I suspect some of the controversy over mgl and Cameron is a turf issue. BTF was never really the home turf for either of these fellows, so when they say something abrasive, they're more likely to get taken to task for that. Contrast that with someone like Szymborski, who can be just as strident and arrogant in his analysis, but with BTF as his turf, he never gets a deserved #####-slapping from the community (or from the SBN blogs, for some reason).

I suspect some of the controversy over mgl and Cameron is a turf issue. BTF was never really the home turf for either of these fellows, so when they say something abrasive, they're more likely to get taken to task for that. Contrast that with someone like Szymborski, who can be just as strident and arrogant in his analysis, but with BTF as his turf, he never gets a deserved #####-slapping from the community (or from the SBN blogs, for some reason).

I think most Primates' exposure to mgl came from his contributions here. And he got a lot of the same criticisms when he was a regular poster here as he does now as a non-contributor.

I yell at Szym when he gets too snarky for my tastes, but I don't really read TO that often.

Contrast that with someone like Szymborski, who can be just as strident and arrogant in his analysis, but with BTF as his turf, he never gets a deserved #####-slapping from the community

It's never a good idea to taunt the guy carrying the banhammer.

James in the early Abstracts talked a lot about Thorn & Palmer, and Craig Wright: I learned about their work there. He didn't drop footnotes because his books were popular and because, let's face it, the world's most organized writer he ain't. But I always get the impression, at least, that he acknowledges precursors and shares credit readily.

I suspect some of the controversy over mgl and Cameron is a turf issue. BTF was never really the home turf for either of these fellows, so when they say something abrasive, they're more likely to get taken to task for that.

This is entirely wrong - MGL used to write for and comment at Primate Studies an awful lot. I'd say it's more like a tumultuous divorce, where one side just can't let go. MGL has, for the most part, given up on BBTF (for good or for ill). BBTF can't or won't let go of MGL.

BBTF can't or won't let go of MGL.

and we shouldn't. MGL was/is a big part of this site and some of the better original studies on this site came from him. If Dial left it would also be a similar loss to the site. I know this is a collection of comments on baseball articles, but at the same time, it's also been a nice repository for some interesting original research and that trend should attempt to be kept here, and the researchers who have moved on, should hopefully be willing to come back from time to time to explain and clarify.

Guy--After gauging the direction of these discussions, it's clear to me that what I'd need to do to satisfy your requests would be to write a book that revises Schwarz' work (along with several others) and that exhaustively addresses the concepts I've sketched here. Anything less is likely to create a back-and-forth that becomes vulnerable to good old Usenet tactics (artful "extremifying" of other's arguments, shifting burden of proof, etc.)

As Cale and Eno said: been there, done that, don't wanna go back.

The simplest answer is that James' rep has produced a permanent "shadow effect" on the field. There have been efforts to minimize that shadow beyond simple criticism of his work, much of it originally stemming from his omission of Rickey's work. BTW, I never said that James hasn't been "given his due" by the next generation. Frankly, it would be impossible for them not to. What I said was that his shadow affects the tone of the work being done, and to trace that in a way that would satisfy readers already in possession of at least latent "rooting interests" in the story would be a monumental task.

I don't think we're quite ready for such a book, frankly. There are some more shoes that need to drop first. And I think we might need a less controversial person to write it. Maybe not, though!

The most important question about all the work being done is not related to whatever "philosophy of history" wins out as the prevailing overlay for these efforts. The question is: what impact have these ideas actually had on the game itself? Corollary questions are: if it has had an impact, how? What measures are there that confirm that fact? If not, is there tangible support for the view that an impact is about to manifest itself? And is technology going to help drive theory into such a role for the game, or will it bypass theory into other forms of practice?

I don't have time to tackle those questions right now, but I'm more than willing to peruse other peoples' take on them.

The good news is that Bill is more galvanized than before toward others due to his web presence. Tango's "leverage" concept--the most useful new tool in THE BOOK, IMO--has been picked up on by Bill. (Tango himself may well have had something to do with that.)

Tango--I'm glad THE BOOK has reached a wider audience in what I take to be its second edition. (The one I have is from TMA, which was I think your initial printing.) But I think you might be missing an opportunity to move it along a few more notches, both in terms of its value as a work and its reach toward a more mainstream audience, by deciding against the concept I've proposed.

It would also have been interesting to see you examine and configure that set of maxims from the perspective of which ones have the most impact on the game as it's played--incorporating and, perhaps, going beyond the straightforward calculations of fractional run differentials.

Cardsfanboy/107--Coke to you. The phenomenon you describe, thankfully, does happen in most cases, despite the fact that there are now more dynamic places for new material.

Steve--The immediate impact of the '61 Yankees was that baseball attempted to suppress offense (strike zone change in '63). The Lords weren't happy that Maris broke the Babe's record, so they tried to make sure it wouldn't happen again. But HRs had been growing at a solid clip in the 50s and that style survived those efforts at suppression. The dam began to fail in the 80s, there was a HR spike in '87, which prompted another strike zone revision. New parks, expansion, the '94 strike, and various forms of "bodybuilding" broke the dam wide open in the mid-90s. The '09 Yankees reflect the evolution that the '61 team showcased--HR hitters everywhere; but they've distributed it far more evenly. That type of distribution is becoming more and more commonplace, as I think I previously demonstrated with some tabular data.

I don't want any of the following to suggest I disagree with any of Tango's characterization of MGL. He knows MGL better than I do. Nor do I want this to appear as a defense of Michael Kay; in my limited experience with him, I can't stand the man. And in a battle of wisdom on baseball, I'd take MGL over Kay any day of the week.

VI would win, if "sweeps all that away" were true. If Michael Kay has done something that is not worth sweeping away, let's see it. Otherwise, VI simply took the one line of my post out of context to make his point. Classic Primer-stuff. E for effort.

You seem to be saying that the difference between what is being done to MGL here and what MGL is doing to Kay is that Kay deserves it because he is single-dimensional. Otherwise, my point is entirely within your context.

MGL expressed that the question wasn't worth anyone's time: certainly not his time, nor anyone else's (based on his initial reaction to others' noodling). He felt the wisdom he already had was enough - or, at least, that's how his comments read. In terms of wisdom he seems farther along than Kay, but otherwise there's no difference between what MGL was doing there and what the basic sports columnist would do. He stated his wisdom; he scoffed at those who would study it. The two main reactions here seem to be (a) the same reaction wisdom-spouting columnists usually get on the internet; and (b) to study the issue, test it out, and reach a fact-based conclusion. To me, (b) is Classic Primer-stuff. YMMV. If you can't take (a) with (b), this site, and the internet, might not be for you. For that matter I suggest you avoid the blog post linked at the top of this thread.

- - - - -

MGL has, for the most part, given up on BBTF (for good or for ill). BBTF can't or won't let go of MGL.

Based on the rate that Tango is defending him, and comments MGL has made elsewhere, I'm guessing (1) MGL lurks here, (2) the flogging he gets here really bothers him a lot, (3) he's learned that defending himself won't solve anything, (4) Tango doesn't like seeing his close friend hurt and chooses to step in to defend him. If any of that is true... fair enough. MGL should be proud of his accomplishments, and nothing that is said here should change that. But nobody controls how well MGL is understood more than MGL does. And his attitude is reportedly misunderstood often.

Here's an out-of-context quote from MGL in the comments on the original UZR article:

Beleive it or not, figuring out the proper methodology is extremely difficult. I have to go to dinner right now, but when I get back, I'll try and explain why your "method" isn't the best, and what happens with the various methods when the adjacent player (like in Bordick's case, the third baseman) is better or worse than average.

It would be fairly easy - out of context - to interpret this as saying:

This is not as simple as you seem to think it is. Your so-called "method" is wrong. I'll explain later.

But in reality, the full quote goes like this:

Shorty, very good questions! You are probably one of the few people who actually carefully went through the methodology to see if it makes sense or if it is the best methodology (or has any flaws, etc.). Beleive it or not, figuring out the proper methodology is extremely difficult. I have to go to dinner right now, but when I get back, I'll try and explain why your "method" isn't the best, and what happens with the various methods when the adjacent player (like in Bordick's case, the third baseman) is better or worse than average. I went literaly through many months (any many sleepless nights) going back and forth on the various methodologies. I think I came up with the best, but I could be wrong...

Better yet, in his next post he admits to being wrong, and thanks Shorty (hey, who is that?) for helping out. There's no way that any of this could be taken as negatively as I manipulated above.

Go back and read some of MGL's old stuff. While you can find a number of snippets that could be interpreted as arrogant and condescending on their own, each tends to be interspersed with a heaping dose of humility. At the time it was hard to take anything he said in a negative way. Over time, however, the displays of humility are less frequent; content aside, all that remains is an appearance of arrogance and condescencion. How often does anyone see MGL say "I could be wrong" any more? Certainly not when he's calling Michael Kay an idiot in a content-free post titled "Shooting Fish in a Barrel Again".

Like I said earlier, I'm disappointed by MGL in this regard, but it's my problem, not his. If I don't like how he says something I either must avoid reading it or must find another way to get by. Likewise, if MGL doesn't like the way he's treated here, that's his problem, not mine. He's certainly aware of the perception; he can change the way he writes to stave off misperception, or he can just avoid us completely. I - and I suspect many others - would prefer the former solution, but it's his problem to solve.

EDITed slightly to conform better to the English language.

How the heck did I get dragged into this one?

And nuts to you, #101, after I gave you a Nelson Cruz projection a month ahead of time last year!

is that Kay deserves it because he is single-dimensional

Yes, precisely. It's ok to characterize a single-dimension baseball thinker as a single-dimension baseball thinker.

MGL expressed that the question wasn't worth anyone's time

He took it back on the blog. However, Sean shows the sweep rate as 51.2% on double-headers, which is also the same rate in back-to-back wins. I expected nothing different. I agree it is worthwhile to study it, like sharpening your skates is worthwhile. Lord knows I've done plenty of such research that didn't bear fruit, and with no expectation of it either.

Based on the rate that Tango is defending him...If any of that is true... fair enough.

I never speak to MGL about this, nor do I know what his Primer habits are. Infer nothing, because I know nothing either. So, either none of it is true, or I have no idea if it's true.

or he can just avoid us completely

He does, but still he gets linked. And there's always someone ready to go off on him.

And there's always someone ready to go off on him.

mgl is like some atonally chanting monk who's smeared himself with his own feces... he may well be chanting the wisdom of the ages, but there are those who don't care to deal with the crap to enjoy the rare privilege of his unquestionable wisdom.

the man needs a ghost writer.

¡???? ??n?

Oops, wrong thread.

mgl is like some atonally chanting monk who's smeared himself with his own feces... he may well be chanting the wisdom of the ages, but there are those who don't care to deal with the crap to enjoy the rare privilege of his unquestionable wisdom.

Their loss.

Who cares about mgl.

I want to know what kind of thread prompted Dan to manufacture an upside-down "fuck yeah!"

I want to know what kind of thread prompted Dan to manufacture an upside-down "fuck yeah!"

No you don't. Really.
(It's the Dykstra/Health Care/Racism/Polanski one)

I've done a lot of thinking about this subject, and if it's okay for a mid-level Primate to chime in here with his analysis, then I'll see what I can do.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm easily frightened off by confrontation and hostility -- probably not obvious from my occasional joining in on a BTF dogpile or flaming of someone in a political thread, but true -- and the end result is that I find myself feeling (certainly unwarrantedly) unwelcome at places like the Book blog and Fangraphs. I've been vocally critical, especially of David Cameron, but also of other people (including but not limited to MGL) who display unabashed arrogance and high-handedness in their writing about baseball. There are a lot of reasons for this. One is that it just makes me unhappy. Another is that I feel a great deal of it is unearned -- Cameron, in particular, brooks no disagreement and can be extremely difficult about admitting mistakes. But the truth is that I've had this sinking feeling as time has passed and the "sabermetric revolution" I've been waiting for since I first started reading Neyer 10 years ago and has gone in fits and starts ever since is being hindered by this attitude. It's not restricted to David Cameron and MGL, it's not restricted to BTF and Baseball Prospectus, it's not restricted to Voros McCracken: it permeates the tone of the entirety of the discussion, from the grassroots to the top of the pyramid. And it's unseemly. It often crosses the line from caustic to simply mean (and I don't absolve myself of this, not in the least; I have certainly been willing to go for the cheap joke when it's available), and whatever else it's achieving, it's an essential failure of communication. Talk this way, and eventually people stop listening.

There are a lot of reasons that (some) mainstream media guys react to forward-thinking analysis with hostile jabs about pocket protectors and mothers' basements. It is true that there's an element of fear involved; as it's perceived, the numbers guys come from the internet, which is pretty much in the process of putting an end to the old model of news distribution, in sports as in anything else. But you don't see nearly the rampant and pervasive hostility among, say, news or lifestyle columnists, that you do among sports columnists. Is it true that sports columnists are more reactionary as a class of people than their peers in other sections of the newspapers? I grant that that's possible, but I suspect that if it is so, it is at least partially because we have driven them to that place, with our contempt, our naked aggression, our rudeness, our fondness for absolutism.

The attitudes commonly held by baseball bloggers can be traced backward through time, through Prospectus and Neyer and others, and do, I suspect, have many of their roots in the pugnacity of Bill James' writing. It's understandable, I suppose, that James and other pioneers might adopt a pugilistic attitude in their writing, because they were so thoroughly ignored early on, and then so easily dismissed -- with James, at least, it made him stand out. It also helped that James, unlike many who have followed in his footsteps, was genuinely funny, and that what he (and others) were doing early on did really amount to wiping away the mud from a car window so one could see the obvious features of the landscape beyond them. There was a simplicity and an elegance to a lot of those things, so that when you had followed along the steps in the logical chain and got to the end, you thought, Yeah! Those guys are idiots!

James was a titanic influence on essentially every numbers-oriented writer who has come since, and the thing most easily aped about his writing was the caustic attitude. Rob Neyer displayed it in his column, the guys at Prospectus laid it on thick in their annuals and web articles, the likes of Dial and Szym employed it here. And, to some degree, it still made sense. Ten years ago, when a lot of these ventures were getting off the ground, there were very few hip front-offices, and a lot of the analysis, though now read by a wider web audience, only saw the light of day to be ridiculed. Of course, the ridicule was evidence that some of the jabs were landing, and encouraged more of this (if you'll pardon the term) snottiness. And you know what? Sometimes it still worked. You'll find few bigger fans of Szym than yours truly, and whatever people think of their ethics and recent practices, for years Prospectus' annuals were hilarious, punchy and memorable reads.

But after a while, this sort of thing reaches its expiration date, and then it curdles. It's hard to know when that moment comes, but for me at least, it's happened in this field, and nobody has noticed. Fed by an internet culture of anonymity, and the testosterone-fuled dogpile of an almost-all-male authorship and readership, and living off the fumes of our status as outsiders and the butt of jokes, it's become a useless and ugly feature of internet baseball writing, particularly in the hands of those who have no tact or sense of humor. Maybe MGL isn't shooting for a broader audience, maybe there used to be a note of humility in his writing that has leaked away, but the fact is that his attitude is damaging and alienating. It perpetuates a war that doesn't really need to be fought anymore. He's not alone in this, he's just one of the more high-profile examples.

Perhaps it's endemic to the nature of online discussion. Maybe I'm perceiving it as more common than it is. I don't know. But I do know that it seems like it's everywhere, and I'm not sure what purpose it serves anymore. There were times when stats vs. traditionalists felt like a holy war, when Voros threw down with a bunch of scouts, when Billy Beane wrote that book, when Bartolo Colon was winning the Cy Young and Johan Santana stayed home. And I guess it wasn't that long ago; perhaps with time, people will relax. But god damn if it isn't getting a little old.

And now, I'll shut up. I doubt anybody bothered to read the whole thing anyway.

Is it true that sports columnists are more reactionary as a class of people than their peers in other sections of the newspapers? I grant that that's possible, but I suspect that if it is so, it is at least partially because we have driven them to that place, with our contempt, our naked aggression, our rudeness, our fondness for absolutism.

That is giving the sabermetric community a hell of a lot more credit and power than they deserve. Sports columnists have always been like that, since before Ted Williams railed against the knights of the keyboard. They spend their life hanging around and trying to buddy up to jocks, who are right up their in the arrogance/reactionary scale, and they are almost certainly looked down upon by a lot of their "peers" in journalism, because they write about games instead of important stuff, so they get a chip on their shoulder.

Of course they are not all like that, but too many are.

But god damn if it isn't getting a little old.

it was getting old back in the late-90s heyday of rec.sport.baseball

I doubt anybody bothered to read the whole thing anyway.

I did... and I thank you for writing it.

Perhaps it's endemic to the nature of online discussion.

I think that I avoid it, but my two or three pieces I write a year are about historical stuff. It's not like Fred Lieb's still around to get into a pissing match.

The immediate impact of the '61 Yankees was that baseball attempted to suppress offense (strike zone change in '63). The Lords weren't happy that Maris broke the Babe's record, so they tried to make sure it wouldn't happen again. But HRs had been growing at a solid clip in the 50s and that style survived those efforts at suppression. The dam began to fail in the 80s, there was a HR spike in '87, which prompted another strike zone revision. New parks, expansion, the '94 strike, and various forms of "bodybuilding" broke the dam wide open in the mid-90s. The '09 Yankees reflect the evolution that the '61 team showcased--HR hitters everywhere; but they've distributed it far more evenly. That type of distribution is becoming more and more commonplace, as I think I previously demonstrated with some tabular data.

Right, but I think there are a number of things responsible for the increase in HRs over the years, not just the influence of that Yankee team. I have a friend who thinks that the gains made by the MLBPA have improved offense at the expense of pitching and defense. I'm trying to figure out how to put that in words. If anyone is really interested, I could try after I go to the office.

@Voxter, 118

A very thoughtful piece. I like it.

However, I don't remember James' Abstracts being particularly caustic, especially compared with what has come after. It is easily possible that my memory's at fault. If it is, I'd argue that the 'caustitcity' is what sells, and it is just the same thing as the pocket-protector insult, in the other direction.

Basically, the consumers of sabermetrics are a gnostic crowd, who believe they've stumbled on the Philosopher's Stone. So, like some happy puppy, they go bounding up with it to the Keepers of Baseball. The Keepers just see some dirty old rock that they knew about back when the Blessed Mahatma was still around (which is why it's all dirty, having been buried), and kick it away, kicking the puppy in the process. The deeply hurt puppy grows up into one of those snappy mid-size dogs that are all Sound and Fury in terms of what they can actually do to the Keepers of Baseball. Puppy has kept the Stone, and keeps digging it up to admire it. Sometimes the former puppy is thrown a bone in the shape of a little consultancy job here or there. Most of the time, the dog is left neglected in the back yard, chasing squirrels.

So we love to see Repoz hanging up our piñata's, we enjoy a good snark attack by whomever against the latest mediot or dumb manager, we want to Fire Joe Morgan, Fire Jim Bowden - that's the gnostic mode of discourse. Those not with gnosis are a lesser breed.

Meanwhile, you get gentlemen like Brock Hanke who simply write about baseball history or current sabermetrics, low in snark if any at all, and they are outsold by Baseball Prospectus, fortified with nasty super-snark.

Chiding mgl for being super-snarky, as much as I used to do it, comes across as a hollow gesture to me. He's in-tune with the market, and I am not.

It's a shame @118 and @122 are down here at the end of a dying post.

How much of the tone do you think is the result of math. At a lot of blogs, I've noticed a writer will present a mathematical argument that isn't so much an argument as a statement of fact and the argument that follows is usually the blogger being flummoxed that anyone can disagree with the math. 2 + 2 = 4 and all that. Obviously, it doesn't have to be this way, but it seems as if for some, the #'s lend an authority in the same way old school baseball insiders use that insider-dom as an authority. And arguing with someone who feels the bedrock of authority is under their feet can be maddening.

Sean: I don't think the thread is dying at all. Those posts at least will serve as a repellant to the one-line snarkfest that is so prevalent. They've upped the ante.

***

I disagree with much, if not all, of Voxter's conclusions. However, he at least supports or gives plausible reasons for his opinion. The one point I agree with is when one crosses the line from being caustic to mean. As long as you stick to the facts, or support your opinions in some way, without making it an issue of character, you should be in the clear.

If your view of something or someone is one-sided, you better be darn sure that you are right.

Shooty: good point. I'd say at least half, if not almost all, of my disagreements are based on math and logic.

Chiding mgl for being super-snarky, as much as I used to do it, comes across as a hollow gesture to me. He's in-tune with the market, and I am not.

Likely you're correct, fra...

but there's also a market for heroin... one needn't cater to it just 'cause it's there.

Heroin? A more appropriate and justifiable analogy would be to the national gasbags (Hannity, Rush, Olbermann, etc).

Fra, I sometimes think I'm not the typical primate. Its seems that my tastes are more conventional than many vocal posters here. I still don't get Pavement, for example. I wonder if there is a connection between avante garde preferences in other areas and sabermetrics. Meanwhile, I'm just a Joe Six-Pack who stumbled upon the Abstracts and the Hidden Game while in high school. I liked them, but they never made me feel like throwing out my other baseball books. (Not that anyone has said they tossed out old books. I'm hyperbolizing here.)

I still don't get Pavement, for example.

For shame! I don't think a majority of Primates like Pavement, but we are a large and vocal minority. Better us than the Celine Dion fans. (And they are out there. Don't kid yourself.)

I'm not a big Celine Dion fan. I couldn't name any of her albums, and maybe I can sing a couple of verses of a couple of her songs. Being from Quebec however, I "grew up" with her, as she was heavily exposed as a child star. I had to set all that up to say that I went to one of her concerts, and she put on a great show. Her music is not really my kind of music, but I was able to get into it.

I had to set all that up to say that I went to one of her concerts, and she put on a great show. Her music is not really my kind of music, but I was able to get into it.

Hey buddy, keep that Celine Dion non-disgust under your mattress where it belongs.

Heroin? A more appropriate and justifiable analogy would be to the national gasbags (Hannity, Rush, Olbermann, etc).

point taken...

but why emulate the gasbags on any level when you have (as mgl clearly does) a: so much more to sell than just blather, and b: so little talent for edgy humor (if mgl actually intends that stuff as humor).

Shooty, Pavement reminds me of abstract art in some way. And I feel like Tom Wolfe while he's in the middle of writing The Painted Word.

Shooty, Pavement reminds me of abstract art in some way. And I feel like Tom Wolfe while he's in the middle of writing The Painted Word.

That's cool. I'm not going to hunt you down and make you like them. My girl doesn't like them, either. She prefers Skinny Puppy if you can believe it.

the end result is that I find myself feeling (certainly unwarrantedly) unwelcome at places like the Book blog and Fangraphs

I could kind of see this with Fangraphs. Fangraphs seems more like BTF than the Book blog in terms of the number of readers/commenters it attracts, and thus, you're more likely to encounter the dismissive one-liner. And well, they post all those marvelous stats there, so I suppose that helps create the impression for some, as Shooty notes in #124, that numbers can't be argued with.

The Book blog, though, I find completely different. It's a lot like the old Primate Studies, to me, which makes sense given who posts there. I rarely see it getting personal, and people seem quite willing to answer questions from less knowledgeable people (such as myself). Most of the time, the comment threads there are people rolling up their sleeves and getting to work in response to others' work.

Hey buddy, keep that Celine Dion non-disgust under your mattress where it belongs.

I liked that story. I found it humanizing.

but why emulate the gasbags on any level when you have (as mgl clearly does) a: so much more to sell than just blather, and b: so little talent for edgy humor (if mgl actually intends that stuff as humor).

Tune him out if you don't like it.

(And I'm not saying that he is a gasbag, but if you needed to make an analogy, the gasbags are more justifiable than heroin.)

I don't understand why anyone needs to live up to anyone's standards, other than his own.

It makes no difference, it don't make any difference to me what a man does for a living, you understand. But your business is a little dangerous.

I like Sinatra, the Honeymooners, and John Ford / John Wayne westerns. And Marcel Proust. Typical academic :)

I've never had much problem with MGL's ideas or his superciliousness. If I ever had a direct discussion with him here back in the day, it probably took the form of me asking a stupid question and him telling me how stupid it was. If you're going to make observations on an Internet forum, you need the hide of a mutant rhinoceros anyway, so I had no problem with that.

MGL does not write clearly. Very few people do; I sure don't. The great popular writers on technical subjects – Bill James, Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks, Jane Goodall – all have the gift of understanding a subject and communicating beautifully. However, to criticize someone for not writing like Oliver Sacks is like criticizing a journeyman corner outfielder for not hitting like Joe Mauer.

I'm not a big Celine Dion fan...I had to set all that up to say that I went to one of her concerts, and she put on a great show. Her music is not really my kind of music, but I was able to get into it.

This happened to me! My wife is a big fan and we missed her all those years she was in Vegas, so when she did a concert in town, we had to go.

Carl Wilson wrote a really good book in the 33 1/3 series. It's called Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. That sounds snarky, but the book isn't. It's less a review of that particular album than a music critic trying honestly to understand her amazing worldwide popularity. It ends up a nice little book about aesthetics.

There are a lot of reasons that (some) mainstream media guys react to forward-thinking analysis with hostile jabs about pocket protectors and mothers' basements. It is true that there's an element of fear involved; as it's perceived, the numbers guys come from the internet, which is pretty much in the process of putting an end to the old model of news distribution, in sports as in anything else. But you don't see nearly the rampant and pervasive hostility among, say, news or lifestyle columnists, that you do among sports columnists. Is it true that sports columnists are more reactionary as a class of people than their peers in other sections of the newspapers?

Depends on the newspaper, doesn't it? But in general I don't think so, at least not if you compare them to op-ed columnists. (Reality tends to prevent reporters from being too reactionary, but most op-ed columnists don't have to deal with the world outside their own heads.) The generic problem that sports columnists share with opinionators of any type is that the need to produce 2 to 4 interesting columns a week far outstrips their capacity to do so, and so as a result they resort to cliches and bromides. It's not as easy a job as we may think.

I grant that that's possible, but I suspect that if it is so, it is at least partially because we have driven them to that place, with our contempt, our naked aggression, our rudeness, our fondness for absolutism.

I think it's more that they reflect the marketing culture of their owners, either tabloid newspapers or hyperventilating TV networks, which are pitched almost exclusively to the young and dumb, AKA the "casual fan." Nothing gets the casual fan's attention like a good old barroom brawl mixed with a few pious platitudes.

The attitudes commonly held by baseball bloggers can be traced backward through time, through Prospectus and Neyer and others, and do, I suspect, have many of their roots in the pugnacity of Bill James' writing. It's understandable, I suppose, that James and other pioneers might adopt a pugilistic attitude in their writing, because they were so thoroughly ignored early on, and then so easily dismissed -- with James, at least, it made him stand out.

What made James stand out was his persistence---he self-published for five years and sold about 500 Abstracts a year before finding a publisher; his originality of thought; his writing skill, which was not limited to pugnaciousness or humor; his self-promotional skills (not to be underrated); and of course his sine qua non, which was the essential truth of what he was saying about player evaluation. Unfortunately by combining all these attributes, he also set an impossibly high bar for his imitators. You do have to feel a bit sorry for the multitude of Twinkletoes Selkirks who had to follow in his footsteps.

It also helped that James, unlike many who have followed in his footsteps, was genuinely funny, and that what he (and others) were doing early on did really amount to wiping away the mud from a car window so one could see the obvious features of the landscape beyond them. There was a simplicity and an elegance to a lot of those things, so that when you had followed along the steps in the logical chain and got to the end, you thought, Yeah! Those guys are idiots!

The ability to combine seriousness with humor is an vastly underrated quality, and James has it in spades. Most writers either pontificate like George Will or descend into jokesterism like Kornheiser or his lesser imitators. And it was lucky for all of us that James did have a sense of humor, and was able to write to a lay audience as well as the "seamheads", because without that it's hard to say exactly how sabermetrics would have even been able to come as far as it has, at least in terms of reaching the general public.

James was a titanic influence on essentially every numbers-oriented writer who has come since, and the thing most easily aped about his writing was the caustic attitude. Rob Neyer displayed it in his column, the guys at Prospectus laid it on thick in their annuals and web articles, the likes of Dial and Szym employed it here. And, to some degree, it still made sense. Ten years ago, when a lot of these ventures were getting off the ground, there were very few hip front-offices, and a lot of the analysis, though now read by a wider web audience, only saw the light of day to be ridiculed. Of course, the ridicule was evidence that some of the jabs were landing, and encouraged more of this (if you'll pardon the term) snottiness. And you know what? Sometimes it still worked. You'll find few bigger fans of Szym than yours truly, and whatever people think of their ethics and recent practices, for years Prospectus' annuals were hilarious, punchy and memorable reads.

Snark is great, but only to the extent that it's actually funny, which is seldom the case. The problem with most snarksters is that they don't realize that they're walking around nekked.

But after a while, this sort of thing reaches its expiration date, and then it curdles. It's hard to know when that moment comes, but for me at least, it's happened in this field, and nobody has noticed. Fed by an internet culture of anonymity, and the testosterone-fuled dogpile of an almost-all-male authorship and readership, and living off the fumes of our status as outsiders and the butt of jokes, it's become a useless and ugly feature of internet baseball writing, particularly in the hands of those who have no tact or sense of humor. Maybe MGL isn't shooting for a broader audience, maybe there used to be a note of humility in his writing that has leaked away, but the fact is that his attitude is damaging and alienating. It perpetuates a war that doesn't really need to be fought anymore. He's not alone in this, he's just one of the more high-profile examples.

I don't read MGL enough to say anything about his specific case, but I do know that the FJM mindset wears thin with me after about the first two sentences. Their ratio of self-regard to insight can often rival that of Rush Limbaugh's, only they don't have a few million dittoheads to finance them.

Perhaps it's endemic to the nature of online discussion. Maybe I'm perceiving it as more common than it is. I don't know. But I do know that it seems like it's everywhere, and I'm not sure what purpose it serves anymore. There were times when stats vs. traditionalists felt like a holy war, when Voros threw down with a bunch of scouts, when Billy Beane wrote that book, when Bartolo Colon was winning the Cy Young and Johan Santana stayed home. And I guess it wasn't that long ago; perhaps with time, people will relax. But god damn if it isn't getting a little old.

It's hard not to agree with that, but Repoz has the ratings on his side.

And now, I'll shut up. I doubt anybody bothered to read the whole thing anyway.

There are usually 3 lurkers to every Primate online at any given point, and when you discount the Primates who don't post then the ratio is probably closer to 5 or 10 to 1. IOW don't be discouraged, and that was a very good post.

Don said:

Tango's "leverage" concept... has been picked up on by Bill. (Tango himself may well have had something to do with that.)

Not sure what you mean by "picked up on". I know it's in the Handbook with his name on it, but that was just me and Dewan talking. I suppose Bill greenlighted its use, but I have no idea. Is there something that Bill's actually done with LI?

***

puck/140: identical experience. Change Vegas to NJ.

How much of the tone do you think is the result of math. At a lot of blogs, I've noticed a writer will present a mathematical argument that isn't so much an argument as a statement of fact and the argument that follows is usually the blogger being flummoxed that anyone can disagree with the math. 2 + 2 = 4 and all that....

IMHO, the very belief you cite is the problem. No one is going to argue that 2+2=4; they are going to argue when someone says 2+2=4 therefore baserunners don't control which direction they travel while running, Joe Morgan is an idiot, Billy Beane rulez, and all that disagree are econcomic illiterate b1tches.

There is rarely a problem with a calculation. The essence of a debate about baseball matters shouldn't come down to whether you forgot to carry the one in step forty-seven. As outlined above the problems occur when:

(1) Conclusions are severly overstated;
(2) The output is used to insult someone and reduce their subsequent contributions to nothing;
(3) The output is used to praise someone who either doesn't deserve credit or doesn't deserve the level of credit; and
(4) The output is used to try to divide people into camps and make your camp appear to have the smart, cool membership.

What does frequently happen is that some authors are only interested in having people provide input on their quantification methods. They consider this "serious peer review". Feedback that the conclusion is not supported by the analysis is considered "trolling" Feedback that the process used to test a hypothesis or investigate a phenomena is met with insults and generally sparks a pissing contest where people try to outcredential the other person. Even among some of the better and patient analysts, they often see process criticism as a failure of the other person understanding what they did. That just results in wasted posts that appear condescending even if well intentioned.

This is not to say that every sabermetric writer does these things. For instance, while Tango probably prefers to be in the "well let's calculate the variance of X" type discussions, he is happy to discuss the basis, support, and limitations of conclusions. MGL has always acted the same, but he suffers foolish statements a let less than Tango. My impression is that mgl is less likely to want to debate the process but will explain why and how he uses the process he does. Tango appears to love the discussion of the systems themselves and his system analysis is one of his best areas of output.

It's a shame @118 and @122 are down here at the end of a dying post.

I don't get this sentiment. Both are well written and both are insightful. Nevertheless, these are not new or novel criticisms or observations. They aren't going to have any more or any less impact at post 2 then at post 200. One thing Dial has taught me is that this has all happened before. Tha fact that hubris was advised in the glory days of rsbb, didn't stop or slow down conclusions about pitchers effects on hits on balls in play, FJM, economic illiterate b1tches, Ken Williams is an idiot, Beanecount, Grimace or anything else. In fact, it just speeds it up.

Heroin? A more appropriate and justifiable analogy would be to the national gasbags (Hannity, Rush, Olbermann, etc).

Yes, when Rocks Goldman proclaimed there was a war, it sold. Moreover, it continues to sell.

Hey stranger!

Voxter, that was an excellent post. I'd sum up the evolution of sabermetric snarkiness this way: James came along and said, "Hey those mainstream journalists don't know everything." Now the prevailing attitude is, "Hey, those mainstream journalists don't know anything."

Look, even Tango, a model of evenhandedness, feels like he can come on here and say there's no reason to ever care what Michael Kay says. I'm not a fan of Michael Kay, but I guarantee there are things he knows that none of us know, even if it's just about the piping on uniforms.

Depends on the newspaper, doesn't it? But in general I don't think so, at least not if you compare them to op-ed columnists.

What if you compare them to sabermetric writers? In which case, I think they look far more constrained then the perceived opposition. I'll grant that you have analysts like Tango that publish and largely stay out of the flamefest, but you also have plently of newspaper columnists that do the same. Before you even get to the bloggers, the media outlet sabermetric writers are much more harsh. Neyer's shtick was calling people idiots; Sheehan, one of the most prolific columnists for sabermetrics, will frequently drop the I-Bomb.

QUOTEIs it true that sports columnists are more reactionary as a class of people than their peers in other sections of the newspapers? I grant that that's possible, but I suspect that if it is so, it is at least partially because we have driven them to that place, with our contempt, our naked aggression, our rudeness, our fondness for absolutism.QUOTE

No. While researching a book that I wrote, I read the sports pages of Minneapolis and St. Paul and various other Minnesota newspapers for every single day of every single basketball season (January-March early, then backing up into December and eventually into November) from 1892 through about 2005 and especially 1892 to about 1935.

Sportswriters have always been more reactionary as a class of people than their peers in other sections of newspapers, from the time when SABRs (sabers) were sharply-pointed things used in the sport of fencing. Always.

QUOTE I don't remember James' Abstracts being particularly caustic, QUOTE

I agree with this. Fiesty maybe.

How do I get quotes and bold and etc. into an edit?

The Book blog, though, I find completely different. It's a lot like the old Primate Studies, to me, which makes sense given who posts there. I rarely see it getting personal, and people seem quite willing to answer questions from less knowledgeable people (such as myself). Most of the time, the comment threads there are people rolling up their sleeves and getting to work in response to others' work.

It reminds me more of the old Fanhome board that mgl and Tom used to hang out at; although Primate Studies probably got less casual posts than the Clutch Hits area. CH became the Newsblog/Newsstand. For various reasons, BTF became for of a news aggregator than a place for original content. In any event. no saberist commentators are as dismissive of newbies that the folks who comment at Comics Curmudgeon, but I still read it. Josh Fruhlinger cracks me up.

One essential component of most sabermetric discourse since the early 1990s is that it has been on the internet. That's actually a very long time, and back in the early 90s, when Usenet was the primary venue, the one from which Baseball Prospectus and BBBA sprang, hyper-ascerbicism was the norm. Hell, the rest of Usenet made rec.sport.baseball look like a Quaker meeting. To whatever extent James introduced an argumentative tone, the internet amplified it.

Anyway, now that the internet is just another appliance that everyone has, and now that the baseball establishment is actually listening somewhat, it would be good to see a different tone established. And you know what? I think that's happening. The generation coming into intense baseball fandom seems far less inclined to get into a tizzy about this stuff, and you don't see kids wandering into internet forums so much asserting that Ryan Howard deserves the MVP because he has the most RBI. So people pick on sportswriters and broadcasters who haven't bothered to think in the last thirty years, but I think even that is drying up.

EDIT: And I look back and find Voxter's post, and it seems that I am just expounding on what he said in the last paragraph.

How do I get quotes and bold and etc. into an edit?

Highlight the portion you want edited. Hit quote. Go down to the preview screen and pickup the portion you want, then replace it in the edited version. That's one way.

Oh, and outstanding post Voxter.

Depends on the newspaper, doesn't it? But in general I don't think so, at least not if you compare them to op-ed columnists.

What if you compare them to sabermetric writers? In which case, I think they look far more constrained then the perceived opposition. I'll grant that you have analysts like Tango that publish and largely stay out of the flamefest, but you also have plently of newspaper columnists that do the same. Before you even get to the bloggers, the media outlet sabermetric writers are much more harsh. Neyer's shtick was calling people idiots; Sheehan, one of the most prolific columnists for sabermetrics, will frequently drop the I-Bomb.

I guess on a sabermetric-oriented site like BTF I should try to attach numbers to this, but in general I see all kinds of variety, both in the MSM and in the sabermetric "community."

And it's often not an either/or thing. Plenty of MSM pontificators are incredibly insightful in some areas and cliche-ridden and politically influenced in others. And with a handful of exceptions, even the best of the stats oriented bloggers often wax sarcastic about their skeptics, or let their personal political philosophy interfere with their takes. (You know better than most what I'm talking about here.)

Which class is worse in terms of percentages? Probably the bloggers, as you say. But give most of them a newspaper column and a big enough paycheck and they'll revert to the mean in a blink, at least unless they get hired by one of the shoutfest shows. IOW it's probably more nurture than nature.

How do I get quotes and bold and etc. into an edit?

EDIT: Just follow SoSH's advice.

One's opinion of the level of discourse (either by newspaper writers or by sabermetricians) is proportional to how much the BBTF Newsblog is their primary source of discourse. The Newsblog favors vitriol, snark and conflict over analysis.

I've stayed out of this thread not because of the "good sense" that Don cited earlier, but because (a) I didn't have time to participate fully and (b) much of what I would have said I've said before. I will say that I subscribe pretty much to Backlasher's #143.

Tango asked above:

Is there something that Bill's actually done with LI?

Not specifically LI, but in both issues of the Gold Mine he has identified a "clutch performer of the year" using a method which encompasses a lot of the principles captured in LI - when I first saw it my reaction was that it looked a lot like the Leverage discussion in The Book. I don't think he directly acknowledged being influenced by it, though.

-- MWE

The problem that Voxter discussed is absolutely on track with what I've been telling people for nearly 15 years. That the situation hasn't really changed over that time is indicative of the structural inequities and the existential conditions that Fra Paolo described. It's been embedded into the language of discourse over that time, and only a few seem immune to the virus (and I am certainly not among them).

The lack of an "ideal world" where the issues of knowledge reside in harmony with the interests of indivduals is by no means unique to this field, but it suffers more from this type of "shadow syndrome" because it is still in its very early stages. Possibly technology (as in the system Alan Schwarz wrote about in July) will step in and provide a profound boost to what we can do with defensive statistics, and all of this agonizing phase of seeing the flickering shadows in the cave will be behind us. But that's a lot to hope for, especially since there is the chance that some of that--possibly the essential part of it that would go the farthest in providing the level of knowledge that is the underlying drive for everyone in the field--will remain firmly in the hands of insiders, might remain proprietary.

The way the field has evolved, with its need for charismatic figures--for underdogs to counteract and foil the hated trend that rich teams can spend their way to success--all of this has roots in a fragile core of idealism that has been hard-coated with a cynical shell by the realities of wayward monopoly and corporate largesse. Making statistical analysts into entrepreneurs is a cruel irony for a field that isn't quite ready for acceptance into the academy (and doesn't really know whether it wants that or not). All of that contributes to the underlying frustration, which manifests itself in targeting those who are more benighted, wherever they may be found.

In such a continuum MGL is not really that much of an outlier. If you read his rare non-baseball posts, you will see that he has a strong sense of social justice. Yes, he has more bite in his bark than many of the mid-sized dogs who populate this landscape. His "force of nature" aspect is not in dispute: even Tango alludes to it. Perhaps now he can be seen as merely a means to the real subject of this thread.

That subject took more than a hundred posts to evolve, and it contains enough pain and dissonance that it's difficult to sustain a discussion of it, if for no other reason than the likelihood that exploring it will not solve the deep-seated malady that Voxter and Fra Paolo have characterized (which I see as the crux of Backlasher's post). This site has always been the battleground--a strangely charged territory where peoples from all over come to wage war (is there an analogy to some country in Europe that's appropriate here, Paul? You're the military historian!). Most other sites simply ignore the issue entirely.

Maybe now the questions I asked back in #108 can be addressed as part of this discussion. I'd love it if Mike Emeigh--now that he's finally arrived with his friendly fire hose (no, wait, sorry: that's Jimmy...)--would consider taking a crack at them. I think a periodic "summing up" of where the field is (from a technical standpoint, not a "cultural" one) at would be a good thing. Most of the "true talent" from BBBA is still around here and eminently (Emeigh-nently??) capable of doing that.

And that is another reason why I suggested to Tango that he look at the idea of refashioning THE BOOK in terms of its conclusions. It would have the effect of summarizing the evolution of those ideas in a way that would be more accessible. Of course, such an idea could be tackled by anyone who thought that it was worth pursuing, because the conclusions are already there--they are simply not annotated in that way.

Tango--Bill is incorporating his own concept of "leverage" into the ranking systems for pitchers he's been devising of late. I can't speak to exactly how that occurred, whether it's from any direct reading of your work or if it's "side-saddle" through Dewan, but it's there.

Puck--Thanks for that tip on the book. I had to listen to Celine day in, day out during my legendary adrenaline daze at USPS, where they played the "homogenized playlist" type of radio station to keep the workers semi-comfortably numb. Looking forward to seeing how Wilson characterizes that phenomenon: in the continuum of "plastic, commercial music" that reaches the mainstream (which is analogous to the underlying discussion here, of course), Celine stands out--she does have an extra dimension that repeated listenings will eventually reveal. A snarky person might say, "She really <u>believes</u> in that sh*t." It's more than that, though: she is a kind of musical alchemist, capable of turning dross into gold (or some semi-precious, semi-reasonable facsimile of same) via some mysterious but unquenchable cauldron of emotion.

Steve--Yes, of course there are more reasons for the change in HR. It began long before the '61 Yanks. The glamour and notoriety of that HR chase, and the fact that the team set a new team HR record at the time, however, is why I think its influence needs to be acknowledged. It's a two-sided influence, one immediate and negative (as recently described), the other more ethereal and positive, exerting a kind of siren-like pull despite any and all efforts at suppression. Please feel free to write up your idea.

James came along and said, "Hey those mainstream journalists don't know everything." Now the prevailing attitude is, "Hey, those mainstream journalists don't know anything."

I think the discourse has progressed some from that. That attitude seemed more prevalent ten years ago or so, but I still catch that vibe from certain quarters. Being less civil online than in person doesn't make sense to me. Okay, one the one hand, there is sort of a wall of anonymity that you can hide behind. But on the other, if you called someone an oxygen thief or a gin-soaked manwhore back in 1996, those words may still exist somewhere.

Steve--Yes, of course there are more reasons for the change in HR. It began long before the '61 Yanks. The glamour and notoriety of that HR chase, and the fact that the team set a new team HR record at the time, however, is why I think its influence needs to be acknowledged. It's a two-sided influence, one immediate and negative (as recently described), the other more ethereal and positive, exerting a kind of siren-like pull despite any and all efforts at suppression. Please feel free to write up your idea.

IIRC, you had a larger point in that 61 Yanks thread; how teams impact the future. I don't recall reading too much about how different teams impacted the future of baseball. Sure, I've come across an occasional mention about Branch Rickey perfecting the farm system and other teams following suit. But there's less discussion about the topic as maybe there should be. The McGraw Orioles are another team that come to mind.

Anyways, my friend thought that the salary advances that allowed players to train year round favor the hitter. The extra reps help them, while extra throwing for pitchers isn't necessarily a good thing. I looked at it once, and there are roughly the same amount of pitchers since 1961 born in New England (home of short HS seasons) as there are born in Florida, but many more hitters from Florida than NE. This might not mean anything, but it seems to indicate year round playing is better for hitters.

One thing about Dion that I read in the book is that she's hugely popular all around the world, even in Iran and Afghanistan, bad neighborhoods in Jamaica. Sony has problems selling her in Germany, though.

re [188}

Voxter,

Excellent post. Not sure I agree with all of it, but there's a lot of truth there, very well said.

I know personally I've been trying to stick to making arguments and avoid snide comments, and hyberbole, but it's hard.

I think some of the problems with the snark is, as Andy touches on, that it's so often not funny. The statnerds that I find consistently funny I can count on one hand: Kahrl, Szymborski, Brattain, Werr. Werr probably shouldn't even count as I don't think he's done anything in years, but he was always hilarious.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the other 3 are the only snark-type statheads that are generally very well-respected. One, they're actually funny and secondly, they all have made significant contributions to the internet analysis community. I'm sorry we lost one of the trio this year, but the other two have shown staying power by being consistently relevant for more than a decade, a pretty tough feat for internet guys.

Contrast that with guys like Sheehan or Cameron or MGL (at times) that seem to be generally a humorless lot. Oversensitive and crabby and bound to snipe at anything that ticks them off. Whereas the others can be rather self-deprecating (Szymborski in particular pokes fun of himself quite a bit), most of the snarkdorks have little sense of self-awareness.

James came along and said, "Hey those mainstream journalists don't know everything." Now the prevailing attitude is, "Hey, those mainstream journalists don't know anything."

I think the discourse has progressed some from that.

Yeah, I'm Mr. Groupthink, and I certainly see value in the mainstream. I've learned to skip over discussions of RBIs and clutch and Al Hrabosky's interpretations of Tony La Russa's strategizing. But given the choice between MSM information and deadly accurate talent evaluations, I'd take the MSM easily. There's only so much juice to be squeezed from the saber fruit.

think the discourse has progressed some from that. That attitude seemed more prevalent ten years ago or so, but I still catch that vibe from certain quarters.

I may not understand your second statement, but if I do understand it, I think I disagree. If you go back to some sample from rsbb, you might have 2 people trying decipher the wisdom from a newspaper column; 2 others willing to acknolwedge there could be wisdom, but the columnist is an idiot; 6 people trying to show you that the person is an idiot; and 20 people just proclaiming the person is an idiot. Today, you have the same camps, its just the numbers might be 200; 200, 6000; and 20000.

All you have done is scale the problem with a new communication medium. The fact that you may find four or five people on this thread that agree with some of accurate fifteen year old premises of Don Malcolm does not mean the community has become more knowledgable; it just means you grew the community.

The fact that Neyer writes a column that says Billyboy lost his mojo doesn't mean the community obtained a better method of finding truth. It just means that time exposed an indemnic flaw in the Beanebag system.

For instance, in reading Malcolm's criticisms of defenseive metrics on the preceding page, he is discussing a system level flaw. That is not generating much discussion on this board. When such system level flaws are discussed on more sabery boards, such topics are still summarily dismissed, usually with a response of "even if you are right--and take it from me your wrong because I'm better at maths --- its the best we can do and doing something is better than doign nothing."

Besides the arrogance in this statement, its fallacious. Its not true. If you do something that has an erroneous output and you rely on the erroneous output, it is much worse than doing nothing. If a person then rebuts your conclusion with independent evidence outside your system, and you argue they are incorrect because you didn't make a mistake in your addition, it is also a fallacious argument.

If you come to a conclusion "based on the existing set of data" and its erroneous---IT IS STILL AN ERROR. IT IS NOT RIGHT, NOBLE, GOOD OR USEFUL BECAUSE IT WAS THE BEST YOU COULD DO. THAT IS ESPECIALLY TRUE IF OTHER PEOPLE USE OTHER SYSTEMS THAT ARRIVE AT THE CORRECT CONCLUSION. It is not "the best decision at the time" First, empircally its not true. If its wrong, then the other decision is always better. Second, its not true in examining the meaning behind the cliche namely that a person should not be faulted for making that decision. If they based their decision on a system that is more prone to error than other readily availbel systems, then their decision to use that system is a culpable mistake. Moreover, it is often vidence of the flaws in their system

Today, the arrogance still exists in many places that you can analytically model the game based on current data and project better meaningful outcomes than you can through the synthesis of expert opinions. Of course, this is not universal. Some persons not only recognize the limitation, but actually tend to measure the differences (e.g. Tango's fan scouting report). Most of the commentators pay lip service to using both as inputs, but they contradict this when they criticise opinions that run counter to the models as "idiotic" or make broad claims that expert opinions cannot account for the vastness of data.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the other 3 are the only snark-type statheads that are generally very well-respected.

I would never characterize Brattain's humor as snark. It had far too much warmth.

And I don't believe he would characterize himself as a stathead or a sabermetric writer. He was aware of it and used the stuff, but that isn't the role he saw for himself. Similarly, while THT is certainly sabermetrically-inclined, I know studes doesn't think of it as a simply sabermetric site. It's motto is "Baseball insight daily" and it'll use other stuff, whether it be RB's history, Jack Marshall's occassional ethics pieces, or Carlos Gomez's scouting.

Sorry for going off on a tangent. Nice thread.

Not specifically LI, but in both issues of the Gold Mine he has identified a "clutch performer of the year"
...
Bill is incorporating his own concept of "leverage" into the ranking systems for pitchers he's been devising of late. I can't speak to exactly how that occurred, whether it's from any direct reading of your work or if it's "side-saddle" through Dewan, but it's there.

oic. The goldmine article predated the use of LI in the Handbook. Unless he's specifically citing me, or LI, then I'd guess whatever influence I had is minor to nonexistant.

And that is another reason why I suggested to Tango that he look at the idea of refashioning THE BOOK in terms of its conclusions.

I think this could be done by anyone, and posted on a wiki, be it mine, or Sean's or BTF's. I've got dozens of ideas that is piling up on my todo. Anything that someone else can do, like what Don is talking about, would be a good thing.

A lot of good insights here. But the problem I have with this discussion is the unstated assumption that there is a single "right" snark:diplomacy ratio. From whom? At whom? In what context? And for what goals? It all depends. And different analysts play different roles, which is also fine.

Let's assume the goal is to get MSM writers to incorporate more sabermetric insights into their coverage (and award voting), and thus transmit them to fans more broadly. I'm sure many sober, invective-free analytical pieces (think of someone like Dan Fox) have contributed to that goal by influencing writers. But it also seems entirely plausible to me that the threat of being ridiculed on the internet for saying something stupid, and having your colleagues and friends see that, provides a useful incentive for journalists to make a little effort to learn more from the analytical world, and rely a little less on received folklore.

Let's take the Blyleven HOF example. At this point, Blyleven getting into the Hall depends on convincing a small number of journalists to change their vote over a limited time. For that goal, diplomacy is almost certainly called for. So if I were advising Rich Lederer, I'd tell him to lay off the only-idiots-vote-against-Blyleven articles. It's time to make nice. BUT, if Lederer had never been on his crusade the last few years, fueled surely by some justifiable anger at the ignorance and stubbornness of many reporters, I doubt Blyleven's candidacy would have come as far as it has. So there's a role for both stridency and diplomacy. And different people can play different roles at different times.

The fact that journalists say they have been put off by the arrogance or snark of saberists impresses me not at all. It's often a convenient excuse for their not doing the hard work of learning. And they have responded to sabermetrics as all priesthoods respond to a challenge to their authority: 1) destroy it if you can, 2) if you can't destroy it, belittle it and hope others do the same, 3) if the challengers develop a following that can't be ignored, bring some of the challengers into your ranks, accept a few of their ideas, and dismiss as much of the rest as you can get away with. I'd say we're early in stage 3 now. Lots of progress, but still a lot of resistance as well. (Interestingly, the academics who study sports have often taken much the same approach toward the saber "amateurs" -- they have their own priesthood to protect -- though I imagine the MSM guys view the two groups as largely the same.)

So if the question is "to the extent saber ideas still aren't fully accepted, is that more the fault of the saber community or the MSM?", I think sabermetricians' share of the blame is probably south of 20%. I'm sure Mike E. disagrees, and probably others. But I'm not sure it really matters. Mike should present his work and ideas the way he wants, Tango and MGL will do the same (but very differently from each other), and so on. In the end, it's the readers/consumers who will have the final say. If the more saber-inclined journalists succeed, and take readers away from the Old Guard guys, then change will come quickly. If not, then not.

If you do something that has an erroneous output and you rely on the erroneous output, it is much worse than doing nothing... If you come to a conclusion "based on the existing set of data" and its erroneous---IT IS STILL AN ERROR. IT IS NOT RIGHT, NOBLE, GOOD OR USEFUL BECAUSE IT WAS THE BEST YOU COULD DO. THAT IS ESPECIALLY TRUE IF OTHER PEOPLE USE OTHER SYSTEMS THAT ARRIVE AT THE CORRECT CONCLUSION. It is not "the best decision at the time"

I see your larger point and agree that over-valuing models is just as wrong as rejecting them out of hand. But the line of arguement quoted above is kind of goofy. You're arguing in this paragraph as if there is a single, absolute truth at stake, but ten lines down you attack the notion that there can always be mathematical truth, or thaqt everything can be modeled. In the case where you're trying to estimate something that resists concrete modeling then multiple approximations from multiple approaches are quite helpful. There is no "THE CORRECT CONCLUSION" about defensive value or batting projections or many other aspects of life. But there is value in trying to estimate a value as long as you remember to use it like an estimate. Don't throw out the baby with the hyperbolic absolute bathwater.

But the problem I have with this discussion is the unstated assumption that there is a single "right" snark:diplomacy ratio.

I don't think there is that assumption at all. There is the use of humor and there are other things. Lederer saying that voters are idiots is not humor, at all.

Let's assume the goal is to get MSM writers to incorporate more sabermetric insights into their coverage (and award voting), and thus transmit them to fans more broadly.

Why should that be the goal. You use a religious analogy to attack the MSM, but are imploying a relgious objective. If those are your objectives, then you already have a proseltyzing agenda.

So if I were advising Rich Lederer, I'd tell him to lay off the only-idiots-vote-against-Blyleven articles.

He has been advised. It only seems to embolden him.

BUT, if Lederer had never been on his crusade the last few years, fueled surely by some justifiable anger at the ignorance and stubbornness of many reporters, I doubt Blyleven's candidacy would have come as far as it has.

I do not see how this is supported or supportable. HOF candidacy's have movements. There is nothing about Blyleven's change in numbers that is atypical. Moreover you are starting with premises that his mean-spirited snarl is "Justified" and that the other side is "ignorant and stubborn" rather than reasoned under other systems.

Sending the postcards is kind of cute; writing multiple columns proclaiming those that don't agree with you are idiots is not advancing anything.

So if the question is "to the extent saber ideas still aren't fully accepted, is that more the fault of the saber community or the MSM?",

Again, these are the wrong questions. The idea that sabermetrics should come and replace all things before it is wrong. The good ideas from sabermetrics should be used. The bad should be cast in the pit of fire. The problem is that the proseltizing often tries to force the bad in with the good just because its a system of thought that people think is cool.

Recognizing the repeatability of getting on base and valuing it is a good thing. Pretending that pitchers can't influence hits on balls in play should not be pollute the well of wisdom AND IT DEFINATELY SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A SELECTION MECHANISM FOR THE POPULATION OF PITCHERS WHEN YOU CAN DISCERN THAT ABILITY IS A GROSS MISTAKE.

Recognizing the repeatability of getting on base and valuing it is a good thing. Pretending that pitchers can't influence hits on balls in play should not be pollute the well of wisdom AND IT DEFINATELY SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A SELECTION MECHANISM FOR THE POPULATION OF PITCHERS WHEN YOU CAN DISCERN THAT ABILITY IS A GROSS MISTAKE.

You know you really undermine your credibility here with both the eggregious screaming and the Ahab-esque devotion to proving DIPS wrong rather than evaluating how far DIPS research has come and recognizing the contributions its made to our understanding of baseball.

I would never characterize Brattain's humor as snark. It had far too much warmth.
Or Werr's for that matter.

And I don't believe he would characterize himself as a stathead or a sabermetric writer

The work of his that sticks out in my head was his writing about the economics of baseball. It wasn't academic, but he did write alot about labor issues and what happened to Montreal. Too, while he generally supported the MLBPA, he wasn't always sanguine about the direction it was going and he wasn't all that enamored with some player agents.

John was a bridge-builder and an ambassador. I think he got along with everyone except Jeff Loria, his guy Sampson, and Bud Selig.

the Twins really should've lost Game 1 of yesterday's DH, and thus would have indeed been swept after Verlander's performance. Tie game, the top of the 9th, letting Nick Punto hit with man on 3rd and one out, a blown suicide squeeze, inserting Jon F. Rauch in the bottom of the 9th - it gleefully violated every tenet of saber-thinking. Ron Gardenhire was very fortunate to escape with the W.

Oh ye of little faith. This is just Gardy's genius at work.

Or, on the other hand, maybe he's an idiot. I do remember that last year the Twins came down to one game and Punto made the next to the last out of the Twins' season.

OK, he's an idiot.

the arrogance still exists in many places that you can analytically model the game based on current data and project better meaningful outcomes than you can through the synthesis of expert opinions.

The key word in that sentence is "expert". Who gets to decide what constitutes an "expert" opinion? In many cases, the "experts" are self-appointed; they are no more qualified to give an "expert" opinion than you or I.

As far as modeling goes, I think this variant of the classic George Box quote applies:

"Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful."

I would add that the practical question should be extended to not only how wrong the model is, but also how complicated it is.

-- MWE

To make it simpler:

For quotes, surround the text with:

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For strikeout, surround the text with:

[strike] [/strike]


For bold, surround the text with:

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For italics, surround the text with:

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Remember to always close out, or the formatting continues on.

You know you really undermine your credibility here with both the eggregious screaming and the Ahab-esque devotion to proving DIPS wrong rather than evaluating how far DIPS research has come and recognizing the contributions its made to our understanding of baseball.

That is preciously the point in most of my posts. For many, its not about discerning the analytical truth, its about weighing how much authority they want to give someone's statements based solely on whether they have the same belief systems.

First and foremost, my "credibility" should be irrelevant to any point I make unless I am asking you to trust me on some point you cannot independently verify.

Second, "how far DIPS research has come" is completely irrelevant to the point I was making. It doesn't matter if what you want to define as "DIPS research" has discovered the cure for cancer, it would not reflect one bit on the accuracy of my statement or the inaccuracy of the conclusion.

Third, the characterization of person's arguments rather than the rebutting or discussion of it, is precisely the major complaint that was being discussed on this thread.

Fourth, I'm not sure what you mean about "proving DIPS wrong" since the definition of DIPS seems to change to suit each poster's argument. Whether or not a pitcher can influence the result of an at bat doesn't need to be proven. Whether or not a pitcher's influence is limited to balls not in play I think has already been proven. Whether or not that skill is an important skill for a ML pitcher appears to also have been proven. The need to measure pitchers control on a pitch basis rather than an outcome basis to gauge the skill seems to have caught on and would not need to be proven. If there is some relevant conclusion that someone categorizes as "DIPS research" then we can discuss it specifically.

I see your larger point and agree that over-valuing models is just as wrong as rejecting them out of hand. But the line of arguement quoted above is kind of goofy. You're arguing in this paragraph as if there is a single, absolute truth at stake, but ten lines down you attack the notion that there can always be mathematical truth, or thaqt everything can be modeled

No, I'm stating there is a correct conclusion. I have discussed over multiple posts that when weighing models, you can't show that the lack of error in calculation using the a model as evidence that the model is superior to another model. I have never claimed there is a perfect model; there may be or there may not be and that is going to depend on the question. Moreover, I have never claimed that the most ideal model is devoid of simple arithmetical calculations from classical statistics. Instead, I have posited the reverse, you can't say someone is an idiot because the decision reached using their model does not match the decision advised by a model using only classical statistics.

That is preciously the point in most of my posts. For many, its not about discerning the analytical truth, its about weighing how much authority they want to give someone's statements based solely on whether they have the same belief systems.

First and foremost, my "credibility" should be irrelevant to any point I make unless I am asking you to trust me on some point you cannot independently verify.

Second, "how far DIPS research has come" is completely irrelevant to the point I was making. It doesn't matter if what you want to define as "DIPS research" has discovered the cure for cancer, it would not reflect one bit on the accuracy of my statement or the inaccuracy of the conclusion.

Third, the characterization of person's arguments rather than the rebutting or discussion of it, is precisely the major complaint that was being discussed on this thread.

Fourth, I'm not sure what you mean about "proving DIPS wrong" since the definition of DIPS seems to change to suit each poster's argument. Whether or not a pitcher can influence the result of an at bat doesn't need to be proven. Whether or not a pitcher's influence is limited to balls not in play I think has already been proven. Whether or not that skill is an important skill for a ML pitcher appears to also have been proven. The need to measure pitchers control on a pitch basis rather than an outcome basis to gauge the skill seems to have caught on and would not need to be proven. If there is some relevant conclusion that someone categorizes as "DIPS research" then we can discuss it specifically.

What exactly have you written here that you aren't asking me to take on your personal authority? You haven't linked to a single example of what you are talking about or provided a single bit of independent research. At best you're expecting me to know about arguements that happened before I joined this site and that have been buried under three to four site redesigns and a mediocre search function.

The key word in that sentence is "expert". Who gets to decide what constitutes an "expert" opinion? In many cases, the "experts" are self-appointed; they are no more qualified to give an "expert" opinion than you or I.

I agree with your point, but to answer the question, the model decides who is the expert. If you were trying to reduce the decision making of many executives, they have a hierachical level of expert selection. They generally have experts using subsystems to choose experts, and synthesis occuring across those steps.

I am not arguing whether this genre of models containes THE OPTIMAL MODEL. I would say that specific models in this genre have outperformed models based solely on classical statistics gathering.

Today, I presume all models currently in use by any organization have synthesized expert opinion with some classical statistics and advance analytical structures. This makes it more, rather than less, putrid when people call somebody an idiot because their decision didn't match a simple analytical model.

In many cases, the "experts" are self-appointed; they are no more qualified to give an "expert" opinion than you or I.

I think in most cases they are appointed by other experts. Their qualification of giving an opinion certainly exceeds my ability to give a similar opinion. My opinion on the projection of pitching prospect A is far less valued than that of Carlos Gomez. I am perfectly willing to concede that your expert opinion is higher than a portion of the scouting population. It doesn't matter if its higher than all of the scouting population. I think there are some sportswriters I could outperform, but again its not that big of a deal when we are talking about MLB decisions.

"Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful."

I would add that the practical question should be extended to not only how wrong the model is, but also how complicated it is.

I agree. "Complication" is often measured as cost. Tango has discussed this very well in articles about MARCEL.

I don't remember James' Abstracts being particularly caustic

Most of it wasn't, but ask Enos Cabell, Doug Flynn, various people in the Indians' management, Sparky Anderson, Peter Bavasi ("A Solid Financial Footing For Toronto," or "A Man's Outhouse Is His Castle If He Holds His Nose And Pretends The Flies Are Pigeons), various people in the Padres' management ("Will the McMeeting Come to Order") or Don Zimmer or Jim Frey or ...

A problem if you will is that some of his nasty stuff was well written and memorable. Will the McMeeting Come to Order is one of my favorite pieces and there's a pretty clear message of, "Ballard Smith and company are idiots" underlying the article.

evaluating how far DIPS research has come and recognizing the contributions its made to our understanding of baseball

To the extent that DIPS research has contributed to our understanding of baseball, it has been because of the efforts of people like BL, Tom Tippett, myself, and others who have spent a considerable amount of time looking at ways that the model can be falsified, and discovered aspects of hit prevention that run counter to the "it's mostly luck" mantra that some of the proponents continue to offer (even for hitters).

In Win Shares, James brought up the example of NFL offensive linemen. If you look at an offensive tackle's performance based on size, you would be tempted to conclude that size doesn't matter for offensive linemen. But would you be tempted to put a 175-pounder there? Of course not, because size DOES matter - you can't even play the position if you don't meet certain minimums. It doesn't matter as much once you meet the minimum criteria for the position.

There is a similar effect with hit prevention ability. Pitchers who don't have a certain minimum level of ability to prevent hits don't pitch in the majors, or don't stay there very long if they do. They can achieve that ability in a number of ways - by blowing the ball by hitters, by exhibiting pinpoint command, by throwing a hard-to-hit-solidly knuckler or cutter, etc. - so they can show a wide range of performance in the non-DIPS stats, but they absolutely can't have a lot of variance on the high end in terms of being able to prevent hits. Those pitchers don't stay in the majors.

Now, when you ONLY look at pitchers with a track record of major league success, you're discarding the very large group of pitchers where you could easily find significant variations in hit prevention ability (as I did), and focusing instead on the 15-20% of pitchers where you are not likely to find such an ability, so it's no surprise when you don't find it - not because it doesn't exist, but because you were looking in the wrong place for it (and using an approach that made it less likely that you would find it even if it did exist).

The value of DIPS research is that it got other people looking at ways to try to characterize the skill of hit prevention - which was a very important, understudied aspect of pitching. The injury that DIPS research did is that it convinced a lot of people, who didn't understand why the original study was flawed, that studying the components of hit prevention ability wasn't necessary because "the ability didn't exist in any meaningful way".

-- MWE

John was a bridge-builder and an ambassador.

That's true, and we could use more people like him. I guess it could be said that the world could use more people like him.

Anyway, I wanted to drop in and add that I have seen from many people a relaxation of attitudes, on both sides of what one might call the stats v. reporters split, for lack of a better term. Certainly, my own attitude has evolved, and I've tried to make an effort -- not always successful -- to be more civil in general; and certainly my adherence to certain types of statistical orthodoxy has waned. I think the thing that really made a difference for me was when our own community split hard over DIPS, and this place regularly melted down into flame wars between people who usually seemed fairly reasonable. I remember a post -- I don't remember who made it, or which side they were on -- in which they referred to the other side as "evangelists" and their own side as "philosophers". And from the perspective of someone without a dog in the hunt, it became clear to me that what was really happening was that attitudes were calcifying into a sort of fundamentalism, through contentious and uncivil argument. So not only did I begin to question things -- I've grown to have grave reservations about defensive statistics, for instance, and to question the traditional sabermetric orthodoxy that managers only exist to be scapegoated by GMs, and so on -- I began to wish for, hope for, and in fact notice, some softening of the stances as the things so many people try to do around here get accepted into the mainstream.

I certainly didn't mean to sweep every numbers guy under the rug with one broad stroke about the devolution of wit into snark; a great many writers simply go forward with their commentary and research with a minimum of nastiness. Tango certainly never offended my tender sensibilities with his attitudes, and neither did Nate Silver, back when he still wrote about baseball, and there are several posters around here who are fairly civil at most times. And the thing that sets Kahrl and Szym and possibly Stephen Goldman apart -- and this is totally a matter of personal taste -- is that I find them funny. Though Szym, in particular, seems to have been gifted with a certain perspective on his own place and size in the universe that some other writers just don't have. This is the difference between him and, say, David Cameron, who is just an #######, and there are no two ways about it. It doesn't help that Cameron isn't funny, but the real problem is that there's never a moment where he steps back and acknowledges that maybe he's not right, maybe everybody who disagrees with him isn't necessarily an idiot, and maybe, just maybe, this isn't that big of a deal anyway. (Who knows, maybe Cameron does do that than I realize; I quit reading his writing long ago, when I could avoid it.)

Okay, I should really stop now, before this just becomes another of my tasteless and pointless anti-David-Cameron screeds. Sorry about that.

Besides the arrogance in this statement, its fallacious. Its not true. If you do something that has an erroneous output and you rely on the erroneous output, it is much worse than doing nothing.

No, that's no universally true, relying on something that has erroneous output may or may not be worse that "doing nothing".
Relying on something that has erroneous output is worse than relying on something that has LESS erroneous output.

Pretending that pitchers can't influence hits on balls in play should not be pollute the well of wisdom AND IT DEFINATELY SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A SELECTION MECHANISM FOR THE POPULATION OF PITCHERS WHEN YOU CAN DISCERN THAT ABILITY IS A GROSS MISTAKE.

I know your opinion on DIPs, but despite that (or because of that) I have no idea what you were trying to say here. (and no post 173 doesn't clear it up).

Anyway to change the subject, what I find interesting about the idea of DIPs is not the erroneous initial DIPS proclamation (Pitchers have no ability to control hits on balls in play), not the refusal of the anti-Dippers to acknowledge that the DIPS adherents backed off that long ago, but that pitcher's ability to influence hits on balls in play is FAR LESS than was formerly assumed (and is still assumed by much of the "mainstream".

Some batters can sustain a BABIP over .350 year after year, some are under .250 year after year.
No pitcher has sustained that year after year. In fact the hypothetical max BABIP appears to be around .330 (the aggregate given up by non-pitchers when used as pitchers- and also by Glendon Rusch).
Or perhaps that's interesting to me playing Fantasy Baseball, if a 4.50 ERA pitcher has a year when his ERA drops to 3.50, and his BABIP dropped 30 points, but his K/bb stayed the same- stay away- the improvement is an illusion- he's not a 3.50 guy, he's a 4.50 guy who had a good year.

What exactly have you written here that you aren't asking me to take on your personal authority?

I don't think you need my "authority" for anything. I'm not sure if by "here" you mean the quoted text, this thread, or this website. If you mean the former, than what in "First and foremost, my "credibility" should be irrelevant to any point I make unless I am asking you to trust me on some point you cannot independently verify. requires you to trust me on something? What in that statement requires me to cite something? What in that statement requires "independent research"? In fact, if there is an attempt to scholarize that statement will just derail the meaningful debate.Do you need some kind of proof to discuss that statement.

At best you're expecting me to know about arguements that happened before I joined this site and that have been buried under three to four site redesigns and a mediocre search function.


What are you talking about? I don't want you to go looking for any argument. More important, I don't even know what you believe or what it is you want me to prove to you.

I can only presume that since you made ad hominem's, specifically raised DIPS, and continue on about Independent research, you won't me to prove something to you based on your current defintion of DIPS and what you believe that research tells you. Moreover, based on your desire for "credibility" I presume you aren't even going to bother to listen even if I did disagree until there is some published work by someone that you deem to be "credible"

not the refusal of the anti-Dippers to acknowledge that the DIPS adherents backed off that long ago

Not that Voros needs defending from me, but it is worth noting that the first person to back off the "No ability to control" was Voros. Long before there was a BBTF or a Backlasher.

some of his nasty stuff was well written and memorable

Yes, some of this is coming back to me. Excoriating Haywood Sullivan for keeping son Marc on the Red Sox roster, for instance ... or the famous comment "Ken Reitz is slower than a lot of dead people."


I also remember James's comment on the Rangers releasing Jamie Moyer: contemplating Moyer's next year was like looking into the bottom of the Arlington sewer system ... I like to think that Moyer read that and dedicated his career to living it down.

Tha fact that hubris was advised in the glory days of rsbb, didn't stop or slow down conclusions about pitchers effects on hits on balls in play, FJM, economic illiterate b1tches, Ken Williams is an idiot, Beanecount, Grimace or anything else. In fact, it just speeds it up.

Recognizing the repeatability of getting on base and valuing it is a good thing. Pretending that pitchers can't influence hits on balls in play should not be pollute the well of wisdom AND IT DEFINATELY SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A SELECTION MECHANISM FOR THE POPULATION OF PITCHERS WHEN YOU CAN DISCERN THAT ABILITY IS A GROSS MISTAKE.

I brought up DIPS? Really?

(M)aybe, just maybe, this isn't that big of a deal anyway. (Who knows, maybe Cameron does do that than I realize; I quit reading his writing long ago, when I could avoid it.)

He had a recent article on Fangraphs where he says that he doesn't get worked up about awards votes. But yeah, he doesn't seem to like criticism. He would have probably been better off living in an era where you had to pay for a stamp to disagree with a writer.

But I always get the impression, at least, that he acknowledges precursors and shares credit readily.

See for instance his mention of Voros in the New HA.

That said he's often incurious and has a strong tendency to "not invented here".

Dave Tate came up with most of the improvements to runs created (marginal lineup value) that James eventually adopted in the early 90s. His defensive system in win shares has a lot in common with Charlie Saeger's.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he stole them, but rather he spent years working on problems (particularly the issue in runs created that a home run hit by Frank Thomas was a fair bit more valuable than one him by Joe Carter) that good solutions were already available for.

Yes, some of this is coming back to me. Excoriating Haywood Sullivan for keeping son Marc on the Red Sox roster, for instance ... or the famous comment "Ken Reitz is slower than a lot of dead people."

I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but he was writing about baseball personages, not his competitors in the BBWAA. He didn't say that Tracy Ringolsby was to writing what Thurman Munson was to aviation. He saved that for Rick Cerone and hitting. The one that sticks out in my head was the essay on Chuck Tanner's funeral home.

No, that's no universally true, relying on something that has erroneous output may or may not be worse that "doing nothing".
Relying on something that has erroneous output is worse than relying on something that has LESS erroneous output.

Yes, you are correct, and I stand corrected.

I know your opinion on DIPs, but despite that (or because of that) I have no idea what you were trying to say here. (and no post 173 doesn't clear it up).

I think Mike's 177 may clear up my intended comparison, namely, I would opine that a pitcher's ability to prevent hits on balls in play is a selection mechanism for the set of MLB pitchers. Emeigh has done the bulk of that research and its covered in other threads. I have no desire to reopen the correctness of that conclusion.

The statement is meant to show that incorrect conclusions drawn from valid calculations are still harmful. They produce a worse overall result if the existing models more often produce the correct conclusions. Their existence can create a worse overall effect if: they are used in favor of the existing models, or they are combined with existing models and the resulting combination produces a worse result then the existing models.

It does not matter if version 217 of the model, that now has different conclusions and different inputs, can outperform the pre-existing models. Every decision made before version 217 that relied on those models are worse.

(And you don't need any authority, citation, etc. to examine those statements).

Whether or not you have to have rely on those bad models before you get version 587 is a tenous statement for which I do not believe could be supported.

Whether or not the existence of an erroneous model allowed you to get to version 587 quicker is often stated by those that actually develop version 587. I doubt whether this is true, but I will take the people at their word because its hard to prove inevitable discovery.

Instead, I think the time is better spent to make sure you don't repeate the mistakes of implementing models 1-586, and that they be kept in an R&D;space.

you're discarding the very large group of pitchers where you could easily find significant variations in hit prevention ability (as I did)

Mike,

Could you provide a link to this study?

I brought up DIPS? Really?

Yes you did. Right in post 168. But this is what I am talking about. You are more interested in getting into a personal debate, and trying to recharacterize words to "win" something. I can only presume that is because you have some attachment to DIPS.

The post says
"I can only presume that since you made ad hominem's, specifically raised DIPS "

I do not know why you interpret "specifically raise" to mean, "the first person to bring it up" nor why you think that me pointing out a specific erroneous statement requires: (a) independent research; (b) demeans credibility, or (c) even why credibility is needed. Moreover, I don't know why you think my recitation of erroneous statements made in conjunction with DIPS is an indictment of whatever current conclusion that you or another may have posited.

I still don't know what it is that you think is the point of disagreement about "DIPS research" that makes you feel the need to worry so much about trying to prove me wrong about an inconsequential matter.

If there is some specific element of that "DIPS Research" that you wish to discuss, then please let me know what it is.

Not that Voros needs defending from me, but it is worth noting that the first person to back off the "No ability to control" was Voros. Long before there was a BBTF or a Backlasher.

I'm not sure why that matters. If an erroneous conclusion is made, it does not need me to catch it. If an erroneous conclusion is relied upon, it doesn't matter if the first person to utter decides to "take it back." unless the only item under discussion is that person's culpability in the wrongful use of the erroneous conclusions.

Backlasher, I have no idea where you get this from. I was most intested in a conversation about the topic at hand, the rate of a double header sweep. That's why I did the initial research using the Retrosheet data that I did (you'll see it cited on the first page of the thread). You're the one that came in here after 100 posts or so and started shouting about DIPS. This thread was not about DIPS until you brought it up. Which is, from what I've noticed about your participation in threads, not exactly uncommon with you.

And this is why it's a mistake to be on the Mainland to begin with. I should learn from this.

I will say that mgl's comments were basically the reason I started reading BBTF, and my interest waned considerably after he stopped showing up much. Frankly, that anyone would think he's a bad communicator, or have a problem with his tone? The mind boggles ...

See for instance his mention of Voros in the New HA

Ron: I think this was less a "for instance," and more "a rare exception" to James' usual practice.

That James is now apparently developing his own, redundant, versions of clutch and leverage is really disappointing. He should either engage with the work that others have done over the past 10 or 20 years, and improve upon it if/when he can, or he should retire from the field and rest on his very-well-earned laurels. Thirty years ago, with no internet and very few others doing this kind of research, going it alone was fine. Trying to continue on that path now will likely do more to tarnish than enhance James' reputation.

Could you provide a link to this study?

I did a presentation at SABR in Toronto on this subject, which I might still have sitting around somewhere.

-- MWE

I will say that mgl's comments were basically the reason I started reading BBTF, and my interest waned considerably after he stopped showing up much. Frankly, that anyone would think he's a bad communicator, or have a problem with his tone? The mind boggles ...

He doesn't bother me. I'd be glad if he was a regular here, but his own blog seems like a better forum for him now.

Frankly, that anyone would think he's a bad communicator, or have a problem with his tone? The mind boggles ...

Frankly that anyone would think he's NOT a bad communicator, boggles me....

I have no problem with his tone...

And I'd say he's an excellent communicator, but I occasionally have a problem with his tone.

But it's a big internet. If anyone doesn't like MGL's style, just don't read him. How hard is that?

I will say that mgl's comments were basically the reason I started reading BBTF, and my interest waned considerably after he stopped showing up much. Frankly, that anyone would think he's a bad communicator, or have a problem with his tone? The mind boggles ...

I completely agree. MGL is a very precise writer. The fact that he isn't always clear says more about readers.

The reaction MGL provokes around here is completely beyond reason.

The reaction MGL provokes around here is completely beyond reason.

Awww, G., you would think that!

A problem if you will is that some of his nasty stuff was well written and memorable. Will the McMeeting Come to Order is one of my favorite pieces and there's a pretty clear message of, "Ballard Smith and company are idiots" underlying the article.

Ron, I think there were two distinct phases of Bill's "caustic underbelly" in the Abstract days. The first was in 1984-5, when the efforts to create Project Scoresheet were underway and the Elias folks countered with their own book. Bill was a bit hot under the collar regarding that, and showed some (quite possibly justified) impatience with the first crop of "believers" who came along with the Scoresheet effort. (The "Pro" and "Anti" essays in 1984 reveal some of that, and have a definite edge that stands out from the first two books).

The second was mostly in 1987, when Bill had experienced more of the insider world and clearly found it repellant. I'm pretty sure that "McMeeting" is from that edition, which was probably the darkest overall. There's less of that in 1988 because he knew that it would be the last Abstract, which had become a chore accompanied by what he termed (I'm paraphrasing here) "a four-month cycle of depression."

That James is now apparently developing his own, redundant, versions of clutch and leverage is really disappointing. He should either engage with the work that others have done over the past 10 or 20 years, and improve upon it if/when he can, or he should retire from the field and rest on his very-well-earned laurels. Thirty years ago, with no internet and very few others doing this kind of research, going it alone was fine. Trying to continue on that path now will likely do more to tarnish than enhance James' reputation.

Guy, you're making an inference based on facts not in evidence. In the late 90s it seemed to the outside world that Bill was "retired." He's done quite a bit since then, regardless of whether he's become involved in the community that was in large part spawned from his work.

It could well be that the "engagement" he's undertaking with those concepts may lead to his own synthesis. We can only wait and see. There is more than one form of "engagement." The fact that Bill is interacting with people on his web site is a positive thing, if for no other reason that he never used to do any of that. But if he stops doing it, that's his choice, not anyone else's: he simply exercising the right that you are suggesting others utilize about MGL.

The value of DIPS research is that it got other people looking at ways to try to characterize the skill of hit prevention - which was a very important, understudied aspect of pitching. The injury that DIPS research did is that it convinced a lot of people, who didn't understand why the original study was flawed, that studying the components of hit prevention ability wasn't necessary because "the ability didn't exist in any meaningful way".

Well said, Mike. But tell me: are the DIP and FIP numbers that get tossed around now based on the corrections to the original research or not?

#195 -- I think it's fair to say that he's not an effective advocate, but that he doesn't care.

And depending on his reasons for writing that's fine -- or not.