So, To Recap
by Jeff Sullivan on May 17, 2009 10:47 PM PDT
in Miscellaneous
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PrintThe Mariners followed a statement win over Oakland by losing nine of their next ten games.
The Mariners then followed two crushing last at bat losses to Texas by taking two out of three against arguably the best team in baseball.
Baseball teams catch fire and baseball teams collapse, but we should probably stop pretending we can identify the catalytic events as they happen. Never has this been more evident than over the past two weeks.
What an awesome weekend.
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Agreed.
I was happy that I was able to go to Friday and Sunday.
I just hope we stick it to the Angels in this four game series.
Let's just hope they react differently to getting swept by Texas than we did
"Get up you crazy black man, I'm gonna make you drink my piss!" - Will Ferrell.
Great series win but
I’m not going to too excited since we currently only have 4 guys on the roster with an OPS north of .700.
"If your good at something never do it for free." - The Joker
Except when probability dictated that we should've won more than 1 out of those 10 games.
I'm more like I am now than I've ever been.
I think that probability deserves equally as much nut kicking, if not more so.
...and now I'm here
I've just noticed.
Based on the way the season is playing out the schedule for June looks rather soft.
Hmmmm….
I noticed that too
May’s a bitch though
"Get up you crazy black man, I'm gonna make you drink my piss!" - Will Ferrell.
You could put a fatty bow on it and give it as a present.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- P&P&Z
by Two Rs and Two Ls on May 18, 2009 12:39 AM PDT up reply actions
Jeff's right.
We can’t reinvent the night, but reinventing how the driver sees in it with an innovative heads up display and advanced head lamps makes the Lexus 2010 RX the car to buy. Lexus: Reinventing the vehicle that invented it all.
Hard work never killed nobody, but I won't take my chances.
Is this one of these jokes that I would get if I didn't run adblock?
"Even the stupidest of men, by some instinct of nature, is convinced on his own that with more observations his risk of failure is diminished."
-Jacques Bernoulli Ars conjectandi 1713
by Bearskin Rugburn on May 18, 2009 7:23 AM PDT up reply actions
Yes. There's Lexus ads smeared all over.
Hard work never killed nobody, but I won't take my chances.
The idea that there are such catlytic events
is a well documented fallacy of human reasoning. For some processes catalytic events the engender chain reactions exist, but for most, they don’t. Baseball is almost certainly not one of them. The outcome of any given baseball game is 99% causally (but not statistically) independent of the outcome of any other game that season.
"baseball is 99% causally independent of the outcome of any other game that season"
This is a great example of the sort of false choice that bothers me. Just because KJR or ESPN abuses us with stupid assertions that are based on superstition and short memories, doesn’t mean we should defenestrate the baby with the bathwater.
Science does NOT hold that “If we can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.” Science will continue to seek out better and better ways to measure, predict and modify natural processes. Submitting a totally unsubstantiated claim that “momentum” and “catalytic events” don’t exist (or are 99% bogus) is just as bad as the ESPN jerkwads who claim that they absolutely do. You have a safer position, because it might be impossible to absolutely prove you wrong, but that isn’t the point. It’s not about which position is more defensible; it’s about finding more and more accurate models and measures.
As both a therapist and a competitive “athlete”, I find the psychology of sports absolutely fascinating. To hear that psychology doesn’t play a role in competition (because it can’t be easily measured) is just as ridiculous to me as to hear Joe Morgan state that a player is “clutch” because he happened to come through in his most recent high-leverage at bat.
I think the point is best left with: We often look foolish when we stake out an absolutist position.
If we look for it, and it's not there, then that certainly suggests it doesn't exist (or at least doesn't have a big impact)
Though we may not be good at directly measuring psychological effects, we certainly can check whether the process we’re observing (in this case, the sequential outcomes of baseball games) is consistent with the presence/absence of certain effects.
From everything I’ve read, the “streaks” of wins and losses over a season are entirely consistent with a process which is affected by 1) the true talent of the teams involved and 2) random variation which favors no team in particular. The point is, if there were a large “momentum” effect, we wouldn’t have to do fancy brain scans to detect it; it should show up as a deviation from the expected pattern of outcomes. And in the absence of such deviations, it seems scientifically reasonable to conclude that the effect, if it exists at all, is very small.
Very small as in... only a couple of games over the course of a year?
Very small as in… the difference between throwing an 85 mph change and an 88mph one?
Very small as in… a tiny hitch in a pitcher’s delivery mechanics?
Very small as in… a half-inch choke up on the bat? Or rotating your hands another 10 degrees inward in the way your grip the bat?
Very small as in… the centimeter difference between hitting a pop-up and hitting a homerun?
Very small as in the 1/10 second difference between stealing a base and getting nailed?
Very small as in the difference between Zack Grienke this year and two years ago?
I think you’re right that psychological effects rarely seem to produce staggering deviations from players achieving their expected talent level performance… but it’s a hopelessly dirty science. How can you even extract their preexisting psychological tendencies from their expected performances in the first place?
So I missed all but about four innings of this series
Is Yuni actually looking like he’s salvageable now, at least at the plate? Taking walks, taking pitches – this is not the Yuni I despised last week, is it? Can I still mock his defensive shortcomings, or does he look to be fixing those too?
Nice Guys Finish Third - My semantics are a waste of time.
Are you saying tht Yuni had a statement at-bat?
"Even the stupidest of men, by some instinct of nature, is convinced on his own that with more observations his risk of failure is diminished."
-Jacques Bernoulli Ars conjectandi 1713
by Bearskin Rugburn on May 18, 2009 9:48 AM PDT up reply actions
Yes, that did seem to be the case. I'm just not seeing better range yet.
At his age I believe he could improve that if he worked on it. Hopefully he gets motivated to because my hatred of him is purely based on his wasting tons of talent.
Yeah, range is still an issue, but it seemed like he wasn't killing the team as much
by starting off horribly out of position and THEN adding on rangelessness.
The Geoff Baker blog post this morning might interest you – Rudy4three alludes to it below.
Hmm, I would be interested in that trade I guess.
Wilson is probably on a downward slope defensively at this point, but he still has to be almost a win better than Yuni with the glove.
I'll say one thing though
After his throwing error to 2nd yesterday, he seemed genuinely displeased with himself while on the field. I can’t remember the last time he made an error and seemed like it bothered him at all. I like seeing accountability out of players and it was especially nice to see it from Yuni
I want to poop at your house - Thingray
by tootthekazoo on May 18, 2009 10:57 AM PDT up reply actions
From the highlight clips it looks like Beltre is playing an extra step towards SS, anybody notice if this is true?
Just positioning depending on the specific batter, or a regular thing? That would be hilarious if Yuni was such a sucking blackhole at SS the rest of the infield is collapsing into his position.
He looked mostly fine defensively over the weekend save for a horrid feed to Ronny on a potential DP ball.
His new found plate discipline was lovely, although it’s way to early to say he’s a new man. He did hit a few balls with authority, including a laser that Lowell speared. I’ll be happy if he continues leaving borderline pitches alone early in the count and stops popping up 35% of the time.
I will definitely take that as an improvement
he’s not off my list yet but if he’s even showing signs of not wasting that talent I’ll take it.
Nice Guys Finish Third - My semantics are a waste of time.
I stop yelling SWING SWING SWING
every time he’s up and he starts walking? Weird.
by seattlebruin on May 18, 2009 10:29 AM PDT up reply actions
He actually had two lasers that Lowell snared down
I want to poop at your house - Thingray
by tootthekazoo on May 18, 2009 10:58 AM PDT up reply actions
He also made an error in the first game
by Graham MacAree on May 18, 2009 11:08 AM PDT up reply actions
Thanks, Encyclopedia Brown.
I’m not sure how that escaped my memory, but he had a ball hop over his glove. To me, the biggest issue is that he’s at least been receptive in the short term. It would be unreasonable to expect him to become a different player overnight. If he actually internalized anything from his benching, that’s a good step forward.
A real dedication change wouldn’t really manifest itself until the offseason, as he doesn’t exactly have the time right now to drop the excess weight and work on his lateral quickness.
I read a nice comment from Wakamatsu
From Divish at TNT, when Wak was talking about Yuni’s new approach: "It’s just getting him to understand what on-base percentage really means and getting him to put it above batting average."
by Snowman1025 on May 18, 2009 11:41 AM PDT up reply actions
Not 100% apropos to that comment, but
why does anyone find OBP difficult to grasp? It’s actually much more conceptually easy than batting average.
Batting average: the number of hits divided by number of at bats; which is defined as the number times you come to plate and you do not walk, get hit by pitch, hit a sacrifice bunt, reach on catcher’s interference or hit a sacrifice fly, which shall be defined as a batted ball hit to the outfield with less than two outs in which a runner ends up scoring after a fielder makes the catch.
OBP: Number of times you reach base excluding by error or interference divided by your number of plate appearances excluding sacrifice bunts and interference
It because walks are the fault of the pitcher, not a skill of the batter
and a selfish player is one who w ill not move the runner along at all costs.
Yuni's comment was alarming. Something like "I'll try it for now to help the team, but
I’m an agressive hitter"
All the fans pretty much realize that OBP is more important, but I’m not sure a 20 something year old guy from Cuba, who probably had to hit his way off the island, grew up valuing walks.
And given that he came in under the Bavasi era, which didn’t seem to care one bit about OBP, it wouldn’t suprise me if Yuni never really cared what OBP was.
He actually rafted his way off the island
by Graham MacAree on May 18, 2009 12:13 PM PDT up reply actions
I wish it had capsized.
"You're so beautiful. You could be a part-time model, but you'd probably still have to keep your normal job."
He probably swam a bit there at the end
or at the very least waded.
Nice Guys Finish Third - My semantics are a waste of time.
Test of machismo
Getting a hit is infinitely more manly than drawing a walk. And it’s these microcosmic tests of manhood (not ultimately winning/losing the game) that drive the instict to play sports. These instincts are actually quite useful, but have to be managed by older, wiser tacticians… which creates one of the most interesting tensions in all of sports, between a player and his coach.
Yeah something like this
Although there are a lot of manly arrogant jerks who drew/draw a ton of walks.
You would think these guys would realize that the best way to make money
and get a nice big contract is to boost that OBP up given that most GMs and managers value it more than batting average.
However, our guys seem to be a bit odd. We did just have a young starter decide to cost himself millions in future dollars to become a closer.
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