Thursday, May 23, 2013
Five Notes On the Ridiculous Pablo Sandoval
(www.mccoveychronicles.com)
A teaser:
I can’t … It’s just … that is so beautiful and hilarious. Again, that’s batting-average against from the catcher’s perspective, so picture a lefty-swinging Sandoval with his back to you over on the right side of your screen. The place you go in the strike zone is in on his hands but, for goodness sake, don’t go too far in! If you miss outside the zone and come close to hitting him, he kind of rakes those pitches. Which doesn’t make sense. But, hey, neither does Sandoval. ...Read More...
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< 1 2 3 >Also, the Giants were significantly better with Scutaro and the Nationals shut down their best pitcher.
By the end of the season, SF was no worse than the second best team in majors.
As opposed to the profoundly deep and meaningful significance of the children's game which is played by grown men the rest of the year?
If you can't tell the difference between the value of results from a game played over 162 events, vs the value of that same game played over 12 events, I can't really help you man.
So far this century, the team with the better regular-season record has won 6 World Series, the other team 7. That's an initial data set, anyway.
But the question is beset with definitional problems. How much better gives you a how much better chance? With teams playing different schedules in leagues of different strengths, and adding and subtracting players all season, how do the two teams in a series "really" compare? And a lot of the fun of sports is seeing who can come up with the better strategy, anyway, hypothetical talent aside. The four-corner stall and the rope-a-dope and using Ryan Theriot as your designated hitter are all part of the wonder of it :)
And that accomplishes what, exactly?
Postseason success matters in baseball, and that's been the case for a long time (going back before the days of divisions). The most memorable games in baseball history, with no more than a couple of exceptions, have either occurred on the postseason stage or between two teams who are fighting to get there late in the season. The goal isn't to be the *best team* - it's as Jim Valvano put it, to survive and advance.
-- MWE
Sure, but the attitude that the regular season is all that matters and the playoffs are just meaningless exhibition games (and I know you didn't specifically say that) is just backwards, IMO. Winning the World Series is the goal of every team before and during the entire season. Having the best regular season record only matters in the sense that it gives the team a shot at the WS.
Don't you think the 2001 Mariners players, coaches, and fans would've rather had 96 wins and a title instead of 116 wins and an ALCS exit? I sure as hell would if I were an M's fan. Best regular season record in most years is a fairly irrelevant distinction that few will even remember the following year. World Series champ is a much more memorable distinction.
That it is status quo doesn't make it less stupid. You can support the status quo, or you can support intelligence.
With that said, any Giant fan who, this morning, is upset because some grumps on the internet aren't bowing down to their team needs to get a life. They're at a party and they're unhappy not everyone came?
Define "best team". And how do you know a priori which team is the best team?
In the broad sense, it really doesn't matter which team is the best team, because that's not the point of the competition. The point of the competition is to be the one left standing at the end of the battle.
-- MWE
Exactly. Talking about a team having the best regular season record isn't much different than talking about them having the most HR's or the lowest ERA or whatever. Those things only matter cuz they help a team win games. And winning regular season games only matters cuz it helps a team get into the playoffs, which is necessary for winning the World Series.
So yes, winning the World Series doesn't necessarily mean a team is the "best." But so what, since "best team" is an irrelevant and generally forgetable distinction anyway?
And this is why they hate us.
I don't know if most people DO call the WS champ the "best" team. Every list I see always labels them the WS winners or the championship winners or whatever. And those titles aren't disputable.
The "best team" is as elusive as the "best player", yet there have been many attempts to define it. If you search, you can usually find someone making a serious attempt to answer it, although I can't point you anywhere at the moment.
You can say that it is the team with the best record, or the playoff champion and leave it at that; if that is the same team in a year few would argue with you. Even if, theoretically, the evidence indicates otherwise.
What evidence? The usual: strength of schedule, "true talent", Pythag W-L, and other statistical analysis woven in with assumptions about what makes teams win.
There's a long drive...it's gonna be, I believe...
THE GIANTS ADVANCE!
THE GIANTS ADVANCE!
THE GIANTS ADVANCE!
THE GIANTS ADVANCE!
There was a time when the regular season champion was considered to be a champion and a meaningful one too. I suppose that's never coming back, but I don't have to be happy about it.
You hit the nerve. Baseball is clearly a man's game which is played by children, not the other way around. If you've watched fourth graders try to throw strikes you would know this is the case. What you're thinking of is kickball.
And you're OK with that? If "best" is irrelevant, why have playoffs, regular season or games? Why not go watch the ballet instead, you'll see equally impressive displays of athleticism?
This is one attitude which annoys the crap out of those of us who aren't happy about the expansion of the postseason in number of teams and the glorification of the postseason in terms of importance. The best doesn't matter. The regular season only matters in that it gives you a shot at the playoffs (and in the other sports, that's half the teams so the regular season barely matters for that).
The point of competition, the very reason for its existence, is to determine which person/team is better. If the competition is reduced to the level where its only purpose is to produce a winner for the sake of there being a winner, why should I watch baseball and why should I care who wins?
The problem is that it's very rare for there to be a clear cut "best." Did the one extra win prove the Braves were better than the Giants in 1993? Were the '78 Yankees clearly better than the Red Sox? If Bobby Thomson swings half an inch lower and pops up are the Dodgers the clear best in 1951?
For me assigning values like "best" and "worst" is a fun intellectual exercise but the objective of the game is to win under the rules as constituted.
Do you want to know the horrible truth, or would you like to see Pando Sandoval hits some dingers?
I'm "okay" with that because the alternative - having no playoffs and the league winners meet in the World Series every year - is much worse. Yes, having the entertainment of getting to see a few more rounds of baseball is more important to me than making sure the "best" team wins every year. What you're wanting just isn't possible, and it never has been.
Um, isn't that what the World Series is too - a competition for the purpose of producing a winner for the sake of there being a winner? Even if you went back to the old format and eliminated all rounds of playoffs except the WS, you'd still only see the "best" team win about half the time. Why even have a meaningless exhibition like the WS then? Why not just declare each league champ the winner and leave it at that? Implementing the WS in the first place killed this argument over 100 years ago, IMO.
That it is the status quo does not make it less stupid.
If you think the World Series is stupid and you consider the season over once the last regular season game is played, that's up to you. I don't see why it should bother you though that not everyone else does the same.
I think the complaint is that Ratto spewed up this "new platinum standard of modern baseball" horseshit more than anything else. As I said, I have nothing particularly against the Giants. They're a perfectly boring baseball team with no really interesting players who are good enough to win their division and ran the post-season tournament. But they're not exactly a "new platinum standard" for anything other than getting a few lucky bounces and a few pitchers hot at the right time.
And the post-season is stupid. People who like it are stupid.
Yep, again. The worst part of the modern postseason is how it's rendered seasons like the Nationals' an afterthought. Why was that fanbase subjected to a home Game 5 that far removed from the World Series against an obviously inferior team that left their fanbase disappointed, if not embittered?
The old postseason wasn't really meant to determine the "best" team, but instead to act as a Tournament of Champions, by which champions could add additional championships to what had already been a great season. The modern postseason is, obviously, entirely inconsistent with that aim.
NOTE: This has nothing to do with the Giants winning this year.
World Series is stupid. Got it.
The Nats rendered their own season an afterthought the moment they shut down Strasburg. I was actually cheering for them to make the WS (check my picks in the postseason thread), but it's hard to have too much sympathy for the "best" team losing when they deliberately didn't put their best team on the field.
Under the premises of the modern postseason, maybe. Not under the old system, though, when their well-earned NL East championship would have (a) got them a round closer to the World Series; and (b) salved the pain of losing the LCS -- in itself, and also because they wouldn't have lost it to a joke team like the Cardinals. You lose to a 97-win Reds team -- the only team worthy of playing you -- you get over it, hang your hard-earned flag next spring, and celebrate an excellent season.
The National League should have been Nationals-Reds in a 7-game LCS. The post-'93 system sucks.
The grapes are sour. Understood.
Many, many things in life are less than robust equations of manly perfection. That doesn't make them stupid. Chocolate has obvious flaws and shortcomings. So does beer, so does sex, and so does the playing of baseball games for the entertainment of a crowd. That doesn't make people who like them stupid.
Except that even pre-1993, the winner of one division may have been an inferior team to the 2nd place team in a stronger division. And in the format prior to that, the winner of one league may have been inferior to the 2nd or 3rd best team in the other league. The only way to avoid this would be to eliminate the postseason entirely (including the WS), which no one except Sam seems to advocate doing.
And played superb defense.
No, the grapes are fine. He's just pretending that they're sour because he didn't get any.
You are obviously eating the wrong chocolate, drinking the wrong beer, having sex with the wrong people, and watching the wrong baseball games.
Ur doin it rong.
You're probably right. The arrow of causality is probably reversed on that one. People like it because they're stupid.
To me, the system should be set up so that the teams that make the entertaining postseason should have a claim to the throne. Then it is a short tournament between legitimate candidates for best. You mention 1951 and 1993. I think either LA (51) or SF (93) would have been fine combatants in the postseason tournament. SF would have, in fact, been better than the Phillies.
But what we have now is a system where, very often, it is obvious that one of, if not the, last teams standing is NOT the best. Not arguably not the best, obviously not the best. The Tigers weren't the best team in the AL and everyone knew it. Same for St. Louis last year. That sucks.
The Giants, this year, are a completely legit champ.
I guess what I'm saying is, I'd rather leave a good team home than have a bad team advance. Eventually, everyone has to be eliminated.
I get that I'm in a clear minority.
Of course.
Of course.
You haven't been paying attention, then.
Your abject defeat on the merits of the argument is duly noted.
College football.
So you really wouldn't consider any Braves championship meaningful unless they were clearly the best team in baseball that year?
My bad, then. I do believe you're in an extreme minority on that one, though.
To be fair to Sam, the Braves generally played postseasons like they believed that themselves.
But they were different leagues so you really couldn't be sure. The champions of the National League were the Champions of the National League, not the World Series qualifiers from the National division.
The point is that adding layers upon layers of playoffs pretty much has to have a significant effect on how success in the regular season is perceived. And many of us feel that the overall result lessens our enjoyment of the season. Going to the division setup was a small step backward, but as long as the schedules were unbalanced you could live with it. But now we've got two more rounds of playoffs and likely additional playoffs in the future.
Not that it matters, but I don't like it.
Manchester City celebrates what must have been a historic win in the championship game:
Man City are playoff champs!
I honestly don't understand how you people intend to determine the "best" team. In the NL this year, was the best team the 98-win Nats or the 97-win Reds? Is one game really enough to tell, especially given that they played different schedules? Are we talking about the Nationals with or without Strasburg? The Reds with or without Joey Votto? Can you be sure the 94-win Giants weren't the best team once they got Marco Scutaro? Does your opinion change if Scutaro hits .233 next year?
Barring the odd case like the 1998 Yankees, there's just no such thing as an objective "best team in baseball." It exists only in someone's supposition.
We don't, or at least I don't. What I prefer is for success over 162 games be prioritized over success over 16. The "best" team still might not come out on top after 162 (even if you could know such a thing), but I think the team that does come out on top will have done more to deserve it.
As I pointed out directly above, it isn't like such a setup is unworkable in modern sports, there are probably more professional sports leagues in the world who do it that way than not. Ironically enough, the English league is set up that way because it modeled its league structure and scheduling after professional baseball.
Bochy's winning percentage is already over .500, though not by much. He's at .502 (1454-1444) after the 2012 season. Even so, I generally agree with your point. He's turning into a legit candidate but it would help to an even higher winning percentage- which he could do with a few more seasons in San Fran.
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