From: mjs@fc.hp.com (Marc Sabatella)
Subject: Re: Mattingly, what a fine fielder (was: Hardly not etc.)
Reply-To: marc@hpmonk.fc.hp.com
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1.4 PL6]
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Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 21:06:07 GMT

Roger Maynard (maynard@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca) wrote:
: In <1992Nov5.180753.839@adobe.com> snichols@adobe.com (Sherri Nichols) writes:
: 
: >>certain extent I'm qualified to at least discuss baseball. 
: 
: >You don't have to see any games to be "qualified" to discuss baseball.  
: 
: This is just about the most rediculous statement I have ever seen any member
: of the FofDT Society post.  You seem to be suggesting that one could be
: "qualified" to discuss baseball if one had never seen even one game.

And I fully and wholeheartedly support that.  If the question is about rules,
reading the rulebook suffices.  If it is about the popularity of the game,
reading about it will do.  And if it is about knowing how many homeruns Manny
Sanguillen hit in 1974, a reference book will suffice.  If I want to discuss
who was the best hitter in 1927, I don't have to be transported back into time;
the record books provide more than enough data.  You're begging the question,
"what makes defense so special that it is the only thing we think cannot be
measured"?

: Once again we have an example of the 
: fundamental SDCN confusion - Baseball is not statistics and statistics
: are not baseball.

No, once again we have Roger Maynard fundamental confusion - no one ever said
they were the same.

: >>He says the only real way to judge a player is
: >>by watching him.
: 
: >I disagree.  I think in many ways, that's the worst way to judge a player.
: 
: I stand corrected.  You just outdid yourself.  I guess when you want to
: know what the weather is like outside you just flick the remote to the 
: weather channel right?

No.  Why make pointless analogies like that?  I could make up some dumb ones to
support Sherri's position as well - "if you want to know is the fastest runner
in track and field, the only real way to judge is to exclusively watch one
runner and declare that he looks smooth, so he must be the fastest".  As with
baseball, this is nonsense.  Watching Don Mattingly day in and day out will not
give you a clue how he compares to Mark Grace, and only a glimmer of an idea of
how he compares to Mark McGwire.  And even if you saw a lot of both of them,
looks can be deceiving.  I can watch Wade Boggs run to first base, and watch
Tim Raines, and be perfectly convinced that Tim gets there faster unless I use
a stopwatch or actually put them in a head to head race, whereupon I'd find out
I was mistaken (or at least, this was true three years ago, when such timings
were actually performed).  Why should we think that defense has this magic
quality that makes it the one thing in baseball we believe cannot be measured,
but has to be watched?

: I guess if you don't understand the fundamentals of how a player should
: field a position, and I guess if you are unable to see whether one is an
: athlete or not then I guess you have no recourse.  One thing is for sure:
: if you don't watch any games you won't have a clue.

Again, why is defense so different?  I don't understand the fundamentals of
swinging a bat, either, but even without looking at them play, I can check the
statistics and tell you that whatever it is, Barry Bonds does a better job of
it than Dave Valle.  For the zillionth time, your arguments come down to one
thing, and one thing only: this belief you have that defense is inherently
unmeasurable.  If you want to discuss that, fine, but stop obfuscating the
issue with this irrelevant nonsense about watching things being the only way to
ever find out about anything.  If you believe defense is unique in this, give
some rationale.  Some reason to believe that counting how many balls they
fielded (as a ratio of balls hit "near" them) isn't better than the known flaws
with "watching" someone.  I'll give you a head start: pitching staffs might
influence DA, since you might tend to get harder hit balls behind some pitchers
than others.  This still doesn't make it unmeasurable - you can do studies of
player's DA's behind different pitchers, on different teams, etc.  Not that
these have been done, but they *could* be done, meaning it is not reasonable to
claim defense is unmeasurable.  Another head start for you - what about the
effect of good/bad players nearby?  Studies can be done here as well - and
already have.  They appear to show it doesn't matter.  What about first basemen
holding runners on?  What about shifts?  Again, we can measure this, although I
would claim it is probably not worth the effort, unless someone convinces me
that certain first baseman have to hold runners on more often than others, and
that this effect appears to be unrelated to the pitcher effect that we, in
theory, will already be accounting for.

: Then again, some 
: people spend half of their lives watching games and they don't have a 
: clue neither.

Exactly the point - this is why we say watching someone can be the worst way to
evaluate him - because it is so incredibly subjective and prone to error.

--
Amendment 2 - Shame On You, Colorado
--
Marc Sabatella
marc@hpmonk.fc.hp.com
--
a disgusted resident of the first state in history of the union
to enact a constitutional amendment that explicitly legalizes discrimination
against a particular minority
--
All opinions expressed herein are my personal ones
and do not necessarily reflect those of HP or anyone else.