boogie on reggae woman
espn
tried to say
it was opening day
yesterday

but no way. it's today. today is opening day right now it's monday the first monday of april and that's opening day. the boomtown rats don't like mondays so you know they don't like baseball they're british they probably like cricket. it's just another manic monday the bangles wish it was sunday and commissioner seel-ig says we gonna do a lot of pre-opening opening well you can boogie on reggae woman! what is wrong with you?

let's get down to business. what is left to do? nothing. it's all here. read it. so let's have some fun.

what makes a good player? pitchers, we did. what about batters?

5 things: patience, contact, power, defense, speed. patience is workin the count, gettin your pitch, takin the walk. contact is hittin the heat, hittin the break, hittin the change (lay off the curve.) power is hittin it hard, hittin it deep, hittin it far. defense is callin, blockin, gunnin (catcher); pickin, turnin, flippin (infield); jumpin, grabbin, throwin (outfield). speed is gettin to first, gettin around, gettin the triple.

it's all in the numbers, but that's another story. numbers are an approximation of reality. so before we can understand the numbers, we have to understand reality. we've got our work cut out for us.

those with better defense play in the middle. those with better power play on the corners. the cool thing about win shares is it gives extra value to those who play demanding positions. it's built-in. the uncool thing about win shares, vorp, and all those other yay-hoos is the assumption that a run is a run is a run. we're supposed to be scientific and look at that there's an assumption. newton said time is eternal, absolute; everybody makes mistakes.

a three-run jack in a blowout is nothing. a suicide squeeze in the bottom of the 13th is everything. until you account for that, your system is incorrect. after, it's still incorrect, but less so.

what that means is that contact is the ugly kid sister. statheads disdain her, and squeeze tits and ass, but their way is folly. we who are not so vulgar see the beauty inside, and nurture her, with love, to womanhood. then, in full flower, she captures our hearts with her joy.

i should quit right here. what i'm trying to say is a run against walter johnson is not the same as a run against joe schaffernoth. it's better. and there's a certain type of player who can beat the big train. that player is the contact hitter. some would call him clutch.

a simple metric would be to calculate a player's run value for each game, then adjust for the score of the game. runs in a one-run game are much more valuable than runs in a three-run game. here's how you do it: divide the run-value by the score difference. voila! runs in one-run games are twice as valuable as those in two-run games, three times as valuable as those in three-run games, etc. it's crude, but effective.

close games tend to have good pitching. good pitching tends to require contact. thus, contact hitting is appropriately valued.

i need to sleep. i'm rambling. all five attributes are important. we will use them to rate players by position. or not. who knows? night-night!
- posted by julien @ 3:06 AM