From: lsmith@cs.umn.edu (Lance "Not Here" Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: Value of Stats
Date: 28 Jul 92 20:48:16 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: The Little Squids of the Poor

In article <1992Jul28.135122.13351@cs.umn.edu> thornley@cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley) writes:
>In article <Bs28on.4Ar@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> djohnson@cayley.uwaterloo.ca (David Johnson) writes:

[Kent Hrbek was injured at the end of the 1990 season when he slipped while
chasing someone around around the locker room. Let this be a lesson to us
all.]

>>This was stupid on his part but it happens.  He shouldn't have been fooling
>>around.
>>
>Accidents happen, whether in clubhouse horseplay, trimming hedges, or
>closing cab doors.  People can look awful stupid for it.
>
>And should he have been fooling around or not?  By all reports, he does like
>to keep the clubhouse loose.  Is this good or bad?  Is it worth taking a
>risk for?

I've gone over the question of looseness as it concerns the 1990 and 1991
season. Let me throw in the 1984 season.

By many accounts, the Twins lost the division race in 1984 when things got
too "tense" in the clubhouse. The point that many people point to is that
Kent Hrbek used to due a wrestler imitation before each game. (The wrestler
was Baron von Raschke, The Claw Master.) Kent stopped doing this imitation
and supposedly this was when the Twins started to choke.

Now let me throw in that Kent used to kick a chair at the end of the 
imitation. 

My guess is that the team was just trying to rationalize not winning the
division race. If Kent had kept doing the imitation something else might
have received the blame. (Like the Twins botched attempt to get a shortstop.)

If Kent had hurt himself kicking the chair and missed a number of games, 
then we would have heard the refrain of the young players not having the
intensity necessary to win the important games. (They were too loose. They
weren't taking the game seriously.)

I'd argue that atmosphere had little to do with it. The Twins were a fairly
young team that was only in contention for the division title because it
was a miserable year for the AL West. They didn't contend in 1985 despite
a lot of good predictions. 

[Lots of stuff deleted.]

>Helping other players is iffy.  Wanting to learn is iffy.  You can see
>extra BP if you arrive early enough, but I don't go to many games early
>enough to watch all the Twins' BP, so it would be a small sample.

No David, you can't. Gates don't open until after the Twins finish batting
practice. (Just acting jealous 'cause I have to get to games at 5:30 to 
get a good seat.)

Let me just throw in here that there is no way to know if a player takes
extra batting practice unless someone in the media wishes us to know this
often this is to prove that the player is a worker. So again it depends
on what the media wishes us to know.

You know, what all this talk about intangibles boils down to is attitude.
(The cult of personality if you will.) Everything else is reflected 
somewhere. If a player wishes to learn by taking extra batting practice
then his stats will improve. If he hustles after every ball then that
will be reflected in his numbers. 

What we're really concerned with is his attitude/personality and does this
affect the team's performance. To be frank, this is silly. We don't know,
we can't know, and we wouldn't know what to do if we knew how a player
acts and thinks and how this would influence a teams performance. We
can't agree on a reasonable way to rate the defense of a first baseman 
and you want to somehow come up with a way of deciding which player
will work better within a clubhouse. It aint gonna happen.

On a very simple basis, we may be able to make a selection based upon
intangibles. (I really hate that word.) I mean if we had to pick between
Kirby Puckett (Saint) and his evil twin Skippy Puckett (Puppy kicker) 
with both players putting up equivalent stats, we'd probably go with 
Kirby. (Of course, perhaps Skippy has that gritty intensity necessary
to win ballgames.) But choosing between two players with differing 
stats and basing your pick on personality reports is just crazy.

Things in the real world are complex. Sure, Dan Gladden is a fiery
competitor who would play a day after having a whole bunch of his
teeth knocked loose. (He did this.) But he's also fiery enough that
he would drive over to the home of the team's starting second baseman so
he could settle a difference by trying to punch the other player silly.
(He also did this.) Now do you want this player on your team? I dunno.  
-- 
  Lance "On Vacation" Smith    | "Upon the corner of the plate
    (lsmith@cs.umn.edu)        |  There hangs a curve ball to be hit;
  More replica World Series    |  I'll smote it ere it reach the mitt."
  rings than David Thornley    |          "The Scottish Player," III. v. 23