Just sayin'

Then you should be delighted that Epstein has quit the Sawkx.

Though his claim that he "might leave baseball behind, entirely" is hog-wash.

He'll be in Tampa by next year - aught-six - I would guess. He'll take on the challenge of building in a team in his moneyball image.

Hubris, no?

Which, the story you just made up, or your attempt at predicting the future?

Both.

So what's the point of this thread? Mark is jealous because ESPN's baseball headlines are all about Theo Epstein instead of the White Sox?

No, they're just all idiots. I didn't even know Epstein was one, didn't realize part of sabermetrics was to not bother getting a bullpen.

So what inspired this thread? Now I'm actually curious, since the Epstein news is the only thing that seemed timely.

Silly Tigers fans, using Sabermetrics in a horrible attempt to prove the Indians were better than the Sox. This is how the argument starts, "1 their Pythagorean W-L is 91-71,"


seriously, these people are insane and should be shot immediately(sabermexicans and detroit sports fans)

Weird. Why would Tigers care?

Are what proof were they using? Did the Indians have a higher run differential or something like that? That means the Indians won more blowouts and the White Sox won more close games, or vice versa. They can't take away the fact that you won the division and, even better, the World Series.

haha yeah that's pretty funny. yeah, they're better even though they lost. right.

"their Pythagorean W-L is 91-71, their actual w-l is 99-63. this number is based on the amount of runs scored vs runs allowed, if you score the same amount as your opponents, you should be a .500 team, if you outscore your opponents by x amount of runs, you should be x games over .500 etc. the white sox had a +8 differential, which means that they were lucky to win 99 games. the indians ended up with a pythagorean w-l of 96-66, 3 games worse than their actual. if luck didn't play a factor, the indians would have won by 3 games."

i dont even know how you respond to something like this.

Ask them to define luck.

I think sabermetrics has it's place. As over-hyped as Moneyball is, I'm not sure the A's would have been able to be successful without it. The big market teams can play small ball and get away with it but the sabermetrics of Moneyball has to do with finding a strategy for being successful when the odds are against you.

Certainly the best team won this year and Sabermetrics aren't going to win every time but it's an interesting perspective and strategy nonetheless. Now, saying the Indians are better than the Sox because of some formula is ridiculous. There were 162 games to determine who the best team was which is more than enough sample to come to a conclusion.

wow, that's just some fantasy bullshit.

Good god that is fucking stupid. The proper response is to call them a bunch of Rotofaggots.

I know baseball harbors stat geeks, but it's people that spew shit like the above that absolutely ruin the game. We're already over-statted to death.

Boobs invaded the comments section at detigers.blogspot.com?

Even the 162 games don't determine it completely, if you assume the World Series winner is the best team. This is the first year since 2001 that the World Series winner even won their own division.

Terrible. This doesn't factor in who was pitching when the runs were scored, how many games each team played against teams with the lowest point differentials, etc. You can't possibly just say that because one team had a higher point differential, they're better. There are so many other factors that play into it.

My response was simple sarcasm, "The Tigers actually won 170 games last year and the Lions are already 10-0."

to which he replied about 4 pages of other retarded stats that I didn't read.

It's not that stupid. It makes sense on paper: a team that scores the same amount of runs that it allows should be, on average, a .500 team. But that doesn't mean they will be. If there's four games in the season, you could win one 10-1, lose one 1-0, win the third 3-2 and lose the third 4-3. You scored 16 runs and allowed a paltry 6, but you're still a .500 team.

Your 2003-2005 Paper champions: The Chicago Cubs.

But it is stupid because it's a bunch of dipshits (who never broke in a glove) masturbating over their Rotisserie teams. It's Dungeons and Dragons for high school team managers.

Yes it is. I never understood D&D freaks but now I sort of do.

I had a similar reaction when reading the article, but I'm fine with these dipshits continue to pore over stats which are essentially meaningless.

There's a guy here at the paper that used to bring up the argument that Cal Ripken wasn't HOF material since he was no better than Toby Harrah or Roy Smalley statistically. Maybe the streak was detrimental to the team and his career, but Cal was quite simply one hell of a ballplayer, which doesn't show up nearly as well on paper.