Letters to the Editor
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We need a real new stat!
I hate it when relief pitchers let inherited runners score! For cryin out loud (tm), the relief pitchers' job is to prevent those guys from scoring!
SO! My proposed new stat idea is to charge relievers half a run when they allow inherited runners to score, and to charge the earlier pitchers who put on the baserunners that other half-run.
We might wind up with half-losses in the overall stats. But we already have half-games in the standings, so, what the heck?
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I wish I had been there!
I wish I had been there when this exchange occurred:
Caller: "Remember when you played for the 49ers?"
Simpson: "Yeah."
Caller: "Yeah, did you kill Bill Walsh?"
That is one of the classic exchanges in the history of sports journalism. Is there some Prize the caller can win? I will chip in a few bucks. Let's make this happen!
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OJ Killed Two People, America killed 650,000 Iraqis - Wrong Subject
Why is anyone talking about this? Simpson is a petite murderer, a piker, a mere amateur. Bush, with the acquiescence, nay the the utter acclamation, of 80% of Americans, attacked and destroyed a country, killing nearly a million people.
These are the only murders you should be discussing.
WWIII has begun in earnest and Salon wants to talk about OJ. It's sad, but so american.
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it's not "blood money" if the Goldmans get it
Money gotten because a family member has died is called (in this country) "damages for wrongful death" and is routinely available in our legal system as well as many others.
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Let Us Not Forget
The cops lied their asses off in the Simpson case. The prosecutors and their witnesses must be 100 percent honest or we cannot blame a jury for rejecting them.
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You think THIS is the wrong subject. . .
Boy, would you be steamed if you read the gardening column in my local newspaper. They don't even MENTION Iraq. And in the Automotive section? Same thing. No Iraq. Just cars. So sad. So typically American, to have different sections of news publications address different subjects.
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BQR, Timbuktom
From your friends at www.baseballprospectus.com:
BQR - Bequeathed runs prevented from scoring. Measures how many more or fewer of the bequeathed baserunners subsequent relievers allowed to score than would be expected from league average performance in those situations. I.e., a positive figure means the following relievers kept more of the bequeathed runners from scoring than expected, negative means more of the runners scored than expected.
The real question is, why use BQR? Bequeathed isn't one word, and the eructatious BRPS hasn't been used. I'm guessing the letter Q is something you don't pass up when you have a chance to use it (which would also explain EqA).
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This new useless stat doesn't go far enough
As far as useless stats go, TP is a great one. I don't think it goes far enough though. Take the following case.
Team A makes a single transaction on each of the following days of a given week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of a given week. Team B makes 3 transactions on Wednesday of that same week. Teams A and B both made 3 transactions in the week, but Team A will have a higher TP because they spread it out over 3 days, while Team B did all of their transactions on 1 day.
What is needed is some way that takes the number of transactions on a given day into account, sort of like how slugging percentage takes into account how many bases were obtained, weighting home runs, triples, and doubles higher than singles, while batting average counts them all equally.
Perhaps you could make a companion stat, average transactions per day (AT/D). But that alone wouldn't give you the whole story either, a case could be made that a team with higher AT/D but a low TP is perhaps making moves according to plan than a team with a low AT/D but a high TP. So combine the two (like OPS).
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off the subject, but...
did anyone else notice that the Braves left 36 runners on base last night against the Astros? i can only find records for LOB over the course of a 9 inning game. The record according to the baseball almanac for a 9 inning game is 17.
anyway, 36 is a damn big number. HAS to be a record.
bye now.
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RE: noj and Braves
From the Box Score: Team LOB - 14.
They had 26 total people reach base. 11 Scored. 1 Double Play.
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oops
stat novice am i...that'll teach me to analyze box scores...sheesh
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If you're serious
Additional problems with the stat, which I for one have no interest in solving:
1. The difference between transactions caused by injury and those caused by ineptitude. The former would tend to make the team worse; the latter would tend to make the team better.
2. The difference between long-term and short-term transactions; i.e. the 60- and 15-day D.L. For example, the Angels lost Juan Rivera to a broken leg before the season started, necessitating one transaction moving him to the 60-day D.L. and sidelining him for the year. Even if someone on another team went on the 15-day D.L. three separate times, necessitating six transactions, they'd still get a lot more use out of him.
Of course, even talking about this makes me feel so very dirty, since I'm not out protesting the war. Why must I be so shamefully American? Why?!?
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It's really about creating stats for GM's
Tracking the numbers of transactions vs. wins is marginally interesting, but what does it prove? If the number is "good" or "bad", what does that really indicate?
What we're really looking for is a statistic to chart the quality of a General Manager. Are his transactions helping the team or hurting it?
I recommend the Neifi Index Ratio for Decisions in Sports (NIRDS). We start with King's Neifi Index, which determines if a player causes his team to win or lose when that player is on the field. We then average the Neifi Index for all of the players that a manager activates during the year and divide it by the AVERAGE Neifi Index of all players in the league. A score of 1.00 indicates that the manager's decisions have neither helped nor hurt the team. Since higher Neifi Indexes are bad, the higher this number is the worse the manager is, the lower, the better.
Now we can finally determine quantitatively if Brian Cashman or Theo Epstein is the better GM.