Monday, May 06, 2013
Parkhouse: Do advanced stats have a place in high school baseball?
(heraldargus.com)
Well…it is K8 and not K/9.
Read More...I began thinking of this often this week as I was watching local high school teams play the game. Specifically, Michigan City and La Porte.
I became frustrated watching these players, particularly at the plate. In my opinion, too much first-pitch swinging is going on, which flies directly in the face of stats like on-base percentage, who many people - myself included - feel is a greater indicator of batting success than the more popular batting average.
If the ...
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1 2 3 >People are nervous because this is taking on some (but not all) of the features of the 1918 pandemic. But we definitely shouldn't be in panic mode right now.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, because they're so different from us there.
What about the glee the pig-men are feeling now that their plot for world domination is under way? Or do pig-men not count as people to you?!?!?!
Shouldn't the pig-men be most susceptible to swine flu? This strikes me as an extremely poorly thought-out plot on their part.
Obviously, I underestimated the Pigs. I always had the Apes, Dolphins or Cephalopods taking us out. How could I have been so blind?
Hmmm.. good point. Perhaps it is a Cephalopod plot. Those Octopi are sneaky-ass bastards.
Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to both religions and "we should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu," he told a news conference Monday at a hospital in central Israel.
Both Judaism and Islam consider pigs unclean and forbid the eating of pork products.
Scientists are unsure where the new swine flu virus originally emerged, though it was identified first in the United States. They say there is nothing about the virus that makes it "Mexican" and worry such a label would be stigmatizing.
Israel's Health Ministry on Tuesday confirmed the region's first swine flu case. The 26-year-old patient recently returned from Mexico, where he had contracted it. An official in the city of Netanya said the patient had recovered, but will remain hospitalized until the health ministry approves his release.
Under that reasoning, shouldn't Jews and Muslims welcome the opportunity to call this the swine flu, while a bacon/pork/ham lover like myself should be outraged to associate this magnificent beast with an infectious disease.
So the names of these things can be changed if there's enough of a case for it.
Well, they DO have terrible air quality and are at 8,000 feet, and they're dying of pneumonia. But other than that, I agree.
And how is that notably different from Denver?
Well, the air quality is shockingly worse in Mexico City.
However, 2 major cities in North America do not make a global pandemic of death, either.
I'm not saying the experts aren't right on this, Just that there IS something different about the people dying versus the people in NYC and Kansas and Texas that have the disease.
From the Washington Post: Bernal: This website confirms 500, but at least that's a disease most people have heard of. 35,000 people die from sepsis, yet I bet if you polled 100 Americans at random, 99 of them (including me) couldn't tell you anything about septicemia.
thanks, rich!
Not to be overly cynical, but pandemy scares are good for the health agencies funding. It's the only chance they ever get to stand in front of a media throng and look important.
Man, disease is such a downer.
Let's review some of the other recent health panics:
* Mad cow disease: 206 deaths worldwide.
* SARS: 774 deaths in the entire hysteria of 2002-2003.
Yes, I think some cynicism is in order.
TV news is going to switch to obsessing over some other story in a few days, and it will have nothing to do with the severity of the swine flu epidemic.
What we really need is another dead/disappeared blonde white girl to captivate the nation's attention.
But what if she dies of swine flu? The horror.
That only works if the girl in question has rich relatives.
Not that I agree with the panic-inducing techniques often used in describing these things, but a big part of the reason why things like Mad Cow and SARS killed so "few" people was that there was this agressive action to contain and protect against further incidents.
Also, as someone in the Toronto area, I can say that the level of SARS hysteria seemed pretty appropriate. After all, at the time, no one knew what it was, how it was transmitted, or how to treat it, and it was showing a high mortality rate among those who contracted it - including those who should have been best equipped to fight it off.
It's a shame America didn't export our cutting edge "Chicken soup/Dayquil/Diet Sprite" therapy in time to save more lives.
In all seriousness, it seems to me that when you don't know what something is, how it's transmitted, or how to treat it, hysteria is probably the least appropriate response.
Unfortunately, politicians are constitutionally incapable of taking a calm, measured response to any problem.
Are you trying to get me to leave my bunker?
The mortality rate was 10%, with a significant number of those infected requiring breathing assistance. Something a bit stronger than Dayquil is probably required.
Also, Ginger Ale is much preferred over Diet Sprite in these situations.
In all seriousness, it seems to me that when you don't know what something is, how it's transmitted, or how to treat it, hysteria is probably the least appropriate response.
I'd say that, in that case, hysteria is the least preferable response, while also being a fairly appropriate response to the mystery killer disease. I suspect I'm using "appropriate" in a slightly different manner than you are.
well, their excellent state-run health care system maybe could have something to do with it.
I don't really see the extreme caution here as any kind of failure, however, so we probably differ there.
(Yeah, I know. The Red Sox's ten game winning streak. I needn't have asked.)
EDIT: And if it makes the anti-hysteria mongers feel any better, the Post now has demoted Swine Flu to a spot well below the Specter defection and the imminent collapse of the Republican Party. Well, at least there's some good news out there....
And, yet, the level of hysteria still seemed appropriate?
Probably because 149 people dying in Mexico is barely news no matter what they die from. Hell, it seems like 25,000 people die in Bangladesh from a bus accident or kitchen fire every few weeks, and that's lucky to get a 2 inch blurb on the 18th page.
Really the only proper position to take on these disease shenanigans is that of extreme skepticism. When it turns out to be much todo about nothing, you can bask in your rightness. If you're wrong and it truly is a lethal pandemic, most of the people who heard you being wrong will wind up dead. Either way, you're looking good.
When it's also (as stated in the part you elected not to quote) "showing a high mortality rate among those who contracted it," then a certain degree of hysteria is appropriate. You'd rather people acted in a perfectly rational manner, no matter the situation, but that's just not going to happen.
Fear and hysteria are often appropriate responses to the unknown. They're just often not the most productive response.
You think you can get away from it on a baseball site...
What do we mean by "high" mortality rate? 3%? 5%?
10% overall, with mortality rates increasing with age. From wikipedia:
On a country by country breakdown, Canada actually showed a mortiality rate of 17%.
After 8 May 2003, there wasn't much more in the way of data, as it was mostly a matter of recovery for a few lingering cases.
Bunch of wimps. Probably because you guys misuse the word "appropriate" all the time.
Stop eating us
Or else -
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