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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Thorton…Theophilus south? Wilder than anything you’ve evah read!
But not everyone has evolved the same way. There is a growing subculture of stats-crunching troglodytes among us, and I for one am frightened that these mouth-breathing, greased stained Gollums might actually be influencing something vital to our national interest. Namely, the 2010 Red Sox. They’re like the nerdy fanboys from “Galaxy Quest” being asked to use their ridiculously detailed knowledge of the show to save the world for real. I mean, consider Bill James, who is like a god to these Sabremetric trolls. He’s made an industry out of making up silly, useless formulae to prove things like Alex Gonzalez should be bussing tables in the Fort Myers Waffle House, and yet Theo has given him a position of power and influence in his inner circle. It’s the equivalent of my old Missle Command skills getting me a job with NORAD or my Bill Belichick building a gameplan around my Coleco electric football offense.
So as a public service to all like-minded fans, concerned Red Sox citizens worried about the direction the Nation is headed, I’d like to put my ex-Stat Geek skills to us and offer my own formula for judging all statisticians. Let’s call it the NSGR/MMUSRI (Nerdy Stat Geek Ridiculous/Meaningless Made Up Statistic Rating Index). You take any new, obscure baseball evaluation stat and you start with the weight of the guy who invented it, times how many days he’s been wearing the same “Han Solo Shot First” T-shirt, divided by how many times he’s had sex in his life, multiplied by how often his mom cooks his meals add how many days a month he sees the sun times the percentage by which he throws like a girl.
Then you throw them all out and go with what your eyes tell you. And stop wasting our time with this Sabremetrics foolishness.
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1. I Am Not a Number Posted: March 10, 2010 at 10:22 PM (#3476894)I'll bet Thornton scores infinity in this stat. That's pretty good.
Because this wouldn't have been complete without a touch of racism.
but they don't want it.
Is that racist? This guy's issue seems to be with defensive stats right? I mean, its incredibly stupid to suggest that Cameron, a great defensive CFer who has managed to play fulltime into his age 38 season is somehow a guy who wouldn't have been a good ballplayer in some other era (assuming he were allowed to play), but I don't think its racist.
He shouldn't quit the day job.
Rest assured I was on the internet within minutes registering my disgust throughout the world.
You didn't?
(185*0)/ (2,155*0)+ (15/0)
Its not if you use your head. But it feels right, nerdlinger!
Did Rainier Wolfcastle write this?
As I said, a touch. Interesting that all of his baseball lifers who would be successful in any era are white dudes, as is the body-snatched Jason Bay, while the replacement is not.
If this was going for straight belly laughs, it failed. If it was satirizing anti-stathead hysteria, well it don't think it really succeeded at that either.
BTW there's nothing racist about anything he said. Let's stop trying to find racism in everything people say.
Fair enough. Can I still find his reportorial decision that all of his "blue chip, proven, battle-tested baseball lifers who’d be winners in any era" share a common characteristic that the new import doesn't a questionable choice?
He should have picked Bill Hall or Beltre. Of course Beltre belongs in the Hunter thread.
I think the most striking thing about his "classification" is how most of the "blue chip, proven, et al" guys are appropriately decorated by Sabermetrics as well.
Well, to me it seems a variation on the old "gritty, gamer" tag that is not typically a province of minority ballplayers. Honestly, his grouping may have been accidental, in which case it's just kind of sloppy.
I think the mom cook's thing is supposed to go in the numerator.
Shut up you racist.
Why couldn't something like this have had the same effect on Rob Neyer?? (ducking)
This is more sexist than racist, why stop there? Picking on 38-year old ballplayers is age-ist, too.
Well, yes. Some post-neo types have even decided that old gritty players are cool--there's no limit to the strides we can make if we talk out of both sides of our mouth at the same time!!
It was a list of Red Sox so...
Anyway the whole article is a joke. If the perspective presented in the article is racist it is part of what he is make fun of. Or trying to at least.
I don't think you could actually add the two quantities since they have different units, and pretty crazy units at that.
But then, I made an amazing discovery. Something that the Stat Geek population doesn’t know and never will. Women. And it changed my life forever, in much the same way that Blossom’s life changed in that Very Special Episode where she gets her period, I would never be the same. As I recall, the exact moment for me came when Phoebe Cates climbed out of the pool in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and took her top off in slow motion to the Cars’ “In Stereo” that did it for me. What Phoebe showed me that day was perfection. I wanted to have them and I was willing to do what it took to get them.
- so then the author had gender reassignment surgery?
hmmmmmmm
perhaps this is why he/she is such a boob
With his range, he'd be more valuable in the kitchen.
I think it's satire, to be honest. For the love of my sanity, I hope it's satire.
I agree with this writer 100%. I wish he could influence more New Englanders to run the geeks out of town. It would have to go as far as replacing the owner, since he's a geek too. Then they could promote a real baseball man like Allard Baird ( he still works there, right) to run the team. That would be awesome.
You can't divide by 0, duh!
If I'm not the first to make that joke, I apologize, my eyes are bleeding from reading that, so I can't read any comments right now...
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