batmagadanleadoff

Triple Dee wrote: Look I agree with [Lunchbucket] on one point; If the Phillies have figured Heilman out, the onus is on [Heilman] to re-adjust. But how could Heilman ever readjust when you've conclusively established that the Phillies have his number? Didn't you just prove with his 36 innings that Heilman can't get the Phillies out effectively? So how is Heilman's performance supposed to be able to change? And if he readjusts, for, oh, I don't know, the next 36 innings or so, does this mean that Heilman then has the Phillies number? And that maybe Heilman should then pitch every single game that the Mets ever play against the Phillies instead of never? And then could the Phillies readjust to to the readjusting that Heilman did against them? And if all of that ever happens, which cluster of 36 innings pitched would, in your opinion, get to matter the most? Once you acknowledge that Heilman must readjust or that he even can, doesn't this undermine your claim that Heilman shouldn't pitch against Philly? That you have allowed for a scenario where Heilman and the Phils might go back and forth, trading the upper hand against each other in a game of leapfrog, is proof of the random nature of the 36 innings you relied on. For now, those 36 innings only prove that Heilman sucked against the Phils over his last 36 IP against them.

Triple Dee wrote: Do you know what a normal distribution is? What are you, The Riddler? You know what? You win. I concede. Heilman sucks against the Phillies and it's not a coincidence. And as soon as Beltran's last 30 or 40 at-bats against any specific team go bad, I'm gonna put it in Willie's suggestion box that Beltran should never play against that team anymore.

Let me follow up here some more because some of these formulas are not as formulaic as they've been made out to be. It's not good enough to simply say that 36 innings pitched is good enough to decide this. It's not just the unit of measure that needs to be considered, but also what exactly it is that you're setting out to establish, and also what kind of level of comfort do you want to have with your final results - how reliable are your findings. To illustrate, suppose you were given a coin and were charged with determining whether or not that coin was a fair and balanced coin; the kind of coin that has the same chance of coming up either heads or tails when flipped in the air. And so you take that coin and flip it 36 times, coincidentally the same number of innings pitched that Heilman has accumulated against the Phils. So you flip the coin 36 times and get 18 heads and 18 tails. Well, what do these results indicate about the coin? I would say that the 36 flips are meaningful in proving some things and not meaningful for other things. For example, the results allow you to rule out the possibility without any doubt, that the coin might have been rigged in such a way that it would always come up heads on every single flip. Or tails on every single flip. But could you use those results to rule out the possibility that the coin was rigged in such a way that on every flip, there is a 52% chance of getting heads and a 48% chance of getting tails. Obviously not. I wouldn't be comfortable asserting that the coin is truly balanced based on those 36 flips. Because it's not so statistically unreasonable to flip a 52/48 biased coin 36 times and get 18 heads and 18 tails. Thirty six innings isn't enough data to prove that the Phillies have Heilman's number, especially given all the rest of Heilman's stats against the Phils.

AG/DC wrote: Well, there's some theory out there that performance over 150 at-bats (or is it plate appearances?) is an indication that what a batter is doing is f'real. Yeah. Even 30 at bats might be a meaningful # of at bats under the right circumstances. It's also dependent on what you're trying to figure out. A rookie might come up and hit 4 or 5 hr's in his first 30 at bats and just about blister the ball in almost every other non Hr at bat. Now these 30 ab may not be proof enough that the rookie's going to be setting hr records, but those 30 ab's are more meaningful when trying to gauge if the rookie is capable of hitting major league pitching.

AG/DC wrote: Well, I disagree wth him also, but 30 innings /= 30 at-bats. My understanding is that 30 refers to the unit. And that any unit is acceptable, assuming that the theory applies in the first place. It's not necessarily the unit of measure, but also what you are trying to measure with what particular unit. But sure, there are necessarily more batter/pitcher confrontations in an entire inning rather than in a singular at-bat, which is obviously a component of the inning itself. But this is why, given what we know about baseball, we all know on an intuitive level that 30 at bats or 30 innings pitched isn't concrete evidence for a whole lot of things, but might constitute proof of some things.

I know that this is gonna be unpopular but I always liked Benitez, warts and all. Was there any Met reliever who was better than Benitez during his Met stint? And wasn't Benitez always one of baseball's best relievers during his years as a Met? Maybe I'm misremembering, but there were surely better relief pitchers around, but not too many.

Triple Dee wrote: And this is where you're wrong, Grasshopper. Statisticians consider a sample space of 30 as the minimum for achieving a normal distribution. It's called the Central Limit Theorem. I think this is absurd. I've been reading about baseball analysis through statistics for about 30 years and I've never heard of anyone making the kind of judgements you're making about Heilman based on 30 innings. According to you, it would therefore be statistically meaningful data when a batter gets hot and bats .500 over a stretch of 30 at-bats. I bet this happens a few times every single season. According to you, that run is supposed to be a strong indicator that the batter is gonna bat .500 over the rest of the season. Would it make any difference to you to consider that the entire population of major league caliber baseball players is, in and of itself, not random at all, but culled from the extreme right side of the curve... so that when I go on and on about how Rey Ordonez sucked, it's still understood here that in the grand scheme of things and when compared to the population as a whole, he was still one of the very best baseball players in the world?

Triple Dee wrote: No, I don't because Carter initially made that statement before his induction, while the Expos were still around. Well I didn't know that and the article that started this thread never explained that either. I thought it was a fresh quote. But it wouldn't matter anyway because by the time Carter was in a position to talk about which cap he'd like to have on his HOF plaque, everybody knew that the Expos were done as a franchise. Even Carter.

Triple Dee wrote: I can't quite figure out why you find the idea that the Phillies may have figured Heilman out, and consequently he should be used sparingly against them, such a difficult proposition to come to terms with. I'll bite. Because it's an idea. A theory. That's all it is. Because you don't have enough evidence to take your idea beyond the idea stage. Because 36 innings is nothing more than a tiny blip in the grand scheme of things if you want to use those 36 innings to evaluate Heilman's effectiveness against the Phils. And it wouldn't matter if those 36 innings are the most Heilman's pitched against any one team. It's still only 36 innings and 36 innings isn't enough to prove whether or not Heilman's struggles against Philly is anything more than random coincidence. After all, he's gotta have his worst stats against some team. This is not to say that under other circumstances, 36 innings wouldn't be enough to make some concrete judgement about some pitching phenomena or other. If a pitcher throws 36 innings and allows a HR in every single one of those 36 innings, I think it's safe to say that the pitcher is susceptible to the long ball and needs to make whatever corrections are necessary if that pitcher wants to continue to pitch in the major leagues. Or ordinarily, one wouldn't be able to gather much meaningful information from flipping a coin exactly 36 times. But if I were to flip a coin 36 times and get heads every single time I flipped that coin, my instincts would tell me that the coin is rigged even though it's theoretically possible though unlikely to get 36 straight heads from flipping a fair coin. But you don't have this extreme outlier sort of data that would give greater meaning to a small sample size, so your 36 innings (Heilman's 36 innings) aren't enough yet. Now it might one day emerge that Heilman's struggles against Philly are not random. Perhaps Heilman is tipping off his pitches is such a way that only Philly is noticing. Or maybe the Phils cheat whenever Heilman pitches. But all that would mean, is that you had a hunch, and you followed your hunch and went with it, and it turned out that you were right. But you still need more proof. You have a theory and you are entitled to place as much faith in your theory as you wish. But faith is not evidence.

Triple Dee wrote: The suggestion that Carter wanted to go into the Hall as a Met, for the purpose of enhancing his post-career employment opportunities is incredulous. I need some slack for someone to cut me some of. That was a joke. Because the Expos don't exist. So he could never get to manage them anymore. Get it? Because some former teammates of his think he's very calculating and all. I still didn't forget to write about that Carter article. And who's that cool rookie on the top of this whole forum? Looks a little bit like Bruce Springsteen in a Met helmet if Springsteen was skinnier.

AG/DC wrote: Carter's being disingenuous at many levels. They certainly didn't owe him .... " AG: In my book, you hit a grand slam with this post of yours. I can't begin to tell you how much this Carter article bothers me on so many levels (and I'm talking about levels that go against Carter, not the Mets or Rickey or anybody else). If I started to write a post about this, it would be a long one, and I don't have the time right this moment. But maybe later tonight, while the Mets game is on, I'll write a few words on this.

Rockin' Doc wrote: RMPL stands for read more, post less. .... I'm glad to have you here and you have had a lot of interesting points to make in other discussions.... Thanks for the RMPL heads up and for the other nice words. I didn't intend to write all those separate posts. I just wrote one post. And then like 45 seconds later, I thought of a follow-up. Spontaneously, and without any RMPL post-padding premeditaded calculations. And then another follow-up after the first follow-up. And I thought that each of those posts, as they came to me, would stand up well on their own, individually. I didn't have any advance knowledge or plan that I would write a coupl'a posts that would appear to have me talking to myself. It just came out that way. So now you know.

"Despite a career that was mostly spent with the Montreal Expos, former catcher Gary Carter considers himself a Met and wanted to go into the Hall of Fame as one." Plus, Carter knows that it's gonna be even harder for him to manage the Expos than to manage the Mets.

Rockin' Doc wrote: This trhead is a perfect argument for RMPL. I can't figure out what RMPL is. But it doesn't sound so hot.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: My prediction: Batmag will be at the Tom Seaver level by August. But what comes after Seaver? McIlvane, I'd suppose. Casey and Davey and Bobby V. And eventually ..........Lorinda DeRoulet. I can't wait.

Could you imagine having multiple Dallas Greens all over the place? Man is that scary. And man is that man scary. And then with the dark and all, on account of the light bulb not working. I'm scared already. I'm gettin' the hell out of here.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: How many Willie Randolphs does it take to screw in a light bulb? I don't know what the answer is to this one but I'm sure that you'd need more Dallas Greens than you'd need Willies.

Frayed: For how long do you get to be John Franco? Because if I ever get to be John Franco, I'm gonna put on a show so's I won't be Franco for too long.

Here's some more San Francicsco's: Dark Passage The Graduate Foul Play Play it Again, Sam Pacific Heights

Vic Sage wrote: here are the cities with baseball-related movies (or, at least some tenuous connection to baseball or sports).... CENTRAL Cleveland - MAJOR LEAGUE.... Add "The Fortune Cookie" (Football) to the city of Cleveland

AG/DC wrote: Who is Steve talking to? I think he was correcting something that was broadcast on FOX. The announcers were talking about Steve Carlton, but I don't remember what they said specifically.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Here are the two moves I wanted Willie to make, but he didn't: When Sanchez came in, I would have double-switched. Put Endy in left field and pull Pagan. That sounds like a good idea. I have to admit that I don't know much about Pagan other than what I've seen of him this season, which is mostly very good. But he has looked very shaky to me in the outfield on a few plays that I can remember, so far. Also, Heilman was excellent today in a tough inning where through no fault of his own, he was forced to get an extra out to make up for bad outfielding. So CWCID Heilman today.

Frayed Knot wrote: Nice 1st inning: Reyes - 2B Church - 1B (though Reyes didn't advance, he thought it was caught) Wright - 2-RBI 2B Perez = 1-2-3 inning GO, K, FO It's a good thing Willie didn't sac bunt Church. Otherwise, Church probably wouldn't have gotten on base and wouldn't have come around to score the Mets second run. So here's an example of how the sac would have cost the Mets one run.

Lucky you. Not lucky me!!!

Frayed Knot wrote: Did you really want to get from Tommy Herr to Juan Berenguer THAT badly? Berenguer? I thought that Willie Randolph would be the next Met.