60 thoughts on “February 4, 2014: Final Four”

    2. I was wondering why he used the tone he used in the article. By the end I figured it was a satire on "thug" language. Awesome.

      (Or he always writes that way and I've only read him once before.)

  5. I don't want to alarm some of you, but TDO has skippered his team to the playoffs in my historic OOTP league for the first time.

    2. I recently did one, and I did one last year too, so I'll sign up but bump me to the bottom of the list, eh?

  8. I hate when a crossword answer might either be LEGAL, LICIT, or LEGIT and I can't figure out any of the crossing words either.

  10. Joe Pos took a look at parity in the four major US pro sports leagues, comparing them to one another and the English Premier League, the other day. It's worth your time.

    One of the things I found myself wondering was whether Pos was conflating competitive with equalityor fairness. There are certainly things in baseball that promote fairness - the reverse-order draft and compensation picks, revenue sharing, the salary tax - but there are others that essentially allow teams a great deal of leeway - local media contracts, ballpark revenue, no hard salary cap, unlimited free agent signing ability, major control over player development, etc.

    The distinction I'm making here is that a league that is competitive but unequal or unfair is one where the Rays, Twins, and Athletics can still finish ahead of the Yankees, Tigers, and Angels at the end of the season because they have discovered alternative paths to putting a winning team together. That the Twins can be so resolutely old-school while the Rays go the other route, and both clubs be successful (at least when bill Smith isn't running one of them) says a great deal about how baseball rewards teams who best utilize the resources they have. I don't see that with the NBA, or even the NFL. Both of those leagues seem to have much more limited avenues to success, both in the way the leagues have structured equality or fairness into their rules, but also in the way those games can be played on the court or field.

    1. but also in the way those games can be played on the court or field.

      Baseball is so dependent on having a well-rounded team, which is why I love it so much. You can have Verlander, Trout, and Mauer and still finish with 100 losses if the ancillary parts are subpar.

      1. This - so much this.
        "...the ancillary parts are subpar." Someone should make that banner with pictures of the Twins & Wolves roster (sans Mauer, Love, Pek, Perkins, Ricky ... ahh, Dozier?).

      2. That's actually one of the reasons I am on board with the intentional walk. Yes, you can take the bat out of a great player's hands in a big moment, but it is a team sport after all, and if you're not deep enough to make 'em pay with the next guy in the order, too bad.

        2. Baseball Prospectus once did a study many moon ago on whether or not it made sense to ever intentionally walk Barry Bonds. I don't remember the numbers, but they determined that even when Barry was otherworldly, it almost never made sense unless someone as bad as your typical pitcher was next, or if the game situation truly called for it (e.g. ninth inning, first base open).

          1. I didn't mean the really gratuitous situations, just the situational IBBs. Looking at the '04 Giants, using career splits for non-Bonds and estimating Bonds' non-IBB "true" splits for '04 (the more-human-than-human Bonds), I get the following back-of-the-envelope table:

            Player - Vs. P - OBP - Improved chance of making an out
            Bonds '04 - L - 0.535 -
            Snow - L - 0.368 - 36%
            Alfonzo - L - 0.354 - 39%
            Feliz - L - 0.304 - 50%
            Pierzynski - L - 0.291 - 52%
            Bonds '04 - R - 0.495 -
            Alfonzo - R - 0.365 - 26%
            Snow - R - 0.351 - 29%
            Pierzynski - R - 0.331 - 32%
            Feliz - R - 0.282 - 42%

            I'd guess there are a lot of "close and late" scenarios where adding a baserunner to increase your chances of making an out by 26-52% makes an awful lot of sense.

            1. Hardball Times 2010 piece by Studeman on Bonds and "situational wins":

              Situational Wins to the rescue. Let’s start with Bonds’ average Situational Wins per at-bat for each year in question. This is how much he contributed, on average, when the opposing pitcher didn’t walk him or hit him with a pitch:

              Year Avg SW
              2001 0.017
              2002 0.016
              2003 0.012
              2004 0.013
              Total 0.015

              Every time he was allowed to swing away, Bonds added 0.015 wins for his team. That’s a very good number. Keep in mind that the sum of all Situational Wins is zero—all the positive and negative events, all the wins and losses, cancel each other out—and that walks are a positive event for the batter. That means that the average at-bat, not including walks, is a slightly negative event. Bonds’ at-bats were positive by a good margin.

              These numbers give us an important baseline. The answer to “When should we walk Barry Bonds?” is simply “When the Situational Win resulting from a walk is less than his average Situational Wins in at-bats.” Intentional walks are a choice, and you know that if you don’t walk Barry Bonds, he will produce .015 Situational Wins, on average. If you don’t want to take your chances, then you should walk him when the impact of the walk will be less than 0.015 Situational Wins.
              ...
              By walking Bonds in high-leverage situations, managers clearly eroded the impact of his home runs. However, the decrease in home run impact was more than offset by an increase from those intentional walks. Bonds’ overall Situational Wins average rose in 2004.

              All Plate Appearances
              Year Avg SW
              2001 0.020
              2002 0.019
              2003 0.015
              2004 0.017

              As great as Barry Bonds was, we all lost our perspective in 2004.

              By the way, these calculations are based on league-average hitters. Say what you will about the likes of Alfonso and A.J. Pierzynski, they weren’t worse than league average at the time.

              To wrap this up, here is a table of all the intentional walks given to Bonds during these four years, broken into three groups (Okay, Maybe and No Way).

              WPA/LI Number Pct.
              Less than 0.016 199 70%
              0.016-0.019 21 7%
              0.019 and Over 64 23%
              Total 284 100%

              39 of the 64 “No Way’s” occurred in 2004.

              1. Here's the sort of thing that tends to make me roll my eyes:

                Quick aside: I’m oversimplifying things here, because when you do pitch to Barry Bonds you often wind up walking him anyway and that affects the baseline Situational Wins. I’m choosing to ignore that wrinkle for now.

                When you're talking about decisions that are close to the margins, it's that much more important to include all the wrinkles. I don't see any mention of platoon advantage in the discussion, and they are still assuming that the Giants are facing a league average pitcher and many pitchers are not league average. If I only have poor pitchers at my disposal, that makes Bonds even more likely to succeed, which makes the walk less costly.

                I don't know, I was really, really underwhelmed by the analysis of managerial decisions in Inside The Book.

                I agree that things with Bonds got carried away in 2004, but a lot of the worst intentional walks were pretty obvious ones--early in the game with no one on base.

  11. I just came across this article from last August. I think it's pretty interesting in retrospect, especially after (the seemingly forgotten) Richie Incognito fiasco this last season. I'm not the world's biggest believer in rampant positivity, but when the alternative is a culture of bullying, maybe it's enough to make a difference.

      1. World Cup years aren't always the best for pre-season friendlies, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is being arranged by SUM as a sort of trial balloon for whether or not MLS should expand to Minneapolis.

  13. After besting our "Furthest South" record of Key West last year by stopping at Ka Lae, where we saw a couple whales rounding the point. Tonight I best by "Highest Elevation" record (weather permitting, which looks like it will right now) by going to the top of Mauna Kea to see the observatories at sunset and then do some night sky viewing.

      1. I dunno. Shipping it around a lot means it will get "lost" pretty quick. Maybe someone hangs on to it and just sends a few pictures to the new winner. I'll nominate myself as the ring bearer.

  15. Much has been made of ManUnited's fall since last year, but I'm watching Fulham's FA Cup replay and wow are they crap. I know they just made a couple moves in January, but it's hard to believe this was a top ten team just a couple years ago.

  17. fell down a rabbit hole. I'm watching Odessey and Oracle Revisited on teh Youtoob. Oh. My. God. What a great album. So great to see them play it live at last (even without Paul Atkinson, RIP).

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