51 thoughts on “December 16, 2013: We Sing it Out Loud, We Sing it Out Loud”

  1. There seems to be a problem with mlb.com's winter baseball site this morning, and I can't get at the box scores or recaps. I'll keep trying and will get to it if it clears up at a time when I have time to work on it.

    2. I don't like it as of 7:16 EST on Monday, December 16th. I will now spend the next four hours reading about possible replacements and make judgement later.

      1. My favorite part of the HoF trip I took this summer was the museum aspect - all the various bats, balls, gloves, cleats, hats, scorecards, etc from great moments in baseball history. The room with the plaques was the lamest part.

      2. I think part of it is just bad luck. You could see this coming a mile away--when these retirements were happening 5-6 years ago, it was obvious there would be a glut of qualified candidates, but a lot of the "small Hall" voters artificially tie themselves to voting for very few candidates per year.

        I generally feel like I'm on the "small Hall" side of things, but I could even see a case for voting 9-11 guys on the current ballot into the Hall and seeing the standards for the Hall rise as a result.

    2. so, his credentials are that he's been "predicting" outcomes for 30 years, and last year was almost right?

      1. And:

        I think the acid test of prognostication performance lies in guessing the fate of men who finish within 10% either way of being elected (i.e., who receive between 65-85% of the vote). Among such candidates, I have gone 50-12 (.806) in correctly predicting who would or would not make it over the years.

        1. and what would be the percent correctly predicted if one simply predicted "no" on all 62 of those cases?

          1. Here are the predictions for the 2012 election. Tallying that year and 2013 has him at 6-0. Predicting no would be 5-1.

            He does include percentages in his predictions.
            2012:

            Dude Predicted Actual
            Larkin 79 86.4
            Morris 66 66.7
            Bagwell 51 56.0
            Smith 51 50.6
            Raines 47 48.7
            Trammell 26 36.8
            Martinez 40 36.5

            Got the 'yes' right on Larkin, but quite low on the percentage predicted. Even worse prediction on Trammell.

            2013:

            Dude Predicted Actual
            Biggio 72 68.2
            Morris 63 67.7
            Piazza 58 59.6
            Bagwell 56 57.8
            Raines 46 52.2
            Smith 45 47.8
            Clemens 44 37.6
            Schilling 41 38.8
            Bonds 35 36.2
            Martinez 31 35.9
            Trammell 30 33.6

            6.4 off on Clemens and 6.2 off on Raines.

            It would be nice if there was a historical record to compare, but this is the best I have.

            1. point predictions on the percentages are pretty ambitious. I would also be more impressed if he were getting really close on the first-timers, since anyone with a ballot history has lots of public information available about likely vote shares (last year's vote share certainly strongly predicts this year's; and having multiple years of data surely provides the ability to predict even more accurately).

              But my generic point is confirmed by sean's quick-and-dirty. Getting one more "right" over the no-information prediction of zero elected is not all that impressive. My prediction (see what I did there) is that a lot of us could have duplicated his prediction of ins/outs.

              still, these kinds of things are fun to mess around with over a hot stove.

              1. I'd also add that I'd really like to see a bit more about how he determines who goes in his "acid test". Post-hoc observation of which guys fell within +/- 10 percent of the threshold? Or guys whom he predicted would fall within that range?

                the reporting on his "method" leaves a bit to be desired, but I guess that's not all that surprising, given that he's selling his "expertise" to the media.

                The way Deane does his analysis is to look at how many votes are freed up by a previous year’s election – Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven were elected in 2010 – and then estimating how that might impact the candidates in-waiting.

                Voters get to check up to 10 names on the ballot. How many ballots, on average, are saturated? My guess is very, very few (the average ballot has 6.6 votes).

                1. Or guys whom he predicted would fall within that range?

                  We can figure that out. He predicted Morris would have 63% but he got 67%. For the 2013 election, he states his record as 48-12. This year he states his record as 50-12. Assuming he's been consistent, his record is on players that received +/- 10%.

                2. The ballots are not technically saturated, but many voters have self-imposed limitations on how many votes they are willing to cast, just like some voters will basically never vote for a player on the first ballot.

    3. The worst thing for the Hall of Fame is for too few or no people to be elected. Without all that free press, the Hall loses a lot of traffic. If the trend is for less and less players to be elected, I wouldn't be surprised to see the methods for voting changed to encourage more Hall of Famers.

      1. like, say, a new committee to select veterans from the Expansion Era! They should totally do that.

  5. I was reading up on the protests in Brazil during the Confederations Cup and now I'm really interested in the history of South American dictatorships in the 20th Century. Just look at this graphic!


    Click to embiggen

    Does anyone by chance know of a decent overview of the region as a whole?

    1. This one looks promising: Latin American Dictators of the 20th Century

      ToC:

      Diaz - Mexico
      Cabrera - Guatemala
      Varga - Brazil
      Trujillo - DR
      Jimenez - Venezuela
      Pinilla - Colombia
      Matiauda - Paraguay
      Duvalier - Haiti
      Somoza - Nicaragua
      Suarez - Bolivia
      Arocena - Uruguay
      (Pinochet) Ugarte - Chile
      Videla - Argentina
      Montt - Guatemala
      Noriega - Panama

        1. I wasn't bothering to type out full names, so I just took the last word on each line and the country. Pinochet's full name is Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte. I just got going too fast and didn't register that the index said "Pinochet Ugarte". I saw two words and wrote the second one down blindly.

  7. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I just got emails with photos pasted into word documents and sent as attachments instead of the photos themselves.

    1. Apparently because the person doing my job before me told her to do it that way. Of course, there's a much faster way to do things that my previous counterpart didn't bother to learn.

      2. I'm assuming to the withers, like with a horse. [which would make him freakishly tall for a reindeer]

    1. I don't think I'm gonna get it read anytime soon, unfortunately. I have to return all my library books here before I go home for Christmas.

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