Salon's Kaufman accuses Kindred of 'ignorance'

Why is it useless to know how much better your shorstop is than the guy who would replace him? That's pretty basic - not gobbledygook.

I get it that you're the crusty, grouchy board elder, spouting your horse sense for all of us naive whipper snappers, but now I just think you're being willful and contrairian. I'm someone with a foot in both worlds, trying to meet you halfway, and you still refuse to give an inch on this.

 

Because you're not determining who's actually better. You're creating your own arbitrary mean and then measuring people by it.
You're determining who's "better" by using an arbitrary standard that varies from case-to-case to the point where the whole argument devolves to "Because I say so, that's why."

 

Many years ago, at the old Eliot Lounge, Charles Pierce and I invented a statistic we called the Totally Average, which we used to identify who were the most throughly mediocre players in baseball at every position.
It was a spoof, a gag. And now, almost 30 years later, it has become a serious statistical concept, part of VORP!!!!
Knowledge is NOT good!!!

 

Unrelated, but like MG's stat, I could see this coming true in 10 years. From the Brushback.

 

Isn't that the Mendoza line?

 

But this is part of the problem. Because two voters' "eyes" told them Jay Bell -- Jay friggin' Bell! -- was a Hall of Fame player. Whatever they gathered from their "years of experience," I hate to say it, is plain horseshit. It's as unrecognizable as a Martian hitting a fungo.

Nobody wants to believe it, but our eyes like to deceive us. Our memories often deceive us. That's a fact, and writers of all people should know that better than anyone. Researchers, reporters, historians and genealogists all can attest to that. Try to confirm some of the stories an old-time ballplayer tells; they're usually a little exaggerated. People misremember all the time, sometimes just because it's easier that way. It happens to all of us.

And while there is absolutely a place for subjective analysis and dominant perceptions in a Hall of Fame vote, or any other type of player evaluation, there's also a place for some kind of an objective truth that doesn't rely on a human being's faulty memories and inherent biases. Relying on your "two eyes" and your "years of experience" alone is just hubris, especially when deciding admission to a club people feel as passionate about as the Hall of Fame.

 

Brilliant!!!!

 

Because you have no earthly idea who would replace him, so you pull numbers out of the air to represent some hypothetical player who would. Therefore this stat does not do what you claim it does, not in any empirical, scientific way. When you introduce the arbitrary, it becomes guesswork.

 

You know, the answer lies somewhere in the middle here. Navigate the gray, people.

 

As a complete aside and one-time threadjack, I made a pilgrammage there in my 30s, I think it was, because of its reputation as a runner's bar (you'd never know from looking at me now, but I was a runner in school). Loved that place.

 

I made several pilgrimages to the Eliot Lounge back in the day because I was thirsty

 

wall street relied on mathematicians to create the mortgage-backed securities that ruined our economy. these brilliant 'experts' constructed these securities on their mathematical models of human behavior.

mathematicians, historically and notoriously, are isolated nerds whose grasp of numbers does not include a grasp of people.

and kaufman is ripping kindred and chass for downplaying VORP?

hahahahahahahahahah!