i updated the achievements page with the football league winners:
-apparently unclewalt won 4 years in a row.
-i can't access 2016 data for some reason. does anyone remember who won? was it unclewalt?
-also, i can't figure out how to add another row underneath the football league row so we can add the B league results. at least i can't without likely screwing up the rest of the page.
Actually, I don't think we had a league last year.
oh, riiiiight.
Added in a row for the B league.
My 2014 Frozen Four bracket victory is not here? Discrimination!!
okay, i think unclewalt ALSO won the MLB league in 2015, but i can't look back at the history for some reason. can anyone confirm or deny?
Yeah, that looks right.
The league id changes every year so you need to get an old link. Old emails would have it I think. That assumes the old leagues aren't removed entirely at some point.
Not the case for the football leagues. There's a drop down on the Standings page that let's you select any year of the league's existence.
"Off-Season's Greetings" will take today off. If nothing unexpected happens, we'll get caught up tomorrow.
Carlos Beltran finally gets his ring. Nice. (Also Juan Centeno and Francisco Liriano!)
It's totally unfair, but this game, and in particular the last AB, is always what I think of when I think of Beltran in the playoffs. He even had a nearly 1.000 OPS for the series, but of course it's the SO looking with the bases loaded that I remember.
At least F-bomb got a couple of appearances, including a meaningful out.
No video of the future Mrs. Correa gettin her ring?!
I wonder what he had in mind for plan b on the proposal.
I'd guess day 1 of whatever post-WS vacation they have planned.
I proposed to my wife publically* in a similar situation and had no back-up plan whatsoever.
New income tax proposal out today. I felt like Homer in the frogurt episode reading through it.
"That's good. That's bad. That's good..."
Speaking from a personal-greed standpoint and not a policy standpoint, this would have been a better plan for me at basically every other point in my life, but without actually filling out forms, I'm pretty sure it'll raise my taxes if I understand the broad outlines correctly. Could potentially get grandfathered in on the mortgage-deduction piece, which might be the only thing that keeps it from being a tax increase. I generally agree with simple over complicated, but simple's not always better. Just in general, I'd rather see the mortgage-interest deduction gradually phase out at higher dollar levels, for instance:
Having it phase out at higher levels would seem to provide less incentive for people to make minimum payments on their mortgage and more incentive for them to quit paying money to the bank in order to get a tax deduction. I haven't heard the banks make a bunch of noise around this, but I feel like the mortgage-interest deduction makes a lot of money for the banks. Also having the mortgage-interest deduction gradually phase out would provide a disincentive for people taking out huge loans, while also providing some relief to people who live in expensive areas.
The $500K cap would have seemed comfortably high to me in the past, but it's now less than the median home price in my county (which is actually an inconveniently huge county encompassing both urban Seattle and tiny little unincorporated areas nearby and everything in between.) If that cap goes into effect, you might initially expect home prices to go down, but I actually suspect what will happen is that everyone who is grandfathered into their current mortgage will move heaven and earth to keep their tax deduction, which means more people renovating in place and even less inventory in a market with already historically low inventory, so pressure on marginal prices will still be high provided that the job market remains hot (and it shows no particular signs of slowing.) The cap is also kind of perverse (in expensive areas) in that the deduction is supposed to help people become home-owners, but it will make it harder for someone who needs a home loan to compete with someone who can come in with an all-cash offer for a $750K 3-bedroom house (which is a lot more people than I would have apparently thought in the past.)
I also wouldn't be totally opposed to just having the mortgage-income deduction get phased out for everyone gradually over time--I'm not sure it really accomplishes what it sets out to do. Phasing it out gradually would hopefully ease any shocks to people's personal financial planning, but it's hard to imagine it wouldn't hurt home values, which would hurt people selling a home to downsize in retirement. The best solution would be to go back in time and not institute it in the first place.
Okay, I have to laugh at the people who insist on paying a mortgage so as to save on your taxes. Sure, the mortgage deduction helps defray the tax cost a bit, but it's nothing compared to NOT HAVING TO PAY YOUR MORTGAGE ANYMORE.
I read an article on the tax plan, and I don't love it. I don't love that it's going to increase the debt. I'd rather have what's in place. The mortgage deduction doesn't affect me at all. I think I'm okay with increasing the child tax credit in lieu of the exemptions. At this point I have enough kids to where I actually don't pay any federal taxes (other than FICO, Medicare, etc).
I'd like to see more on the Corporate piece and what the expected effects are. I imagine the logic runs something like reducing the taxes for corporations will help lower prices for goods, but we'll see if that actually happens. However, I know that businesses typically pass tax increases on to consumers through higher prices. But that doesn't mean it will go the other way.
Initially, I don't love it, and I have concerns. We'll see how everyone else reacts to it.
I generally agree about the mortgage interest tax deduction, I'd rather not have a mortgage if I could avoid it. I don't think you can quite say that it doesn't effect you, though, because it increases the purchasing power of potential homebuyers, so it generally increases housing prices, so it has all sorts of implications from property taxes to rent (higher costs to buyers passed on as higher rents to tenants) to resale value.
In the past, the higher standard deduction would have been a nice touch, but this will probably be the first year it makes sense for me to itemize, so looking back through the outlines, I don't think there's a single change that helps me (won't eliminating the child exemptions offset the credit? not sure on that), unless changing the brackets helped, which I doubt.
Trying to avoid going into the FZ, but... I have thoughts. For now, I'll just put this one here:
As an attorney who does estate planning, I will always help my clients minimize any estate tax they might have, but the notion that we should get rid of estate taxes offends me. The present exemptions are more than $5 million per person. We literally are only taxing estates that are valued at more than 5 million, and they still get their first $5+ mill without taxes too, of course. The estate tax is the best tax we can have, and deserves to be loved, not loathed. It taxes money held by someone who it can not benefit (the deceased) and transferred to someone who did not earn it (the heirs). That's as fair a tax as can be assessed, especially with the exemptions.
Coupled with the fact that we prevent people with fewer assets from passing those assets to heirs when they receive medicare... we essentially are setting up an extremely regressive approach to inheritance.
I will say, regarding FZ-ness of this topic, I am engaging here because there are intelligent folks here, and it is nice to learn what people think the ramifications will be for individual filers. Less interested in the general discussion of whether taxes as a whole should be more or less progressive, or higher or lower, which I'm sure we all have our opinions about. For the purposes of this discussion, I am coming from the standpoint of the greedy individual who wants to know how his personal situation will be impacted.
To that extent, I think this is a good forum.
And, in a non-specific, non-FZ way, I'd suggest that the standpoint of the greedy individual should have at least some concern about the way the proposal affects budgets and society at large (which I think you get into too, so this isn't meant as a critique.) .
Mmm hmm.
At this point I have enough kids to where I actually don't pay any federal taxes (other than FICO, Medicare, etc).
You may want to take a look at the proposal. I think it eliminates personal exemptions. (I could be wrong.)
My problem with the mortgage interest exemption is that it can subsidize irresponsibility. Two people making $100k. One buys a $200k house. The other buys a $500k house. Why should the one with the bigger house pay less in income taxes?
Well, there's also the problem with applying the same rules across different housing markets. The person buying the $200K house might actually be overpaying relative to rental rates in his area, and the person buying the $500K house might be making a good financial decision considering rental rates in his area. Also, the person buying the $500K house might have a 25% down payment and the person buying the $200K house might be doing so with a 5% down payment, paying PMI and on a high interest rate. There's a lot that goes into whether or not buying a house is a responsible decision.
At any rate, I think we'd agree the incentive is for carrying debt rather than for owning a home (which presumably is its own reward?). And maybe I'm cynical but I think there are a lot of people (most people?) that don't really understand the math and just figure the tax deduction is somehow worth more than the interest they are paying. Hell, it's been hard to convince my wife of this, that is, it's been difficult to convince her that what we want to do is pay off the mortgage as quickly as possible ("but wouldn't we lose the tax deduction?" *facepalm*).
I generally have the same problem with all the interest deductions. On its face, it's a good idea to give tax relief to people with student loans, for instance, but it's hard for me not to believe that those deductions don't on some level contribute to increased tuition rates.
The person buying the $200K house might actually be overpaying relative to rental rates in his area, and the person buying the $500K house might be making a good financial decision considering rental rates in his area
Heh. The cost of my house in NOLA could buy me a mansion in peterville, MN.
Paying off the mortgage as quickly as possible is not necessarily what you should want to do, but not because of the tax deduction. It depends on whether you have higher interest rate debts to pay off or whether you can get better returns on your investments. At 3ish%, paying off our mortgage is near the bottom of our goals.
Yeah, at 3.125% we're working on paying off other debts that cost us a lot more, although we're making an additional mortgage payment per year. So, I guess we're doing both.
Yea, at 3.125 (I think) I am more inclined to out money into the Roth and the 401k first. Expected returns on those are more like 7 percent per year over the long run. That is way better than the tax-discounted 3.125 percent rturn on paying the mortgage down faster.
We paid off all our other debt before saving for a down payment and then buying. I prefer the known payoff of reduced interest payments to the unknown payoff of stock investments, which I am already invested in through my 401k max contribution. Call me risk averse but I don't trust the markets and paying off loans has worked well as a strategy thus far.
To each his own risk aversion. For my money, expected 7 percent with variance will beat the pants off of certain 3.125 percent until I am living off my investments.
I might feel differently if more than 30% of my minimum monthly payment was going to principal, or I was farther along in the term of the mortgage. I would also like a bigger margin of error should the housing market tank simultaneous with the stock market tanking--I recall this happening recently--having to sell stock at a loss to get out from underwater would be a really, really bad place to be. I feel good about our purchase but with prices going up 10%/year locally, it's hard not to be a little leery of another potential housing bubble.
Plus, defense wins championships. 😉
You know, we have a natural experiment on the effects of public policies on home ownership patterns. It's Prop 13 here in California.
Prop 13 basically prevents property taxes from going up on a property (basically true) without a reassessment (upon sale only).
It has had a big impact on commercial properties, which basically don't get sold in California any more. Instead, ownership of the companies that own the property changes.
In residential markets, it has caused property taxes on adjacent, equivalent properties to diverge based on different turnover dates.
Anecdotally, it has deterred turnover and incentivized remodeling/adding on. Not sure how deep the evidence is.
That would seem to line up with the incentives.
I think one of Gladwell's podcasts touched on this. Seems like a screwed up system that screws over newcomers to CA by protecting the oldtimers. Taxation without representation! You should pour IPAs in the ocean in protest!
Holy crap. I thought stress reaction was a fake injury? Seems like a long way to go to cover up a fake injury.
It used to be a fake injury. Now, it is an injury that fat guys get.
Some of you may remember my old roommate Q from the caucus at Minnehaha Falls.
He's a lifelong Astros fan, having spent part if his childhood in Texas. He was crushed by Lidge giving up that homer to Pujols (though not as bad as that ball was! ) so I'm really happy for him.
My other roommate is a lifelong Cubs fan. If trends continue, Twins for 2018 WS Champs!
I don't know what to do with myself as I'm bacheloring it up and there is no baseball to watch. Guess I'll go scrape grout from the tub surround to apply caulk where the contractor should have. Effing cheap bastards that couldn't just take the extra step to do it right. Get off my lawn.
Sweet jesus, grout removal is a pain in the ass. I'm going to swear a lot tonight.
I first read this as "gout removal."
I had to do that same thing when we redid our bathroom because the dumbass who did the grout didn’t even know that you need to use caulk by the tub, so I fee your pain.
The fact that I was said dumbass didn’t make it any better, either.
Well, you got what you paid for.
To entertain yourself, you should make a tiny man out of the grout and say, "I am grout" over and over again.
Just another reminder of how lucky my wife is to be married to me!
I love this far too much.
Hey, guys, Ricky Nolasco is a free agent! I hear his FIP is better than his ERA.
I suspect that if he'd gone up to the plate without a bat, pitchers would've thrown him a lot more strikes.
You didn't listen to it, did you?
No, of course not. I learned from facebook that you don't bother to pay attention, you just make comments.
Of, course, the Padre could have watched and still made this comment and been exactly right.
But the piece was kind of fun.
It is kind of an interesting thought experiment. Arguably Bois' simulation is unkind to Bonds--imagine doing this for a player with awful plate discipline. Pitchers wouldn't be throwing him strikes in real life, but he'd be taking swinging strikes that would get converted to balls for, say, batless Carlos Gonzalez, and he'd wind up with a really good OBP from all the walks from all the balls that he now isn't swinging at. But then surely there are some hapless hitters that no one is a bit afraid of, and they'd just get pounded because pitchers would be aggressively throwing them strikes.
In the end, I wonder if the fact that his simulated OBP is so close to his actual OBP reflects that the pitchers and Bonds were engaged in pursuing nearly optimal strategies of how often to throw strikes and which pitches to swing at.
If either was very far off, then you'd get cases like: Pitcher throws too many strikes in real life--would lead to good OBP in real life but poor OBP in simulation
"If you think you know, please go to the comments below and get into a huge fight."
I almost made it the whole game last night. Fell asleep just before the bottom of the ninth started.
hungry joe becomes the first two-time winner of the bracket predictions.
Effing Nationals.
Same, only Cubs
i updated the achievements page with the football league winners:
-apparently unclewalt won 4 years in a row.
-i can't access 2016 data for some reason. does anyone remember who won? was it unclewalt?
-also, i can't figure out how to add another row underneath the football league row so we can add the B league results. at least i can't without likely screwing up the rest of the page.
Actually, I don't think we had a league last year.
oh, riiiiight.
Added in a row for the B league.
My 2014 Frozen Four bracket victory is not here? Discrimination!!
okay, i think unclewalt ALSO won the MLB league in 2015, but i can't look back at the history for some reason. can anyone confirm or deny?
Yeah, that looks right.
The league id changes every year so you need to get an old link. Old emails would have it I think. That assumes the old leagues aren't removed entirely at some point.
Not the case for the football leagues. There's a drop down on the Standings page that let's you select any year of the league's existence.
"Off-Season's Greetings" will take today off. If nothing unexpected happens, we'll get caught up tomorrow.
Carlos Beltran finally gets his ring. Nice. (Also Juan Centeno and Francisco Liriano!)
It's totally unfair, but this game, and in particular the last AB, is always what I think of when I think of Beltran in the playoffs. He even had a nearly 1.000 OPS for the series, but of course it's the SO looking with the bases loaded that I remember.
At least F-bomb got a couple of appearances, including a meaningful out.
No video of the future Mrs. Correa gettin her ring?!
I wonder what he had in mind for plan b on the proposal.
I'd guess day 1 of whatever post-WS vacation they have planned.
I proposed to my wife publically* in a similar situation and had no back-up plan whatsoever.
*
And, as usual, Superior Colin got surly
I was super excited about this job opportunity based on the company name. But it wasn't what I thought. 😔
New income tax proposal out today. I felt like Homer in the frogurt episode reading through it.
"That's good. That's bad. That's good..."
Speaking from a personal-greed standpoint and not a policy standpoint, this would have been a better plan for me at basically every other point in my life, but without actually filling out forms, I'm pretty sure it'll raise my taxes if I understand the broad outlines correctly. Could potentially get grandfathered in on the mortgage-deduction piece, which might be the only thing that keeps it from being a tax increase. I generally agree with simple over complicated, but simple's not always better. Just in general, I'd rather see the mortgage-interest deduction gradually phase out at higher dollar levels, for instance:
$0-$5,000 (of interest) -- 100% deduction
$5,000-$10,000 -- 90% deduction
$10,000-$15,000 -- 80% deduction
etc.
Having it phase out at higher levels would seem to provide less incentive for people to make minimum payments on their mortgage and more incentive for them to quit paying money to the bank in order to get a tax deduction. I haven't heard the banks make a bunch of noise around this, but I feel like the mortgage-interest deduction makes a lot of money for the banks. Also having the mortgage-interest deduction gradually phase out would provide a disincentive for people taking out huge loans, while also providing some relief to people who live in expensive areas.
The $500K cap would have seemed comfortably high to me in the past, but it's now less than the median home price in my county (which is actually an inconveniently huge county encompassing both urban Seattle and tiny little unincorporated areas nearby and everything in between.) If that cap goes into effect, you might initially expect home prices to go down, but I actually suspect what will happen is that everyone who is grandfathered into their current mortgage will move heaven and earth to keep their tax deduction, which means more people renovating in place and even less inventory in a market with already historically low inventory, so pressure on marginal prices will still be high provided that the job market remains hot (and it shows no particular signs of slowing.) The cap is also kind of perverse (in expensive areas) in that the deduction is supposed to help people become home-owners, but it will make it harder for someone who needs a home loan to compete with someone who can come in with an all-cash offer for a $750K 3-bedroom house (which is a lot more people than I would have apparently thought in the past.)
I also wouldn't be totally opposed to just having the mortgage-income deduction get phased out for everyone gradually over time--I'm not sure it really accomplishes what it sets out to do. Phasing it out gradually would hopefully ease any shocks to people's personal financial planning, but it's hard to imagine it wouldn't hurt home values, which would hurt people selling a home to downsize in retirement. The best solution would be to go back in time and not institute it in the first place.
Okay, I have to laugh at the people who insist on paying a mortgage so as to save on your taxes. Sure, the mortgage deduction helps defray the tax cost a bit, but it's nothing compared to NOT HAVING TO PAY YOUR MORTGAGE ANYMORE.
I read an article on the tax plan, and I don't love it. I don't love that it's going to increase the debt. I'd rather have what's in place. The mortgage deduction doesn't affect me at all. I think I'm okay with increasing the child tax credit in lieu of the exemptions. At this point I have enough kids to where I actually don't pay any federal taxes (other than FICO, Medicare, etc).
I'd like to see more on the Corporate piece and what the expected effects are. I imagine the logic runs something like reducing the taxes for corporations will help lower prices for goods, but we'll see if that actually happens. However, I know that businesses typically pass tax increases on to consumers through higher prices. But that doesn't mean it will go the other way.
Initially, I don't love it, and I have concerns. We'll see how everyone else reacts to it.
I generally agree about the mortgage interest tax deduction, I'd rather not have a mortgage if I could avoid it. I don't think you can quite say that it doesn't effect you, though, because it increases the purchasing power of potential homebuyers, so it generally increases housing prices, so it has all sorts of implications from property taxes to rent (higher costs to buyers passed on as higher rents to tenants) to resale value.
In the past, the higher standard deduction would have been a nice touch, but this will probably be the first year it makes sense for me to itemize, so looking back through the outlines, I don't think there's a single change that helps me (won't eliminating the child exemptions offset the credit? not sure on that), unless changing the brackets helped, which I doubt.
Trying to avoid going into the FZ, but... I have thoughts. For now, I'll just put this one here:
As an attorney who does estate planning, I will always help my clients minimize any estate tax they might have, but the notion that we should get rid of estate taxes offends me. The present exemptions are more than $5 million per person. We literally are only taxing estates that are valued at more than 5 million, and they still get their first $5+ mill without taxes too, of course. The estate tax is the best tax we can have, and deserves to be loved, not loathed. It taxes money held by someone who it can not benefit (the deceased) and transferred to someone who did not earn it (the heirs). That's as fair a tax as can be assessed, especially with the exemptions.
Coupled with the fact that we prevent people with fewer assets from passing those assets to heirs when they receive medicare... we essentially are setting up an extremely regressive approach to inheritance.
I will say, regarding FZ-ness of this topic, I am engaging here because there are intelligent folks here, and it is nice to learn what people think the ramifications will be for individual filers. Less interested in the general discussion of whether taxes as a whole should be more or less progressive, or higher or lower, which I'm sure we all have our opinions about. For the purposes of this discussion, I am coming from the standpoint of the greedy individual who wants to know how his personal situation will be impacted.
To that extent, I think this is a good forum.
And, in a non-specific, non-FZ way, I'd suggest that the standpoint of the greedy individual should have at least some concern about the way the proposal affects budgets and society at large (which I think you get into too, so this isn't meant as a critique.) .
Mmm hmm.
At this point I have enough kids to where I actually don't pay any federal taxes (other than FICO, Medicare, etc).
You may want to take a look at the proposal. I think it eliminates personal exemptions. (I could be wrong.)
My problem with the mortgage interest exemption is that it can subsidize irresponsibility. Two people making $100k. One buys a $200k house. The other buys a $500k house. Why should the one with the bigger house pay less in income taxes?
Well, there's also the problem with applying the same rules across different housing markets. The person buying the $200K house might actually be overpaying relative to rental rates in his area, and the person buying the $500K house might be making a good financial decision considering rental rates in his area. Also, the person buying the $500K house might have a 25% down payment and the person buying the $200K house might be doing so with a 5% down payment, paying PMI and on a high interest rate. There's a lot that goes into whether or not buying a house is a responsible decision.
At any rate, I think we'd agree the incentive is for carrying debt rather than for owning a home (which presumably is its own reward?). And maybe I'm cynical but I think there are a lot of people (most people?) that don't really understand the math and just figure the tax deduction is somehow worth more than the interest they are paying. Hell, it's been hard to convince my wife of this, that is, it's been difficult to convince her that what we want to do is pay off the mortgage as quickly as possible ("but wouldn't we lose the tax deduction?" *facepalm*).
I generally have the same problem with all the interest deductions. On its face, it's a good idea to give tax relief to people with student loans, for instance, but it's hard for me not to believe that those deductions don't on some level contribute to increased tuition rates.
The person buying the $200K house might actually be overpaying relative to rental rates in his area, and the person buying the $500K house might be making a good financial decision considering rental rates in his area
Heh. The cost of my house in NOLA could buy me a mansion in peterville, MN.
Paying off the mortgage as quickly as possible is not necessarily what you should want to do, but not because of the tax deduction. It depends on whether you have higher interest rate debts to pay off or whether you can get better returns on your investments. At 3ish%, paying off our mortgage is near the bottom of our goals.
Yeah, at 3.125% we're working on paying off other debts that cost us a lot more, although we're making an additional mortgage payment per year. So, I guess we're doing both.
Yea, at 3.125 (I think) I am more inclined to out money into the Roth and the 401k first. Expected returns on those are more like 7 percent per year over the long run. That is way better than the tax-discounted 3.125 percent rturn on paying the mortgage down faster.
We paid off all our other debt before saving for a down payment and then buying. I prefer the known payoff of reduced interest payments to the unknown payoff of stock investments, which I am already invested in through my 401k max contribution. Call me risk averse but I don't trust the markets and paying off loans has worked well as a strategy thus far.
To each his own risk aversion. For my money, expected 7 percent with variance will beat the pants off of certain 3.125 percent until I am living off my investments.
I might feel differently if more than 30% of my minimum monthly payment was going to principal, or I was farther along in the term of the mortgage. I would also like a bigger margin of error should the housing market tank simultaneous with the stock market tanking--I recall this happening recently--having to sell stock at a loss to get out from underwater would be a really, really bad place to be. I feel good about our purchase but with prices going up 10%/year locally, it's hard not to be a little leery of another potential housing bubble.
Plus, defense wins championships. 😉
You know, we have a natural experiment on the effects of public policies on home ownership patterns. It's Prop 13 here in California.
Prop 13 basically prevents property taxes from going up on a property (basically true) without a reassessment (upon sale only).
It has had a big impact on commercial properties, which basically don't get sold in California any more. Instead, ownership of the companies that own the property changes.
In residential markets, it has caused property taxes on adjacent, equivalent properties to diverge based on different turnover dates.
Anecdotally, it has deterred turnover and incentivized remodeling/adding on. Not sure how deep the evidence is.
That would seem to line up with the incentives.
I think one of Gladwell's podcasts touched on this. Seems like a screwed up system that screws over newcomers to CA by protecting the oldtimers. Taxation without representation! You should pour IPAs in the ocean in protest!
You should pour IPAs in the ocean in protest!
I lol'd
Sanó will undergo surgery to have a titanium rod implanted in his leg later this month.
Holy crap. I thought stress reaction was a fake injury? Seems like a long way to go to cover up a fake injury.
It used to be a fake injury. Now, it is an injury that fat guys get.
Some of you may remember my old roommate Q from the caucus at Minnehaha Falls.
He's a lifelong Astros fan, having spent part if his childhood in Texas. He was crushed by Lidge giving up that homer to Pujols (though not as bad as that ball was! ) so I'm really happy for him.
My other roommate is a lifelong Cubs fan. If trends continue, Twins for 2018 WS Champs!
I don't know what to do with myself as I'm bacheloring it up and there is no baseball to watch. Guess I'll go scrape grout from the tub surround to apply caulk where the contractor should have. Effing cheap bastards that couldn't just take the extra step to do it right. Get off my lawn.
Sweet jesus, grout removal is a pain in the ass. I'm going to swear a lot tonight.
I first read this as "gout removal."
I had to do that same thing when we redid our bathroom because the dumbass who did the grout didn’t even know that you need to use caulk by the tub, so I fee your pain.
The fact that I was said dumbass didn’t make it any better, either.
Well, you got what you paid for.
To entertain yourself, you should make a tiny man out of the grout and say, "I am grout" over and over again.
Just another reminder of how lucky my wife is to be married to me!
I love this far too much.
Hey, guys, Ricky Nolasco is a free agent! I hear his FIP is better than his ERA.
I suspect that if he'd gone up to the plate without a bat, pitchers would've thrown him a lot more strikes.
You didn't listen to it, did you?
No, of course not. I learned from facebook that you don't bother to pay attention, you just make comments.
Of, course, the Padre could have watched and still made this comment and been exactly right.
But the piece was kind of fun.
It is kind of an interesting thought experiment. Arguably Bois' simulation is unkind to Bonds--imagine doing this for a player with awful plate discipline. Pitchers wouldn't be throwing him strikes in real life, but he'd be taking swinging strikes that would get converted to balls for, say, batless Carlos Gonzalez, and he'd wind up with a really good OBP from all the walks from all the balls that he now isn't swinging at. But then surely there are some hapless hitters that no one is a bit afraid of, and they'd just get pounded because pitchers would be aggressively throwing them strikes.
In the end, I wonder if the fact that his simulated OBP is so close to his actual OBP reflects that the pitchers and Bonds were engaged in pursuing nearly optimal strategies of how often to throw strikes and which pitches to swing at.
If either was very far off, then you'd get cases like: Pitcher throws too many strikes in real life--would lead to good OBP in real life but poor OBP in simulation
"If you think you know, please go to the comments below and get into a huge fight."
A perfect summary of the modern internet.