek didn’t play, count up the wins, and divide by games played. Compare and contrast. Comprehensive? Absolutely not. But is it a baseline? Sure - why wouldn’t it be?
A normal person who insinuates that someone who actually has information must be lying about it? :dubious:
Good luck with that.
The most interesting part would be how he could extrapolate that Ortiz was a power hitter based on his grounder-hitting approach in Minnesota. I trust you can understand how skeptical I am that (A) James had anything to do with the signing (especially considering the absolute absence of any local reporting to that effect at the time, and trust me, the Red Sox beat is very well covered), and (B) that it would even be possible for him to make a credible projection.
BTW, there’s another item I should have added to the list of things the Yawkey tyranny never understood - that the power field in Fenway is to right, and the Wall is for doubles. Three feet high vs. 38, ya know. And right is even shorter for a lefty who can hook it around the pole. Ted Williams was proving all of that long before Bill James was even born. Munch, are you seriously suggesting that you can calculate how well Tek handled Lowe by how well Mirabelli handled Wakefield? Well, that ought to be interesting to see, too. Be my guest.
I’m doing nothing of the sort, I’m merely presenting one such approach to discussing the issue, rather than relying on one person’s eyewitness account.
If it was shown that starting pitching performed better (ERA, WHIP, etc.) during Tek’s starts than when someone else was behind the plate, wouldn’t that be a statistic worth calculating? I’m sure over the past several seasons enough non-Wakefield numbers could be found for the non-Tek side of the equation, since you point out a clear flaw in the plan - that there would obviously be a big discrepency between Wakefield’s numbers and the rest of the squad.
Even if that’s the case, I’m still not crunching the numbers - someone out there has to have a baseball-reference account that can do a quick game finder search.
Or you can find someone who has already done the work The study corrects for a number things including different pitchers, and finds pitchers have a worse ERA when Varitek is catching than backups.
The fact remains you aren’t a member of the Red Sox organization, so you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know Jason Varitek, or any of the other pitchers on the 2004 team, and don’t know what his effect on their pitching was. It’s ridiculous to think you know anything about the day-to-day morale and its effects on performances of an organization you’ve got nothing to do with. It’s like saying you know how the personality of some director at Cisco affects the company’s stock price even though you’ve never worked for the company and don’t know anyone who does.
Assuming you’re referring to Billy Beane, who has actually played major league baseball, been a professional scout, worked in the industry for years and years and knows far more about baseball than you or I ever will (and only an absolute idiot would think otherwise) the claim Beane planned to trade Varitek is, at any event, an unverified second-hand story. (And in fairness, Varitek didn’t become an All-Star until after the events described in the book; he really turned it on in 2003-2004.)
Billy Beane claims that defense doesn’t matter? Is that so? Cite, please. I’d be quite amazed to hear anyone in Major League Baseball saying “Defense doesn’t have any impact on baseball.”
Sorry, I don’t play fantasy baseball. These “stat geeks” you rail against are a figment of your imagination.
You never provided a shred of evidence to support your claim until post #78. That’s what I mean by “backing up your argument.” I don’t know where you get this business about lying.
Yes, Wakefield has historically been an above-average performer, and eats innings, too (well, not last year, and he may even be done or close to it, but that’s another discussion). Mirabelli, and then Cash, did have the knack of minimizing their passed balls when working with him. We’ll have to see if Bard can do it in his second try at the job. But you still can’t conclude jack shit about Varitek or any other catcher, or about any conventional pitcher, from that stuff.
See, that’s another major hole in the stat-geek approach to “fandom” - players are humans, not number generators. They have names and individualities and, often, very different playing styles. That’s what following the game on the field can teach you. No database can reflect that, and no analysis based on such a flawed database is worth anything, either.
What “little problem”? The fact that Varitek can’t catch a knuckleballer? That’s a point against your argument that he’s such a pitcher’s catcher he improves the entire squad (once you discount 20% of the rotation). If, by simple observation, you just KNOW that Varitek is improving these pitchers (the 80-90% in any given season that aren’t Tim Wakefield), wouldn’t you be able to give an example? Hell, you haven’t been able to give even an anecdotal one. If you’re so eager to discuss the real world, why don’t you? All you’ve done in this thread is point out where you think others are wrong. Nothing wrong with that, but try to provide some actual examples next time.
Getting away from Elvis’s stupidity and lies, some news:
1. A-Rod May Be Out Ten Weeks, Maybe More.
This is too bad for the Yankees and wonderful for everyone else in the world. Ten weeks would only mean losing 5-6 weeks of the regular season so it’s not a huge disaster for the Yankees, but that’s assuming all goes well with the hip surgery, but then the Yankees say maybe he won’t need it. Who knows.
Some sources report than 10 weeks is absurdly optimistic if a hip labrum must be fixed. I’m not a doctor, but your hip is not something you want to be taking a lot of risks with, I’d think.
In positive news for Yankee fans, Mariano Rivera lookes good.
2. Manny signs With Dodgers
Huge upgrade for LA’s offense, obviously. $45 million, 2 years confirmed. LA probably overpaid nad is taking a huige risk on a player this old, but Ramirez hits well even when he’s not hitting well.
And I don’t know if it was officially noted in this thread yet, but **Orlando Cabrera’s an A now. ** His contract - 1 year, $4 million - seems ludicrously cheap. For the A’s this is a pretty significant upgrade; Cabrera is a very, very good fielding shortstop and he can’t hit any worse than Bobby Crosby was hitting. Oakland’s positioned to maybe pull off an upset division title; they’ve added some awfully good players almost without anyone noticing.
Cabrera’s signing means Crosby’s either done in Oakland or will have to accept very limited playing time. Crosby hasn’t reacted well in the past to talk of playing other positions or being a backup, but a .237 hitting 4th-year player doesn’t have a lot of bargaining power. He’s two, three years away from career oblivion if he doesn’t step it up with another team.
The problem with trying to show, by statistics, how well Varitek handles the Boston staff. You’re assuming away the fact that invalidates a comparative approach. That
Puhleeze. You already know Wakefield’s a freak, both stylistically and statistically, that a catcher doesn’t “handle” a knuckler anyway, and you can’t extrapolate shit from Wake’s performances. Do you agree or not? If not, why not?
None that would satisfy you, since by definition you’ll only believe a statistical analysis that in his case cannot be credibly made.
I have, in passing. Are you interested in discussing intangibles or even unquantifiables in good faith? If not, then you’re no fan of the full game and I have no interest in discussing it with you.
Perhaps you should change your screen name to Horatio.
I’m so proud of you for learning how to use the rolleyes! Still don’t see anything about lies. You made claims with no evidence to back them up. You are aware of the difference between a lie and an unsubstantiated claim, right?
Well, that ought to be interesting to see, too. Be my guest.
The study corrects for a number things including different pitchers, and finds pitchers have a worse ERA when Varitek is catching than backups.