Steve Goldman: A voice in the interlocking wilderness…an oasis of Pinstriped Biblical truth.
Yes, Rivera is a Hall of Famer and one of the greatest pitchers of all time, but both of those phrases require this qualifier: “in his niche.” He is one of the greatest pitchers of all time in his niche. That niche, closing, has been given a lot of exaggerated importance because of the saves rule and the persistence of the idea that losing a game in the ninth inning is somehow worse than losing it in the first inning, or the third, or the fifth.
Rivera has, of course, been exceedingly valuable to the Yankees, not because he was saving games, but because he was pitching scoreless innings, and doing so more consistently and reliably than any other reliever in history, be it setting up or closing, regular season or postseason. We can and should give him credit for pitching in pressure-filled situations, but even then, the value is in the scoreless inning, not in the save—the difference between Rivera’s saves conversion rate and that of the typical closer is unremarkable.
Let me pause to boil that down: Rivera is a Hall of Famer because he gets outs, because most relievers, including closers, have very short career peaks and are not reliable from year to year; he has been the most reliable pitcher of all time. The saves, the ninth-inning stuff, it’s the smallest part of his value.
...No matter how beloved Mariano Rivera is (not least by me), no matter how great he has been at what he does, if a team can’t find a way to reassign 39 innings out of 1450, it wasn’t going to win anyway. This is a sad day for the Yankees and for baseball, but it’s impact on the winning effort should be minimal.
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1. RMc and His Roster of Rubbish Posted: May 04, 2012 at 07:16 AM (#4123234)Firsts!!
And I wonder what kind of odds we could have gotten a year ago that Derek Jeter would be the Yanks' runaway MVP at this time in 2012?
I can't wait to see "guy who can stand upright" on the Yankees.
AKA: Not Eric Chavez
Pardon?
I'm 100% confident that the results of a championship season have never been determined by which inning the deciding runs of a game, or games, were scored.
In terms of mannerisms, Robertson seems like a worth successor to Mo. Hopefully the 2012 walk rate is sustainable, because that was really the only flaw in his physical game.
The bigger problem is losing Robertson from the 8th inning, where Rafael Soriano is being paid something like 10 times as much to be not as good as Robertson. That being said, the one thing Joe Girardi has done exceedingly well since becoming Yankees manager is build the bullpen, and I think they can weather this injury on the field.
But it makes the team less fun to watch.
Anything other than this is just stupid wordplay on Goldman's part. Seeing how (barring forfeits) it's impossible to lose the game in the first inning.
And as I said in the other thread,
2011 WPA:
Robertson
Rivera
Sabathia
....all the gnashing is moot anyway. *Who* exactly is going to stop the Yanks from grabbing the first (nevermind the second) WC?
Do I have my Yankee hater glasses on here, or have the NYY's been remarkably fortunate at avoiding costly boo-boo's in the Gift Basket Era, even as the one team in US pro sports best equipped by resources and rules to overcome them?
That's a silly way to look at it. You have 9 chances to score, and the opponents have 9 chances.
This is not soccer where a team goes into a shell with a 1-run lead, and need to "react" to a lead change. Teams keep trying to score with a lead.
Losing b/c you give up 4 in the first and only score 3 is exactly the same as taking a 3-0 lead into the ninth, and the closer giving up a grand-slam.
Toronto
Boston
Los Angeles
Right now it's a big honkin' mess in the American League. There is the potential for a really wild race. I think Texas and Detroit are pretty safe but after that I see five teams for three spots. Everyone has holes but I don't see the Yankees as any sort of lock. Cleveland probably belongs in there too. I'm not a believer in them but I won't be stunned if they get to an 87 win season and sneak in.
I agree with this. I also suspect that, by season's end, the consensus will be that the second wild card team (whoever that is) has no business being in any postseason funfest.
I never feel that the Rangers are safe; but in a world where Mitch Moreland is out-hitting Albert Pujols, many things can happen :)
My exact position when I look at the two Boston teams who would have grabbed those WC spots in 2010 and 2011.
Five weeks ago I would have said that a 92 win team could wind up staying home. Right now I think 87/88 wins might be the #2 slot. LA, Boston and New York have all come out and in varying degrees laid eggs.
BDC - Life of a fan, it never looks as good as it is. #### happens but the Rangers are the best team in baseball, enjoy this, longtime Ranger fans have had this coming to them.
Not if you go by likelihood of win (WPA) ... and it makes more sense to go by that.
Game context matters to play result value. That's why the Shot Heard Round the World wasn't only more dramatic than if Thomsen had hit a 3 run HR in the first; it was more valuable.
Obviously a 3 run homer in the 9th inning of a 4-2 game is more impactful to that game than a 3 run homer in the 1st inning.
Game context matters to play result value. That's why the Shot Heard Round the World wasn't only more dramatic than if Thomsen had hit a 3 run HR in the first; it was more valuable.
Why should the conditional probability matter? A game that you lose when you had a 99% conditional win-probability counts exactly the same as the one where you drop to 5% in the top of the first, and never rally. There is no reason to think scoring early hurts your ability to score or prevent runs later on. In fact, the early runs may be more valuable to winning prob., b/c they keep the other team's best RPs out of the game.
Ex-post, Thomson's HR would have been just as valuable if hit in the first. You're confusing the change in probability with the end-state. Every game ends with a 0% or 100% win prob. The value of a deciding run shouldn't vary based on timing.
How? If the other team is only going to score 2, then those first 3 runs have the same impact whenever they are scored.
There's virtually no link between offense and defense in baseball. It's not like "two-way" sports where score has a big impact on strategy.
To the extent that scoring does impact run prevention, or further run scoring, it would seem that early runs have a positive impact on your own run prevention, and a positive impact on your own scoring, because teams use better pitchers with a lead than when behind.
Yes. You. Can.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201204210.shtml
True. But, I think studies have shown no "hangover" effect from these losses. The loss feels bad, but teams don't go on to lose other games b/c of it.
Really? Cause I see a ninth inning was played. They didn't stop playing in the eighth.
You're not fixing the runs scored, and arguing (also correctly) that if you still have chances to score*, you can't technically lose a game earlier than the ninth/extras.**
* The problem with this angle is you can't really lose, from a pitching perspective, any game on the road.
** To be 100 percent accurate, you can lose a game any time in the fifth or later if the rains come.
Look at the win probability graph, they might as well have.
It's ridiculous to say the game wasn't lost until the 9th. That's saying it's the offense's fault they didn't put up a 6 spot in the 9th, rather than the bullpen's fault for giving up 14 runs in the 7th and 8th.
But why wouldn't you fix the runs scored in an ex post analysis?
Are people saying that if the team hadn't had the lead, they would have scored more?
Because seasons are played in 162 individual units, not by aggregation.
A game that you lose when you had a 99% conditional win-probability counts exactly the same as the one where you drop to 5% in the top of the first, and never rally.
Sure, but why would you ignore the various game states along the way -- particularly when managers don't? Managers put in the 12th man on the staff when they're down 10 in the 9th; they put in one of the best guys on the staff when they're up 1 in the ninth. The game states provide valuable information.
Ex-post, Thomson's HR would have been just as valuable if hit in the first.
I don't see that. I see change in win probability as a really good measure of "value" that should be deployed even more than it is. Hitters hit and pitchers pitch in particular game state contexts. Maybe that's wrong, but I don't see how. Perhaps there's a better term than "value" to describe what the changes in game states really are.
But, those manager actions mean that early scoring leads to more expected scoring for your team, b/c you face crappy RPs. That would make the early runs more valuable, not less. Likewise, early runs let you leverage your best RPs, and reduce expected runs allowed.
If a team could know with certainty how many runs they would score in a given game, that would be a huge advantage. i.e. if one team batted 9 times, then the other batted 9 times, you'd always want to bat first. It allows you to optimize pitcher usage, and deply defensive specialists.
Agreed, but all that should be captured by the game state inputs into WPA.
Why should there be animosity? Adults should be able to debate anything about baseball without taking it personally.
Because we're humans. And an inability to get the other person to understand what you're trying to communicate leads to frustration, and frustration leads to animosity. Animosity leads to anger and to the Dark Side that leads you.
So drop your cable and get DirectTV
Do you feel sorry for every Yankees catcher, first baseman and right fielder since Berra, Gehrig and Ruth? I'll resist the temptation to add every future shortstop. :)
Sure, if everything else in the game had transpired exactly as it did otherwise---which of course would've literally been impossible. When Thomson hit that walkoff homer, the Dodgers had a zero percent chance of winning. Even coolstandings.com could've predicted that.
But if Thomson had hit a three run homer in the first, the entire nature of the game would've been transformed, and there's absolutely no way of predicting what might have happened. Newcombe might've been rattled to the point where he made an early exit, and the Giants might have won in a laugher. Or the early deficit might've awakened the Dodgers out of whatever complacency they'd carried over from their 10-0 win the day before, and they would've pounced on Maglie early while Newcombe settled down. Both of these scenarios
But in any event the Dodgers' chances would've still been greater than zero percent. None of these "first inning homers are just as valuable as ninth inning walkoffs" statements take this into account. They simply ignore it and go on with their absolutely irrelevant hypothetical exercises. It's as if you said that a presidential assassination is no different on the first day or the last day of his four year term, as if everything in between wouldn't have been affected.
And yet, you have me on ignore...
I was going to say "because he only pitches 60 innings a year," but I see Goldman covered that.
Huh? The premise is that you've already lost it.
Yup, Jeremy Giambi is available.
I'd personally feel much, much sorrier for the next Yankees' shortstop, since you'd have to be in your 60's to remember even Berra at his peak, and you'd have to be Roger Angell's age to remember the Babe. And if Robertson can close as effectively as he's been able to hold, I don't think too many Yankee fans are going to be on his case too much.
And yet, you have me on ignore...
Not currently, no.
And when you were, it was because of personal insults, not your opinion on any issue. Certainly not an opinion on baseball.
I try very hard not to engage in personal attacks, and only debate things on their merits. But, I won't stand for being insulted (I don't know how Ray stands it here sometimes). I can either disengage from the person, or lash out myself. I don't want to lash out, so I may leave a thread or ignore a person.
I ignored you precisely to avoid inreased animosity.
There's no evidence that major league baseball players are affected this way.
The computer simulations win and lose games in just the same way.
I made one throw away joke about the phrase "NRA member in good standing", in the same thread where people were flat out calling you a bigot. You turned around, called me an ass, and put me on ignore...
Personally, I just find that hilarious, YMMV.
I'm jus sayin.
Personally, I just find that hilarious, YMMV.
I'm fairly certain that wasn't the line that set me off, but let's just drop it. No point in dredging up unpleasantness.
I'm jus sayin.
That was really just a throw away line. The main point was that the game was, in fact, lost in the 8th. Of course, Boston could have come back (just like NY did) and then the game wouldn't have been lost in the 8th.
Well, 20 seconds of googling the only other part of the post that 'set you off' was a quip on the typo on 'demigogues'. Not exactly beyond the pale IMHO...
But dropping it now. Promise.
CAN YOU HEAR ME?
I don't think there's any way to tell if someone has you on ignore. This site has a gentle touch that way.
Click on their user name, and their profile appears. On their profile, click "Ignore Member".
No.
Damn, and I like Shooty.
I've always wondered what YMMV stood for, but never thought about it until now. The first phrase that came to mind was "you make me vomit", but since that didn't fit the context here I finally looked it up. Question answered.
On a related note, Herodotus was apparently shocked to find that Persians sought out private places to vomit and defecate, which leaves me curious about how Greeks handled that stuff.
Brian Cox: What is this Hope?
Gwyneth Paltrow: Jesus Christ dad, you scared the #### out of me!
Cox: Hope, you've no business being in here. This is my masturbatorium....and you're using my blanket.
Gwyneth: I was just taking a nap
Cox: Nap? This is not the place for naps.
Young boys and grape leaves, Greg. Young boys and grape leaves.
I thought that was the whole point of the internet.
Feel sorry for the next one. But things will fade over time. I'm pretty sure Mickey Mantle had to deal with a lot more crap for not doing some things as well as DiMaggio* than Bernie Williams had to deal with for not being as good as either of them.
*While Mantle was the better player, DiMaggio did certain things better like playing defense and making contact.
And after beginning 2012 with an ugly blown save and loss in St. Pete, in his 8 appearances after that he's allowed no runs, 3 hits and no walks in 8 innings, averaging 13 pitches per inning.
Police believe sabotage was involved.
The difference is that in baseball the games are largely random and that the end of a game when you happen to have a lead is very valuable (especially the 4 or 5 out save where Rivera would get out of an 8th inning jam). The strategic advantage of being able to choose exactly when to finish off as many wins as possible is the key. How many wins better than some other reliever through the course of a whole season in these situations is another debate.
Put another way would you use Rivera in a 10-0 blowout? How do you know if the game will be a blowout in the 1st inning? You can use Nick Swisher to finish off a blowout but you would want an actual pitcher if it's 1-0 in the ninth.
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