I don't know jack-all from metrics, but I think I was right when I said in the first week of the season that the Yankees outfield sucked dick. This is from nomaas.org today: Damon currently the 3rd worst defensive LF in the AL...Gardner currently the 2nd worst defensive CF in the AL...Yankees tracking at a -7.5 UZR/150 -- 4th worst team defense in the AL. Not that I what the fuck a UZR is. I just know bad baseball when I see it.
Completely different things man. Poker involves strictly using strategy against a finite number of possibilities. Baseball is completely randomized on a pitch-by-pitch basis. Any number of things can change during the course of one single pitch, rendering any planning/strategy/preparation absolutely useless. Sure, you can bank on a guy who has an OPS of .800+ getting RBI. Sometimes even game winners. What you can't bank on is that he'll do it against an elite pitcher, which is where you really need him to do it. During a game in April, yes, my previous posts are over-reactionary. However, as I've said, my reaction is based on this being the same thing we've seen over and over again against the same teams over the past decade. The Yankees, year in and year out, have made the playoffs by winning series against the bottom 2/3-3/4 of the AL (and throwing in lots of interleague wins.) Then comes playoff time, where they can't beat up on "#1 starters" who wouldn't make the AAA team for the playoff contenders anymore. (Yes, an exaggeration.) That's the point I continue to come back to. Yes, the Yankees will score runs. Yes, the big hitters will get their RBI. The question is, will they get them against the Josh Becketts of the AL? Because if they don't, I don't give a damn if they win 105 regular season games. All I care about is winning the last one in November.
Dont pin HR and RBI on me...I was just recalling the day with less stats. Just because you cant measure the intangibles, since theyre intangible, doesnt mean they dont effect performance. Ive already agreed that talent has more weight than intangibles. But the Yankee intangibles, for whatever reason, are whats been killing them. The Red Sox for the last few years always seem to get the "big hit" while the Yankees dont. The way you describe it actually makes sense though. The part about the numbers will eventually fall the way the numbers will fall. Its like the Yankees have adopted that exact philosophy....not a care in the world, just go up there and take a few swings and let the numbers fall as they may
Damon is a fuckin disaster out there. Cappy, not to pick on you but didnt you say a couple weeks a go that you thought he was above average in left? Not buying that one dude...and neither does that fuck UZR or whatever the fuck made up stat that is.....im sure you know what it is.
Why? Hughes' stuff is nasty, and Pena showed why we can overlook the lack of a bat, if the guy at third can play good defense.
Right, but that misses the point of the analogy. The point was that you can be doing the right things and still not see the desired results. Why? Because of variance. If anything, variance is even more of a harsh mistress in baseball than it is in poker, because of the variables you mentioned. You can't bank on it for any individual at bat, but my point is that the stats (given a large enough sample size) show that a guy with an OPS of .800 is very, very likely to rack up more RBI against an elite pitcher than a guy with an OPS of .750. I think, if you go back and look at the "elite" pitchers in the AL, and then look at their split stats against the Yankees over the past several years, you'll see that the Yankees have hit those pitchers just fine. (Josh Beckett's career ERA against the Yankees is 5.90, by the way.)
What I said was that Damon was above average in LF the past two seasons, according to UZR. UZR is calculated using both range and errors. This early in the season, that boneheaded, fluky error Damon made (the one where he dropped the routine fly ball) is costing his UZR rating dearly.
Hughes looking pretty nasty so far. Pitch F/X showing more velocity than he was putting up last year, too, so that's promising.
What a squeeze job on that Granderson at bat. Gameday showed two pitches were well over the plate and called balls.
Hughes has been getting quite a few bad calls tonight. If it were Mussina on the mound, there would be a problem. He's stayed tough though. I like to see that. -------------- That Everett play was just flat out weird. It looked like he was playing on ice.
Holy shit! Did you guys see that knuckle curve? Wow. Jonny, honestly, do you still think Hughes doesn't have top-of-rotation stuff?
Wang is sitting in a hotel room in Tampa right now watching his spot disappear. EDIT: Well, at least until Pettitte hangs it up.
