Voros' article on DIPS

1008 words! Phew!
one!

All of these "rules of thumb" can get tweaked by other relevant variables. How much a manager wants to tweak them is up to him, as long as the tweaking is sensible

While what you say is logical, the question is how practical is it? You are providing a template with certain factors, whose weights are undetermined and vary by situation, then creating a concrete instance of the solution might involve more effort than the value of the result. As Emeigh said upthread, most managers have lot of these "variables" wired into their psyche as instincts.
If you are providing a method to the fan/nouveau manager, the packaging is as important as the content ( As a slaving Ph.D student, I should know ). Sometimes making things too esoteric for the sake of complete ( or as close to complete you think you can get ) correctness can turn people off your research. And from what I gathered out of this fracas, thats what happened to you.
You were right in your own sense, but your packaging of your views turned off said fans, as they were looking for a simpler explanation from "people in the know". And as things happen on the internet, such misunderstandings get overblown. Justice was at fault, but in a sense, you are culpable too by virtue of using a machine gun to kill a housefly.

My post in 47 echoes MGL/93's Bannister example, for those who want a slightly different perspective.

The criticism Mickey gets here is along the lines of "if the final answer is 'I don't know,' why did you just waste my time with the ins and outs of the mathematics of the sacrifice bunt?"

But, Voros, that's the thing. At no point in his post does MGL say he doesn't know. He says Cecil Cooper doesn't know, and fans don't know, and anyone who hasn't read The Book doesn't know, and anyone who hasn't competently studied the matter doesn't know. His answer is a lot more of "YOU don't know" than it is "I don't know". And while it's informative on sacrifice bunts, his post doesn't directly address Cecil Cooper's dilemma.

- - - -

I'm an actuary. My entire profession is losing value within the insurance industry because, although actuaries have a wide array of knowledge and skill regarding insurance, they're notoriously bad at conveying relevant information. My career has moved along rather briskly not because I'm so much smarter than everyone else, but rather because there's this one part of the job - communication - that everyone else completely fumbles.

It pains me to see bright, talented people who are (despite the bright and talented part) like me in so many ways shoot themselves and their careers in the foot because they can't convey one simple idea without unnecessarily and significantly confusing the message. It hurts worse when I see it happen so often for a stereotype to form, and even worse when someone fits the stereotype. Frankly, there are a lot of parallels between my profession and the sabermetrician stereotype; so when I see it in this forum it bugs me as much as it does in my day job.

I was wrong earlier when I said what the key to good communication was. The key is to assume that, for any misunderstanding or apparently irrational reaction, you're at fault. If you give the benefit of the doubt to the audience instead of yourself, and work to improve your message and/or their understanding, eventually one of two things will occur: they will understand, or their fault will become evident beyond all doubt. In either case, at that point you can walk away and let things stand.

There's a lot to be said for the high road when it comes to communication.

MGL is, frankly, an intolerable, raging ***hole more often than not. The way he often conducts himself online is a discredit to the sabermetric community, and for the sake of all of us he really ought to just STFU and go back to numbercrunching. And apologize to Richard Justice for crapping a humorless, arrogant lecture out onto his blog instead of answering the ####### question.

FWIW ... he's e-mailed me to offer critiques on stuff I've written and was cordial and genial in his responses.

Best Regards

John

People are still going around saying: Voros says that pitchers have no control over balls in play.

Six years ago on this site was:

DIPS 2.0

1. The amount that MLB pitchers differ with regards to allowing hits on balls in the field of play, is much less than had been previously assumed. Good pitchers are good pitchers due to their ability to prevent walks and homers and get strikeouts in some sort of combination of those three.
2. The differences that do exist between pitchers in this regard are small enough so that if you completely ignore them, you still get a very good picture of the pitcher's overall abilities to prevent runs and contribute to winning baseball games.
3. That said, the small differences do appear to be statistically significant if generally not very relevant.

Then there's post #188 from this BTF thread from November of 2007:

"11/23/99

"However, I don't think you're wrong here. If the league average totals are adjusted to represent
league average totals for GB, FB, LH, RH, SP and RP we might gain some accuracy in the DIP numbers. Also to night is that, anecdotally, I believe pitchers with trick deliveries (e.g. Knuckleballers) might post consistently lower $H numbers than other pitchers. I looked at Tim Wakefield's career and that seems to bear out slightly... I believe that GB/FB adjustments to league average figures would make the system more accurate."

12/7/99

"The key from here is to refine the DIP measures (assuming now that they are a valuable tool) to be more accurate. We can assign different "league average" values for various pitchers depending on whether they are left handed or right handed, starter or reliever, groundball pitcher or flyball pitcher and other designations which could cause subtle shifts in the overall evaluations."

2/29/00

"There may, however, be instances where a hits allowed total may be representative of a special
ability of a certain pitcher, and the best candidates there would be trick delivery pitchers like knuckleballers and sidearmers. Still more work needs to be done there."

All more than a year prior to the Prospectus article. If I ever said pitchers had ZERO ability in this stat, it was clearly an accident since I've been saying quite the contrary since the very start of this.

But as I mentioned before, I'm sure the above will fail to sink in and I'll have to do this all over again."

And what do you know, here I am posting it all over again. I realize not everybody reads everything, but it's personally exhausting (I've just burned a half hour on this post alone). I don't understand what was so ambiguous about DIPS 2.0 in the first place. My only guess is that, like Tom Tippett, many folks simply never read it before saying these things. It's worth understanding that until I actually got the e-mail from John Henry, it was never my intention to work in a baseball front office or be a professional analyst; I was a paralegal who enjoyed doing this stuff as a hobby. As such, there's all sorts of things scattered about usenet and the internet on the subject. There was lots of stuff on the old Fanhome boards and ton on rec.sport.baseball. That's how Propsectus knew about it when they asked me to write the article.

It's also worth noting that it's very hard to explain the state of statistical pitching analysis in 1999. Suffice it to say, I think the original DIPS went a long way toward advancing the way folks looked at pitching statistics, and so I'm tired of people asking me to apologize for it. Put yourself in my shoes. A bunch of people on the internet hate you for a piece of work you're personally quite proud of, and that others whom you respect also find to be quite important. What are you supposed to do? I know I shouldn't take it personally, but I'm only human and I want people to like me. To that end I'm trying hard to be more diplomatic (I really am), but it's just not that easy.

I know exactly where Mickey's coming from, and I think maybe some folks ought to try and view this issue from his shoes, and Richard Justice's as well.

Thanks for the response.

Wanting people to like you is fairly normal. We can't all be like kevin.

When in doubt, remember that old nostrum about Washington D.C.: If you want a friend, buy a dog.

I'm sure the above will fail to sink in and I'll have to do this all over again

To be sure. Some time within the next day, somebody on the internet will post that "Voros McCracken says that pitchers have no control over balls in play". Watcha gonna do? Joe Morgan still thinks Billy Beane should not have written that book.

I will ask him to publicly retract his statement that "it is obvious that MGL has no sense of humor whatsoever" AND to write, "I am a buffoon" 100 times. Fair enough?

I'm not going to do the counting, but this made me laugh, so we're at one.

On the topic of whether the title "The Book" is born of arrogance: I thought it was a play on words from the commonly used phrase "Manager X does things by the book.". Amirite?

It's not true, it's never been true from day freakin' one and I've let it pass by without comment long enough.

Ok, then I amend. I should have said, had you rather hear:

I've done ________ research and X is true; or

I've looked at ________ and we know X, but we don't know Y.

because the issue is the conclusion and the data used to arrive at the conclusion. I should not have said 1 year, b/c I should have known that it would be inferred I was talking about DIPS, and I don't know how long the total amount of time spent on DIPS actually is.

The issue about the 1 year is usually regarding the Maddux exemplar. I don't know specifically what else I said, but to the full extent that I am acting 100% positive or implying in any way that 1 year's worth of data comprises DIPS X.X, then I am wrong. I am happy to apologize for that oversight. I will make sure that it is not said or implied again.

Nevertheless, I still don't think:

The critical thing to understand is that major-league pitchers don't appear to have the ability to prevent hits on balls in play. There are many possible reasons why this is the case, and I don't really have a concrete idea as to why it is.

But the one thing I do know is that it is the case.

" Randy Johnson gives up fewer hits than Scott Karl. That's not because batters hit the ball harder off Karl than Johnson, but because they hit the ball more often off Karl than Johnson. "

"In MLB, a pitch could result in a pop-up or a line drive. It all depends on what the batter does with it. "

Or from 2.0:

Good pitchers are good pitchers due to their ability to prevent walks and homers and get strikeouts in some sort of combination of those three.
The differences that do exist between pitchers in this regard are small enough so that if you completely ignore them, you still get a very good picture of the pitcher�s overall abilities to prevent runs and contribute to winning baseball games.

are true in context or connotation. It doesn't matter which version number you go to, or what may have been said five years previously. You are still dealing with:

(1) Conclusions not supported by the data;
(2) Conclusions in published form made before full analysis of the data;
(3) To this date, no meaningful analysis on the selection bias and what it means to the implementation or utility of the statistic

and by others

(4) Implementations in awful ways
(a) deriving proofs about batters lack of ability to produce outcomes
(b) prolification of 'luck' being used as a causal element rather than further experiment on the externalities that seem to comprise this 'luck'
(c) Use as a performance measure rather than a forecast
(d) Use for roster construction rather than for forecasting in a fully selected population space

Its not a matter of misunderstanding or a need for clarification. If the only statements are strikeouts, walks and homers are important, then we would not need to aggregate them. If the goal is to determine their relative level of importance and forecast some type of RA performance, then you do need to include the hit ability.

Maybe, maybe not. You like to assume.

I presume you know what he meant. I'm betting you are in the target audience.

A lot of people have misquoted it from the get-go, and/or refused to even consider later permutations.

How many? Who is to say they misquoted it?

How is translating:

The critical thing to understand is that major-league pitchers don't appear to have the ability to prevent hits on balls in play. There are many possible reasons why this is the case, and I don't really have a concrete idea as to why it is.

But the one thing I do know is that it is the case.

into

that the difference in that skill among most bona fide major league pitchers is so minimal, that other skills (K, BB, HR) are more important.


yet claim

pitchers have no control over balls in play.

is misquoting.

BL, I think the distinction is that the quote deals with the appearance, while the misquote suggests a certain conclusion. It's like saying "the moon does not appear in the sky" vs. "there is no moon". There are all kinds of reasons why the moon does not appear in the sky - it's on the other side of the planet; it's a new moon; it's obscured by clouds; or perhaps it's gone. It's a big leap to assume the latter from the former. In Voros' quote, he admits to not knowing why the appearance exists, and admits that there are many possibilities. But he doesn't leap to one conclusion, especially not to the misquoted one.

[EDIT] You're right, that many others have made that leap. But there's no reason Voros should have to defend it. [/EDIT]

Voros can certainly speak for himself, and I don't want my comment here to result in Voros having to defend something he didn't say... again. But that's my take on it.

You're right, that many others have made that leap. But there's no reason Voros should have to defend it.

VI,

You don't have to go to many others, you can go straight to me. That is overtly telling me that the reason for the difference in hits from one pitcher to the next is frequency, not harder .

It's like saying "the moon does not appear in the sky" vs. "there is no moon".

Either way its telling me there isn't a visible moon, and when the issue in contention is the moon's visibility, that is going to be the same. Its not going to be correct to come back and say, "when there is only a quarter moon, there is so much taht is not visible that it is larger than what is visible"

That's especially true when you come back in your 2.0 version and tell me that the skill is essentially meaningless, when we know that even a small variation could be the difference in ML effectiveness and being out of the game.


I don't want my comment here to result in Voros having to defend something he didn't say... again.

Do you have a different standard for communication in this instance than you have in the previous instance?

This statement:

the difference in that skill among most bona fide major league pitchers is so minimal, that other skills (K, BB, HR) are more important.

can be true while this statement:

pitchers have no control over balls in play.

is false. The key difference is the qualifier: bona fide major league pitcher.

My own research, and that of others, suggests that the two most important things that one needs to know about a minor league pitcher to evaluate his likelihood of success - or to put it another way, to become a bona fide major league pitcher - are:

1. how often batters make contact against him when they don't walk, and
2. how often they reach base when they DO make contact - IOW, hits on balls in play.

And if I could pick one, I'd pick the second one as more indicative of success.

What has happened is that the conclusions from Voros's studies - studies which included only pitchers who had already jumped the first hurdle of becoming established major league pitchers - have been extended and applied (IMO inappropriately) to the entire population of pitchers, the vast majority of whom have NOT established themselves as bona fide major league pitchers. And it becomes fairly obvious (as I noted in my 2005 presentation at the Toronto SABR convention) that when you do look at pitchers who have not established themselves, as a group they do NOT prevent hits as well as do established pitchers.

What I am suggesting is that you DO have to look at hit prevention as a pitcher's skill, and a very important one - because it, as much as if not more than any other skill that a pitcher has, distinguishes a bona fide major leaguer from a career minor leaguer. And Voros's studies do nothing to disprove that thesis, because he didn't study the entire population of pitchers, but only those pitchers who have already HAD success.

-- MWE

This statement:

the difference in that skill among most bona fide major league pitchers is so minimal, that other skills (K, BB, HR) are more important.

can be true while this statement:

pitchers have no control over balls in play.

is false.

Gee, do you suppose that is why I posed them as alternatives, instead of equivalents, and threw in the qualifier "bona fide major league"?

Other than that comment, I agree with what MWE said.

Sheesh, BL is an even bigger horse's ass than previously discovered.

So, because you've been incorrectly slamming Voros' work because you did not read it and were taking your opinion from others, Voros should have contacted you directly to correct you?

Rich...

Gee, do you suppose that is why I posed them as alternatives, instead of equivalents, and threw in the qualifier "bona fide major league"?

No doubt. It's that qualifier that people miss, though.

-- MWE

And I should also point out that you've been corrected on this many times, but no, those were just the words of the echo chamber statheads, so what do they know, right BL?

And the problem I have is that "I don't know" is not an acceptable answer for Cecil Cooper. He faced a binary decision: bunt/not bunt.

Exactly the point I was making in post 41, though you put it more succinctly than I did.

Frida/109: It's exactly where the title came from. Our pitch was to write the "unwritten book" that managers refer to.

In post 39, I asked the authors of post 32 and 34 to support their criticisms.

I emailed Esoteric this morning, in case he didn't see my request.

Gambling Rent however has no email linked to his account. If someone can ask him to please respond, I look forward to what he has to say.

Gambling Rent however has no email linked to his account. If someone can ask him to please respond, I look forward to what he has to say.

You can always get his attention by saying Dusty Baker is the worst manager ever and that anyone who likes him is racist against white people.

Tango, the reason you weren't able to get ahold of Gambling Rent is because he violated parole and they don't allow internet access in his state.

In post 39, I asked the authors of post 32 and 34 to support their criticisms.

I emailed Esoteric this morning, in case he didn't see my request.

Gambling Rent however has no email linked to his account. If someone can ask him to please respond, I look forward to what he has to say.

Is this really necessary? If they never respond, will there be a default judgment that awards you the internets?

I will respond to this post from Gambling Rent:

and could somebody please hook those guys up with a little html. thats the most third grade looking website . .. ... ever!

Please don't add anything to your website to make it look "better" or "not 3rd grade". I much prefer my content to be the ideas expressed on the page and a minimum of the flash animation, videos, soundbites, and popups that have ruined too many websites.

At home I've got comcast internet, and a lot of these fancy pages (including comcast's home page) take as long to load as simple pages did back in the days of dial up. I didn't switch to cable internet so that I could get fancier pages at the same speed, I got it so I could surf the web fast. Now so many sites have completely shut out anyone without high speed internet, as well as people browsing on their phones away from high speed wireless.

TDA/124:

I find my request for those two guys to stand behind their words more necessary, than for those two guys to have made their comments in the first place.

Your "is it necessary" comment would have been better placed following their two drive-by comments, not following my comment.

***

AROM/125: Agreed.

Richard Justice :

Mitchel Lichtman, Bob Nightengale and Skip Bayless will be my guests 11-Noon Monday morning on 1560-AM.

Dude, are you serious? One guy didn't enjoy your book, the other guy doesn't like your web design. They said that. You disagree. You said that. Everyone expressed their opinions. That's what the site is for. If they want to elaborate, great. If they don't, that's great too. Either way, we can all take everyone's opinions for what we feel they're worth. We don't need you critiquing every post that gets made, calling people out, and e-mailing them.

I never said I disagreed. I'd like them to substantiate their opinions.

And I am not critiquing every post that is made. These TWO posts directly reflect against me, even though I wasn't even part of the conversation to begin with!

If I feel I want them to back up their words, then that's what I'll do. And I'll continue to do so, until I'm satisfied.

As a third party, I don't see why you would care either way. Just skip over any post that's got my name on it.

FWIW, I didn't see Tango's e-mail because I rarely check my e-mail (in fact I still haven't read it):

1.) I find this quote...

I find my request for those two guys to stand behind their words more necessary, than for those two guys to have made their comments in the first place.

...utterly hilarious. Do I not have a right to my own point of view, my own opinion, without being forced to stand up and offer an mgl-like dissertation on the subject? If I dropped into the movie thread and said "feh, I really dislike 2001," have I then incurred a moral obligation to sit and defend my aesthetic judgment against all comers?

2.) However, in the interest of not leaving Tango hanging, I'll explain myself further very briefly: simply put, The Book is not very well-written. As I said, the concepts/ideas/analyses in the book are for the most part very sound. Intriguing stuff. But the writing, format and structure are major self-inflicted wounds that make the book a drag to get through, about as fun as drinking a bottle of castor oil or leafing through the '34 Securities Exchange Act.

In other words, as I said in my original comment (which I thought was clear enough): decent in concept, shoddy in execution. It is by NO MEANS a worthless book - there is a storehouse of fantastic insight to be found there, stuff which really made me think - but it was unnecessarily difficult to read and disappointingly devoid of the sort of contextualizing color that makes me want to return to it the way I do with Bill James's work.

I never said I disagreed. I'd like them to substantiate their opinions.

What?! you want accountability now! Thats distinctly unfashionable these days. As the current American president would attest to.
Next, you will want everyone to make reasoned, thoughtful posts! Where are the tubes going to?!

Ah, that's much better. The book can be an especially dry read, certainly. It's a definite YMMV kind of book.

I appreciate the balanced view in your post, and you taking the time to respond.

Tom

This has the makings of a classic thread. I'll just throw in that this thread has demonstrated everything that is wrong with the mainstream thought around here. The criticisms of MGL are completely preposterous. In my view MGL is the clearest sabermetric writer I know of. If you think he is a bad writer it is because you are illiterate. Moreover the notion that people around here would critice him for being arrogant and caustic is quite rich.

I can be quite critical of some sabermetric ideas but if everyone was as humble about the limits of their findings and as clear in their presentation of those findings I wouldn't ever disagree.

If you think he is a bad writer it is because you are illiterate.

Can you send me a pictogram fo what you're trying to say here, Gaelan? I don't understand what you're writing.

BTW, if someone wants to make $50, I'll pay them to research all writings I have ever made on the internet, and compile a list of every attempt at humor I have ever made. If the list is less than 10, I'll donate $1,000 to Kevin's favorite charity and if it is 10 or more, he will donate $1,000.

If you have to do a webserch to see if you have a sense of humor or not, then I think that sort of validates my point, no?

OTOH, AROM makes a good point that this statement can constitute one of the 10, inadvertently or no.

If you think it was inadvertent (#135), you need more sense of humor.

I agree with what Gaelan said (#133), if you turn what he said down a couple notches. I usually find MGL's writings very clear and helpful relative to the complexity of ideas that tend to get presented. And while he doesn't display Tango's remarkable diplomacy, his persona attitude ain't so bad (and is often humorous (often advertently)). A number of other folks throughout the thread have said something similar to Gaelan, so I agree with them too, but am not up to citing them.

MGL is diplomatic and quite helpful when asking him direct questions that illustrate a lack of understanding but a willingness to learn. Off the top of my head, any thread with UZR discussions is usually of high quality.

But then you'll see a thread here with a random blogger post, and words like "idiot" or "stupid" come out, with an attitude suggesting people should need to pass a test before being awarded a baseball fan permit.

Most people will choose to appreciate baseball at the level they want, and it's a losing battle to try to hammer them into seeing what they don't want or care to see. It's like standing outside a Nickelback concert as people leave and yelling at them for supporting a derivative band with unimaginative song structure, awful lyrics, a bloated sense of self-importance, etc. You're probably right for ranting, but they won't care, and they're probably going to think you're nuts. And they're not wrong for doing either.

If you think he is a bad writer it is because you are illiterate.

As Esoteric suggests, it is in part a question of being entertained/engaged as well as being educated. I read The Book and found it interesting but not entertaining. As has been pointed out ad nauseum, James set the standard in one respect, in that he is fun to read (so are others). That doesn't make Tango/Lichtman/Dolphin "bad" writers, but it is not an irrelevant criticism, or "preposterous" either, particularly since they sold/sell/promote the The Book to what is by sabermetric standards a mass market.

It's like standing outside a Nickelback concert as people leave and yelling at them for supporting a derivative band with unimaginative song structure, awful lyrics, a bloated sense of self-importance, etc. You're probably right for ranting, but they won't care, and they're probably going to think you're nuts. And they're not wrong for doing either.

This is a clever analogy, and I think in that context, Justice et al are at times the Nickelback fans saying, "Screw all those indie bands and their snobby fans and listen to some regular music for regular people." Arrogance and condescesion show up on all sides of any debate IMO.

Arrogance and condescension show up on all sides of any debate IMO.

Certainly. But I think the onus for maintaining a standard of discourse falls on the people doing the initial assailing. They should expect a certain amount of pushback when their ideas aren't asked for. (In this case, a profanity is far worse than calling someone incoherent.)

I think the problem is most people treat baseball as a matter of taste, and MGL literally has it down to a science. Most people at a Nickelback show aren't weighed down with who they might be ripping off or use of chord progressions -- they just like what they heard.

Likewise, most people see a sacrifice bunt and don't compare it to all the sacrifice bunts that came before it. They just have an idea of whether they like that one, and that's as far as they care to go. There's nothing wrong with that.

Please don't add anything to your website to make it look "better" or "not 3rd grade".

You don't need bells and whistles. But black print on a light lime-green background is hard on the eyes. There is a reason you don't find that color scheme too many other places. Should be fairly easy to change.

MGL is diplomatic and quite helpful when asking him direct questions that illustrate a lack of understanding but a willingness to learn.

In other words, as long as you suck up and drink the Kool-Aid, he's fine. But if you disagree with him, that's when he turns into a surly prick.

ah just saw this .. I am running out the door right now, but i will get back to this tonight when I get in.

Don't forget to wear your T-shirt.

But if you disagree with him, that's when he turns into a surly prick.

What's your excuse?

In other words, as long as you suck up and drink the Kool-Aid, he's fine. But if you disagree with him, that's when he turns into a surly prick.

So you two have a lot in common, then.

edit: Oh.

What's your excuse?

I don't suffer fools gladly.

BTW, Srul, you're not wearing your T-shirt either. Don't make a ####### maniac out of me.

Any suggestions for my blog can be made directly on my site.

The Book can be a very dry read, depending where you are coming from (personally, I find it very enjoyable... but I find my Oracle books highly enjoyable too). There is enough excerpts and previews on the site for someone to decide if the book is for them. It is not meant to be entertaining in a Jamesian sense, nor light by any standard. I'm not sure how it was "mass marketed" by sabermetric standards (I'm not even sure I understand the term), but the market was definitely a subset of Hardball Times, if that makes it clearer. Really, the market is mostly whatever sites would have linked to tangotiger.net.

And, robin, I appreciate the positive comment.

The book was not a pleasure to write, and I doubt I would ever write another book again. I definitely won't be able to sell the idea to my wife and kid that I'll spend another several hundred hours for minimum wage. It was a long arduous process, where we stopped a few times altogether. The editing of the book was incredibly painful (and no editor would have be able to deal with the three of us). While when I write articles, I can get by with making a little shortcut here or there, or making a few assumptions, the book was not like that. We had to do things in sometimes excrutiating details, just to make sure everyone was on board. We were not going to have any "black box". Everything we did is replicable to some extent. As for why we even bothered, we knew our particular audience would go for it, and that was the only audience we had in mind. Nothing more. We based our success on selling to our daily audience, and that's all we wanted.

In other words, as long as you suck up and drink the Kool-Aid, he's fine. But if you disagree with him, that's when he turns into a surly prick.

Too easy.

I don't suffer fools gladly.

Your inner life must be one of unending pain. Buddha would approve.

As for why we even bothered, we knew our particular audience would go for it, and that was the only audience we had in mind. Nothing more. We based our success on selling to our daily audience, and that's all we wanted.

And I would add, it will end up with the kind of influence on the study of baseball that Earnshaw Cook's book did. At least you sold better than he did!

Don't make a ####### maniac out of me.

Nature beat me to it.

In the interest of full disclosure, Gaelen, #133, is my mother's user name on BTF.

2 down, 8 to go.

BTW, "If you have to do research to find out if someone has a sense of humor..." makes no sense.

For someone that you don't know personally, but only through their internet writings, how else would you know if they someone had a sense of humor other than by reading or researching their writings?

I'm reasonably comfortable with my writing skills. I am no James Joyce (that's the only famous writer I know - not really) or Bill James, to say the least, but if I were truly a bad writer, there is little chance that a publisher would have published my (our) book or that THT, BP, and other web sites would publish my articles. My style is rather dry, but otherwise I think it is OK. I am definitely not going to win any Pulitzer Prizes (or Nobel Peace Prizes).

The Book is well-written. Not one single reasonable person that I know of has said that it is poorly written. It is admittedly a little (not terribly, actually, if you haven't read it - Tango is a pretty colorful writer) dry, and not particularly entertaining. Our (Andy, Tango, and I) strong suit was not taking technical information and making it entertaining and interesting, like someone like James (among others). But it is well-written nonetheless, and people who are interested in that kind of material generally loved it. If it were poorly written, we would have gotten some or even lots of feedback to the extent that it was.

None of us is a professional writer by any means. Considering that, I thought we did a pretty good job. One reason was that we put a lot of time into editing it, not just the typos and things like that, but the research, wording, and organization. It is also not at the level of a book like, say Freakonomics, or Wisdom of the Crowds, or something like that, which is technical yet written more for the masses. For various reasons, our book was written more like a "textbook" than a non-fiction best seller. But we were happy with it nonetheless. If you have not read it and are interested in any of these topics, I think you will enjoy it. If anyone bought it and is unsatisfied, you are welcome to email me or post on The Book blog and I will be happy to personally refund your money.

Your inner life must be one of unending pain. Buddha would approve.

Huh?

I thought Buddha preached avoiding pain. Not an expert on Buddhism by any stretch, but didn't he say life was pain, and that your goal should be to avoid it. Avoiding it is nirvana. You follow Buddha's eight fold path in order to avoid pain and attain nirvana.

The Book is well-written.

You're back to 10 again. You get 2 debit points for that.

The criticisms of MGL are completely preposterous. In my view MGL is the clearest sabermetric writer I know of. If you think he is a bad writer it is because you are illiterate.

I'm willing to entertain the notion that I'm "illiterate" - not in the common definition, but relative to whatever bar you might have set. But let me try an example.

Unless Cooper has read the book (The Book), there is no way he would know whether a bunt in that or any other potential situation is correct, and there is certainly no way any fan would know.

What MGL conveys in this sentence is that the subset of the world population that understands when one should bunt or not is limited to himself, and people who have read The Book. He conveys that any other scenario by which people would know the answer is impossible. There is certainly no way that any fan would know this stuff. If it is impossible for anyone to have arrived at The Book's conclusions independent of reading The Book, then it follows that only MGL is capable of the analysis that was done.

If MGL is truly being clear in the above passage, then he is far more arrogant than anyone has ever claimed. Again, I don't think he's arrogant; rather, I think he conveyed a message he didn't intend. Maybe he meant to say "most fans" or "many fans"; maybe he meant that reading The Book is not the only way to get there. But if that's what he meant, the above quote is indeed incoherent.


I usually find MGL's writings very clear and helpful relative to the complexity of ideas that tend to get presented.

"Usually" implies that there have been occasions - however unusual - when you don't find his writings to be clear and helpful relative to the complexity. I'm not sure if you're saying you grant him a mulligan in this case because usually his writings are usually better than this, or that this is one of the "very clear" cases. (And I hope I'm not giving your word choice too much weight. I suppose you might have said "usually" simply in an effort to use softer language than Gaelan.)

I'm trying to stick to this specific case, what appears to me to be an obvious miscommunication between MGL and Richard Justice. Yeah, Justice shouldn't have mocked MGL if he really wanted MGL to clear up what he didn't understand. However, as I think the above example suggests, someone who doesn't know MGL might interpret his original post as mocking nearly the entire target audience for the post!

MGL mixed in bad word choices around good information that came from a great analysis. The post he made is only as good as its weakest part. I hope he learns from this.

None of us is a professional writer by any means. Considering that, I thought we did a pretty good job.

MGL, you either have written it well or you haven't. This isn't golf. You're not allowed handicaps.

You published the book, didn't you? And you expected to get people to pay for the book to read it, didn't you? Then that means you're a professional writer. Stop making excuses for yourself, get out Strunk and White's The Elements of Style and start developing your craft.

One of the rules: Nobody ever made a good case against clarity.

For example, for sac bunting:

If your pitcher is not an anemic hitter, you should bunt him mostly and occasionally hit him. If he is an above average hitter for a pitcher, you should bunt him about half the time with 0 outs and about 20% of the time with 1 out. If the batter is slow or a poor bunter, you should rarely if ever bunt him and if he is fast and a good bunter, you should bunt him about half the time.

see, I find these contradictory. Almost all pitchers are slow out of the box. So, pitchers are slow. So you should rarely bunt with him. Except he's a pitcher, so you should always bunt with him.

(another good rule of thumb is that when the defense is especially anticipating a bunt, a bunt is almost never correct, except perhaps by the speediest of players who are great bunters, like a Pierre, Ichiro or Taveras),

When a pitcher comes up with a runner on first and no one out (let's call him an average bunter), you always bunt with him. And the defense is "especially anticipating" a bunt. So should he bunt?

Of course he should. The risk of a force is heightened, but the risk of a DP is probably too high.

Thingsthat aren't considered in mgl's engine: type of pitcher - does he throw sliders? fastballs? How hard is it to bunt this pitcher? Right - that's a tweak, but then again, most of the things in mgl's engine are.

I read this in 1997 on USENET:
"Bunting is also a reasonable thing to do provided there is some chance that the bunter will reach. You need to reach just over 12%
of the time - provided that you always get a sacrifice as a worst case result (bad assumption though. The success rate was just under
81% last year). I'd argue that it makes bunting *mandatory* provided you've got (say) Otis Nixon or Brett Butler at the plate. Unless
there's some chance of being safe though, it's pretty clear that the bunt is a poor play. And asking someone who isn't a good bunter to
bunt is silly."

That's talking about position players (like Loretta).
MGL didn't invent the analysis - he tweaked it, AFAICT.

I'm willing to entertain the notion that I'm "illiterate" - not in the common definition, but relative to whatever bar you might have set. But let me try an example.

Obviously illiterate was hyperbole. Nonetheless I stick with my main point and it is demonstrated by your example. The meaning of any single sentence is never solely contained within that sentence. If you read a sentence as an abstraction it is almost inevitable that it will be misconstrued. Now it is true that there is a comma in the wrong place in that sentence but I don't think that's what you were getting at. The confusion centers on the meaning of the word "correct." Now I can understand how Justice wouldn't know what MGL meant by "correct" and that maybe MGL should have added a qualifying adjective but on the whole I'd rather leave something up to the intelligence of the reader. It's not like MGL is engaged in esoteric writing.

Chris/158:

see, I find these contradictory. Almost all pitchers are slow out of the box. So, pitchers are slow. So you should rarely bunt with him. Except he's a pitcher, so you should always bunt with him.

MGL is implying non-pitchers that are slow.

***

MGL didn't invent the analysis

I don't know anyone who is saying otherwise. But to call what he did a "tweak" is simply unfair. Did you read his chapter? Nate Silver called it the best part of the book, and he loved the book.

MGL did the best job anyone's ever done on the bunt analysis, that I've seen. The best job I saw prior to that one was Tom Tippett, and that one was fabulous. (Is that the one that got him the SABR award that year? I think it was.) MGL's is simply a big step above that.

You may think I'm biased, but there's no one more honest or harsher a critic of sabermetric writings, mgl's included, than I am.

You may think I'm biased

I'm certain you are. We all are. You certainly call "Nonsense" on any analysis you find wrong (mgl's included).

Yes, I've read most of that chapter. However, Tippett's work wasn't much of a step over what I quoted, and there's plenty of followup to what I clipped there that went further into the situational analyses. I was surprised when many people thought Tippett produced some major breakthrough. Essentially his findings are summed up in the paragraph I quoted.

More:
">>Or with a batter who has a significant chance of reaching. If the
>>bunter can reach 20% of the time (and *maybe* a half-dozen in all
>>of baseball can) then you'll at least break even.

>>Nothing wrong with bunting with Brett Butler or Otis Nixon or
>>Cristian Guzman.


>>But straight base for an out is a losing proposition.


>Is it? The base-out takes every situation to come to their assigned
>values, and thus, for anyone on bottom half of that curve, it isn't a
>losing proposition. It's readily apparent that for pitchers and
>Cristin Guzman, but I think it may also apply to a much larger MLB
>population than one would think.



Don't think so. I've looked at this using the game situation charts
and batter/pitcher matchups (Stratomatic for instance isn't a perfect
simulation, but it'll get you within spitting distance most of
the time). In general, before about the 7th or 8th inning unless
the batter is either a very poor hitter or has a substantial chance
of being safe you're still better off hitting. And it's generally
not close.

Late innings of close games not being played in Coors field can alter
the odds fairly substantially."

I'll defer to you as to the knowledge and history of research on usenet.

At the same time, would you agree that mgl's presentation was at least the most complete and coherent compendium on the subject (even if it lacks the originality as you see it)? And to most non-usenet readers, to them it would simply be fresh material that they likely never saw otherwise?

MGL, I'd rather light a candle than curse your darkness so let me give you something to ponder.

Most writers don't really reach their prime until they hit their mid-forties. I don't know how old you are but I'm guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty. That gives you a long gestation period to hone and refine what you do. If you keep at it and not be satisfied with where you are now and what you have already done, you'll get there.

Here i took some screen shots, and made some notes for you. Every time I cruise by your guys page, I can't help ask ..

"These guys are trying to sell a book?" "Seriously?"

the web site really needs some flow, and a tweak of the html in general. And for some reason I can't get over that header, is that done in crayon? i just gotta know. All of them are mostly minor fixes. Nobody is talking about bringing in java or pop up or any of that stuff. Just basic HTML, and basic website flow. 4th grade stuff.

Tomorrow, you guys are going to be getting a huge plug. A huge plug from a guy your beloved MGL just called an idiot. You will get a 1000 hits from obvious Justice fans, and your website, and the blog post in question, is going to come off making you all look like amateurs.

Just stating the obvious .. ::in my best tom tango voice:: .. "we are in agreement on that right?"


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#164, I don't know much about web sites, but I appreciate the suggestions. Looks like you spent some time thinking and writing, and it looks like there are some good suggestions. I hope that Tango reads them. I'm pretty sure he will. He is in charge, basically, of the layout and design of the web site. Again, it is not a commercial site by any means. If it were, we would have hired a professional web designer, I would think. But since we are hawking a book, as opposed to just hosting a blog for our own enjoyment, I suppose we should want it to look good.

We've all discussed this point before, but how incredibly unfair is it to critique someone's clarity, writing style, grammar, typing prowess, etc., on a post made on a blog at 2:00 in the morning, as if it were a journal article? Seriously, it's not even close.

Yes, obviously the rule of thumb about the bunter's speed is not referring to pitchers. And yes, when the defense is playing down the pitcher's throat when he is trying to bunt, it IS correct for a decent hitting pitcher to swing away some of the time. With 1 out (and a runner on first only of course), it is correct to swing away more of the time and for pitchers who are even less proficient hitters. If you dispute that, please provide the math. As always, I could be wrong.

It is not that hard to do. I have all the relevant numbers in The Book, or you can come up with them yourself. All you need is to figure out using a Markov model how often a pitcher of a certain hitting quality gets a single, d, t, hr, K, bb, so, ROE, DP, etc. when he swings away with the infield playing for a bunt, figure the WE, and then compare that to the WE based on the typical outcomes when a pitcher bunts (which is in the book). If it is close, that automatically means that you can and should sometimes hit and sometimes bunt, and also that you can not only randomly mix up your hitting and bunting, but tweak the strategy according to other variables as well.

If it is not close, either way, then either it is 100% one way or another, or something like 90/10 or 80/20 (you would have to do the game theory calculations as well). All of that is not as hard as it sounds, but it has to be done in order to come up with the correct answer. Which brings up my other quote about Cecil Cooper or anyone else not being able to come up with the right answer.

What I meant, which I did NOT convey well (again, a friggin' post at 2 in the AM is not a published treatise - what do you expect in literally 5 or 10 minutes, seriously - in fact, you should be amazed at how good that post was for something hammered out in 10 minutes!), was that if the decision is close, there is no way to figure out the right answer without all the relevant data and the appropriate analysis, and either a lot of time on your hands or a computer. obviously no manager does that and if there is a fan that has done the proper analysis, all the more power to him. Obviously, if the batter is David Ortiz, or a terrible hitting pitcher, you don't need to do any computations to figure out the correct answer, so my statement needs to be qualified as such. Or I should just be summarily executed.

Why is it so hard to believe or so arrogant to say that something requires a certain kind of analysis and that it can't be done in someone's head (unless they are some kind of a savant, I suppose)? You can't figure out basic strategy in blackjack without a computer or a lot of time on your hands either. You can't come up with an accurate weather forecast without a compute model I don't think, or whatever it is that meteorologists did before computers. That goes for a million other things in life, no? What, it is not politically correct to say that in baseball, because it is a game that players and manages and commentators all think they know inside and out? Please! And if you say that in public, you end up insulting people? Ooh!

I am familiar with most of what has been researched and written about the sac bunt other than Usenet. If everything or most of what I have done was already done by someone, good for that person. Did I ever say that what you are about to read or hear has never in the history of the world been said, written or thought of before? Geez! The sac bunt analysis in The Book is a good, thorough and mostly accurate analysis. That's it. It is not even complete. If it has been done before, good for the person who did it. I never said that it was groundbreaking work. It is not. It is just thorough. I tend not to have great and groundbreaking ideas, like a James or an Einstein. I tend to run with what has already been done or started. It sounds like similar work and discussions about the sac bunt were going on a long time ago, as they should have been (it is pretty obvious that the efficacy of the sac bunt depends on where the defense is playing, how often the bunter gets a single, ROE, hits into a DP, fails to move over the runners, etc., which implicates the bunter's speed and bunting ability, etc. - none of that is new or surprising).

But to say that the chapter was a "tweak" on work that has already been done does not even dignify a response.

I love when people say things like, "Your analysis is meaningless since you have not taken into consideration things like whether the pitcher is easy or hard to bunt on."

The beauty of the kinds of analyses I do and the "rules of thumb" I come up with, is that they are perfect for using in conjunction with any of these "other" variables that managers or players may or may not be aware of and may or may not be relevant to the decision at hand.

For example, if you use a model and come up with a situation where the bunt or no bunt is a flip of a coin, based on the "average" pitcher, you can advise the manager that if in his estimation, wisdom, and experience, the pitcher is tougher than average to bunt on, you hit away or you hit away more often. If he is easier than average to bunt on, you bunt more often. You can do the same thing based on the fielding (for bunts) ability of the third baseman. You can do the same thing with any other variable that you or the manager thinks is relevant.

On the other hand, all of the information that the manager or players may or may not know is useless unless they know and understand the basic framework, which they generally don't. That is evident when you see, for example, a bad or slow batter at the plate bunting early in a game (I know that is rare, but it happens) or even late in a close game with the infield breathing down the batter's neck anticipating a bunt. Or a decent hitting pitcher bunting with runners on 1st and 3rd and 1 out (a horrible play).

We can also go back to the laboratory (literally) and work on incorporating these other things into the model. It is not that hard. For example, identify the easiest and most difficult pitchers to bunt on, and see how that affects the results of the sac attempt and thus the WE in various situations. (You probably have to do some interpolating, since difficult to bunt on pitchers probably don't get bunted on too often.)

Isn't that how we come up with correct answers in all facets of life - by using the scientific method? Should we not do double or triple blind experiments in order to come up with some idea of whether a particular drug works because we can't possibly know all the variables or duplicate real life in the laboratory? Why don't we just have some people take the drugs in question and ask them how they feel? Are weather models useless because no one really knows whether it is going to rain or not?

Disclaimer: Everything written herein was done in 15 minutes or less at 4 in the AM.

the web site really needs some flow, and a tweak of the html in general. And for some reason I can't get over that header, is that done in crayon? i just gotta know. All of them are mostly minor fixes. Nobody is talking about bringing in java or pop up or any of that stuff. Just basic HTML, and basic website flow. 4th grade stuff.

Wow, fourth grade has really evolved since I was a child.

MGL, Mark Twain wrote a chapter in a book called Letters from the Earth. The chapter, called Cooper's Prose Style, was a literary criticism of James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer. It will only take you a few minutes to read and it's very useful in its criticisms, cutting though they may be. It's emphasis is on spare, strong prose. The Gettysburg Address is a good example of that.

Now, I'm not suggesting your every writing should aspire to the quality of the Gettysburg Address but, when you write, go through it and start to pick at it as though it were written by someone else. Start to discard or change all the things in it that are redundant, superfluous or not concise. Make short, strong sentences. Break up your paragraphs so that each one contains one theme. Summarize in one or two sentences at the end the main theme of your piece.

If you did that, you'll find that 1500-word tome you wrote could have been written in 200-300 words. And you'll also find your writing will be stronger and more confident and influential. The reader will appreciate it and will find it easy to remember.

Part of Justice' reaction was a reaction to that. Justice is a newspaperman and he is quite sensitized to the need to be brief and clear while still conveying a lot of information at the same time.

There's nothing wrong with having flaws in your writing. What's wrong is maintaining the opinion that the flaws should be acceptable, since they are compensated (supposedly) by other qualities. I'm a scientist and this attitude is prevalent in my field and it annoys the crap out of me. No matter who you are, or what field you work in, there are certain rules and guidelines to quality prose that need to be adhered to.

Writing is like anything else in terms of getting better at it. You find a quality ideal and you aspire to it. Find someone who's prose you admire. Bill James would be a pretty good one. His prose is excellent. Then model your own on that. Identify things in his writing that you like and try to copy what he does. You will find it awkward at first but as you write more, your style will slowly evolve and will become your own. Then you'll truly be able to call yourself a writer.

kevin, my guess is that MGL has no desire at all to be a writer. All of his baseball writings are done purely for fun. Basically, MGL is donating his baseball knowledge to the sabermetric community.

***

Gambling: cool, thanks for taking the time. Much appreciated.

To answer your questions:
1. The header on the page is the spine of The Book (original edition).

2. Like mgl, I don't really think of "selling a book". I don't really push the book. I understand I should put those big names out there. That's what the publisher did, by putting those names out on its website. Let me think about it.

3. Good call on the picture. In fact, the picture of the book is for the original edition, not the new edition. So, in fact, people will not know what it looks like! This is what the publisher's website looks like:
http://www.potomacbooksinc.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=153776

4. The USSM message. I see it as separate from the book totally. I really like that message. You really see it as coming off as arrogant? I'll see what others on my site thinks. Thanks for giving me something else to think about.

5. Puke green. I really like the green. I guess that means I like puke! Seriously, no one ever said word one, and I've asked a few times for site suggstions. I'll keep asking.

(If you see an abbreviated message, then my kid pulled me away.)

kevin, my guess is that MGL has no desire at all to be a writer. All of his baseball writings are done purely for fun. Basically, MGL is donating his baseball knowledge to the sabermetric community.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well, Tango. And anything not worth doing is not worth doing at all.

Besides, I don't know what MGL has planned for the rest of his career but writing ability will almost assuredly be an asset.

Wow. The exquisite clarity of the writing in post 168 is surpassed only by its pretension. Well, and also by its presumption.

Personally, I'd much rather MGL spend his time on doing new sabermetric studies, rather than refining his writing skills (or doing 1500 word posts!). But that's just what would benefit me -- I wouldn't presume to tell him how to spend his time.

6. Search engines. Hmmm... again, I'm totally at odds with your point of view. I'll ask my site readers.

7. Comments. Yeah, they should be on the right. That's why I reserved the space there. I put them at the bottom to start, and have never really been bothered to move them to the side. Just have to set my CSS correctly.

8. Teaser for each article is definitely the right thing. Again, laziness on my part.

Thanks for taking much of your time for making the notes. It's much appreciated.

kevin/170: I don't share that point of view. When I worked on the book, I shut down my public research for quite a while, as the book took, basically, forever to write. The attention to detail on the book simply surpassed anything I've done elsewhere, ever. Is that a good thing? Maybe. But, personally, I'd rather do 90% of the job, and produce triple the work, then do 100% of the job to produce less volume. Especially considering that the monthly readers at my site is far larger than the people who bought the book.

What's the point for dotting i's and crossing t's (i.e., we spent a good two months just working on typos, and editing), if we could have spent that time producing other research? Certainly, the book now stands on its own, as a timeless piece of work. That's good.

But, there's alot to be said to simply producing quality volume. At this point, for me, I'd rather churn out quality, than be meticulous and put out less. I'll guess MGL is in the same boat as I am. (As, I would add, are most people. Writing is tough.)

The new book cover looks good, but I can't believe you don't have a picture of it up yet ... and whether you guys want to admit it or not, you are selling a book.

2. Like mgl, I don't really think of "selling a book". I don't really push the book.

umm, this whole thread here started, because somebody was pimping the book.

oh and one other thing tom, if you don't mind.

if you took your simple seasonal marcels project, and tweaked it just a little, and called it your own. i don't know adjust the age calculation or something.

You'd bring in 10 grand every spring.

What's the point for dotting i's and crossing t's (i.e., we spent a good two months just working on typos, and editing), if we could have spent that time producing other research? Certainly, the book now stands on its own, as a timeless piece of work. That's good.

You owe it to your readers to do your best. After all, you are expecting them to spend their hard-earned money on it. If you don't, it will be apparent to them and they won't finish reading it.

And Tango, the book will only be timeless if people continue to read it. If they don't read it, it will be forgotten and it will be like you never really wrote it in the first place. If you take a breezy attitude towards its quality, people won't continue to read it, but will turn to works where the writer does go the extra mile to please the reader. That's true of all art.

well

i've read every word of the justice post. and every word of this discussion.

i know i've gotten ENDLESS shtt from people here about my lousy writing/grammar/brains/just about everything else, but you know, i know i am uneducated and i figure it comes with the territory when you try to talk to males with degrees.

but

it surprised me how yall try to be as rude as you possibly can when you talk to each other. i guess it is the male version of a bunch of grrls telling some other grrrl her ass fat/she a slut etc

why do so many of you have to do the - jane you IGnerint slut!!!!!!! kind of talking? how does it exactly help to look for any way possible to peepee on someone else's hard work? what, you think that the way you discuss your concerns makes someone MORE likely to listen?

i don't have ANY difficulty reading the website. me, who doesn't know what a marcel is or where it came from or how to get one. i don't have ANY difficulty reading what tango/mitchel say and unlike bill effing james, they don't use fancy words to piss on everyone else and i prefer plain speaking to some ####### like james who just can't WAIT to tell everyone how stupid you and everyone else is and how he KNOW everything sos you'd best just get down on your knees and open up. you think mitchel is arrogant but you think james ROOLZ? talk about oxyMORON

i don't know whether i am happy or sad to see all the feces flung at mitchel/tango - i would say happy because it is kind of a relief to know i'm not the only one who can't please everyone, no matter what i do/say and that extremely high intelligence and lots of education doesn't seem to matter a bit, but it is sad to know that there are too many firejoemorgan types out there who live to shtt on someone else's work unless that someone else does/says exactly what the critic demands.

and yeah, i SURE have noticed that the critics sure as heck can't take no criticism their own selves

and frankly, bill james can't so much as sniff the jock of really great writers like joe posnaski and john brattain.

but so what? demanding that everyone write the same way with the same style as defined by person X is the absolute epitome of arrogance. makes mitchel look more umble than (gotta find just the right goody 2 shoes who has absolutely zero ego) - got it!!! any red sox player...

why do so many of you have to do the - jane you IGnerint slut!!!!!!! kind of talking?

I don't pretend to have that answer, but it comes off as petty jealousy.

Rent/174: I get the feeling that even if the book was for free, the reaction would have been the same. The script is: a) MGL says something that some think is outlandish, b) get out the weapons. It's the BTF version of the E! True Hollywood story: a) success, b) downfall, c) rehab, d) comeback. Or the five stages of grief. The script is so tiresome, don't you think?

Rent/175: If you've been following my forecasting evaluation thread, you will notice that all the systems are pretty much the same as Marcel. There's very little that can be done to be any better than Marcel. That's the plain truth of it, regardless of any claims to the contrary. No other forecaster would dare even confront me on it. I don't know if I want to sell the Marcels. Maybe, we'll see. If AROM were to sell his Chone, I would trumpet his over Marcel.

***

Kevin/176: Yes, the book does deserve the best. My point was whether to was worth to make the book (and make people pay for it), as opposed to simply releasing all that work for free on my site, without all the extra bells and whistles of the editing and formatting. Basically, you are paying for the typesetting and editing. Plus, preventing me from doing other research while I dot all those i's. (And, an editor would not have helped, noth with our personalities.) It's a tough call either way.

umm, this whole thread here started, because somebody was pimping the book.

In no way, shape or form, was anyone pimping the book. If I ever say, "You should get The Book," or, "It is in The Book," it is either because I think someone will find it interesting, or the material in The Book answers or addresses a question that is being discussed.

"Pimping the book" implies that I am trying to drum up business. Perhaps to Tango's and Andy's chagrin (probably not), I have no motivation whatsoever to try and get anyone to buy the book. If you mean simply that I was pointing out that I presented some research about the sac bunt in The Book, and that if someone wants to read it, they can/should get The Book, then you are right of course, but that is tautological.

Baseball chick, whose posts I enjoy, BTW, is right. As some girls like to gossip about one another and other things, which a lot of guys don't understand, some guys, especially on BTF and other sites, like to compare d****. It is our version of George Bush going to war in Iraq I guess.

None of this I take personally, and I usually forget who said what, unless someone makes a living haranguing me, which is the case with 3 or 4 posters, on this site at least. Heck, maybe Justice and I will become best friends.

I am NOT 30 years old, BTW (wish that I were - not really - with age comes wisdom). And sure, I was taught by my mother that if you are going to do something, do it well, which is one reason why we did spend a lot of painstaking hours editing the book. I appreciate the suggestions about writing and writing style and I might even check some of them out. My father actually was an English teacher and a writer. He has written hundred of short stories and plays. He is pretty good. While I have little interest in becoming a "writer", I do intend on continuing to publish some work, as I do, as Tango said, like to take my work and present it to the public (at least some subset of the public), as does he. And it doesn't hurt to make that presentation as interesting as possible.

I just saw the movie, 21, which was pretty good BTW. A lot of people on this site would enjoy it (now I am pimping a movie!). In it, the Kevin Spacey character (John Chang is his real name BTW, and he has a web site about the movie, MickeyRosa.com, I think) says something like, and I am really paraphrasing here, "Great people evince hatred." That's the bottom line! ;)

The Book can be a very dry read

What The Book needed was some mindless esoterical meanderings on the chapter titles...:)

Yeah, we actually commissioned Repoz to come up with his clever intros for our book. This was the one case where it simply didn't work. Too bad. I would have loved it otherwise.

Why is it so hard to believe or so arrogant to say that something requires a certain kind of analysis

Mostly because, more often than not, it doesn't REQUIRE analysis at all. Many times, analysis will confirm what people who do these things for a living instinctively realize anyway.

On average, teams bunt maybe 30-40 times a season in "sacrifice situations" with players other than pitchers. There were 939 such plays in 2007 with a runner on first only, less than two outs, and a game differential of two runs or fewer (I did count PAs in which a batter missed or fouled off a bunt attempt but didn't actually lay down a fair bunt in that number). Do you think it possible, when you look at how often the bunt is actually used when a pitcher isn't batting, that maybe most managers KNOW that the sacrifice is generally counterproductive WITHOUT needing a treatise on it?

-- MWE

I don't necessarily agree with baseballchick, but I enjoy the posts anyway.

And I do agree on the part about the vitriol among many posters. It baffles me.

This latest mgl post was a really good one, too, I thought.

I like to try to figure out what people MEAN, beyond just what they literally write. Some people are better than others at bridging that gap, but it doesn't really correlate with the quality of the message, necessarily.

Do you think it possible, when you look at how often the bunt is actually used when a pitcher isn't batting, that maybe most managers KNOW that the sacrifice is generally counterproductive WITHOUT needing a treatise on it?

Most managers yes

but don't you ever wonder what on earth Clint Hurdle is thinking?

For instance steal dropped precipitously from 1919 to 1920, from 912 in 1120 games (AL) to 752 in 1234 games, and again down to 685 in 1921.

What happened was that offense had gone from 4.09 to 4.76 to 5.12 runs per game.
Most managers, without spreadsheets, calculators, and statistical analysis of any sort figured out for themselves that stealing as often as they had been before was counterproductive when hits and Xbasehits were suddenly much easier to come by.

and frankly, bill james can't so much as sniff the jock of really great writers like joe posnaski and john brattain.

Baseball chick, you ignorant slut.

At the same time, would you agree that mgl's presentation was at least the most complete and coherent compendium on the subject (even if it lacks the originality as you see it)? And to most non-usenet readers, to them it would simply be fresh material that they likely never saw otherwise?

Are you kidding? It was terrific. What makes The Book so good is the accumulation of all those Stathead things in a, well, book. With the math. I think your "The book that needed to be written" idea is very well done, and I am sure there is room for a sequel.

But cutting edge, well, for some it most certainly was. Just as "MoneyBall" was for a HUGE audience. It completely depends on your previous exposure.

I am familiar with most of what has been researched and written about the sac bunt other than Usenet. If everything or most of what I have done was already done by someone, good for that person. Did I ever say that what you are about to read or hear has never in the history of the world been said, written or thought of before? Geez!
...
But to say that the chapter was a "tweak" on work that has already been done does not even dignify a response.

So, you note that someone else may have already done most of what you had done, and yet saying what you did tweaked previous info is outlandish?

I love when people say things like, "Your analysis is meaningless since you have not taken into consideration things like whether the pitcher is easy or hard to bunt on."

Did anyone say that?

Do you think it possible, when you look at how often the bunt is actually used when a pitcher isn't batting, that maybe most managers KNOW that the sacrifice is generally counterproductive WITHOUT needing a treatise on it?

In the above threads I clipped from, I made this about argument 10 years ago. I said:

"Here's partly my point: A bunt by Mark McGwire is a bad move. Any time. He is offset by Rey Ordonez who should bunt all the time.

A blanket statement about "bunting should only be done in late innings of close games" (which is the only time it happens IIRC) is pointless.
Situationally, it has its place. I mean, if the Pirates weren't throwing away a bunch of runs, who could?

NL managers have 110 bunts in a season. And what, 60, are from pitchers? The guys bunting do suck: Caruso, Womack, Nixon, Santangelo, D. Hamilton. All of them are weak-hitting speed guys.

I guess this is a long "I agree", but saying a player can bunt has value, that while you, Ron, recognize, so many more SHs just trot out
the party line when sac bunting should take place (which, it so happens, is when it does happen)."

Of course, most of the time managers do the correct thing when they bunt or don't bunt. They are not going to bunt Ortiz and bunting a weak, fast hitter, is probably correct much of the time. That does not, in any way, shape or form, mean that they have any idea how to do the "correct analysis in potential bunt situation. The entire point of a correct analysis is to determine the LIKELY (not always 100%) correct decision in the non-obvious situations. It makes no sense to say that managers generally get things correctly therefore the idea that can't possibly do a correct analysis is incorrect. OF COURSE you are correct that most managers and most fans know when it is obviously correct to bunt or not bunt. On top of that, when it is close, which is all the other times, even if you make a wild or random guess, you are going to be correct much of the time. There is little in baseball analysis that is going to prove conventional strategies are so wrong that a manager costs his team 2 wins (for just one area) a season. The ENTIRE IDEA of these kinds of analyses, THAT HUMAN BEINGS, let alone managers, cannot do IN THEIR HEADS, BY INSTINCT, or FROM EXPERIENCE, is to tweak out a couple runs a year here and there so that a manager picks up a win or two, which is A LOT.

Blackjack dealers, for example, for the most part, play decent strategy themselves. They probably give up an extra .5% over a perfect basic strategy player. That does NOT mean that they can figure out basic strategy by observation or experience. As with baseball, bunting strategy, and the like, it simply means that you can come close to an optimal strategy in certain things, with expeience, intuition, general smarts and the like. But I stand by my statement that for close decisions there is NO WAY for a manager to know, no matter how smart he thinks he is, how smart he is, or how much experience he has, no know the correct decision. Why is that so hard to imagine? To me it seems obvious. How in the world could anyone figure out, without "running the numbers" that it is correct to double down 1-2 versus a 4 in single deck but not in multiple deck or double 11 versus an ACE when the dealer does not hit soft 17 but only hit when he does?

Chris, yes, if in fact, my entire chapter on sac bunting, or the entire rest of the book, was already done, more or less before, then you can accurately say that the chapter, or my Justice post, or The Book is merely a tweaking of what has already been done. Which would be an incredibly petty, immature thing to say, by the way.

Do you think it possible, when you look at how often the bunt is actually used when a pitcher isn't batting, that maybe most managers KNOW that the sacrifice is generally counterproductive WITHOUT needing a treatise on it?

MWE, you are one of the 3 or 4 people I was talking about, BTW (along with Dial). Jealous, petty, and nasty, for no good reason. Quoting things from other people that either aren't true or are taken out of context, and writing things of your own that are either bizarre or just plain wrong.

Since my treatises are about the fact that sac bunting is NOT as counterproductive as many analysts and fans think, once again, you are making #### up, in order to belittle someone else. You simply don't read what other people write, you just like to read your own crap. I have absolutely no use for you whatsoever.

mgl,

dude, good luck tomorrow. i'll be listening and i just might could call up, tell justice you ROOL - piss him off. youneverknow...

- grinning

but i don't think you will need no help from me.

you GO boy!!!!!!!!!!


anyone else - check out www.1560thegame.com

between 11 and 12

Wow, fourth grade has really evolved since I was a child.

It has -- kids today are digital natives. That being said, "fourth grade" is too harsh. However, "adept seventh graders is appropriate." Most importantly, one doesn't have to be skilled in web design to have a nice looking site -- for a very, very nominal fee (about 15 bucks a year), one can put their blog on a site that offers plenty of templates with a very presentable design.

(along with Dial). Jealous, petty, and nasty, for no good reason.

can you produce some UZR work from before you read my work at Fanhome?

But to say that the chapter was a "tweak" on work that has already been done does not even dignify a response.

It's a book, thus it's just tweaking Shakespeare. My guess is sonnets 79-86.

I think we've descended into Middle School food fight territory now...

If AROM were to sell his Chone, I would trumpet his over Marcel.

If I thought I could make 10 grand every spring, I would sell it. I don't charge because I would not pay for it myself (maybe I'm out of touch with the thinking of the customer base).

If I were someone just playing fantasy ball and looking for projections, I would not pay for CHONE if I could get ZIPS for free. If all the top forecasters started charging, I would just use Marcel since it's 99% as good. If Tango tweaked it and charged for Marcel, I'd just use the current formula that is already public knowledge.

If I were someone just playing fantasy ball and looking for projections, I would not pay for CHONE if I could get ZIPS for free. If all the top forecasters started charging, I would just use Marcel since it's 99% as good. If Tango tweaked it and charged for Marcel, I'd just use the current formula that is already public knowledge.

Yep, Szyn is screwing all you guys. As long as Zips is free, there is just no need for me to pay for other projections. It's one of the main reasons I stopped paying for B-Pro.

Sean, you could certainly make money with the CHONEs.

You'd need to do manual playing-time projections with frequent updates, which would be time-intensive.

You'd need a plan of attack to counter people who argue that Marcel-like projections are too conservative. In addition to clearly explaining they're NOT too conservative, I'd come up with some sort of score to measure over- and under-ratedness -- maybe comparing projected stats with the previous year's stats. That makes it easy to pick out which players to target and which to let go.

You'd need to package everything in a nice spreadsheet, with some level of auto-calculation for fantasy dollar values. (Or have this available via a web page.)

Advertise the projections as "more accurate than PECOTA" (using spin, of course) and more helpful than just downloading ESPN numbers.

You could either charge $10 for them (much cheaper than BPro) or offer them on a page with tons of advertising and ask people to donate whatever they're worth to them (the approach from Freakonomics.)

MGL was just on Justice's show. Anthony liveblogged it for us, which you can follow from posts 22 through 29.