batmagadanleadoff

Ruthian, which, like some other terms mentioned here, transcend baseball.

Vic Sage wrote: i think Mags is right, mathematically, that a system that awards (+) for good performances, but no (-) for bad perfs is likely to favor players with larger swings in their perfs. That's just math, right? But i don't know that it necessarily effected the Sewald vote, and i don't know that it matters a bit either way. The Schaeffer is not an attempt to create an unassailable new sabrmetric statistic, but is merely a way to keep everybody together and interactive over the course of a long season. And the "player of the year" is a way to keep a diary of our thoughts over the year, and from year to year. We've built a history together and the Schaefer is one of the ways we've recorded that history. I don't think it's a breach of conduct to offer critique of the system, perhaps toward evolving it as we move forward, and the day the results are announced are exactly the time to have that conversation. But as i said, i don't care to improve it; it's "accuracy" is only important in that it accurately reflect what the board is feeling at any given moment, and cumulatively, and creates a record of those judgments. Perhaps the creation of a negative score option would allow for that, but I leave that to Ben to decide. Mr. Grimm does a great job of keeping it all going despite widespread lack of involvement. I participate sporadically each season (even some games that i just evaluate by the box score and news reports) but i tend to lose my will over the course of a bad year. I'll try to do better next season, and hopefully the Mets will too. I agree with your post and I've said so before when I first raised this flaw -- that Schaefer is fun and that it mainly exists to have that fun and as a social function to drive the forum's activity. It shouldn't be relied upon as an accurate statistical measure of a player's worth. Having said that, I'm surprised at the resistance my post drew. (Not really surprised. I'm merely saying that out of politeness. Like anyone else here would've generated those responses other than me.) Convoluted arguments to try and show that Sewald, if not the best reliever, was close to the best. And then the GOP gun control mantra --- "Now's not the time to talk about this". Hey Kong: When was the right time to have had this discussion?

Frayed Knot wrote: This is beginning to seem a bit like your draft/tanking argument.... Here your starting point is that Sewald's season was one of extreme highs and lows even when compared to other NYM relievers.... You then went through a whole lot of math to essentially tell me that Blevins had the better ERA which I was quite aware of. I'm also aware, as are you, that reliever ERA is only marginally interesting. So now you wanna undercut my point that Sewald was significantly worse than Blevins by noting how meaningless reliever ERA is? Let's go to WAR to show you how bad Sewald was compared to Blevins. Blevins --- 1.5 WAR/49 IP Sewald --- 0.2 WAR/65.1 IP. At the qualitative rate of performance that Sewald pitched in 2017, he would have had to pitch precisely 490 innings to accumulate the 1.5 WAR that Blevins amassed in just 65.1 innings. Sewald won't get to pitch 490 major league inning in his entire life. How much more straining are you gonna engage in to counter my posts here mainly because it's me and because you've committed yourself to the wrong idea that Sewald and Blevins were somehow close to each other performance-wise?

Frayed Knot wrote: Considering that Sewald wins this "award" by being compared only to other NYM relievers, it's tough to see how the 'flaw' in Schaefer rewards him more than any other.... He also edged out Blevins in the 'Schaefer vote by all of 0.06 and Reed by 1.65, so it's not like the results of this process resembled that of FDR over Hoover. "How the flaw ... rewards him...."? Don't tell me that you're suggesting that the goal of a Met reliever, in the real-life real-live world, is to tailor his outings to win the CPF Schaefer award? Sewald benefited from Schaefer, not purposely or by design to get an edge over his relieving Met teammates, but because he had more extreme outings -- very bad and very good outings. Those outings smooth each other out and cumulatively, result in a middling to average season at the end of the day. But Schaefer doesn't score Sewald as a mediocre to average reliever because Schaefer only recognizes his good outings. This results in Sewald receiving an inflated score relative to his actual performance. This is how a mediocre to average reliever can outscore his more deserving teammates: the extremely good outings are credited while the bad ones that hurt his team are ignored. A pitcher who, by comparision, ends up with cumulative stats identical to Sewald, but with significantly less individual game extremes will not score as high in Schaefer. The typical intermittent use of relievers will yield a sample size not large enough to smooth out extreme outings. It's true that Sewald outpitched Blevins innings-wise - 65.1 to 49. But what were those extra 16.1 innings pitched by Sewald worth? Here's what Blevins did in 49 innings, followed by, in parentheses, Sewald's total for 65.1 innings: Hits - 43 (58) Runs - 16 (36) ERuns - 16 (33) HR - 4 (8) BB - 24 (21) K - 69 (69) If we pretend, for the sake of this post, that Blevins and Sewald performed exactly the same statistically over their first 49 innings pitched, then we can see what the Mets received from Sewald's extra or marginal 16.1 innings he pitched over Blevins: IP - 16.1 Hits - 15 Runs - 20 Eruns - 17 HR - 4 BB (-3) K - 0 Those 16.1 marginal innings were disastrous. Sewald gave up more than a run an inning for 16.1 innings, about a third of Blevins' entire season IP output, striking out nobody and allowing a HR every four innings. The Mets would have been better off had Sewald never pitched those marginal innings. And statistically, he's nowhere close to Blevins' performance, no matter what Schaefer says, or no matter that Sewald beat Blevins in the Schaefer vote by only a little bit. The idea that Sewald was more valuable or better than Blevins because he pitched more innings is just wrong. This isn't even a close call and even less so when you're trying to use Schaefer votes to bolster Sewald's 2017 season.

d'Kong76 wrote: The point is, and I think it's pretty good point, you had 162 games and a whole season to pee on Schaefer voting. But no, you pee'd on it's most glorious day of the season. -2 suds to you and -3 to your bladder. I don't get your point. Actually I do, and it's ridiculous. You're just making it up as you go along now and you would've never written your post had almost anyone else here wrote it. So wait, there's a properly designated date to note that Sewald was undeserving and that Schaefer has a flaw? When is that date and who gets to designate it? And is everybody else here bound by that date? Or just me? I don't follow the day to day vote and even if I did, I'm not sure I would have had any way of knowing that Sewald, who wasn't even the Mets second best reliever in 2016 was primed to win Schaefer's reliever award. And this isn't the first time I raised this specific criticism of Schaefer. We had an entire thread on this a few years ago, where I explained the flaw in Schaefer voting. In fact, I was asked to specifically explain this flaw by some other poster (I think it was Grimm, if I remember).

Batmag: Must you raise your leg and pee on everything when you get the urge? I'm sorry. I take it back. What was I thinking? Sewald was the best Mets reliever this season. Probably the best Mets reliever the Mets ever had. And if Sewald sang lead for Rush, Moving Pictures would've been even perfecter. This is the response you come up with to my post? Is this how you would've responded if Edgy wrote that post? What a circle jerk you want this to be. Not even tongue in cheek there. Has anyone ever heard Geddy Lee? I'd prefer my cat sharpening his claws on a blackboard to that.

Batmag: Must you raise your leg and pee on everything when you get the urge? I'm sorry. I take it back. What was I thinking? Sewald was the best Mets reliever this season. Probably the best Mets reliever the Mets ever had. And if Sewald sang lead for Rush, Moving Pictures would've been even perfecter. This is the response you come up with to my post? Is this how you would've responded if Edgy wrote that post? What a circle jerk you want this to be.

G-Fafif wrote: I definitely did not have Paul Sewald winning the reliever award back in April. I'm a little surprised in that every time I paid attention to Sewald, he imploded like he was a latter-day Dale Murray .... Sewald was able to exploit Schaefer's biggest flaw to an undeserved Reliever of the Year Award. Sewald's season was marked by several very good and very bad stretches that, when averaged out, exposed an overall mediocre to average reliever, barely better than replacement value, if even that. Sewald's 2017 season Strat-O-Matic card will be very unimpressive. Schaefer doesn't allow for negative numbers and so treats a horrible game performance just the same as if that player sat on the bench all game long. In both cases, the player will receive zero points. It's theoretically possible for the worst reliever to come away with Schaefer's Reliever of the Year Award. So Schaefer didn't penalize Sewald for giving up five runs in a third of an inning to the Pirates on June 2, or giving up two runs in a third of an inning against the Marlins on April 8, just to pick out a few of Sewald's horrible outings. Sewald's season illustrates the ideal way for an average or even mediocre reliever to beat the system -- by having many extreme outings -- either very good or very bad. This Schaefer flaw is most likely to occur with relievers and bench players, who appear sporadically instead of regularly. The everyday awards for everyday players shouldn't be affected nearly as much by this flaw because everyday players, by definition, play every day and so the Schaefer advantage in avoiding negative numbers for a bad game are minimized. There, it's enough of a penalty for season long awards not get any points at all in a given game.

Nobody here is rooting for The Murph?

When I first saw that top post, I missed the author's name. I was looking at the illustration, marveling at that "Quicksteps" nickname (Quickstep Reyes) but wondering why Edgy posted the book cover in the first place. Now I see. Hah. Great work. Will there be any extraterrestrials in there? Wilmington. It figures.

The Syracuse Orange 'n Blue Men.

The Mets have come full circle. Their original 1962 AAA affiliate was also in Syracuse.

Didn't Jim Leyland manage the Tigers? Of Michigan? Don't get me started.

I voted for Larry Parrish. I don't know Parrish personally, but I did meet him. And if I were playing that game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, I only need one personal acquaintance to link myself directly to Parrish. Plus he managed the Tigers. So he must know the current sad state of political affairs in Michigan, where, politically speaking, everything that's coming out of that wholly owned Betsy Devos subsidiary is slimy. Maybe Larry Parrish can fix things in Michigan where the drinking water in Flint is poisonous all so that scumbag Snyder could save seven dollars a day. Where the pols run Detroit like it's the Warsaw Ghetto of WWII, stealing their education money so that Betsy Devos can fund schools that teach conversion therapy and intelligent design with public tax dollars. Where the scumbag governor throws out 75,000 votes coming out of Detroit in a state election that Trump won by about 10,000 votes. The state that's got just about the most abusive and contrived congressional lines, all to guarantee that the scumbag GOP running things in Michigan gets most seats with less than most of the vote. Where the state went to right to work mainly to weaken the unions because unions tend to vote Democrat. Maybe Parrish can fix Michigan. I was looking to vote for Sparky Anderson or Billy Martin or Ralph Houk, but after a while of looking for them, I remembered that they were all dead. I'm sure they're rolling over in their graves over what's become of Michigan, which is lucky that there's the insaner state of North Carolina to keep everyone's eyes off of what a sleazeball state Michigan has become. Plus, their educational system is about the worst in the nation, thanks to that know nothing Devos running it and their biggest city, Detroit, once one of the greatest cites in America, went bankrupt and is a shithole. Vote for Larry Parrish. I'll bet anything that someone from this forum is gonna post here how Michigan gave out some free sandwiches and a couple of overcoats to some homeless people and how that makes everything else in this post about the vomit drinking water and gerrymandering alright. I'll bet that those homeless people receiving those overcoats were Republicans, too. I suppose it's OK to destroy an entire city's public education system because whoever did it is a nice guy and those homeless republicans got extra pickles.

I went with Trammell, who played, then managed for the Tigers of Detroit back when Michigan was in the good hands of Democrat governors James Blanchard and Jennifer Granholm. This was before that once proud state was purchased by that know nothing Betsy Devos and hijacked by the GOP. Back then, you could send your kids to the public schools of Detroit knowing that your tax dollars wouldn't be siphoned off to voucher charter schools that would use those tax dollars to discriminate against kids and teach lunatic religious theories. And create all white flight schools, all at the expense and annihilation of inner city schools because the tax dollar pot of money is finite and where that money goes is a zero sum game. Back then, Flint's drinking water was safe to drink. You think Betsy Devos would ever drink Flint's water? Why didn't Flint get the same water that Holland, Michigan gets? Was that all part of God's plan? The God that lives in Betsy Devos's God's Kingdom? Now that scumbag state is about to pass voter suppression laws even though there's no evidence of voter fraud in Michigan unless you count what the scumbag current governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder did to throw out 75,000 ballots from Detroit during last year's presidential election, where Trammell used to play. So what if Michigan's new law will appear to be unconstitutional? By the time the challenge to the law reaches the Supreme Court, there'll be a second Neil Gorsuch on that bench to make Michigan's corrupt partisan voter suppression legal. Maybe Trammell could put an end to the abusive partisan gerrymandering happening in Michigan, where according to the efficiency gap, Michigan's lines are the next most outrageous lines in the nation, second only to the more scumbaggier state of North Carolina. So that's why I voted for Trammell.

A few years ago, you created graphs for each player, showing which games they played (and didn't play). I forgot how to access those.

It could be the injuries. And the Mets might know a lot more than they're letting on even though it's usually the other way around. Conforto's injury has the possibility to turn out to be extremely damaging. And going into last season, Matt Harvey was a major part of the Mets winning equation. Right now, Harvey can't be counted on for anything. Syndergaard, Matz and Wheeler will all return from serious injuries next Spring Training, even though with Wheeler, it's more of an ongoing chronic thing than a serious injury he sustained in 2017. This alone, should be of great concern.

Still, heading into the draft, they're better off picking 4th or 5th instead of 7th or 8th. I'd say that every year, no matter who's available. You lament too much that it's no big deal if the Mets draft 7th instead of 4th. Why all the continuous lamenting? Stop lamenting a lot.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Benjamin Grimm wrote: Vic Sage wrote: And the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong... but that's the way to bet. Higher draft choices are better than lower draft choices. It's neither controversial nor complicated. Well, sure, but I also don't think the difference is worth continually lamenting that the Mets went 12-17 over the last month of the season instead of 9-20. If you're talking about me, I'm not continually lamenting more than youse guys are continually lamenting that it's not worth lamenting over the later rather than earlier Mets draft slot. Youse have me beat with your counter-position laments by a wide margin. So I don't think it's worth continually lamenting that it's all the same if the Mets pick later instead of earlier, no matter what the value of the pick. bump from last post previous page to new thread page

Frayed Knot wrote: ... But it's different when the Mets have a chance to draft a special player, which many commentators believe would be available to the first four or five, maybe six teams picking. This draft is supposed to be top heavy loaded. This is at least the third or fourth time you've made reference to this now, what/who are your sources for this? That bit about the "third or fourth time" is really superfluous, isn't it? Anyways, here ya go: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/sliding-mets-lose-win-draft-article-1.3482723

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Vic Sage wrote: And the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong... but that's the way to bet. Higher draft choices are better than lower draft choices. It's neither controversial nor complicated. Well, sure, but I also don't think the difference is worth continually lamenting that the Mets went 12-17 over the last month of the season instead of 9-20. If you're talking about me, I'm not continually lamenting more than youse guys are continually lamenting that it's not worth lamenting over the later rather than earlier Mets draft slot. Youse have me beat with your counter-position laments by a wide margin. So I don't think it's worth continually lamenting that it's all the same if the Mets pick later instead of earlier, no matter what the value of the pick.

But see .my next post.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Vic Sage wrote: And the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong... but that's the way to bet. Higher draft choices are better than lower draft choices. It's neither controversial nor complicated. Well, sure, but I also don't think the difference is worth continually lamenting that the Mets went 12-17 over the last month of the season instead of 9-20. I'd ordinarily agree with you. I usually have zero interest in the MLB draft. I don't give a shit about it and don't follow it. The draftees are too far away from reaching the MLB, if they ever will, and so the value of an MLB pick, I think, is notably less than a comparable pick in other sports. But it's different when the Mets have a chance to draft a special player, which many commentators believe would be available to the first four or five, maybe six teams picking. This draft is supposed to be top heavy loaded.

Edgy MD wrote: Sure it is. I'd rather draft 4th than 7th*. That's all I was saying and the only thing I could see that's complicated or controversial about that thinking is that you think it's complicated or controversial. *Especially when there are supposed to be about four no-brainer impact studs in the draft.

2015 Set Code Name "Neon" [fimg=366:1aib2fqy]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/9a/34/e6/9a34e6a03bbdf0d4610b139f720287d0.jpg[/fimg:1aib2fqy] 2015 Code "Neon" Alt. [fimg=366:1aib2fqy]https://gdc1simonfrench.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/vegas-kodachrome.jpeg[/fimg:1aib2fqy] 2015 Code "New Judge" [fimg=444:1aib2fqy]http://www.tradingcarddb.com/Images/Cards/Baseball/7845/7845-150804Fr.jpg[/fimg:1aib2fqy] 2015 Aborted set; Code Name "Basil" [fimg=555:1aib2fqy]https://cbsnews3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2002/03/01/cafe50e4-a642-11e2-a3f0-029118418759/thumbnail/1200x630/0cf4d2ae9fc3172b58057be78c3de556/image502527x.jpg[/fimg:1aib2fqy] 2016 Code "Sludge" [fimg=444:1aib2fqy]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/7b/f6/e8/7bf6e8c1fe58c39c02e7f68a098d8839--vintage-box-vintage-stuff.jpg[/fimg:1aib2fqy] 2016 Code "Basque Ltd." [fimg=555:1aib2fqy]http://www.thatericalper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Electric-Ladyland-photo-shoot-2.jpg[/fimg:1aib2fqy] 2017 Code "Potato Knish" [fimg=444:1aib2fqy]http://classic.esquire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/sonnyliston19631201.jpg[/fimg:1aib2fqy] 2017 Code "Potato Knish" Alt. [fimg=444:1aib2fqy]https://static.filmin.es/img/resources/web/film/poster/poster-resized/umberto-d.jpg?w=240[/fimg:1aib2fqy] 2017 Code "Hoosier" [fimg=444:1aib2fqy]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xVxMOIfSQHg/maxresdefault.jpg[/fimg:1aib2fqy] 2017 Code "Ack" [fimg=444:1aib2fqy]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cMdbfkl3Rz4/SYE9vSNav2I/AAAAAAAAEcs/9sZJqAA5ahI/s800/MadMagazine-089-001.jpg[/fimg:1aib2fqy]