From: drw3l@delmarva.evsc.Virginia.EDU (David Robert Walker)
Subject: Re: Blue Jays-Gillick
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 22:06:40 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.210013.10713@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca> maynard@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca (Roger Maynard) writes:
>In <1992Dec16.155127.10035@cs.cornell.edu> tedward@cs.cornell.edu (Edward [Ted] Fischer) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Dec16.032238.9715@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca> maynard@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca (Roger Maynard) writes:
>
>>>>I'll take Cito, thank you very much.
>>>
>>>So should every team in baseball.  At least in '92.  Because the team he
>>>managed won it all and that's all there is to win...

If all you are going to consider is '92, and you won it all, then
abviously you don't want to change a damn thing.

>
>>That is the most ridiculous statement I've seen in ages.  And I'm not
>>even taking it out of context!
>
>>I'll take Alfredo Griffin, thank you very much.  "So should every team
>>in baseball.  At least in '92.  Because the team he played for won it
>>all, and that's all there is to win...".
>
>Can you prove to me that in '92 the Jays would have won without Griffin?
>(or Gaston or any other member of the team).  No you can't and until you can
>prove it you cannot tell me that any member of the team was more important
>than any other if importance is defined as being necessary to winning the WS. 

Um, if you carry this argument to its logical conclusion it says that
you should never, ever make any changes to a team that just won a
world's championship. 

>
>What is really stupid and of little interest is to claim that any manager
>was "better" than Gaston in '92.  We know that the team that employed Gaston
>won.  We will never know whether or not that team would have won with any
>other manager and any speculation on this issue is purely idle.
>
>>Cito the most successful manager in 1992?  Of course.  Was he the
>>best?  Not by any normal definition of "best".  (I know.  You prefer
>>your own dictionary, in which "best" and "most successful" are
>>synonyms.  Why don't you just accept that the rest of the world
>>defines the terms differently?)
>
>What you consider the "best" is meaningless.  The fact that so many argue 
>about just what the "best" is should be your first clue.  The fact that
>nobody argues about who the "most successful" is should be your second.
>
OK, here's my spin. Think of a baseball team like a set of dice. You
have 26 people, the owners, and they all have a set of 25 dice. 

But are they all fair dice? NO! Some people have dice that are
"loaded" in one direction or another; the smart owners are the ones
whose dice are loaded for higher numbers, not lower ones. Some owners
are too dumb to be able to tell which dice are loaded low. The object
of the game is to get the highest score with one throw of your dice.

Now probability says that the set of dice, loaded to the highest
average score, will win most often. The chance of winning, in fact,
will be directly related to the average weighting of your dice. But on
any gien throw of the dice, the probability function is going to
collapse to one and only one winner, and it isn't always going to be
the one with the highest average loading. The best dice don't always
come up with the highest total.

Now back to baseball. The best team doesn't always win, not in
baseball, basketball, football, hockey, or anything else. A smart GM
never stops trying to get the best team he can; if that means getting
rid of players with whom you won last year, sobeit. Too many teams
take the attitude that because they won, they must be good; so they
sit tight, and when their luck doesn't repeat, they can't figure out
what went wrong.

As for the Blue Jays: they were, IMO, the best team in the AL last
year. I can't really decide which of the Jays or Braves were better,
and who might have won a 49-game series, but I fully accept that they
won the Series, fair and square, and I give them all of the accolades
that go with that achievement. But they were not the best possible
team. Their third baseman and shortstop were very weak, overall; they
were average or above everywhere else on offense, their closing
bullpen was excellent, they had an outstanding starter in Guzman, got
an outstanding starter in Cone, but had an otherwise average staff.
Even the much-maligned Carter was a key part of their team; he is an
above-average player, and a team of 9 Joe Carters would lead the lead
in scoring. But he is not as far above average as Henderson or Bonds,
nor is it even close. 

>
>rm
>
>-- 
>roger maynard
>maynard@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca

Much of the statistical dickering that goes on on this net has to do
with trying to *predict* the future achievements of various teams.
Since no one has an adequate model of how a team meshes, we assess all
of the parts individually. Your model of evaluating skill and talent
after the fact has the advantage of accuracy, but its predictive power
is pretty low.

And it doesn't bother me at all if my predictions are wrong much of
the time. After all, I *am* a meteorologist. I'm used to it.

Clay D.

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