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Ok obvious the NL MVP is Albert Pujols, but who are the writers going to vote for?
read some of the comments on the thread, it's like a few of the guys don't know who Rob Neyer is. Telling him about OPS.
Wasn't he traded to the Red Sox?
I think for Drew, Lugo and Bucholz. According to Kevin the Red Sox got ripped off.
Jose Reyes
Seriously. "PhillR, NYC: Why do writers/voters such as yourself over value BA and RBI so much when they are very clearly not amongst the best metrics?"
Look at me! I used the word "metrics!"
my guess is 1. Pujols, 2. Braun/Howard (whichever team has a stronger September) 3. Reyes. I wouldn't be surprised to see Berkman finish high while getting zero first place votes. And I think that as more people champion for Sabathia that it will create an Edmonds campaign.
The last Dodger MVP hit 25 HR and had 76 RBI.
1) RBIs are down because of injuries causing him to miss a small but significant number of games, and because he hits in worse lineups than he did from 2001-2005.
2) Homers are down because of injuries causing him to miss a small but significant number of games, and he ends up around 35, not an eye-popping total, instead of 40+.
3) Both of these are compounded by the fact that Pujols' walk rate has been going up for a couple of years both because of managers buying into "protection" with "unintentional intentional" walks, so he has less at-bats in which to drive in runs.
Of course, he is hitting .348 with the highest slugging percentage in baseball. With a hot streak, he could set a personal best in batting average.
(On a random side note, anybody notice nobody is slugging .600 in the AL? A-Rod is at .598, I'm guessing he or somebody else will finish above .600 but when was the last time either league had a player lead their league in SLG with a mark under .600?)
but the Cardinals have two. :)
Mark McGwire in 1992.
1992: .585, Mark McGwire
NL
1991: .536 (!) Will Clark
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/SLG_leagues.shtml
If you had told me before the season that the Cardinals would have a player lead baseball in IsoP, and that this player would have a mark over .300, and that this player would not be named Albert Pujols, I would've bet pretty much every possession I own that you were wrong.
#99 might get enough votes
I'm guessing you haven't seen many of my posts or have me on ignore.
Just so everyone can complain and have a good reason to.
Wow, have we reached that point already? That's he's educated the public on sabermetric principles so well and for so long that some saber-inclined fans aren't really aware of his reputation? It reminds me of the suburban punk kids who are so into Blink 182 but are completely oblivious to The Clash.
That's a great analogy. It also reminds me of undergrads in humanities classes who want to lecture you on Foucault, but never read Plato.
I don't have any hard data to back this up, but I'd bet that winning the batting title actually hurts a player's chances in the MVP race, all else being equal. Joe Sportswriter tends to view it as a somewhat selfish achievement.
Mauer .325 - 8 - 60
Morneaue .305 - 19 - 96
If Mauer couldn't win it when he hit .347, voters aren't going to give it to him with a .325 average. I'll be surprised if he finishes in the top 10.
Well, I did prefix it as "suburban" punks, who, for the most part, had no idea who Blink-182 were before they signed a major label deal for Dude Ranch. And they didn't really gain a legion of fans until they exploded into the public consciousness with Enema of the State. Maybe I'm taking you too literally but what 12 year-olds are you talking about? That could be true of the relatively few 17/18/19 year-old fans who were into Cheshire Cat but 12 year-olds are barely just beginning to comprehend the punk-rock ethos of "selling out," if at all.
I think my larger point holds true, though. Rob Neyer has been so successful that the people he's influenced have influenced others to the point that there now seems to be an incoming generation of saber-savvy fans who have no idea of his contributions.
What humanities curriculum isn't going to require plato (I assumed you meant philosophy)? Though I would argue you could study Foucault without having studied/read Plato. Now, studying Foucault without studying Marx might be correct, of course this requires understanding Hegel, which requires understanding Kant, which...so on and so forth...Yeah I guess you are right.
An even stronger line is: See, we were right about Morneau -- he is an MVP type who carries his team.
And under the "Longoria Lemma", if the Red Sox manage to collapse, that will make Manny more valuable and Manny can win the MVP in both leagues in the same season!
I know most of the posters here do not care for philosophy discussions, but you have hit on my point exactly. Philosophy curricula tend not to be a particular problem since they tend to allow a linear progression from the general introductory classes to more specialized graduate classes. I have encountered this misunderstanding more frequently in higher level theory classes in other social sciences.
I was an undergrad at Georgetown, home of about 35 different majors with "politics" in the title (Political Economics, Culture and Politics, Political and Social Thought, not to mention the first cousins in the Women's Studies, American Studies, Security Studies domains). At some point, many of these students read something subject specific by a 20th century post-structuralist (Discipline and Punish is extremely common) and embrace the theory emphatically. But how does one become a post-structuralist without understanding any particular thread of structuralism?
There was an instructor in a graduate education course I took at Penn who exemplified the problem precisely. She was essentially a sociologist who wanted to investigate impoverished indigenous school systems in Canada or some such thing. Along the way, someone gave her a copy of of Power/Knowledge, and she seemed to have a strong grasp of Marx, so she started talking about the expression of power in the classroom. I asked a question about whether she regarded the interactions between student and teacher a dialectic of juridical and disciplinary power whereby the teacher can exercise rules and regulations with certain codified consequences, but the ultimate productivity of the classroom relies on the interplay with the investment of the student him/herself. She said that the school gives the teacher power to exercise in the classroom. It seemed to be a poor understanding of Marx due to complete ignorance of the synthesis phase of the Hegelian dialectic which entirely perverted her understanding of the Foucauldian text which she was referencing.
The analogy to punk music seems apt to me since a fan of Blink 182 who has little more knowledge of The Clash than that they existed has missed the formative aspects of their own favorite band. The layers of development not only make a topic more compelling in my mind; they are also necessary to fully understand the application.
But how far back does that go? Does someone need to learn about the blues before they're allowed to listen to rock in the first place?
Great post and I say this not only because I did my Ph.D. at Georgetown. In fact I was a teaching assistant for one of the courses you mentioned, "Political and Social Thought" a required course for the school of foreign service. What was interesting about that course was that half of the sections were taught by the Philosophy department and half of the sections were taught by the Government department. In the spring there was a workshop designed to get everyone on the same page. What I learned from that workshop is that no one should ever learn philosophy from anyone in a philosophy department (at Georgetown anyway) because those guys are analytics, historicists, or marxists and, in any event, don't know a single thing about the people they are supposed to be teaching (i.e. Plato on down--well I suppose the Marxists knew something about Marx but I wouldn't take that for granted). It's amazing how ignorant an entire field has become through the out of context introduction of books they don't understand. In North America the sure fire way to know that someone doesn't understand postmodernism is if someone calls themselves a postmodernist.
How long ago were you there?
In music, I couldn't care less since the point is enjoyment. In philosophy, where the point is the pursuit of wisdom, yes you shouldn't be allowed to read Foucault unless you already understand Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger. The reason is if you read Foucault out of context you will in fact become dumber thinking you know something you don't really know.
No, but I think the larger point being made is that you'll definitely understand and appreciate things more if you have a good grasp of the history of it. If you're well-versed in rock music, you know that 3 Doors Down is mediocre crap. If you're 10 and you've only heard a small sample size of rock bands, then maybe they seem pretty original and exciting. If you're a baseball fan who's been following the sport for a number of years, you know that Derek Jeter is not close to being one of the top 20 greatest players of all-time. But a casual fan might think something like that.
Well, obviously, if it was just Pujols, but didn't the Cards throw in Springer?
Why Rob took that tack, I dunno. I feel like "who will win" is the type of thing you can make a standalone pronouncement about, but "who should win" is more the type of thing you can have an actual discussion about.
Heh. Sounds to me like having a grasp of the history will make you enjoy things less. At least, if those things are 3 Doors Down.
oh, I agree with your first sentence, no doubt. But I disagree with your second and third. I'm very familiar with Neyer and I perfectly understood that he was talking about "who will win" as opposed to who should. My general point is that PhillR in NYC, when posing the question of "why do writers/voters such as YOURSELF..." clearly isn't familiar with Neyer's work. If he were then he wouldn't have lumped him in with the writers that he thinks Neyer's like. Like the entry-level scenester who thinks the Beach Boys just made bubblegum pop music, PhillR in NYC probably thinks Neyer's some hack who works for Disney.
Just to make you feel old, those 12 year olds are 22 now.
Agreed. The same thing hits me come Oscar time when critics fall over themselves trying to predict the voting pattern of a large diverse group of people. It's a far more interesting course to state what you think is the best and why, rather than demonstrate your knowledge of the horse race.
I take umbrage at this comment. Enjoyment is the goal of the general public with regards to music but to the music scholar you're damn right you go back to Ma Raney, Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson to understand the nuanced inflections in Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Chuck Berry, Miles Davis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Lee Morgan, Elvis, Page/Plant etc...
It's no different in music - we still study the past to better understand the more current proprietors of the art.
I'm still tripping on the guy that thinks Rob is a typical sports writer. Honestly it was the whole reason I wanted this thread linked.
With regards to the sociology instructor, who understood Marx, missed a huge point of his, which is, in a nutshell, you cannot examine the parts independently and expect to understand the 'whole'. Of course, I might have misinterpreted this idea and could be completely wrong. Also, Foucault, as well as a lot of the major philosophers, have been described as apologists for those in power. If there is any truth to this in regards to Foucault, then she wasn't necessarily wrong, regardless of her understanding of Hegel.
34: Undergraduate philosophy should be taught by the types you describe. A BA in philosophy is essentially a BA in the history of philosopy. And as far as them being Marxists (I assume you are not using the term Marxist to mean commie), Marx is 'that guy' in the 20th century. One either has to refute him or agree with him on particular subjects, but regardless, there is no getting around him, so one better know as much of is theory as possible (fortunately it is nice condensed in a tiny book called Kapital. Light reading).
An analogy this discussion has brought to mind, and kind of off topic, as well as the MVP discussion, how hasn't Chomsky (philosopher/scientist..even if you disregard his political leanings, never won a nobel prize. He has had several Pedro 1999 years where he coul d have won the MVP, but got shafted.
They do. They really do. Then you hit 16.
But at least you can always play them when your friends are around, just so everyone can say "Hey! I remember that!"
(or am I too young for those conversations?)
I think it's absolutely necessary to have a working knowledge of the history of philosophy to read contemporary contributions to the field, but I think you're setting up an impossible bar, whereby a non-philosopher must dedicate themselves to a career in philosophy before being able to speak on poststructuralism. A moderate form of your argument, in which anyone who wants to do interdisciplinary work must make themselves familiar with the broad scope of the second field under discussion, is perfectly fair. The extreme form of your argument, in which only those with a full philosophy training may speak about philosophy, would fundamentally undercut the ability of anyone to do work that cuts across disciplines.
Maybe because there isn't Nobel Prize for what he does best. I don't think he's peace prize material, in spite of his criticism of various military endeavours. Not literature, because his writings, while influential, are not particularly literary (the Swedish Academy has not chosen a pure essayist as winner since Bertrand Russell or Winston Churchill in the early 1950s). He doesn't qualify for economics, and not for any of the hard science prizes oibviously. If there was a Nobel Prize for social sciences, he'd be in the running, but there is none.
I can't tell if I feel smarter or dumber for having read this. :)
Can we just award the NL MVP to Pujols through 2010? That will give us more time to discuss synthesizing dialectics, the Battle of Jutland and the 2008 presidential race.
As far as music - is the correct analogy Blink 182 (a completely superficial band) to the Clash? The Clash were much more than a punk band in terms of message, and I can't for the life of me recall a single Blink 182 song that dealt with anything of importance. I do plead ignorance on the deeper meaning of Blink 182 - I am a confessed shoe gazer from the twee school myself (lovely looking Converses, by the way).
You can't understand Plato without a solid grounding in the history of ancient Greece, the social and intellectual and political world in which he wrote and worked. Try talking to a couple of classics scholars some day about the way that Plato gets read in traditional philosophy departments, but only if you have an hour or two and an appreciation of extended profanity.
The same argument could certainly be made for Frederick's Germany and Kant, or for fifth republic France and Foucault, and so on down the line.
I am not asking philosophers to acquiant themselves so deeply with the historical period of the authors they study that they become specialists in the multiple periods of historical study. I've tried, in my field, to be fair to the recent works on Paul and Philosophy (Badiou, Agamben, Jennings, Zizek) as written interdisciplinarily, not by early Christianity scholars. (Though I think that all of them but Agamben really needed to sit down and read at least one book written on Paul in the last decade or two.) They can bring interesting questions to Paul and provide useful insights, even if they don't have the background in history to study Paul intensively.
Maybe I'm misreading your posts, but I see a tendency not to recognize that people do good work with philosophy without having philosophy doctorates, and that philosophers often skimp on the necessary interdisciplinary work with history in their works.
No kidding. I'm not really into punk and I just couldn't get into philosophy in school. There's alot of guys here much more well-educated than me. All I remember from college is some basic macroeconomics.
Think so? This is where Ludwick gets interesting as a sort of out-of-nowhere candidate, and we know how MVP voters love them some RBIs.
Ray Charles.
I see your point, and it's a relevant one. Having people from various academic pedigrees interrogating the same text can bring about new and informative discourses. In other words, an economist might have interesting things to say about the economic perspective on a particular psychoanalytic theory text, for instance. On the other hand, when an economist writes an article on economics while cherry picking some argument from that psychoanalytic theory text, it usually takes the theory out of context and misses the point. I guess I'm saying that an expert in a field is better lending their knowledge of that field to other disciplines and learning from the interaction than from independently applying a random piece of critical theory that they don't fully understand to a their own field.
yeah, that was way easier than what i said.
I had to originally read discipline and punish for High School debate. I think I was in 10th grade and there was some argument about government originated biopower. I was only vaguely familiar with Marx and Nietzsche, nominally familiar with Plato, and completely unfamiliar with Hegel. Reading it again six or seven years later for a grad course on Anarchist Theory (with a nearly full complement of BA in Philosophy in tow), I had an entirely different interpretation of the book, and wholly other sections seemed important than before. I guess that speaks to the point of different backgrounds informing the discourse from new perspectives, but I think I can qualitatively assess my second reading as superior.
I'm not sure if you were responding to me but I agree with much of what you've written and I agree that an interdisciplinary approach is a good one. In fact I would go further and say that the division of academia into disciplines has been very damaging to scholarship.
One quible I have is the suggestion that expertise in history is necessary to understand classic texts. I agree with the point in general, however if by expertise in history you mean history of the Skinner type then I would like to share my own brand of expletives. Its ironic that so much of the study of classic texts takes place from behind the walls of the disciplines when the texts themselves were almost universally written within an interdisciplinary atmosphere.
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