Country Sad Ballad Man

Country Sad Ballad Man, originally uploaded by bmichaelpayne.

Over at Blastings! Thrilledge, our former ex-bff observes that

A lot of calculations and projections are necessary to prove anything,

which is as useless a thing as you're likely to read in the Internets these days. It's like saying, "Everyone agrees that the best way to convince someone of something is to make them agree with you," a double x double quadruple whammy if there ever were one. (There's not.)

This statement, which starts off a generally un-statty post (which we like over here) is the calling card of the whole troubled modern statistical movement in baseball. If the sports writers would just look at Burt Blyleven's numbers, man, then it would be clear to them that... Well it's not clear. And no matter how much data you sling, you're never going to convince anyone. Or, as Ben said to Jack back in season two, I don't want you to do the surgery. I want you to want to do the surgery. You have to change the whole worldview, not merely change a few data points. You have to make them want to want the data.

Thinking men from Plato to Kant to Wittgenstein (and even that baseball Nietzsche Yogi Bera saw this one) have seen through the sham simplicity of the naive worldview, a myth. If you're a Platonist, the formal world that is the real source of real meaning (wtf!?, right? What is that even like?) is the operative thing-like thing that most people miss out on when they're looking at the world. Or, the imaginative faculty that unifies the manifold of apperception (if you're Kant), is what makes the world make sense. Or the grammatical hinge propositions that structure your form of life, say Wittgenstein, are the things that give it meaning. The source of meaning, though, not to be an irrealist, is not the world itself, but rather the unique and capricious interplay of other peoples' worlds (i.e., intersubjective validities) with your own meaning-structure. And the Sabremetrician virgins living in their moms's basements eating the Doritos etc., etc. always fail to grasp (well not that FJM, master of irony) that most people remain impervious to the convincifying powers of numbers. Numbers numb us.

It's like saying that America spends X dollars per minute, which dollars could stretch to the moon and back five times. That doesn't mean anything to most people. And saying someone is worth x wins above replacement (it's a simple concept, but so is not smoking drain cleaner and pseudofed) fails to mean anything to most people. But watching Derek Jeter make one scraptastic, jumping-all-over-the-fucking-place, limited-ranged catch and putaway sticks in the mind. That's why analysts are fond of saying that seeing a guy play every day is an advantage w/r/t analyzing the game. It's not, if you're statistically inclined; but to the observer, the way he makes sense of it all is to remember certain special moments, and file the rest away (in the circular file). It's the same reason why ex-players sort of suck as coaches or general managers or whatever. They tend to universalize the few particular events that happened to them, and take this specific-universal knowledge as their starting point for analysis and decision making. Which, to the egghead stat doofus, is a poor way to go.

But while the pocket-protector-wearing, slide-rule-using populace fails to outnumber the red-blooded, girl-fucking majority, that's just how it will be.

Pinkeye Dough Be

Pinkeye Dough Be, originally uploaded by bmichaelpayne.

Just wait. Pretty soon some original cartoons/webtoons will be uploaded in this space. I just made one up. Just now, in between typing the "p" and "a" in "space." It's that easy.

Manny Acta's tragicomic Selfsameness

This sort of thing has already been covered in FJM, but since I promised to make this a sports blog, let's look proceed.  Squawking Baseball interviewed Nats manager Manny Acta last year.  He had something good to say.

Squawking Baseball:  What's your stance on bunting and other one run strategies?

Manny Acta:  Bunting is pretty outdated.  Everybody scores so many runs nowadays, it doesn't make sense to play for one run unless it's late in the game and it's close.  I hardly ever bunt early in a game, unless it's with a pitcher.  A big inning can win you a game.  One run in the third inning can't, unless you have Pedro pitching.

But how good really?  Well, it looks like Acta picked up on the, er, hit-out-bunt matrix differential, which was covered/invented by Baseball Prospectus.  Good, good.  But the same fine minds that brought us that little nugget also found that the manager has little-to-no effect on a ball game.  At least, not a positive effect.  The lineup can be mostly randomized and it won't make much of a difference.  And how hard can it be to click the little pitch count counter?  It seems like a monkey (a stoic monkey) could run a team.  Will Acta come to terms with this realization?  Will it be like a computer becoming self-aware and short circuiting/blowing up?  This outcome seems at least as likely as any other, which is to say, who knows.  I think we need some new metrics, meta-metrics, which should measure the effects of following the new metrics' effects on statistics.  Do you follow?  That is to say, that the new paradigm of tracking and interpreting the day-to-days of baseball must influence the way it's constituted and played (because of, say, gm or managerial or ownership decisions).  And these trends, these meta-trends should also be quantified.  By who?  By the manager.  I mean, you can only chew so many sunflowerseeds before some serious dental work is needed, amiright? 

Which would mean that Acta could function effectively as a manager, become self-aware, and not have to get out of The Matrix.

Funny LOL Ha Ha

Funny LOL Ha Ha, originally uploaded by bmichaelpayne.

So this one here, this photo above. It's a joke, get it? The kids might get to play some structured 5-on-5 or NBA Jam-esque 3-on-3. But when you're just fucking around looking for a game? No Kids Allowed. "Parent Pickup Only."

Stronger Better Faster Longer

Stronger Better Faster Longer, originally uploaded by bmichaelpayne.

The Colts might just be the luckiest team ever to win a Super Bowl. The Manning family sucks qua QBs.