So I'm watching the MLB Network because I have a horrible addiction to getting hyped for every sport I love about the month before the season starts, and it's less painful than ESPN.
But it still sucks.
I'm watching the 30 in 30 deal where the panel talks about the Phillies upcoming season. Mitch Williams, brought in as an objective commentator with no ties to the team, decides to launch in to how the pivotal point in their rotation is one Cole Hamels. He explains Hamels's "let down" in 2009 thusly:
We thought in 2008 after Cole Hamels went through the post season, MVP of the divisional series, MVP of the World Series. He got caught up in all of this MVP hype. He's a young kid. At that time in your career, you don't want to say no to anyone. You think it's rude to say no. Bottom line is: he didn't get the work done in the winter that he needed to get done because he didn't say no, it caught up to him, and 2009 was a big disappointment.
John Hart -- who the network insists on showing with a Rangers logo every time he talks to make me cry -- agrees.
Well, I'm sure Mitch Williams not only knows Cole Hamels but does this psychoanalysis on his own. So let's see. Hamels struck out .05 more batters per nine. Pretty much the same thing, and, in fact, a little bit improved. He also walked .1 fewer batters per nine, again improvement, but not meaningful. Oh wait, here we go: HE GAVE UP .01 MORE HOME RUNS PER NINE INNINGS! Cole Hamels, you schmuck! You were so full of yourself you gave up a whole extra home run every 900th inning pitched. That's pathetic, man, stop buying in to your MVP hype.
So, atrocious collapse in home runs allowed aside, what else do we have? He actually approved his line drive rate by 1%, again an improvement but not much of one. His ground ball rate also improved by almost 1%. His fly ball rate was exactly the same. So, other than the fact that his home run rate skyrocketed, Cole Hamels was exactly the same pitcher, if not better in 2008 by all this stuff. That seems supported by his FIP being exactly 3.72 both years.
My gosh, what could have changed. Oh yeah, his batting average on balls in play. That thing he has almost no damn control over in any way whatsoever. Oh my god. It went from a very lucky .270 in 2008 to a very unlucky .325 in 2009. You see, Cole Hamels? Are you listening to me, douche? This is what future Hall of Famer (both baseball and psychiatry) Mitch Williams was talking about, dumbass. If you believe your MVP hype KARMA WILL GET YOU!
Seriously, though, I hate you, Mitch Williams. I hate you for getting paid more than I'll ever make to do less homework than I just did in five minutes because you cost your team the World Series once. Cole Hamels, inning for inning, was almost the exact same pitcher in 2009 as he was in 2008 (that pitcher is pretty awesome, btw). You, however, are too lazy/uneducated to actually figure out what was different about him, so you make up some nonsense that you know the masses will just trust because you played The Game and no one will challenge you on save an anonymous loser with a blog that no one reads. Get off my TV.
I really like Matt Vasgersian as a PBP guy. He's usually bright, speaks well, and keeps a game from being boring or brain-dead. So he's not usually the type of "bad sports journalism" that we tend to go after here, but, in the words of George Oscar Bluth: come on!
For when this video comes down, after the chilling footage of Brad Hawpe being taken off the field following an errant throw that landed on his head, Vasgersian tries to ease the awkward segue. . . and fails miserably. His response? Interrupting Mitch Williams's statement that you, "never like to see that," by asking if the EMT working on the situation is Donovan McNabb. Vasgersian is then reminded by his producer that he's live. As Billy Ripken says in appropriate response: "Dude. What's wrong with you?"
I am an idiot .. Save the racial stuff which is just flat out wrong, almost all of what has been posted on my regrettably horrific timing is spot on .. It was a bad decision made on live tv and i can absolutely understand how that make an announcer sound insensitive. Bad on the spot judgment. Nobody feels worse about it than I do guys.
I just tuned in to the midnight version of Baseball Tonight. Guess who stopped by? Why none other than Mr. PECOTA himself, Nate Silver: I'm guessing this is his "Soon I shall rule the world" face. Anyway, it was pretty neat seeing him. I do not know if he'll be a semi-regular but it seems as though BBTN just went "check" to MLB Tonight. Who will win this war? Who knows? I still think MLB Tonight has a few more pawns left. As long as the bar continues to rise, we should all be happy.
Also, did anyone notice how flustered Buck Showalter seemed when they made note of defensive efficiency? A Harold Reynolds moment, perhaps?
Bob Costas is doing the play-by-play on MLB Network right now for the Indians/Yankees game. I'm confused, because it automatically makes me feel like the game holds a significant amount of importance, like it's the playoffs or something. It also makes me feel like it's 1998.
24/7 baseball should be a good thing. 24/7 football is a good thing. Why? Because their studio shows aren't made of insultingly dumb opinions.
The MLB Network doesn't have this "skill," and here's an example of why in a video where their studio show takes on PECOTA.
(Sorry for the quality, I have no fancy devices.)
I'm going to respond to every stupid thing I see as it goes along.
First off, let me say this intrigues me. I was excited they were going to take a critical look at a "new" angle of baseball analysis. Being critical is good, but they really should be informed and intelligent before they do so, and they weren't successful in that regard. It's also good for them to introduce the baseball public to a little more critical thinking and better analysis, but their idiocy after the fact may have destroyed this attempt.
1:20: Our first problem: they give the silly triple crown stats as an example of PECOTA's projections and wins and losses for pitchers. RBIs and Wins and Losses are team stats, folks. That means you're including a minimum of 24 other players and their own set of variables in to the equation, thus lowering further the accuracy. While PECOTA goes ahead and projects these numbers, it's more interested (and useful) in projection what is actually in a player's control, and team stats are not. Nevermind the fact that batting average tells you very little and home runs only account for a small slice of a player's plate appearances. PECOTA gives you a full analysis of a player's performance, and focusing on such a small slice of the projections -- let alone an unimportant slice -- greatly misses the point. And as you'll see, that's a problem.
1:38: Matt Vasgersian seems like a smart guy, but the way he words these things, as Mrs. Grif pointed out, echoes a feeling that seems to come from baseball: that things like PECOTA seem to be seen by the baseball establishment as some sort of crazy Kaballah religion. Vasgersian also mentions the fact that Prospectus is more often than ont "on the money." As a subscriber, I know he's correct. Think Hug Me Harold Reynolds or Sean Casey are going to acknowledge this fact? Think again, silly reader!
2:13: It wouldn't be a baseball stats discussion without an inappropriate use of the term "moneyball!"
2:19: "I also think, too, baseball is greater than that!" Thank you for these empty words, Sean. When you're worried you might have a strongly supported statement, talk about the mysticism of The Game. That works for Joe Morgan!
2:48: "Stats are ridiculous!" See, Hug Me hates stats, and yet, I hear him cite them all the time. What he meant to say was, "stats that challenge the opinion I already have, and stats that I have not been brought up looking at, and stats that I might have to think about are ridiculous because I can't handle a challenge." Everyone looks at baseball stats, so everyone who decides they can throw them out of the window is being a hypocrite just because they're lazy. Not that there's anything wrong with being lazy, but there is something wrong with denying it and trying to pretend you're not lazy, you're just too smart to be bothered.
Reynolds comes off ridiculous, he doesn't even know what he's talking about but he talks anyway. What is he talking about with the Hall of Fame? I think he sees statistics as a simple set of numbers that don't tell you much instead of an objective record of just about everything that happens on a baseball field. He doesn't realize how unlimited they are and that most of what he talks about can be measured because he doesn't know anything about the subject. So why is he on a television broadcast talking about it, anyway?
3:06: More Hug Me ridiculousness. How does he know they got Youkilis wrong when the season hasn't been played yet? A PREDICTION IS NOT WRONG WHEN IT HAS NOT YET BEEN PROVEN WRONG AND BASEBALL PREDICTIONS OF ANY TYPE AREN'T REALLY EVEN UNREASONABLE AND YOUR STUPIDITY HAS CAUSED ME TO HAVE A DAMAGING STROKE AND I HIT THE CAPS LOCK KEY AND CAN NO LONGER USE MY PINKY AS A RESULT OF THE STROKE AND NOW I CAN ONLY TYPE IN ALL CAPS HAROLD REYNOLDS LOOK WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO ME!
I got my cat to hit the key. Still, I'm sueing. In any case, the Youkilis numbers do seem low, but they're also not the important numbers of a PECOTA projection, either. See, the problem is not with Reynolds questioning the numbers, it's with him not actually understanding the process or what it's telling him before opening his mouth, and dismissing them as wrong before it's possible to be wrong.
3:59: What is a quality .215? Is that like a team being a competitive 57-105? Is it better than a crappy .378? Does it tell you more than some crazy number like taking how often a player avoids an out and then adding that to something like how many bases he advances himself when he has an at bat? Maybe, but I think he's making it up.
4:11: This is just a curmudgeonly silliness. They'd rather listen to some dude who has done nothing but form a subjective opinion with his eyes over a couple games than someone who has put together an objective opinion over a full sample size using actual tangible evidence. And Larkin's insistence that an objective analyst can't tell you "why" is just nonsense. Does he think they just make up numbers as they go along and trust they're correct without actually having a real reason for arriving to them? Also, how does Sean Casey know the straw man has seen the player "with the game on the line?" What makes him think stats weren't recorded in that game?
5:02: Is there a place for stats or are they ridiculous, Harold? It seems like he thinks "stat mongers" should be allowed to exist just as some form of political correctness. Sort've like someone who thinks women have a place in the office, just not doing actual work. (Unless they're giving him a hug, of course.)
Also, this is how you know someone knows baseball: he smokes cigars and has gray hair. Remember this, folks. Also: note that none of these people have gray hair or cigars. I'll bet Bert Sugar knows a thing or two about rounders, though.
5:16: Barry Larkin doesn't actually know what "educated decision" means. Barry, someone who makes a decision based on an objective record of what a player has done in the past is, in fact, makin an educated decision. By the very definition, his decision has been educated by something (in this case: what the player has done playing baseball). It may not be as educated as possible, but it is educated. Just like watching a player for three games and making a decision off of what you see is educated.
5:48: It occurs to me than Hug Me is very much removed from the game if he thinks "at the end of the day" every team is just ignorin all these stats they've put together and leaning on one guy who looks like Red Aurbach to make their decisions, and that's clear when Larkin and Casey smack down his hilarious assertation. I think Reynolds sees stat guys as some folks who sit around in the front office and put together some numbers that everyone looks at with wry amusement and then ignore to the betterment of the club.
6:15: "It's what the game was founded on, I'm sorry." And there we get to the root of the problem: an aversion to change. The problem is just that it's different and not traditional, and Hug Me has a problem with something that is over his head, comes from "outside" the game, and messes with the way things have been done since darkies weren't allowed on the field and catchers caught fastballs with their bare hands to prove they were men.
It's just ridiculous that they take a neat concept and can't bother having an intelligent discussion on the subject. None of the players have a clue about PECOTA, they just talk anyway. Why do we only have a bunch of ex-players, anyway? Why not have someone there who knows about the topic? Another view point? Why not make sure all the panelists are educated on the topic?
They essentially presented the topic and then spent five minutes spewing empty words that sound good and make fans unaware of the subject go, "yeah, that sounds right!" And that's why the MLB Network is a tragic failure no better than ESPN. Why did none of them address the accuracy of PECOTA and talk about that? Because it would challenge their opinions?
And, as was already pointed out by Goose, this isn't an either/or thing. There is absolutely value in watching players and trying to find the things you just can't find in the evidence with the help of people who know what to look for. There is absolutely no reason NOT to look at numbers in a sport where they tell you so much, though, and there is a lot of reason to put more weight on the actual, objective evidence than anything else. Very few seem to understand this, though. To be fair, I think Larkin and Casey do to a degree, but Reynolds is just another type who thinks it's a "Scouts vs. Computers" debate and that you can't have both (and, furthermore, those robots will destroy the game if you give them an inch).
A challenge and discussion of the system and statistical analysis in baseball with an educated group would be great. The MLB Network couldn't be bothered.
But I love when they stand around on a fake field and tell me how to throw a ball to first base for 15 minutes!!!
Just because you think that there's much to be gained by studying the game of baseball in an objective way doesn't mean that you think the game should be played on a computer or that you hate baseball or that you don't watch baseball. It also does not mean that you oppose scouting information. I just find this notion absolutely ridiculous.
After watching tonight's episode of "MLB Tonight", I seethed. Now, there are many more things in this world to get worked up over (trust me, I do) but I just feel as though this notion of sabermetrics as some scourge upon the game. When someone, I'm looking at you, Mr. Reynolds, says that "stats are ridiculous", please be careful. You may not give a damn about exact park factors or what have you but I'm betting that the scout who discovered you projected how you would do by some kind of statistical profile. Perhaps I'm speaking more out of emotion (wait, someone into sabermetrics showing emotion? NEVER!!) but I really would hope the most vociferous of those who don't care for every little detail that is analyzed to step back and understand that regardless of how we look at the game, we are all fans. It has, in no way, ruined my love of the game and even before I heard of VORP or wOBA, I loved nothing more than spending hours upon hours watching that beautiful game. Right now, I'm watching Ken Burns's Baseball. There's nary a mention of some new stat. You know what, I just love it.
In the mean time, I'll take my amateur scouting and statistical eye (not to mention a dash of game theory, biomechanics, economics and psychology) and enjoy the great game without someone trying to pigeon hole me or assume a choice.
You've probably all heard of the MLB Network right now. I was a little skeptical at first, but it turns out it's a pretty cool and interesting show. They have little features such as "Dodger Blue" which tracks the Dodgers World Series Championships, and play rare, historic games such as Don Larson's perfect game. All that stuff is great, the "expert analysts" on the other hand... Well, here's what Jon Heyman had to say regarding Bert Blyleven and the Hall of Fame:
Bert Blyleven doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame... It's not about stats, it's about impact. He made only two All-Star teams, he won more than 17 games only one time. To me, he's a compiler, and not quite to the level of Don Sutton.
I like how he says it's not about stats, and then proceeds to mention how Blyleven only won more than 17 games once in his career. I hate to break it to you, Jon, but wins for a pitcher are a FUCKIN STAT! In fact, it's probably the worst tool for evaluation in all the game of baseball. I'm not a big fan of using "compiling" statistics, but I'll play this game. Blyleven compiled 64 more complete games, 127 more strikeouts, and two more shutouts than Don Sutton--all while throwing in 312 fewer innings. I really don't understand how people can say Sutton is deserving and Blyleven--who was better in virtually every way--is not.
Heyman continued the sentiment "it's not about stats" in reference to his support for Andre Dawson, Jack Morris, and Jim Rice as well. Whatever. If nothing else, this provides more hilarity (albeit frustraion, too) throughout the offseason.
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