2016 MLB Regular-Season Thread

Yawn.

 

What's that narrative again now?

 

I feel sorry for Rick that he can't find people to talk baseball with.

 

I'm not sure what his issue is here, other than reflexively deciding that other humans are big dumb-dumbs. I acknowledged the Fangraphs skepticism. I said it would be interesting to see if Sale can keep up the success with this alleged new approach. I'm not sure what particularly narrative Rick is being condescending about.

 

He'd explain it to you, except you're not worth it.

 

Ordinary.

 

I'm not sure what else I could have done to please him.

Oh, well. *Shrug* I still kicked his ass seven ways from Sunday predicting the Obamacare decision.

 

I don't think we can keep ignoring the Drake LaRoche factor.

 

Sabermetrics hate him! How Chris Sale beat FIP with one simple trick! Ancient secret rediscovered!

Some bullet points:

- whenever you are a fan of a team and you start coming up with justifications why your player that statheads say is overperforming is actually just fine, at the very least acknowledge your inherent bias and realize you are on the side of an argument that has lost a lot more than it has won. Maybe your guy is the special snowflake, but probably not.

- if Chirs Sale has come up with a way to perform at this level long-term, that becomes sabermetrics too. The heart of sabermetrics is simply examining what works, and if it works it works. It just isn't ready to declare "it works!" after nine games.

- Reducing strikeouts to also reduce walks and go deeper into games has always been a legitimate strategy that sabermetrics never argued with.

- Moneyball is also an oversimplified faux conflict. That's what Michael Lewis does. Yes, I know that an annoying generation of fans including myself took the book at face value and became annoying, but it simply isn't representative of how either sabermetrics or baseball organizations really work.

- Sabermetrics never said anything about always throwing 98 MPH. There's a whole section in previously mentioned book about getting pitchers who get outs by any means necessary and not just flashy, visually obvious ways like velocity.

- "Pitchers don't have control over batted balls" is an oversimplification. Some would say an oversimplification to the point of uselessness, but that's a subjective judgment. I think it has some value because the real truth ("pitchers have some control, but not as much as traditionally assumed and it can easily be overwhelmed by short-term luck.") is still not universally accepted. FIP is an ugly kludge of a stat, but here's an empirical truth that you can't avoid: It predicts future runs around better than ERA does.

 

You think I'm stupid, but I'm not.

I'm smarter than you.

 

I'm not worried about your brains. I'm a little worried about your emotional state. You've been acting weird and attention whore-y lately, which is usually a sign that things aren't going great.

But believe it or not, my original post wasn't about you personally. Not everything that involves you has to be entirely *about* you.

 

Fuck you.